her there with iron chains, lit the faggots about her feet and
withdrew to a short distance, where he stood with his arms folded,
looking on as the flames rose about her. I understood that she
had refused his love, and that in his fury he had denounced her as
a sorceress. Then in the fire, above the pile, I saw the evil spirit
poising itself like a fly, and rising and sinking and fluttering
in the thick smoke. While I wondered what this meant, the flames
which had concealed the beautiful woman, parted in their midst,
and disclosed a sight so horrible and unexpected as to thrill me
from head to foot, and curdle my blood. Chained to the stake there
stood, not the fair woman I had seen there a moment before, but a
hideous monster,--a woman still, but a woman with three heads, and
three bodies linked in one. Each of her long arms ended, not in
a hand, but in a claw like that of a bird of rapine. Her hair
resembled the locks of the classic Medusa, and her faces were
inexpressibly loathsome. She seemed, with all her dreadful heads
and limbs, to writhe in the flames and yet not to be consumed by them.
She gathered them in to herself; her claws caught them and drew
them down; her triple body appeared to suck the fire into itself,
as though a blast drove it. The sight appalled me. I covered my
face and dared look no more.

When at length I again turned my eyes upon the wall, the picture
that had so terrified me was gone, and instead of it, I saw the
enchanter flying through the world, pursued by the evil spirit and
that dreadful woman. Through all the world they seemed to go.
The scenes changed with marvellous rapidity. Now the picture glowed
with the wealth and gorgeousness of the torrid zone; now the
ice-fields of the North rose into view; anon a pine-forest; then
a wild seashore; but always the same three flying figures; always