CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOURTH.

"What witches" (she cried,) "have devoured your manhood? What filth did you tread upon at some crossroads, in the dark? Not even by the boy could you do your duty but, weak and effeminate, you are worn out like a cart-horse at a hill, you have lost both labor and sweat! Not content with getting yourself into trouble, you have stirred up the wrath of the gods against me and I will make you smart for it." She then led me, unresisting, back into the priestess's room, pushed me down upon the bed, snatched a cane that hung upon the door, and gave me another thrashing: I remained silent and, had the cane not splintered at the first stroke, thereby diminishing the force of the blow, she might easily have broken my arms or my head. I groaned dismally, and especially when she manipulated my member and, shedding a flood of tears, I covered my head with my right arm and huddled down upon the pillow. Nor did she weep less bitterly:

The sailor, naked from his foundered barque,

Some shipwrecked mariner seeks out to hear his woe;

When hail beats down a farmer's crop, his cark

Seeks consolation from another, too.

Death levels caste and sufferers unites,

And weeping parents are as one in grief;

We also will beseech the starry heights,

United prayers climb best, is the belief.