ld her about my long absence, my earnest desire to
reach home, and my being robbed that very day. She treated me with the
greatest kindness, gave me a good supper for nothing, and then let me
make love to her. But from the very moment that I was such a fool as to
dally with her, my mind seemed to desert me. I even gave her the clothes
which the robbers in common decency had left me, and the little earnings
I made there by working as cloakmaker so long as I was in good physical
condition; until at length this kind friend, and bad luck together,
reduced me to the state you just now found me in."

"By Pollux, then," said I, "you deserve to suffer the very worst
misfortunes (if there be anything worse than the worst), for having
preferred a wrinkled old reprobate to your home and children."

"Hush! hush!" said he, putting his forefinger on his lips, and looking
round with a terror-stricken face to see if we were alone. "Beware of
reviling a woman skilled in the black art, for fear of doing yourself a
mischief."

"Say you so?" said I. "What kind of a woman is this innkeeper, so
powerful and dreadful?"

"She is a sorceress," he replied, "and possessed of magic powers; she
can draw down the heavens, make the earth heave, harden the running
water, dissolve mountains, raise the shades of the dead, dethrone the
gods, extinguish the stars, and set the very depths of Tartarus ablaze!"

"Come, come!" said I: "end this tragic talk, fold up your theatrical
drop-scenes, and let us hear your story in every-day language."

"Should you like," said he, "to hear of one or two, yes, or a great many
of her performances? Why, to make not only her fellow-countrymen, but
the Indians, the Ethiopians, or even the Antipodeans, love her to
distraction, are only the easy lessons of her art, as it were, and mere
trifles. Listen to what she has done before many witnesses. By a single
word she changed a lover into a beaver, because he had gone to another
flame. She changed an innkeeper, a neighbor of hers she was envious of,
into a frog; and now the old fellow, swimming about in a cask of his own
wine, or buried in the dregs, croaks hoarsely to his old
customers,--quite in the way of business. She changed another person, a
lawyer from the Forum, into a ram, because he had conducted a suit
against her; to this very day that ram is always butting about. Finally,
however, public indignation was aroused by so many people coming to harm
through her art