but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and
desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon
she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant:
[4677]"many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the
midst of Greece." Sabine in his Comment on the tenth of Ovid's
Metamorphoses, at the tale of Orpheus, telleth us of a gentleman of
Bavaria, that for many months together bewailed the loss of his dear wife;
at length the devil in her habit came and comforted him, and told him,
because he was so importunate for her, that she would come and live with
him again, on that condition he would be new married, never swear and
blaspheme as he used formerly to do; for if he did, she should be gone:
[4678]"he vowed it, married, and lived with her, she brought him children,
and governed his house, but was still pale and sad, and so continued, till
one day falling out with him, he fell a swearing; she vanished thereupon,
and was never after seen." [4679]"This I have heard," saith Sabine, "from
persons of good credit, which told me that the Duke of Bavaria did tell it
for a certainty to the Duke of Saxony." One more I will relate out of
Florilegus, _ad annum_ 1058, an honest historian of our nation, because he
telleth it so confidently, as a thing in those days talked of all over
Europe: a young gentleman of Rome, the same day that he was married, after
dinner with the bride and his friends went a walking into the fields, and
towards evening to the tennis-court to recreate himself; whilst he played,
he put his ring upon the finger of _Venus statua_, which was thereby made
in brass; after he had sufficiently played, and now made an end of his
sport, he came to fetch his ring, but Venus had bowed her finger in, and he
could not get it off. Whereupon loath to make his company tarry at present,
there left it, intending to fetch it the next day, or at some more
convenient time, went thence to supper, and so to bed. In the night, when
he should come to perform those nuptial rites, Venus steps between him and
his wife (unseen or felt of her), and told her that she was his wife, that
he had betrothed himself unto her by that ring, which he put upon her
finger: she troubled him for some following nights. He not knowing how to
help himself, made his moan to one Palumbus, a learned magician in those
days, who gave him a letter, and bid him at such a time of the night, in
such a