The _Golden Ass_ is the chief work of Apuleius. _Lector intende; laetaberis_, he says in ending his short preface, and he judged his work aright. The hero, Lucius, is a man with an extravagant interest in magic, and he puts himself in the way of hearing the most wonderful stories of witchcraft and enchantment. Apuleius tells them with the utmost liveliness and humour. Magical transformations, the vengeance of witches, the vivification of waterskins--one tale comes crowding after another, real and vivid, with the most alarming and the most amusing details. For example, we are told by an eye-witness (like everybody else in the book he is a master-hand at story-telling) how he saw witches by night cut the throat of his friend, draw out the heart and plug the hole with a sponge; how terrified he was of the hags to begin with, and then lest he should himself be accused of the murder; how the man rose and went on his journey--somewhat wearily, it is true; and how, as they rested, he stooped to drink, the sponge fell out and he was dead. Lucius meddles with the drugs of a witch, and, wishing to transform himself to a bird, by the ill-luck of using the wrong box he becomes an ass. He is carried off by robbers, and, while he has the most varied adventures of his own, he is enabled to record some of the most gorgeous exploits that {234} brigands ever told one another in an ass's hearing.[93] What is more, a young girl is captured and held to ransom, and to comfort her for a little, the old woman who cooks the robbers' food--"a witless and bibulous old hag"--tells her a story--"such a pretty little tale," that the ass, who is listening, wishes he had pen and paper to take it down. For, while in aspect Lucius is an ass, his mind remains human--human enough to reflect sometimes what "a genuine ass" he is--and his skin has not, he regrets, the proper thickness of true ass-hide. The tale which he would like to write down is _Cupid and Psyche_. "_Erant in quadam civitate_," begins the old woman--"There were in a certain city a king and a queen."