Pamphilus looked pale, dismayed with the accident, and almost as dead as he, and encouraging him to this fearful and sharp passage, laid a cross of two myrtle boughs on his stomach. Instantly he heard a troop of horse, whose masters being divided into divers paths, did seek for the dead man. By their words and their diligence, the pilgrim knew their design, and calling them, showed them him whom they sought for, telling them how he had found him. Amongst them was his brother, who seeing Pamphilus bloody, and in a pilgrim's habit (which is enough to make an honest man suspected) cried out, Oh thou Castilian traitor, thou hast murdered him to rob him. And at the very instant, the same friend who had killed this poor knight, and who the better to cover his treason, accompanying the brother, took hold of the pilgrim's arm: thou robber and infamous assassin, what hath made thee murder the noblest knight in this country? Sirs, replied Pamphilus, I found him in a meadow hard by, bewailing his death, which he said was wrought by the hand of one whom he did account his best friend: and out of compassion and at his entreaty, I brought him to this monastery, where he departed this life in my arms. But Tansiles (who was the traitor which had killed him) fearing lest the pilgrim might discover something which he might have heard from the dying man concerning his treason, pulling out a pistol from the pommel of his saddle, gave fire and aimed it directly at his head. Yet heaven not permitting that it should go off (for saints and angels do always assist the innocent) the pilgrim lived. O let him live said Tirsus, (so was the dead man's brother called) for it is much better, that keeping him in prison he may confess his own crime: and whether he killed him for to rob him, or whether some enemy of my brother Godfrey's did not hire him to murder him. The traitor answered to Tirsus and to the others who did accompany him, that blood (yet warm) of his friend would not suffer him to delay his revenge so long. Yet all their opinions prevailing against his: the innocent Pamphilus was bound hand and foot on a horse, and dead Godfrey laid on another. It is a just judgment, said Pamphilus (by the way) for my leaving of Nisa wounded, and Jacinth almost dead. Do you not hear, said Tirsus? Without doubt this Nisa is the woman for whose sake he hath committed this murder, and Jacinth some friend who led my brother to the place. All of them believed what Tirsus said, and the traitor Tansiles interpreted Pamphilus' despair in such sort, that everyone believed that Pamphilus did speak of Godfrey's death.
They led him into no town as he thought they would, but to a grange house, about half a league from the monastery, the gate whereof was between two towers. Tirsus knocked, and a servant answered: tell my mother and sisters (said he) that I have brought my brother Godfrey dead, and his murderer with him. Instantly he heard a great cry in the hall of the house, by which Pamphilus did know that fortune prepared a great deal of evil for him: Nevertheless desiring to die, he resolved not to defend his life with his tongue, which he could not do with his arms. Someone opened the door of the house, and with candles lighted the miserable mother with her daughters and servants received her dead son. Some howling and crying carried him into the hall, others ran upon poor Pamphilus, tearing his beard and pulling him by the hair of the head, and almost stunned him with blows. With this good entertainment he was lodged this night in one of the towers, having his body laden with irons, yet he was heard to utter no words but only that he deserved this and more for forsaking Nisa. All this night nothing was heard but cries and complaints for Godfrey, and the time which was not employed in this funereal exercise they spent in talking of Nisa and what she should be, whom their prisoner had so often in his mouth.
The light of the morning, which very slowly enters into prisons, brought day to Pamphilus, not in waking him who had not slept, but in advertising his soul of his approaching death, the certain news whereof he would willingly have welcomed with gifts: when as the prison door being open, he saw Godfrey's mother and sisters enter, demanding of him in great passion and choler, wherefore he had killed her son? But he answering, only for Nisa’s sake am I reduced to this misery, they began to beat him with such rage that they left him almost dead; and shutting the prison, they resolved to famish him to death. But whilst about noon, the dead body was carried to burial, with lights, mourning and funeral company of his parents and friends: Flerida his youngest sister, mollified with Pamphilus' complaints, were it that his countenance did enforce her to believe his innocence, or that some other secret sympathy inclined her to have pity of his life, went to the prison, and by the keyhole said thus to him: unfortunate pilgrim, do not afflict thyself, for I will free thee despite my mother and my brothers; who art thou, said Pamphilus who promises life when there is nothing but heaven which can give it me? I am Flerida (answered she) one of Godfrey's sisters who do promise it to thee, afflicted with thy grief out of the assurance I have in my own imagination of thy innocence.
