‘She prays for her.’ Girls at their toilette, and an old woman praying. Meaning obscure.
‘Why was she sensitive?’ A young girl weeping in a dungeon. This _may_ imply that people of excessive sensibility carry their own prison or torture-chamber with them.
‘To the Count Palatine.’ A richly dressed charlatan extracting teeth. Allusion, probably, to the practice of such gentry of representing themselves as physicians to foreign potentates.
‘Sleep comforts them.’ Women asleep in prison.
‘They shave him.’ Young man shaved by girls.
‘A bad night.’ Women out in a stormy night.
‘Will the pupil know more [than the master]?’ A donkey, of dignified demeanour, teaching a little ass.
‘Bravissimo!’ A donkey applauds a monkey who plays on the guitar. Possibly a skit on Charles IV. and Godoy.
‘As far as his grandfather.’ An ass contemplates the portraits of other asses. Satire on those who seek to establish long pedigrees for themselves.
‘Of what will he die?’ An ass feels a dying man’s pulse. Perhaps a reflection on the faculty was intended.
‘Neither more nor less.’ A donkey sits for his portrait to a monkey, who is painting a horse. Satire on artists who paint pictures of those whom they have never seen.
‘Thou who canst not....’ Two men staggering under the weight of two asses. The men represent the people, the asses perhaps the governing classes.
43. El sueño de la razon produce monstruosos.
‘The sleep of reason induces monstrous thoughts.’ Bats and owls fly round a sleeping man, and place a pencil in his hand wherewith to reproduce his vision.
‘There is a lot to taste.’ Around a basket full of new-born children sit three topers. Meaning obscure.
‘Correction.’ Fantastic figures with heads of birds and animals. Said to be an allusion to the Holy Office.
‘Homage to the master.’ Wizards and witches offering a new-born infant to their chief.
‘Blowers.’ Devil on a cat is rousing some sleeping monks.
‘Little ghosts.’ Three monstrous beings in clerical garb. Attack on the clergy.
Two persons with costumes heraldically decorated, their eyes closed, and with padlocks on their ears, are being fed by a third, blindfolded, and with ass’s ears. Allusion to the aristocracy, represented to be the victims of superstition and ignorance.