V
How Socrates and Aristomenus slept together in one Chamber, and how they were handled by witches.
In speaking these words, and devising with myself of our departing the next morrow, lest Meroe the witch should play by us as she had done by diverse other persons, it fortuned that Socrates did fall asleep, and slept very soundly, by reason of his travel and plenty of meat and wine wherewithal he had filled himself. Wherefore I closed and barred fast the doors of the chamber, and put my bed behind the door, and so layed me down to rest. But I could in nowise sleep, for the great fear which was in my heart, until it was about midnight, and then I began to slumber. But alas, behold suddenly the chamber doors brake open, and locks, bolts, and posts fell down, that you would verily have thought that some thieves had been presently come to have spoiled and robbed us. And my bed whereon I lay being a truckle bed, fashioned in form of a Cradle, and one of the feet broken and rotten, by violence was turned upside down, and I likewise was overwhelmed and covered lying in the same. Then perceived I in myself, that certain affects of the mind by nature doth chance contrary. For as tears oftentimes trickle down the cheeks of him that seeth or heareth some joyful news, so I being in this fearful perplexity, could not forbear laughing, to see how of Aristomenus I was made like unto a snail in his shell. And while I lay on the ground covered in this sort, I peeped under the bed to see what would happen. And behold there entered in two old women, the one bearing a burning torch, and the other a sponge and a naked sword; and so in this habit they stood about Socrates being fast asleep. Then she which bare the sword said unto the other, Behold sister Panthia, this is my dear and sweet heart, which both day and night hath abused my wanton youthfulness. This is he, who little regarding my love, doth not only defame me with reproachful words, but also intendeth to run away. And I shall be forsaken by like craft as Ulysses did use, and shall continually bewail my solitariness as Calypso. Which said, she pointed towards me that lay under the bed, and showed me to Panthia. This is he, quoth she, which is his counselor, and persuadeth him to forsake me, and now being at the point of death he lieth prostrate on the ground covered with his bed, and hath seen all our doings, and hopeth to escape scot-free from my hands, but I will cause that he will repent himself too late, nay rather forthwith, of his former intemperate language, and his present curiosity. Which words when I heard I fell into a cold sweat, and my heart trembled with fear, insomuch that the bed over me did likewise rattle and shake. Then spake Panthia unto Meroe and said, Sister let us by and by tear him in pieces or tie him by the members, and so cut them off. Then Meroe (being so named because she was a taverner, and loved well good wines) answered, Nay rather let him live, and bury the corpse of this poor wretch in some hole of the earth; and therewithal she turned the head of Socrates on the other side and thrust her sword up to the hilts into the left part of his neck, and received the blood that gushed out, into a pot, that no drop thereof fell beside: which things I saw with mine own eyes, and as I think to the intent that she might alter nothing that pertained to sacrifice, which she accustomed to make, she thrust her hand down into the entrails of his body, and searching about, at length brought forth the heart of my miserable companion Socrates, who having his throat cut in such sort, yielded out a doleful cry, and gave up the ghost. Then Panthia stopped up the wide wound of his throat with the sponge and said, Oh sponge sprung and made of the sea, beware that thou not pass by running river. This being said, one of them moved and turned up my bed,
