on my head or my heels; but at last going to take up his clothes, I
found them turned into stone. The sweat streamed from me, and I never
expected to get over it. Melissa began to wonder why I walked so late.
'Had you come a little sooner,' she said, 'you might at least have
lent us a hand; for a wolf broke into the farm and has butchered all
our cattle; but though be got off, it was no laughing matter for him,
for a servant of ours ran him through with a pike. Hearing this I
could not close an eye; but as soon as it was daylight, I ran home
like a pedlar that has been eased of his pack. Coming to the place
where the clothes had been turned into stone, I saw nothing but a pool
of blood; and when I got home, I found my soldier lying in bed, like
an ox in a stall, and a surgeon dressing his neck. I saw at once that
he was a fellow who could change his skin (_versipellis_), and never
after could I eat bread with him, no, not if you would have killed me.
Those who would have taken a different view of the case are welcome to
their opinion; if I tell you a lie, may your genii confound me!"

As every one knows, Jupiter changed himself into a bull; Hecuba became
a bitch; Actæon a stag; the comrades of Ulysses were transformed into
swine; and the daughters of Prtus fled through the fields believing
themselves to be cows, and would not allow any one to come near them,
lest they should be caught and yoked.

S. Augustine declared, in his _De Civitate Dei_, that he knew an old
woman who was said to turn men into asses by her enchantments.

Apuleius has left us his charming romance of the _Golden Ass_, in
which the hero, through injudicious use of a magical salve, is
transformed into that long-eared animal.