and is no doubt anointed, for saints are never seen
in such an indecent condition when they are lost in
religious ecstacy; and among us who know her, she has
hitherto had the reputation of a witch rather than
a saint.” Some curious inquirers went so
far as to stick pins in her flesh up to the head,
yet without ever awaking her. It was not till
seven o’clock that she came to herself; and
then finding how she was stuck over with pins, bitten
in the heels, and her back flayed by being dragged
from her room, and seeing so many eyes intently fixed
upon her, she rightly concluded that I had been the
cause of her exposure. “What, you thankless,
ignorant, malicious villain,” she cried, “is
this my reward for the acts I did for your mother
and those I intended to do for you?” Finding
myself in peril of my life under the talons of that
ferocious harpy, I shook her off, and seizing her
by her wrinkled flank, I worried and dragged her all
about the yard, whilst she shrieked for help from the
fangs of that evil spirit. At these words, most
present believed that I must be one of those fiends
who are continually at enmity with good Christians.
Some were for sprinkling me with holy water, some were
for pulling me off the old woman, but durst not; others
bawled out words to exorcise me. The witch howled,
I tightened my grip with my teeth, the confusion increased,
and my master was in despair, hearing it said that
I was a fiend. A few who knew nothing of exorcisms
caught up three or four sticks and began to baste
me. Not liking the joke, I let go the old woman;
in three bounds I was in the street, and in a few more
I was outside the town, pursued by a host of boys,
shouting, “Out of the way! the wise dog is gone
mad.” Others said “he is not mad,
but he is the devil in the form of a dog.”
The people of the place were confirmed in their belief
that I was a devil by the tricks they had seen me perform,
by the words spoken by the old woman when she woke
out of her infernal trance, and by the extraordinary
speed with which I shot away from them, so that I
seemed to vanish from before them like a being of the
other world. In six hours I cleared twelve leagues;
and arrived at a camp of gipsies in a field near Granada.
There I rested awhile, for some of the gipsies who
recognised me as the wise dog, received me with great
delight, and hid me in a cave, that I might not be
found if any one came in search of me; their intention
being, as I afterwards learned, to make money by me
as my master the drummer had done. I remained
twenty days among them, during which I observed their
habits and ways of life; and these are so remarkable
that I must give you an account of them.