The BRIDGE of
SAN LUIS REY
By
THORNTON WILDER
Illustrated by
AMY DREVENSTEDT
1927
ALBERT & CHARLES BONI: NEW YORK
Copyright, 1927, by
ALBERT & CHARLES BONI, INC.
To My Mother
CONTENTS
PART ONE: PERHAPS AN ACCIDENT
PART TWO: THE MARQUESA DE MONTEMAYOR
PART THREE: ESTEBAN
PART FOUR: UNCLE PIO
PART FIVE: PERHAPS AN INTENTION
ILLUSTRATIONS
First Plate
Second Plate
Third Plate
Fourth Plate
Fifth Plate
Sixth Plate
Seventh Plate
Eighth Plate
Ninth Plate
Tenth Plate
ON Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714,the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellersinto the gulf below. This bridge was on the highroad between Lima andCuzco and hundreds of persons passed over it every day. It had beenwoven of osier by the Incas more than a century before and visitors tothe city were always led out to see it. It was a mere ladder of thinslats swung out over the gorge, with handrails of dried vine. Horses andcoaches and chairs had to go down hundreds of feet below and pass overthe narrow torrent on rafts, but no one, not even the Viceroy, not eventhe Archbishop of Lima, had descended with the baggage rather than crossby the famous bridge of San Luis Rey. St. Louis of France himselfprotected it, by his name and by the little mud church on the furtherside. The bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it wasunthinkable that it should break. The moment a Peruvian heard of theaccident he signed himself and made a mental calculation as to howrecently he had crossed by it and how soon he had intended crossing byit again. People wandered about in a trance-like state, muttering; theyhad the hallucination of seeing themselves falling into a gulf.
There was a great service in the Cathedral. The bodies of the victimswere approximately collected and approximately separated from oneanother, and there was great searching of hearts in the beautiful cityof Lima. Servant girls returned bracelets which they had stolen fromtheir mistresses, and usurers harangued their wives angrily, in defenseof usury. Yet it was rather strange that this event should have soimpressed the Lime