I swear unto thee by God said Pamphilus, that going in the night through a meadow I found thy brother wounded unto death, as he told me by one whom he did reckon to be his best friend; I took him on my shoulders, and carried him to the monastery, where he died in my arms before the gate was opened: I do not desire to live, but the care which I have of another's life more than mine own makes me seek my liberty contrary to my desire; if thou canst procure me it, I am a knight, and of a family from which ungrateful man nor traitor ever sprang: thou shalt do a heroic deed worthy of an illustrious lady, and though I should never merit it, yet heaven will not fail to acknowledge it. Flerida had not need of so many reasons, who was virtuous and so well disposed to free him, that she would hazard a thousand lives to give it to him. And (as aptly it served) those which were gone to accompany her brother's body to the grave, not being able to return speedily (as well in regard of the distance of the place, as in respect of the pomp of the funeral, which lasted nine days) gave her opportune means to open the planks on the top of the prison, thereby letting him down some vittles: all her other sisters, her mother and the servants only entered to torment him, they seeing him live, not knowing wherewith he did sustain himself, anger, indignation and cruelty increased so far in them that they resolved to kill him, before Tirsus' return from the obsequies of his brother. But Flerida the same night gave him such strong files, that the fetters, staples and locks being cut asunder, and he being fastened to a cord, she drew him up by that hole which she had made by removing the planks; & all the household being in their dead sleep, she opened the gates: afterwards, with honest embraces, shedding some tears and with many jewels which she did constrain him to take, she was departing from him, when he casting himself at her feet, with the humblest words he could speak, promising to repay her this good turn with an immortal remembrance; and if that ever she had occasion to come into Castile, she should enquire for a knight of Madrid called Pamphilus of Luxan, that she might be assured she should not return without due thanks and acknowledgements for so perfect an obligation.
Pamphilus knowing that to proceed further in the quest of Nisa was to resist the will of heaven, which had opposed him in it with so many rigorous successes, went to Saragossa; resolving from thence to travel into Castile. If thou didst not possess O Nisa (said he to himself as he went along) all my thought, and if thou didst not hold as much place in my body as my soul does, which is all in every part; who would doubt, but Flerida should be now mistress of my will? O how powerful are good turns in apt occasions, seeing that the firmness of love which could not be moved with such painful travails, such fearful shipwrecks and with such cruel captivities and imprisonments, with one good turn alone in an opportune time, is shaken, if not mastered; at least the roof, if not the walls; and although the foundation be firm yet the windows and other ornaments do shake: let not those which shall hear this be displeased with him; for this was not so much a change from the love of Nisa, as a feeling of Flerida’s goodwill: and as there is nobody so solid which the sun sometime doth not pierce, so there is no love so firm but that the first motions thereof may shake.
Pamphilus so by long travail came to Saragossa, and would not enter into it before it was dark night, for fear he might be followed or met by someone whom he knew: and very early in the morning departed from thence and by unused paths, from pasture to pasture, and from mountain to mountain, he endeavoured to shun the great highway, fearing that Flerida’s brother might make pursuit after him. In the end, wearied with the sharpness of the mountains and the austerity of the life which he was constrained to lead, he resolved one night to lie in some place where he might be better accommodated than in these deserts, and entering into a city which divides the two kingdoms, he enquired for a lodging. But nobody being willing to entertain him, seeing him so evilly apparelled, his feet bloody, his face tanned, his hair knotted and shagged, he went to the hospital, the last refuge of misery. Pamphilus found the gates open at that time, but without light, and asking the cause, he was told that in regard of a strange noise which every night was there heard, which had happened ever since the death of a stranger who came thither to lodge, nobody had dwelt there; yet he might (as they said) enter in if he would, for he should find there a man of holy life in a little chapel, who endured for the honour of God all those illusions, and who would show him a place where he might lie without danger. Pamphilus then entered into a dark obscure place, and after some few steps saw a great way off a dim light of a lamp, to which place he addressed himself, and called the holy man. What wouldst thou have, thou wicked spirit? answered the holy man. Thou dost mistake me said Pamphilus, I am a pilgrim, who endeavours to seek a lodging for this night. Then he opened the door, where Pamphilus saw a man of a middle stature and age, with a long beard and hair, a gown of coarse cloth down to his ankles. The chapel was little with an old altar, the base whereof did serve him for his bed: he had a stone for his pillow, his staff for his companion, and a death's head for his looking-glass.
How durst thou come into this place, said he to the pilgrim, did no man advertise thee of the disquiet lodging which is here? I have been told it, answered the pilgrim, but I have suffered so much labour in my travels, so much cruelty in imprisonments, so many heavy misfortunes and cold entertainments, that no disquiet can be new to me. The poor man then lighted a candle at the lamp which burned before the altar, and without saying anything commanded the pilgrim to follow him; he went through a garden, which lay wild as a forest or wilderness, where having showed him a part of the house, amongst some cypress trees he unlocked the door of a chamber, and said to him, seeing thou art young and accustomed to travails, enter here: make the sign of the cross and be not dismayed nor astonished, but sleep; Pamphilus took the candle, and setting it on a stone which lay there, bade his host good night and shut the door.
