The power that this story and the next one we propose to tell presupposes—the power of being able to change one’s nature—is responsible for some of the most terrible beliefs, notably those where men and women were changed into animals, such as dragons or the wehr-wolf. In the following story, though the outcome was lamentable, the weird horror of so many of these tales is absent. Like the previous story, it deals with the tender passion, and the ardent lover and the charming damsel reappear on our page. The lady, before acceding to the wishes of her suitor, stipulated that she should have, without question, the whole of every Saturday to herself, and the request was acceded to and honourably observed for some years. At last one day, stung by the remarks of some mischief-makers, he intruded upon his wife’s privacy, and found her in mermaid form disporting herself in her bath. She gave one piercing shriek, and then vanished for ever. In fig. 9 we see in the foreground the astonished husband, and to the left of the picture the meddlesome neighbour riding off, while, with the quaint _naïveté_ of Gothic art, all that intervenes between us and the chamber of mystery is removed, and there is unmistakable evidence that the fatal and final Saturday, after years of wedded bliss, has dawned. The tempting peep-hole that facilitated the tragedy will be seen by the side of the man’s head, and it speaks well for the honourable feeling of the promise-giver that so easy a means of clearing up the weekly mystery was for years unused. It is difficult now to realize that such a story could ever be seriously believed, and that the possibility of some such incident might befall oneself, or occur, quite as a matter of course, in the circle of one’s friends. [Illustration: FIG. 9.] The terrible belief in lycanthropy, the transmutation of men into wolves, was one of the most widely spread of the weird fancies of the Middle Ages. The idea of the changing of men into various animals is a very ancient one. Herodotus tells us that the Scythians affirm that the whole nation of the Neuri change themselves once a year into wolves, and our readers will readily recall the transformation of the companions of Ulysses into swine, of Actæon into a stag, and divers other gruesome stories of like nature. Ovid, for example, in the “Metamorphoses” tells how Zeus visited Lykaon, the King of Arcadia, and how the king placed a dish of roasted human flesh before his guest to test his omniscience. The daring experiment was promptly detected, and the monarch as a punishment was changed into a wolf by the offended deity in order that henceforth he should himself feed on the flesh he had so impiously offered.