It came to pass that Flamminio, after he had traversed many lands, came at last to a desert and solitary place, where he found a hermit with his beard all matted with dirt, and his body worn away by the passage of the years and by fasting, letting his mind concern itself only in contemplation. Whereupon, thinking that assuredly he had at last found Death, Flamminio thus addressed him: ‘Of a truth, I am very glad to meet with you, holy father.’ ‘The sight of you is welcome to me, my son,’ the hermit replied. ‘My good father,’ said Flamminio, ‘what do you here in this rough and uninhabitable spot, cut off from all pleasure and from all human society?’ ‘I pass my time,’ answered the hermit, ‘in prayers and in fastings and in contemplation.’ Then Flamminio inquired, ‘And for what reason do you follow this life?’ ‘Why, my son,’ exclaimed the hermit, ‘I do all this to serve God, to mortify this wretched flesh of mine, to do penance for all the offences I have wrought in the sight of the eternal and immortal God and of the true son of Mary, and in the end to get salvation for my sinful soul, so that when the hour of my death shall come I may render it up pure of all stain, and in the awful day of judgment, by the grace of my redeemer and by no merit of my own, may make myself worthy of that happy and glorious home where I may taste the joys of eternal life, to which blessedness God lead us!’ Then said Flamminio, ‘Oh, my dear father! spare a few words to tell me—if it be not an offence to you—what manner of thing is this Death, and after what fashion is it made?’ The holy father answered, ‘Oh, my son! trouble not yourself to gain knowledge of this thing you seek; for Death is a very terrible and a fearful being, and is called by wise men the final end of all our sufferings, a misery to the happy, a happiness to the miserable, and the term and limit of all worldly things. It severs friend from friend; it separates the father from the son, and the son from the father, the mother from the daughter, and the daughter from the mother. It cuts the marriage bond, and finally disunites the soul and the body, so that the body, severed from the soul, loses all its power and becomes so putrid and of so evil a savour that all men flee therefrom and abandon it as a thing abominable.’ ‘And have you never set eyes on him, my father?’ asked Flamminio. ‘Of a certainty I have never seen him,’ answered the hermit. ‘But can you tell me what I should do in order to see him?’ asked Flamminio. ‘Ah, my son!’ said the hermit, ‘if you are indeed so keenly set on finding him, you have only to keep going further and further on; because man, the longer the way he has journeyed through this world, the nearer he is to Death.’ The young man having thanked the holy father, and received his benediction, went his way.
Then Flamminio, continuing his journey, traversed a great number of deep valleys and craggy mountains and inhospitable forests, seeing by the way many sorts of fearsome beasts, and questioning each one of these whether he was the thing called Death, and always getting in return the answer ‘No.’ At last, after he had passed through many lands and seen many strange things, he came to a mountain of no little magnitude, and having climbed over this, he began to descend into a gloomy and very deep valley, closed in on all sides by profound caverns. Here he saw a strange and monstrous wild beast, which made all the valley re-echo with its roaring. ‘Who are you?’ said Flamminio. ‘Ho! is it possible that you may be Death?’ To which the wild beast made answer, ‘I am not Death; but pursue your way, and soon you will find him.’
