s; and the very next day had been fixed upon to wreak a
fearful vengeance on her, by stoning her to death. She frustrated the
design by her enchantments. You remember how Medea, having got Creon to
allow her just one day before her departure, burned his whole palace,
with himself and his daughter in it, by means of flames issuing from a
garland? Well, this sorceress, having performed certain deadly
incantations in a ditch (she told me so herself in a drunken fit),
confined everybody in the town each in his own house for two whole days,
by a secret spell of the demons. The bars could not be wrenched off, nor
the doors taken off the hinges, nor even a breach made in the walls. At
last, by common consent, the people all swore they would not lift a hand
against her, and would come to her defense if any one else did. She then
liberated the whole city. But in the middle of the night she conveyed
the author of the conspiracy, with all his house, close barred as it
was,--the walls, the very ground, and even the foundations,--to another
city a hundred miles off, on the top of a craggy mountain, and so
without water. And as the houses of the inhabitants were built so close
together that there was not room for the new-comer, she threw down the
house before the gate of the city and took her departure."

"You narrate marvelous things," said I, "my good Socrates; and no less
terrible than marvelous. In fact, you have excited no small anxiety
(indeed I may say fear) in me too; not a mere grain of apprehension, but
a piercing dread for fear this old hag should come to know our
conversation in the same way, by the help of some demon. Let us get to
bed without delay; and when we have rested ourselves by a little sleep,
let us fly as far as we possibly can before daylight."

While I was still advising him thus, the worthy Socrates, overcome by
more wine than he was used to and by his fatigue, had fallen asleep and
was snoring loudly. I shut the door, drew the bolts, and placing my bed
close against the hinges, tossed it up well and lay down on it. I lay
awake some time through fear, but closed my eyes at last a little
before midnight.

I had just fallen asleep, when suddenly the door was burst open with
such violence that it was evidently not done by robbers; the hinges were
absolutely broken and wrenched off, and it was thrown to the ground. The
small bedstead, minus one foot and rotten, was also upset by the shock;
and falling upon me