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Los Caprichos Plate One: Francisco Goya.
You loosened this plate too. They say yes and give their hand to the first comer. The readiness with which many women are inclined to get married, hoping thereby to be able to live in greater liberty.
Plate Three: Here comes the boogeyman. Lamentable abuse of early education to cause a child to fear the boogeyman more than his father and so make it afraid of something that does not exist.
Plate Four: Nanny's boy. Negligence, tolerance, and spoiling make children capricious, naughty, vain, greedy, lazy, and insufferable. They grow up and yet remain childish. Thus is nanny's little boy.
Plate Five: Two of a kind. It is often disputed whether men are worse than women or the contrary, but the vices of one in the other come from bad upbringing. Wherever the men are depraved, the women are the same. The young lady portrayed in this print is as knowing as the young man talking to her, and as regards the two old women, one is as vile as the other.
Plate Six: Nobody knows himself. The world is a masquerade; face, dress, and voice all are false. All wish to appear what they are not. All deceive and do not even know themselves.
Plate Seven: Even thus he cannot make her out. How can he make her out? In order to know what she is, a monocle is not enough. Judgment and experience of the world are needed, and these are precisely what this poor gentleman is lacking.
Plate Eight: They carried her off. The woman who cannot take care of herself belongs to the first who seizes her, and when the mischief is done, people are surprised that she has been carried off.
Plate Nine: Ten tolas. If he were a better lover and less of a boor, she would revive.
Plate Ten: Love and death. See here a Calderón e'en lover who, unable to laugh at his rival, dies in the arms of his beloved and loses her by his daring. It is inadvisable to draw the sword too often.
Plate Eleven: Lads making ready. Their faces and their clothes make it clear what they are.
Plate Twelve: Out hunting for teeth. The teeth of a hanged man are very efficacious for sorceries. Without this ingredient, there is not much you can do. What a pity the common people should believe such nonsense.
Plate Thirteen: They are hot. They are in such a hurry to gobble it down that they swallow it boiling hot. Even in pleasure, temperance and moderation are necessary.
Plate Fourteen: What a sacrifice! That's how things are. The fiancé is not very attractive, but he's rich, and not at the cost of the freedom of an unhappy girl. The security of a hungry family is acquired.
Plate Fifteen: Pretty teachings. The advice is worthy of her who gives it. The worst of it is that the girl will follow it absolutely to the letter. Unhappy the man who gets anywhere near her.
Plate Sixteen: For heaven's sake! And it was her mother. The young woman left her home as a little girl. She did her apprenticeship at Katz's. She came to Madrid. There she won the lottery. She goes down to the Prado, and here's a grim, decrepit old woman begging her for alms. She sends her away. The old woman persists. The fashionable young woman turns around and finds, would have thought it, that the poor old woman is her mother.
Plate Seventeen: It is nicely stretched. Oh, the body! A woman is no fool; she knows quite well what is wanted and that the stockings must fit tightly.
Plate Eighteen: And his house is on fire. It will not occur to him to take off his breeches or to stop talking to the candle until the local fire brigade freshens him up.
Plate Nineteen: All will fall. And those who are about to fall will not take warning from the example of those who have fallen. But nothing can be done about it; all will fall.
Plate Twenty: There they go, plucked. If they have already been plucked, get them out; there will be others coming along.
Plate Twenty-One: How they pluck! Er hens also encounter birds of prey to pluck them, and that is why the saying goes, you'll get as good as you give.
Plate Twenty-Two: Poor little girls. There are going to mend these tattered women. Take them in, as they have been getting loose for long enough.
Plate Twenty-Three: Those specks of dust! For shame to treat in this way an honorable woman who, for a trifle, served everyone so diligently, so usefully. For shame!
Plate Twenty-Four: Nothing could be done about it. They are persecuting this saintly woman to death. After having signed her death sentence, they take her out and triumph. She has indeed deserved a triumph, and if they do it to insult her, they are wasting time. No one can shame someone who has nothing to be ashamed of.
Plate Twenty-Five: Yes, he broke the pot. The son is mischievous, and the mother bad-tempered, which is worse.
Plate Twenty-Six: They've already got a seat. If conceded, girls want to have a seat; there is nothing better than to put it on their head.
Plate Twenty-Seven: Which of them is the more overcome? Neither one nor the other. He is a charlatan in love who says the same to all of them, and she is thinking of giving up five appointments which she had made between eight and nine, and it's already said in thirty.
Plate Twenty-Eight: Hush! An excellent mother to trust with a confidential commission.
Plate Twenty-Nine: That certainly is being able to read. They are combing his hair, they are putting on his shoes. He is sleeping, and he is studying. No one shall say that he is not making the most of his time.
