Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/129

 brought me into an adjacent wood of chesnut trees. CHAP. VIII.

was a beautiful moonlight night, when. I reached the forest in which the cabal resided. But what was my surprise, to find at day-break that my horse had carried me a quite opposite direction from that whither I imagined to have chosen my way. It was the effect of another enchantment. At sunrising, I saw myself in the charming valley of Placentia, on the river Tago; the river Talavera being on the right, and the town of Oropesa, amidst numberless detached houses, and scattered hamlets and villages on the left. I jogged on between the vineyards and, cornfields which embellish that fertile region, till I arrived at the next village, whose inhabitants were all on foot and drest in their best attire, to go, as I afterwards understood, to a famous annual fair at Oropesa. The groups of peasants of both sexes loudly diverted them-