Nor had we sooner stuff’d our selves with the supper Gito had got for us, when a more than ordinary bounce at the door, put us into another fright; and when we, pale as death, ask’d who was there, ’twas answer’d, “Open the door and you’ll see:”  While we were yet talking, the bolt drop’d off, and the door flew open, on which, a woman with her head muffl’d came in upon us, but the same who a little before had stood by the country-man in the market:  “And what,” said she, “do you think to put a trick upon me?  I am Quartilla’s maid, whose sacred recess you so lately disturb’d:  she is at the inn-gate and desires to speak with ye:  not that she either taxes your inadvertency, or has a mind to so resent it, but rather wonders, what god brought such civil gentlemen into her quarters.”

We were silent as yet, and gave her the hearing, but inclin’d to neither part of what she had said, when in came Quartilla herself, attended with a young girl, and sitting down by me, fell a weeping:  nor here also did we offer a word, but stood expecting what those tears at command meant.  At last when the showre had emptied it self, she disdainfully turn’d up her hood and clinching her fingers together, till the joints were ready to crack, “What impudence,” said she, “is this? or where learnt ye those shamms, and that slight of hand ye have so lately been beholding to?  By my faith, young men, I am sorry for ye; for no one beheld what was unlawful for him to see, and went off unpunisht:  and verily our part of the town has so many deities, you’ll sooner find a god than a man in’t:  And that you may not think I came hither to be revenged on ye, I am more concern’d for your youth, than the injury ye have done me:  for unawares, as I yet think, ye have committed an unexpiable abomination.

“For my part it troubled me all night, and threw me into such a shaking, that I was afraid I had gotten a tertian, on which I took somewhat to have made me sleep; but the god appeared to me, and commanded me to rise and find ye out, as the likeliest way to take off the violence of the fit.  But I am not so much in pain for a remedy, as that a greater anguish strikes me to the heart, and will undoubtedly make an end of me, for fear in one of your youthful frolicks, you should disclose what you saw in Priapus’s chappel, and utter the counsels of the gods among the people.  Low as your knees, I therefore lift my hands t’ye, that ye neither make sport of our night-worship, nor dishonour the mysteries of so many years, which, ’tis not every one, even among our selves, that knows.”

After this she fell a crying again, and with many a pittiful groan, fell flat on my bed:  when I at the same time, between pity and fear, bid her take courage and assure her self of both; for that we would neither divulge those holy mysteries; nor if the god had prescribed her any other remedy fot her ague, be wanting our selves to assist providence, even with our own hazard.