took a long knife and came to kill me. But I had no
mind to perish in this way; and I dashed upstairs into the room where
the master was busy worshipping the goddess in the company of the
priests, and knocked the table over, and the goddess and many of the
worshippers.

"Kill the wretched thing," said the master. "It has gone mad."

But the priests did not care to lose their salable property, and they
locked me in their bedroom, and sold me to the first man they met the
next morning. It was a poor gardener who needed an ass to cart his stuff
to market. But as the gardener was taking me home a soldier came
tramping along the road. He, too, wanted an ass to carry his heavy kit.
So he struck the gardener down with his sword and seized me by right of
conquest; then, loading me with his armour and shield and baggage, he
took me to the town to which he was travelling. There he was ordered by
his tribune to take some letters to Rome, so he disposed of me for a
small sum to two confectioners.

By this time I had grown very feeble and thin. Though I was changed into
an ass, L could not relish hay and grass and food of that sort, and I
derived scarcely any nourishment from it. I still had human tastes, as
well as human thoughts and feelings. Happily, I was very well off with
my new masters. Every evening, they brought home the remains of the
banquets they had served--bits of chicken, pork, fish and meat, and
various cakes; and these they put in their room while they went for a
bath before dinner. I used then to creep in and take all the best bits,
and when my two masters returned they began to reproach each other with
having filched the choicest pieces. In the meantime, I grew plump and
glossy and broad-backed, and as my masters observed I ate no hay, they
spied on me one evening.

They forgot their quarrel when they saw their ass picking out the best
bits with the taste of an epicure: and, bursting open the door, they
cried: "Let us try him with wine!" Naturally, I drank it very readily.

"We have got a treasure here," they said. They soon found that I was
intelligent, and understood human language. And after training me they
took me to Corinth, and exhibited me there, and made a great deal of
money. In a short time I became famous throughout Greece as the "Golden
Ass," and I was bought by the town for use in the public show. Nobody
thought that any watch need be kept over an animal as thoroughly
civilised as I was; and on