sty buoyed him up with confidence; so, assuming the
garb of a maiden, this indefatigable journeyer repaired for the
fourth time to the king, and, on being received by him, showed himself
assiduous and even forward. Most people believed him to be a woman, as
he was dressed almost in female attire. Also he declared that his name
was Wecha, and his calling that of a physician: and this assertion
he confirmed by the readiest services. At last he was taken into the
household of the queen, and played the part of a waiting-woman to the
princess, and even used to wash the soil off her feet at eventide; and
as he was applying the water he was suffered to touch her calves and the
upper part of the thighs. But fortune goes with mutable steps, and thus
chance put into his hand what his address had never won. For it happened
that the girl fell sick, and looked around for a cure; and she summoned
to protect her health those very hands which aforetime she had rejected,
and appealed for preservation to him whom she had ever held in loathing.
He examined narrowly all the symptoms of the trouble, and declared that,
in order to check the disease as soon as possible, it was needful to use
a certain drugged draught; but that it was so bitterly compounded, that
the girl could never endure so violent a cure unless she submitted to
be bound; since the stuff of the malady must be ejected from the very
innermost tissues. When her father heard this he did not hesitate
to bind his daughter; and laying her on the bed, he bade her endure
patiently all the applications of the doctor. For the king was tricked
by the sight of the female dress, which the old man was using to
disguise his persistent guile; and thus the seeming remedy became an
opportunity of outrage. For the physician seized the chance of love,
and, abandoning his business of healing, sped to the work, not of
expelling the fever, but of working his lust; making use of the sickness
of the princess, whom in sound health he had found adverse to him. It
will not be wearisome if I subjoin another version of this affair.
For there are certain who say that the king, when he saw the physician
groaning with love, but despite all his expense of mind and body
accomplishing nothing, did not wish to rob of his due reward one who had
so well earned it, and allowed him to lie privily with his daughter.
So doth the wickedness of the father sometimes assail the child, when
vehement passion perverts natural