ke their predecessors forgotten. I am matron of
a hospital; my behaviour is plausible in appearance; my unguents procure
me some pleasant moments, and I am not so old but that I may live
another year, my age being seventy-five. I cannot fast on account of my
years, nor pray on account of the swimming in my head, nor go on
pilgrimages for the weakness of my legs, nor give alms because I am
poor, nor think rightly because I am given to back-biting, and to be
able to backbite one must first think evil. I know for all that that God
is good and merciful, and that he knows what is in store for me, and
that is enough; so let us drop this conversation which really makes me
melancholy. Come, my son, and see me anoint myself; for there is a cure
for every sorrow; and though the pleasures which the devil affords us
are illusive and fictitious, yet they appear to us to be pleasures; and
sensual delight is much greater in imagination than in actual fruition,
though it is otherwise with true joys."

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 gazi