The lictors then led me to the bier, and forced me to uncover the bodies.  Ye gods!  The corpses were merely three inflated wine-skins, and I observed that they were cut in the very spots in which I thought I had wounded the robbers.  I had, indeed, invented a pleasantry for the festival of the god of laughter!  The townspeople laughed with the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympian deities.  They climbed up to the roof to get a good look at me; they swarmed up the pillars; they clung to the statues; they hung from the windows at the risk of their lives; all shouting at me in wild jollity.

“Sir Lucius,” the magistrate then said to me, “we are not ignorant of your dignity and your rank.  The noble family to which you belong is famous throughout Greece.  So do not take this pleasantry in honour of the joyful god of laughter as an insult.  In return for your excellent services at this great festival, the city of Hypata has decreed that your statue shall be cast in bronze and erected in a place of honour.”

By this time I had recovered somewhat of my good humour.  But knowing how mercilessly I should be teased at the banquet Byrrhena wished to give in celebration of my exploits, I went quickly home with Milo, and after supping with him, retired at a very early hour to my bed-chamber.

III.—­Lucius Becomes an Ass

In the middle of the night I heard a knock at my door.  I opened it, and in came pretty Fotis, looking a picture of misery.

“I can’t sleep without telling you everything,” she said.  “I was the cause of all the trouble that befell you to-day.  As my mistress was coming from the baths yesterday, she saw a handsome young gentleman having his hair cut by a barber.  Seized with a wild passion for him, she ordered me to get some of his hair.  But the barber saw me and drove me away.  I knew I should get a cruel whipping if I returned empty-handed.  Close by was a man shaving some wine-bags of goat-skin; the hair was soft and yellow like the young gentleman’s, so I took some of it to Pamphila.  You know my mistress is a terrible witch, so you can guess what happened.  She rose up in the night, and burnt the hair in her magic cauldron.  As it burnt, the wine-bags from which it was taken felt the compulsion of the spell.  They became like human beings.  Rushing out into the street, they hurled themselves against the door of our house, as Pamphila expected the young gentleman would do.  You came up—­just a little intoxicated, eh?—­and committed the horrible crime of bag-slaughter.”

“Now, don’t make fun of me, Fotis,” I said.  “This is a serious matter, this witchcraft.  What is Pamphila doing to-night?  I have come here to learn magic, and I am very anxious to see her practising her strange arts.”

“Come, then, and look,” said Fotis.

We crept to the room where Pamphila was, and peeped through a chink in the door.  The witch undressed herself, and then took some boxes of ointment out of a casket, and opened one box and smeared herself with the stuff it contained.  In the twinkling of an eye, feathers sprouted out of her skin, and she changed into an owl, and flew out of the window.