"Say you so?" said I. "What kind of a woman is this innkeeper, so powerful and dreadful?"
"She is a sorceress," he replied, "and possessed of magic powers; she can draw down the heavens, make the earth heave, harden the running water, dissolve mountains, raise the shades of the dead, dethrone the gods, extinguish the stars, and set the very depths of Tartarus ablaze!"
"Come, come!" said I: "end this tragic talk, fold up your theatrical drop-scenes, and let us hear your story in every-day language."
"Should you like," said he, "to hear of one or two, yes, or a great many of her performances? Why, to make not only her fellow-countrymen, but the Indians, the Ethiopians, or even the Antipodeans, love her to distraction, are only the easy lessons of her art, as it were, and mere trifles. Listen to what she has done before many witnesses. By a single word she changed a lover into a beaver, because he had gone to another flame. She changed an innkeeper, a neighbor of hers she was envious of, into a frog; and now the old fellow, swimming about in a cask of his own wine, or buried in the dregs, croaks hoarsely to his old customers,--quite in the way of business. She changed another person, a lawyer from the Forum, into a ram, because he had conducted a suit against her; to this very day that ram is always butting about. Finally, however, public indignation was aroused by so many people coming to harm through her arts; and the very next day had been fixed upon to wreak a fearful vengeance on her, by stoning her to death. She frustrated the design by her enchantments. You remember how Medea, having got Creon to allow her just one day before her departure, burned his whole palace, with himself and his daughter in it, by means of flames issuing from a garland? Well, this sorceress, having performed certain deadly incantations in a ditch (she told me so herself in a drunken fit), confined everybody in the town each in his own house for two whole days, by a secret spell of the demons. The bars could not be wrenched off, nor the doors taken off the hinges, nor even a breach made in the walls. At last, by common consent, the people all swore they would not lift a hand against her, and would come to her defense if any one else did. She then liberated the whole city. But in the middle of the night she conveyed the author of the conspiracy, with all his house, close barred as it was,--the walls, the very ground, and even the foundations,--to another city a hundred miles off, on the top of a craggy mountain, and so without water. And as the houses of the inhabitants were built so close together that there was not room for the new-comer, she threw down the house before the gate of the city and took her departure."
"You narrate marvelous things," said I, "my good Socrates; and no less terrible than marvelous. In fact, you have excited no small anxiety (indeed I may say fear) in me too; not a mere grain of apprehension, but a piercing dread for fear this old hag should come to know our conversation in the same way, by the help of some demon. Let us get to bed without delay; and when we have rested ourselves by a little sleep, let us fly as far as we possibly can before daylight."
While I was still advising him thus, the worthy Socrates, overcome by more wine than he was used to and by his fatigue, had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly. I shut the door, drew the bolts, and placing my bed close against the hinges, tossed it up well and lay down on it. I lay awake some time through fear, but closed my eyes at last a little before midnight.
I had just fallen asleep, when suddenly the door was burst open with such violence that it was evidently not done by robbers; the hinges were absolutely broken and wrenched off, and it was thrown to the ground. The small bedstead, minus one foot and rotten, was also upset by the shock; and falling upon me, who had been rolled out on the floor, it completely covered and hid me. Then I perceived that certain emotions can be excited by exactly opposite causes; for as tears often come from joy, so, in spite of my terror, I could not help laughing to see myself turned from Aristomenes into a tortoise. As I lay on the floor, completely covered by the bed, and peeping out to see what was the matter, I saw two old women, one carrying a lighted lamp and the other a sponge and a drawn sword, plant themselves on either side of Socrates, who was fast asleep.
The one with the sword said to the other:--"This, sister Panthea, is my dear Endymion, my Ganymede, who by day and by night has laughed my youth to scorn. This is he who, despising my passion, not only defames me with abusive language, but is preparing also for flight; and I forsooth, deserted through the craft of this Ulysses, like another Calypso, am to be left to lament in eternal loneliness!"
Then extending her right hand, and pointing me out to her friend Panthea:--
"And there," said she, "is his worthy counselor, Aristomenes, who was the planner of this flight, and who now, half dead, is lying flat on the ground under the bedstead and looking at all that is going on, while he fancies that he is to tell scandalous stories of me with impunity. I'll take care, however, that some day, aye, and before long, too,--this very instant, in fact,--he shall repent of his recent chatter and his present curiosity."