Flamminio, when he heard the answer he had so long desired to hear, felt his heart grow lighter. The wretched youth, now worn out by fatigue and half dead by reason of the long weariness and the heavy toil he had undergone, was almost sunk in despair, when he found himself on the borders of a wide and spacious plain. Having climbed to the summit of a little hill of no great height, delightful, and covered with flowers, he looked round about him, now here, now there, and espied the lofty walls of a magnificent city not far from the spot where he stood. Whereupon he began to walk more rapidly with nimble steps, and when the shadows of evening were falling he came to one of the city gates, which was adorned with the finest white marble. And when he had entered therein, with the leave of the keeper of the gate, the first person he met was a very old woman, full of years, with a face like that of a corpse, and a body so meagre and thin that, through her leanness, it would have been easy to count one by one every bone in her body. Her forehead was thickly marked with wrinkles, her eyes were squinting, watery, and red, as if they had been dyed in purple, her cheeks all puckered, her lips turned inside out, her hands rough and callous; her head was palsied, and she trembled in every limb; she was bent almost double in her gait, and she was clad in rough and dusky clothes. Over and above this she bore by her left side a keen-edged sword, and carried in her right hand a weighty cudgel, at the end of which was wrought a point of iron made in the shape of a triangle, and upon this staff she would now and then lean as if to rest herself. On her shoulders also she carried a large wallet, in which she kept a great store of phials and pots and bottles all filled with divers sorts of liquors and unguents and plasters fitted for the remedying of various human ailments and accidents. As soon as Flamminio’s eye fell upon this toothless ugly old harridan he was seized with the thought that peradventure she might prove to be that Death to find whom he was going wandering about the world; so having approached her he said, ‘Ah, my good mother, may God keep and preserve you!’ In a husky voice the old woman made answer to him, ‘And may God keep and preserve you, my son!’ ‘Tell me, my mother,’ Flamminio went on, ‘whether perchance you may be the thing men call Death?’ The old woman replied, ‘No, I am not. On the other hand, I am Life; and know, moreover, that I happen to have with me here in this wallet which I carry behind my back certain liquors and unguents by the working of which I am able with ease to purify and to cure the mortal body of man of all the heavy diseases which afflict him, and in the short space of a single hour to relieve him in like manner from the torture of any pain he may feel.’ Then said Flamminio, ‘Ah, my good mother! can you not let me know where Death is to be found?’ ‘And who may you be,’ asked the old woman, ‘who make this demand of me with so great persistence?’ Flamminio answered, ‘I am a youth who has already spent many days and months and years wandering about in search of Death, and never yet have I been able to find in any land a man who could tell me aught concerning him. Wherefore, if you should happen to possess this knowledge, I beseech you of your courtesy to let me share it, because I am possessed by so keen a desire to look upon him and to know what he is like, in order that I may be certain whether he really is the hideous and the dreadful thing which all men hold him to be.’
The old woman, when she heard the foolish request of the young man, spake thus to him: ‘My son, when would it please you that I let you see Death, and judge how hideous he is, and when would you make trial of his terrors?’ To this Flamminio replied: ‘Ah, my mother! keep me no longer in suspense I beg you, but let me see him now, at this present moment.’ Thereupon the old woman, to satisfy his desire, made him strip himself quite naked, and, while he was taking off his garments, she worked up together certain of her drugs useful in the cure of divers diseases, and when the thing was ready, she said to him: ‘Bend yourself down here, my son.’ And he, in obedience to her direction, bent down. ‘Now bow your head and close your eyes;’ and Flamminio did as she bade him. Scarcely had the old woman finished her speech than she took the sharp blade which she wore by her side and with one blow struck off his head from his shoulders. Then she quickly took up the head, and, having replaced it upon the bust, she smeared it well with the plaster which she had prepared, and thereby the wound was quickly healed. But how the thing which now happened was caused I cannot say, whether it arose through the over-quickness of the old hag in putting back the head upon the shoulders, or whether she herself brought it to pass through her own craft. The head when it was joined once more to the body was put on hind part forward. Wherefore Flamminio, when he looked down upon his shoulders, his loins, and his big buttocks standing out (all of which things he had never seen hitherto), fell into such a fit of terror and dismay that, not being able to think of any place where he might be suffered to hide himself, he cried out to the old woman in a trembling dolorous voice: ‘Alas, alas, my good mother! bring me back once more to my old shape; bring me back, for the love of God, for by my faith I have never seen anything more frightful and more hideous than what I now behold. Alas! deliver me from this miserable state in which I now find myself fixed. Alas! alas! do not delay your help, my sweet good mother. Lend me your aid, for I am sure you can help me easily if you will.’ The cunning old woman still kept silence feigning all the while to know nothing of the mischance that had been wrought, and letting the wretched fellow work himself into an agony and stew in his own fat;[[32]] but at last, after having kept him in this plight for the space of two hours, she agreed to work the remedy he sought. So, having made him bend himself down as before, she put her hand to her sharp-cutting sword and struck off his head from his shoulders. Then she took the head in her hand, and, having placed it upon the trunk and smeared it well with her ointment, brought Flamminio back to his former condition.
The youth, when he perceived that he had once more become his old self, put on his clothes; and now, having seen what a terrible thing, and by his own experience proved what a hideous and ugly thing Death was, he made his way back to Ostia by the shortest and the quickest way he knew without saying any more farewell words to the old woman, occupying himself for the future in reaching after Life and flying from Death, devoting himself more diligently to the consideration of those matters which he had hitherto neglected.
It now only remained that Lionora should propose her enigma, so she gave out the following one in merry wise:
About a meadow fair and wide,
Gay decked with flowers on every side,
Three nymphs on task divine intent,
Pass to and fro, and firmly bent