There was a bed in the chamber good enough to rest on, especially for a man who hath lain so many nights on the ground: this invited him to unclothe himself, and taking one of the shirts which Flerida at his departure had given him, he put it on and got into the bed. Hardly had he revolved in his imagination the confusion of his life, a thing which often (the body being at rest) is represented to the mind, when as sleep which is truly called the image and brother of Death, possessed his senses with that force which it is accustomed to use on weary pilgrims. All that part, which the sun abandons when it goes down to the Indies was in a deep silence, when the noise of some horses awaked Pamphilus. He thought he was stirring (as many times happens to travellers) and that his bed did move as if a ship or a horse was to carry him. Nevertheless remembering that he was in the hospital, and the causes for which it was uninhabitable, he opened his eyes. He saw horsemen enter by two and two into the chamber, who lighting torches which they had in their hands at the candle which he had left burning by him, they cast them against the ceiling of the chamber, where they stuck fast with their bottoms upward and their tops downwards, which dropped down burning flames on his bed and on his clothes. He covered himself as well as possibly he could, leaving a little hole to look out that he might see whether his bed did burn or no; when as instantly he saw the flames go out, and that on a table which was in the corner of the chamber, four of them were playing at primero. They passed, discarded, and set up money as if they had truly played: so long till at length they debating upon a difference, they fell into quarrel in the chamber, which made such a noise with clashing of swords that the miserable Pamphilus called on (for help) our Lady of Guadalupe, which was only left (of all the shrines in Spain) unvisited, although it were in his own country of Toledo. Because holy places near to one are many times left unvisited out of a hope which is had, that they might be visited at any time. Nevertheless the clattering of the swords and all other noise for the space of half an hour ceased, and he was all of a sweat out of the very fear he had; yet no sooner was he well satisfied to see himself in their absence at some rest, not thinking that they would come again, when instantly he felt that the bed and the clothes were pulled away from him by the outermost corners: and he saw at the same time, a man come in with a torch in his hand lighted, followed by two others, the one with a great brazen basin, and the other sharpening a little knife. Then began he to tremble, and all his hair stood on end, he would have spoken but he was not able. When they were near him, he who held the torch put it out, and Pamphilus thinking that they would kill him, and that the basin was to receive his blood, put his hands forth against the knife, and felt that they laid hold of him; he gave a great cry, and the torch instantly kindled again: and he saw himself between two great mastiff dogs, who held him fast in their teeth. Jesus! cried out Pamphilus, at which name all these fantastic illusions vanished away, leaving him so weary and so affrighted with their company that he would not stay there any longer: but going out into the garden by which he was entered, he went to the chamber of the good hermit, who seeing him so pale, weak and naked opened him the door, and said to him; have your hosts here given you an evil night's lodging? So ill, said Pamphilus, that I have not rested all night, and yet I have left them my clothes to pay for it. The good man received him as well as he could; telling him how many others with like success had been so used, and many other discourses, wherewith he passed away the night until morning.
Those who do not know the nature, quality and condition of spirits, will account this history a fable: wherefore I do not think it unfit to advertise them that there are some, fallen from the lowest choir of angels, who despite the essential pain, which is the eternal privation from the sight of God, suffer less pain than the other, as not having so much sinned. And those are of such nature that they cannot much hurt men, but do take pleasure to displease them; with frightings, noises, rumours, subtleties and such like other things which they do in the night in houses, which thereby they make altogether uninhabitable, not being able otherwise to hurt but by these foolish and ridiculous effects, limited and bound by the almighty power of God. These the Italians call fairies, the Spaniards elves and the French hobgoblins; of whose mockery and sports William Totan speaks in his book War of the Devils, calling them devils of the least noble hierarchy. Cassian writes that in Norway they possess highways, play with passenger, and do hire themselves out for wages as servants. Jerome Manchy reports of a spirit which was in love with a young man, served him, solicited him in divers forms and stealing money bought him many things wherein he delighted. Michel Pselho makes six kinds of these spirits: fiery, airy, earthy, watery, subterranean and fire flying spirits: in all which authors one may see, their properties, their illusions, and their remedies.
The light of day, which is the amiable and illustrious daughter of heaven, and the only guide of mortals, did sufficiently assure Pamphilus that now he need not any more to fear the evil infestation of the spirits: then waking this good man, they both rose, and went together to the chamber where Pamphilus lay: but entering in to see the stir that was made the last night, they found the bed, Pamphilus' clothes and all other things in the same place where they had laid, without any appearance that they had been stirred. Whereat Pamphilus being ashamed, with haste made himself ready without speaking a word, and thinking that this good hermit would account him for a great liar and a man of weak courage, departed from him, and thence took his way towards Guadalupe without once daring to turn his head towards the city, vowing to himself never to come into it again upon any occasion whatsoever should happen, if he were not assured to find his Nisa there.