alphonse a young walloon officer is travelling to join his regiment in madrid in 1739 but he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves brigands cabbalists noblemen coquettes and gypsies whose stories he records over sixtysix days the resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket from which tales of characters transformed through disguise magic and illusion of honour and cowardice of hauntings and seductions leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices jan potocki 17611812 used a range of literary styles gothic picaresque adventure pastoral erotica in his novel of storieswithinstories which like the decameron and tales from the thousand and one nights provides entertainment on an epic scale