Prado manuscript: ‘Now that day is breaking, they leave, each one in his direction. Witches, Hobgoblins, visions and phantoms. lt is a good thing that these people only allow themselves to be seen at nighttime when all is obscure! No one has been able to figure out where they close themselves up and hide during the day. Someone who hits upon a den of Hobgoblins and points them out inside a cage at ten in the morning at the Puerta del Sol, would not need any family inheritance (since one would suppose him to be himself one of the Hobgoblins as well!)’.

‘The Ayala text goes back to the ideas of the preceding two Caprichos plates, 78 and 79: ‘Bishops and Canons lead a life of idleness and feasting, stretching themselves, snoring and singing without being of any use to their fellow men.’ Although the Ayala text certainly is closer to Goya's true meanings in this work, the key word is perhaps in the Prado text: amanecer or ‘the breaking of dawn’. This same verb was used in the title of Plate 71: When dawn appears, we will be off. Goya's conception of dawn, in which the clarity of light, and of truth and reason, dispersed the horrors of the night. Dawn thus was the symbol of the hope for a new and enlightened world.’

Johnson, R. S., Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, R.S. Johnson Fine Art, Chicago, 1992, p. 186.