Towards evening one day we halted at the farm of a rich man. The master was at home, received the goddess in his house with much pleasure, and offered sacrifices to her. I am still mindful of the terrible danger I was in at that house, for the proprietor had received as a present from one of his friends a haunch of wild ass. The cook took possession of it to dress it, but by his carelessness it was lost, for a crowd of dogs contrived to steal in where it was. The man was so terrified at the storm of blows and the torture he would get for the loss of the haunch that he determined to hang himself by the neck. But his wife, who was my heavy curse, said, "Nay, dearest, don't take your own life or give way to such despair. Be guided by me and all will go well. Take these rascals' ass out to a lonely spot, then kill him, cut off this quarter, the haunch, bring it here, dress it and serve it to your master, throwing the rest of the creature down some precipice. They will think he has run away somewhere and got lost. You see how fat he is, and how much better in every way than that wild one." The cook praised the woman's idea. A happy thought, wife," said he. “It is my only way to escape a flogging, and it shall be done immediately." Thus did the wretch who was to be my cook plot with his wife, standing in my presence.

But when I saw what was going to happen, I made a strong resolve to save myself from the knife; so, breaking the halter they led me by, I leaped out and entered at a run the room where the rascals were seated at table with the proprietor of the farm. Running in thither, I pranced about and overturned everything, lamp and tables together. I thought I had invented in this a clever means of safety, and that the proprietor would forthwith order me to be locked up where I could be guarded safely as an unruly ass. But this piece of cleverness brought me into the extremest danger. They thought I was mad, armed themselves with plenty of swords and lances and thick sticks, and got ready to kill me. When I saw what great peril I was in, I ran past them into the room where my masters were to sleep, and, seeing this, they closed the doors carefully from the outside.

As soon as day dawned I received the goddess on my back again, and set out in company with the begging priests, and we came to another village, large and populous, where they announced something even more striking than usual in the way of hocus-pocus-namely, that the goddess would not stay in the house of a man, but would occupy the temple of the most highly honored local goddess they had. The people received the foreign goddess very gladly, and lodged her with their own. To us they assigned lodgings with a poor family. When my masters had made a long stay here they desired to go on to the neighboring city, and asked their goddess back from the villagers. They entered the sacred precincts themselves, brought her away, set her on my back, and drove me off. But, as luck would have it, the profane wretches had used the occasion of entering this temple to steal a votive vessel of gold, which they carried off hidden under the goddess. As soon as the villagers discovered what had happened they gave chase; when they came near they leaped down from their horses, arrested them in the road, accused them of sacrilege and temple-robbing, and demanded the stolen offering. Searching everywhere they found it in the lap of the goddess. So they bound the wretches, led them back, and cast them into prison. The goddess whom I carried they took and placed in another temple, and the golden vessel they restored to the local goddess.

The next day they decided to sell the prisoners' goods and me, and they disposed of me to a stranger from a neighboring village, a baker by trade. He took possession of me, bought ten bushels of wheat, which he placed on my back, and drove me home to his own house over a hard road. When we arrived he led me into the mill, where I beheld a great crowd of beasts, my fellow-slaves, and a great number of mills, all turned by them, and everything was covered with flour. They left me there in idleness that day, seeing that I was a new slave, and had come over a hard road carrying a heavy burden. But on the morrow they covered my eyes with a bandage, harnessed me to the shaft of the mill, and then started me up. Although I knew how to work a mill from much experience, I feigned ignorance; but my hopes were vain, for a number of the millers seized clubs and surrounded me; and when I was not expecting it—for I could not see-they pounded me with one accord, and such was the effect of their blows that I suddenly began to whirl round like a top. And I learned by experiment that it will not do for a slave to wait for the master's hand before he does his work.

Well, I grew very thin and weak in body, till my master decided to sell me, and he disposed of me to a man who was a market-gardener by trade, for he had rented a garden to cultivate. This was our daily work: My master would load me with vegetables early in the morning, and take them to the market. Having disposed of them to the dealers, he would drive me back to the garden. Then he would fall to digging and planting and watering, while I stood idle. Still this life was terribly hard for me. In the first place, when winter came my master could not afford coverings for himself, and still less for me; and I trod barefoot through the slimy mud and over the hard, rough, frozen roads; and the only food for man and beast alike was lettuces, hard and bitter.

One day, when we were setting out for the town, we happened upon a fine-looking man in a soldier's uniform, who began to address us in the Latin tongue, and asked the gardener whither he was driving me, the ass. My master, not understanding the language, I suppose, made no reply. The other grew angry at what he thought an insult, and struck with his whip at the gardener, who thereupon closed with him, twirled him off his legs, and stretched him in the road. As he lay there he pounded him with hands and feet, and a stone from the road. The soldier at first resisted, and threatened that when he got on his feet he would kill the gardener with his sword; but my master, being thus instructed from the very lips of his foe, chose the safer part, drew the sword from him and hurled it to a distance. Then he fell to pounding him again where he lay. The soldier, seeing that his plight was already past bearing, pretended to be killed by the blows. This frightened the gardener, so that he left him lying there just as he was, carried off the sword, and rode away on me to the town.

When we were arrived there he confided the charge of the garden to a partner of his, and, fearing possible danger from the affair in the road, he hid himself and me in the house of one of his friends in the town. The next day they laid their plans and acted as follows: my master they concealed in a chest; me they hung by the feet, and carried me up a ladder to the second story, and shut me up there. The soldier, as we heard afterwards, picked himself up out of the road with difficulty when we were gone, and made his way into the city, stunned with the beating he had had. When he found the soldiers of his company, he told them of the gardener's madness, and they, accompanying him, learned our hiding-place. They brought the magistrates of the city with them, who sent some of their people into the house and bade all within come out. When they appeared, the gardener was nowhere to be seen. The soldiers, however, declared he was in the house with me, his ass, but the people of the house said no other creature was left inside, either man or ass. At this an uproar of vociferation rose in the narrow street, and I, in my headstrong curiosity about everything, longed to know who were shouting, so I peeped down from above through the window. As soon as they saw me they raised an outcry. The people of the house were detected in their lie, and the magistrates, entering and ransacking everything, found my master lying in the chest. Him they arrested and packed off to prison, to give an account of his desperate conduct, and me they brought down and handed over to the soldiers. They all burst into inextinguishable laughter at my having given. information from the upper story and betrayed my own master, and I was the origin, on this occasion, of the proverb about the "peeping ass."

I do not know what happened the next day to my master the gardener, but the soldier determined to sell me, and parted with me for five dollars. The purchaser was a servant to a very rich man of Thessalonika, the largest town in Macedonia. His trade was to cook meats for his master, and he had a brother, a fellow-slave, who understood bread - baking and the flavoring of honey - cakes. These brothers were messmates always, lodged in the same house, held the tools of their trade as common property, and finally installed me, too, in their lodging. After the master's dinner these two used to bring home a quantity of fragments, the one of meats and fish, the other of bread and cakes. They would shut me in with these, leaving me the delightful task of guarding them while they went to bathe. And I, bidding farewell with all my heart to my portion of barley, would devote myself to the skill and earnings of my masters, and so for a long time I revelled in human food. At first, when they returned, they used to take no notice of my carnivorous tendency, because there was such a multitude of dishes, and because I still stole my dinner with fear and discretion. But when at last I perceived their unconsciousness, I used to eat up the choicest morsels and a great deal beside. Then they began to notice their loss, and each at first looked suspiciously at the other, and called him thief, robber of common goods, lost to all sense of honor, and after that they both grew careful, and counted the morsels.