After this long harangue she got up, and taking the lamp went into another and smaller room.  I followed her, filled with a thousand conflicting thoughts, and amazed at what I had heard and what I expected to see.  Canizares hung the lamp against the wall, hastily stripped herself to her shift, took a jug from a corner, put her hand into it, and, muttering between her teeth, anointed herself from her feet to the crown of her head.  Before she had finished she said to me, that whether her body remained senseless in that room, or whether it quitted it, I was not to be frightened, nor fail to wait there till morning, when she would bring me word of what was to befal me until I should be a man.  I signified my assent by drooping my head; and she finished her unction, and stretched herself on the floor like a corpse.  I put my mouth to hers, and perceived that she did not breathe at all.  One thing I must own to you, friend Scipio, that I was terribly frightened at seeing myself shut up in that narrow room with that figure before me, which I will describe to you as well as I can.

She was more than six feet high, a mere skeleton covered with a black wrinkled skin.  Her dugs were like two dried and puckered ox-bladders; her lips were blackened; her long teeth locked together; her nose was hooked; her eyes starting from her head; her hair hung in elf-locks on her hollow wrinkled cheeks;—­in short, she was all over diabolically hideous.  I remained gazing on her for a while, and felt myself overcome with horror as I contemplated the hideous spectacle of her body, and the worse occupation of her soul.  I wanted to bite her to see if she would come to herself, but I could not find a spot on her whole body that did not fill me with disgust.  Nevertheless, I seized her by one heel, and dragged her to the yard, without her ever giving any sign of feeling.  There seeing myself at large with the sky above me, my fear left me, or at least abated, so much as to give me courage to await the result of that wicked woman’s expedition, and the news she was to bring me.  Meanwhile, I asked myself, how comes this old woman to be at once so knowing and so wicked?  How is it that she can so well distinguish between casual and culpable evils?  How is it that she understands and speaks so much about God, and acts so much from the prompting of the devil?  How is it that she sins so much from choice, not having the excuse of ignorance?

In these reflections I passed the night.  The day dawned and found us both in the court, she lying still insensible, and I on my haunches beside her, attentively watching her hideous countenance.  The people of the hospital came out, and seeing this spectacle, some of them exclaimed, “The pious Canizares is dead!  See how emaciated she is with fasting and penance.”  Others felt her pulse, and finding that she was not dead, concluded that she was in a trance of holy ecstacy; whilst others said, “This old hag is unquestionably a witch,