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of soup, an orange, a glass of wine, and a coffee to finish off, no one with his sedentary lifestyle could wish for more. He carefully washed up, using more water and detergent than necessary, he dried the dishes and put them back in the kitchen cupboard, he is a methodical man, a proof-reader in the absolute sense of the word, if any word can be said to exist and go on existing for ever with the same absolute meaning, since the absolute demands nothing less. Before getting back to his work, he went to look at the weather, the sky had cleared a little, the other side of the river is becoming visible, nothing but a dark line, an elongated blur, but it is still cold. On his desk there are four hundred and thirty-seven pages of proofs, two hundred and ninety-three of them have already been corrected and checked, the rest should not take too long, the proof-reader has the entire afternoon, and the evening, yes, the evening as well, because this meticulous professional always gives the proofs one last reading from start to finish as if he were an ordinary reader, finally there is the pleasure and satisfaction of understanding in a relaxed manner without looking out for mistakes, how right that author was who asked one day, What would Juliet's complexion have looked like if examined with the eyes of a hawk, now then, the proof-reader in his vigilant task, is just like the hawk, even when his eyes have started to tire, but when he comes to the final reading, he is that self-same Romeo gazing upon Juliet for the first time, innocent, and transfixed by love.
    In the case of
The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
Romeo is fully aware that he will not find much cause for rapture, although Raimundo Silva, in the preliminary and somewhat labyrinthine conversation about the correction of errors and errors of correction, had told the author that he liked the book, and, in fact, he was not lying. But what does liking mean, we ask ourselves, between liking something a lot and not liking it at all, there is less and little, and it is not enough to write it in order to know how much yes, or no, or maybe, means in all of this, you would have to utter it aloud, hearing invariably captures the ultimate vibration, and when we are deceived or allow ourselves to be deceived it is only because we did not listen sufficiently to our hearing. It must be recognised, however, that there was no such deception in that dialogue, and it soon became clear that this was a vague or distracted kind of liking, as lukewarmly expressed by Raimundo Silva, I like it, and no, sooner had he uttered these words than they turned cold. In those four hundred and thirty-seven pages he did not find a single new fact, controversial interpretation, unpublished document, even as much as a fresh reading. Nothing more than yet another regurgitation of those interminable, played-out accounts of the siege, the description of places, the speeches and deeds of the royal personage, the arrival of the crusaders at Oporto and their navigation until they entered the Tagus, the events that occurred on the feast of St Peter, the ultimatum given to the city, the efforts that went into the siege, the battles and assaults, the surrender, and finally the sacking of the city,
die vero quo omnium sanctorum celebratur ad laudem et honorem nominis Christi et sanctissimae ejus genitricis purificatum est templum,
words attributed to Osbern, who entered the pantheon of literature thanks to the siege and capture of Lisbon and what has been written about them, these Latin words, translated roughly by someone who knows the language, mean that on All Saints Day the corrupt mosque became the most holy Catholic church, and now the muezzin will definitely no longer be able to summon the faithful for prayers to Allah, he will be replaced by a bell or carillon after one god has been substituted for another, and what a pity they did not let him go. He is blind, poor man, but then just as blind with sanguinary wrath