“Kill the wretched thing,” said the master.  “It has gone mad.”

But the priests did not care to lose their salable property, and they locked me in their bedroom, and sold me to the first man they met the next morning.  It was a poor gardener who needed an ass to cart his stuff to market.  But as the gardener was taking me home a soldier came tramping along the road.  He, too, wanted an ass to carry his heavy kit.  So he struck the gardener down with his sword and seized me by right of conquest; then, loading me with his armour and shield and baggage, he took me to the town to which he was travelling.  There he was ordered by his tribune to take some letters to Rome, so he disposed of me for a small sum to two confectioners.

By this time I had grown very feeble and thin.  Though I was changed into an ass, L could not relish hay and grass and food of that sort, and I derived scarcely any nourishment from it.  I still had human tastes, as well as human thoughts and feelings.  Happily, I was very well off with my new masters.  Every evening, they brought home the remains of the banquets they had served—­bits of chicken, pork, fish and meat, and various cakes; and these they put in their room while they went for a bath before dinner.  I used then to creep in and take all the best bits, and when my two masters returned they began to reproach each other with having filched the choicest pieces.  In the meantime, I grew plump and glossy and broad-backed, and as my masters observed I ate no hay, they spied on me one evening.

They forgot their quarrel when they saw their ass picking out the best bits with the taste of an epicure:  and, bursting open the door, they cried:  “Let us try him with wine!” Naturally, I drank it very readily.

“We have got a treasure here,” they said.  They soon found that I was intelligent, and understood human language.  And after training me they took me to Corinth, and exhibited me there, and made a great deal of money.  In a short time I became famous throughout Greece as the “Golden Ass,” and I was bought by the town for use in the public show.  Nobody thought that any watch need be kept over an animal as thoroughly civilised as I was; and one evening I succeeded in escaping, and fled to a lonely spot on the seashore.

VI.—­The Miracle of Isis and the Fate of Lucius

As I nestled down on the soft sand, the full-orbed moon rose above the eastern waves, and shone with a glorious radiance.  My heart opened to the mysteries of the sacred night, and I sprang up, and bathed seven times in the cleansing water of the sea.  Then, with tears upon my cheeks, I prayed to Isis, the mighty saviour goddess: 

“O Queen of Heaven, who dost enlighten the world with thy lovely beams as thou goest on thy lonely way, hear me now and help me, in my peril and misery and misfortune!  Restore me, O mighty goddess, to my rightful shape, and let Lucius return to the bosom of his family.”