Then Virgilio took a mirror which he had brought with him, and placing it before the eyes of the invalid, bade him look at it as steadily and as long as he could. The young man did so, and then said, as if in despair:
“For me there is no remedy, O doctor, for what you show me is worse than my disorder, as I supposed it to be. Truly I see death, and not myself.”
“Courage!” replied Virgilio. “You shall be cured.”
“Cure me,” he answered, “and you shall have all that I possess.”
“Nay, I will cure you first,” said Virgilio, “and then settle on easier terms.”
The patient looked steadily at the mirror. Virgilio rapped thrice with a wand, when there suddenly leaped from the bed a mouse, which uttered three horrible, piercing screams. The doctor bade the invalid continue to look steadily at himself in the mirror, and for his life not to cease doing so. Without turning round, the doctor ordered the mouse to enter the bed and lick up and bring away with her on her tongue all the water which the wife had sprinkled on the clothes. And this done, he bade her bring again out of the bed all the powder which she had placed there. Which being effected, he ordered the mouse to make of it a pellet, and devour it; but here she resisted, for to do that meant death to her and a cure to the invalid.
But the doctor was inflexible, and she had to obey. Nor had she begun to eat it before he bade the husband rise, which he did, feeling perfectly recovered, though much confused at such a sudden change.
Then Virgilio ordered the mouse to mount the bed, and lo! she changed to a woman, for she was, of course, the witch who had done all this devil’s work. And the sorceress bade them call parents and wife and all. And when they came the witch said:
“Evil my life has been, and evil will be the death which in a few minutes will come to me; yet am I not so evil as this woman, who would have killed by the worst suffering the husband who loved her. For hell hath many who are bad, but the worst are they who return evil for good. And he who hath ended this thing by his power is the great Virgilio, who is the lord of magic in all this land.”
Then she told, step by step, how the wife had turned her heart from her husband, almost as soon as she was married, and wished to kill him, and had paid her to bewitch him. Then Virgilio opened the window and the witch indeed died, or it was the last seen of her, for with a horrible howl she vanished in the night, flying away.