The bridge of San Luis Rey

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below."

The citizens of Peru crossed themselves and whispered prayers of thanks for their deliverance. But in the mind of Brother Juniper, a humble monk who witnessed the catastrophe, burned the question, "Why did this happen to those five?"

As Brother Juniper's investigations illuminate the possibility of an Intention to the disaster—involving the lives left behind as well as those lost on the bridge—the reader rediscovers the one "bridge" between the land of the living and the land of the dead that does not fall.

THE BRIDGE

OF

SAN LUIS REY

THORNTON WILDER

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY

A Washington Square Press edition

1st printing........................... May, 1939

29th printing................... October, 1963

A new edition of a distinguished

literary work now made available in

an inexpensive, well-designed format

WSP

Published by

Washington Square Press, Inc. 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS editions are distributed in

The U.S. by Affiliated Publishers, a division of Pocket

Books, Inc. 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.

Copyright 1955, by Thornton Wilder. Printed in the U.S.A.

CONTENTS

PART ONE:            PERHAPS AN ACCIDENT

PART TWO:           THE MARQUESA DE MONTEMAYOR

PART THREE:        ESTEBAN

PART FOUR:          UNCLE PIO

PART FIVE:            PERHAPS AN INTENTION

To My Mother

Part OnePERHAPS AN ACCIDENT

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below. This bridge was on the high-road, between Lima and Cuzco and hundreds of persons passed over it every day. It had been woven of osier by the Incas more than a century before and visitors to the city were always led out to see it. It was a mere ladder of thin slats swung out over the gorge, with handrails of dried vine. Horses and coaches and chairs had to go down hundreds of feet below and pass over the narrow torrent on rafts, but no one, not even the Viceroy, not even the Archbishop of Lima, had descended with the baggage rather than cross by the famous bridge of San Luis Rey. St. Louis of France himself protected it, by his name and by the little mud church on the further side. The bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break. The moment a Peruvian heard of the accident he signed himself and made a mental calculation as to how recently he had crossed by it and how soon he had intended crossing by it again. People wandered about in a trance-like state, muttering; they had the hallucination of seeing themselves falling into a gulf.

There was a great service in the Cathedral. The bodies of the victims were approximately collected and approximately separated from one another, and there was great searching of hearts in the beautiful city of Lima. Servant girls returned bracelets which they had stolen from their mistresses, and usurers harangued their wives angrily, in defense of usury. Yet it was rather strange that this event should have so impressed the Limeans, for in that country those catastrophes which lawyers shockingly call the "acts of God" were more than usually frequent. Tidal waves were continually washing away cities; earthquakes arrived every week and towers fell upon good men and women all the time. Diseases were forever flitting in and out of the provinces and old age carried away some of the most admirable citizens. That is why it was so surprising that the Peruvians should have been especially touched by the rent in the bridge of San Luis Rey.

Everyone was very deeply impressed, but only one person did anything about it, and that was Brother Juniper. By a series of coincidences so extraordinary that one almost suspects the presence of some Intention, this little red-haired Franciscan from Northern Italy happened to be in Peru converting the Indians and happened to witness the accident.