Plate Thirty: Why hide them? The answer is easy. The reason he doesn't want to spend them and does not spend is because, although he's over 80 and can't live another month, he still fears that he will live long enough to lack money. So mistaken are the calculations of avarice.
Plate Thirty-One: She prays for her, and she does well to do so. That God may send her luck and keep her from harm and from surgeons and policemen, and make her as dexterous and wide-awake and willing as her mother was in heaven.
Plate Thirty-Two: Because she was susceptible, it had to happen. The world has its ups and downs. The life she was leading could end in no other way.
Plate Thirty-Three: To the Count Palatine or Count of the Pole. In all sciences, there are quacks who know everything without having studied a word and have a remedy for everything. You should not trust a word they say. The really wise man is always wary of making predictions. He promises little and accomplishes a lot, but the Count Palatine accomplishes nothing of what he promises.
Plate Thirty-Four: Sleep overcomes them. Don't wake them. Sleep is perhaps the only happiness of the wretched.
Plate Thirty-Five: She fleeces him. They shave him close and fleece him. It is his own fault for putting himself in the hands of such a barber.
Plate Thirty-Six: A bad night. Get about, girls who don't want to stay at home, risk exposing themselves to these hardships.
Plate Thirty-Seven: Might not the pupil? No more. One cannot say whether he knows more or less. What is certain is that the master is the most serious-looking person who could possibly be found.
Plate Thirty-Eight: Bravo! If ears were all that were needed to appreciate it, no one could listen more intelligently. But it is to be feared that he is applauding what is soundless.
Plate Thirty-Nine: And so was his grandfather. This poor animal has been driven mad by a genealogist and heralds. He's not the only one.
Plate Forty: Of what ill-will he died! The doctor is excellent, pensive, considerate, calm, serious. What more can one ask for?
Plate Forty-One: Neither more nor less. He is quite right to have his portrait painted thus. Those who do not know him and have not seen him will know who he is.
Plate Forty-Two: Thou who canst not! Who would not say that these two Cavaliers are cavalry?
Plate Forty-Three: The sleep of Reason produces monsters. Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters. United with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.
Plate Forty-Four: They spin. Finally, they spin. Finally, and the devil himself will not be able to undo the warp which they contrived.
Plate Forty-Five: There is plenty to suck. Those who reach 80 suck little children; those under 18 suck grownups. It seems that man is born and lives to have the substance sucked out of him.
Plate Forty-Six: Correction without correction in censure. One cannot get on in any faculty, and that of witchcraft needs uncommon talent, application, maturity, submission, and de sylheti to the advice of the great witch who directs the seminary of Barra hona.
Plate Forty-Seven: A gift for the master. That is quite right. They would be ungrateful pupils not to visit the professor to whom they owe everything they know in their diabolical signs.
Plate Forty-Eight: Tail bearers. Blasts of wind. The tail-bearing witches are the most irritating in all witchcraft and the least intelligent in that art. If they really knew something, they wouldn't blast it about.
Plate Forty-Nine: Hobgoblins. Now this is another kind of people: happy, playful, obliging, a little greedy, fond of playing practical jokes, but they are very good-natured, the little men.
Plate Fifty: The chinchillas. He who hears nothing knows nothing and does nothing. Belongs to the numerous family of the chinchillas, which have always been good for nothing.
Plate Fifty-One: They spruced themselves up. This business of having long nails is so pernicious that it is forbidden even in witchcraft.
Plate Fifty-Two: What a tailor can do! How often can some ridiculous creature be suddenly transformed into a presumptuous costume? Who is nothing but appears to be much? That is what can be done by the ability of a tailor and the stupidity of those who judge things by their appearance.
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Plate Fifty-Three: What a golden beak! This looks a bit like an academic meeting. Perhaps the parrot is speaking about medicine. However, don't believe a word he says. There is many a doctor who has a golden beak when he is talking, but when he comes to prescriptions, he's a herald. He can ramble on about pains but can't cure them. He makes fools of sick people and fills the cemeteries with skulls.
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Plate Fifty-Four: The shamefaced one. There are men whose faces are the most indecent parts of their whole bodies, and it would be a good thing if those who have such unfortunate and ridiculous faces were to put them in their reaches.
Plate Fifty-Five: Until death. She's quite right to make herself look pretty. It is her 75th birthday, and her little girlfriends are coming to see her.
Plate Fifty-Six: To rise and to fall. Fortune mal-treats those who court her. Efforts to rise she rewards with hot air, and those who have risen she punishes by downfall.
Plate Fifty-Seven: The filiation. Here is a question of fooling the fiancé by letting him see through her pedigree. Who were the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents of the young lady? And who is she? He will find that out later.
Plate Fifty-Eight: Swallow it, dog! He who lives amongst men will be irremediably vexed. If he wants to avoid it, he will have to go and live in the mountains. But when he is there, he will discover that to live alone is vexatious.
Plate Fifty-Nine: And still they don't go. He who does not reflect on the inconstancy of fortune sleeps peacefully while surrounded by dangers. He does not know how to avoid the danger which threatens him, and there is no misfortune which does not surprise him.
Plate Sixty: Trials. Little by little, she is making progress. She is already making her first steps, and in time she will know as much as her teacher.
Plate Sixty-One: They have flown. The group of witches which serves as a pedestal for this fashionable lady is put there for ornament rather than for use. There are heads so full of inflammable gas that they need neither balloons nor witches to make them fly.
Plate Sixty-Two: Who would have thought it? See here is a terrible quarrel as to which of the two is more of a witch. Who would have thought that the screeching one and the grisly one would tear each other's hair in this way? Friendship is the daughter of virtue; villains may be accomplices but not friends.
Plate Sixty-Three: Look how solemn they are. The Prince shows that these are two witches of means and position who have gone out to take a little exercise on horseback.
Plate Sixty-Four: Bon voyage! Where is this infernal company going, filling the air with noise in the darkness of night? If it were daytime, it would be quite a different matter, and gunshots would bring the whole group of them to the ground. But as it is night, no one can see them.
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Plate Sixty-Five: Where is mother going? Mother has dropped C, and they have sent her on an outing. God willing, she may recover.
Plate Sixty-Six: There it goes! There goes a witch riding on the little crippled devil. This poor devil, of whom everyone makes fun, is not without his uses at times.
Plate Sixty-Seven: Wait till you've been anointed! He has been sent out on an important errand and wants to go off half anointed. Even among the witches, some are harebrained, impetuous, madcap, without a scrap of judgment. It's the same the world over.
Plate Sixty-Eight: Pretty teacher! The room is one of the most necessary implements for witches. For besides being great sweepers, as the stories tell, they may be able to change the broom into a fast mule and go with it where the devil cannot reach them.
Plate Sixty-Nine: Below! No doubt there was a great catch of children in the previous night. The banquet which they are preparing will be a rich one. Bon Appetit!
Plate Seventy: Devout! A profession. Will you swear to obey and respect your masters and superiors, to sweep the Gerrits, to spinto, to ring bells, to how to yell, to fly, to cook, to grease, to suck, to bake, to blow, to fry everything, and whatever time you are ordered to? I swear! Well then, my girl, you are now a witch. Congratulations!
Plate Seventy-One: When day breaks, we will be off. Even if you hadn't come, you wouldn't have been missed.
Plate Seventy-Two: You will not escape! She who wants to be caught never escapes.
Plate Seventy-Three: It is better to be lazy. If the more he works, the less he likes it, he is quite right to say it is better to be lazy.
Plate Seventy-Four: Don't scream, stupid! Poor Pakula. She was looking for the footmen and runs into the Goblin. But don't be afraid; it's plain that Martin Echo is in a good mood and won't do her any harm.
Plate Seventy-Five: Catch anyone! A man and a woman tied together with ropes, struggling to get loose and crying out to be untied quickly. Either I'm mistaken, or there are two people who have been forced to marry.
You understand well, as I say, look out! Otherwise, the cockade in baton makes this stupid boor think he is a superior being, and he abuses the office entrusted to him to annoy everyone who knows him. He is proud, insolent, vain with all, and furious, servile, and obsequious with those who are his superiors.
Plate Seventy-Seven: What one does to another. It is the way of the world. People jest and fight with one another. He who yesterday played the part of the bowl today plays the Caballero. In Plaza, Fortune presides over the show and has lots the parts according to the inconstancy of her caprices.
Plate Seventy-Eight: Be quick! They are waking up. The goblins are the most industrious and obliging people there are. As the maid keeps them happy, they scour the pot, cook the vegetables, wash up, sweep, and hush the child.
It has often been disputed whether they are devils or not. Don't let us deceive ourselves; devils are those who spend their time doing harm or hindering others from doing good or doing nothing at all.
Plate Seventy-Nine: No one has seen us. And what does it matter if the goblins go down to the cellar and have four swigs? If they have been working all night and have left the scullery like gleaming gold.
Plate Eighty: It is time then. When dawn threatens, each one goes on his way. Witches, hobgoblins, apparitions, and phantoms. It is a good thing that these creatures do not allow themselves to be seen except by night and when it is dark.
Nobody has been able to find out where they shut themselves up and hide during the day. If anyone could catch a den full of goblins and were to show it in a cage at 10 o'clock in the morning in the Bois de Sol, he would need no other inheritance.
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