“Amongst ladies and gentlemen,” said he, and waited, smiling and oily, while the other fetched a black bottle from a cupboard. The woman visibly relaxed at the sight of this. Its owner uncorked it, and putting it to his mouth, gurgled, and smacked his black lips. “The deal passes!” cried my master; and he snatched the bottle, and handed it to the woman with an ingratiatory smile. It was the psychologic moment, which loosened and harmonised their tongues. They waxed confiding and genial. Presently the woman, commissioned politely to effect my transformation, swaggered across to me with devil-daring eyes, and began roughly to pull off my clothes. “Damn you!” she said, with such a heat and violence of hate that my very sobs were withered in my throat. “Come up, you young limb! What the deuce! We’ll cry quits for my Georgy when the black smoke finishes your ladyship.” She never had had a doubt of the meaning of my presence in that vile den, but my beauty and refinement and helplessness were only so many goads to her implacability. Her fingers were like rakes in my tender flesh. She would have torn me with her teeth, I believe, if any had been left to her. And I could only shrink and shiver under her hands, terrified if they wrung so much as a gasp from me. When I was stripped, she seized a blunt dinner knife, and sawed off all my golden hair close to my head, a horrible experience. The tears gushed silent down my cheeks. They might have moved the heart of a wolf. “There!” she said, when finished; “chuck us the duds!” and as she received them, scrubbed my face with the filthy tatters before she vested me in them. I had hoped, perhaps, until thus hopelessly transformed; and then, at once, I hoped no more. _Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’ entrate_--I was behind the bars; I wore the devil’s livery. O, my Alcide! Pity this poor little Proserpine so ravished from her Plains of Enna. III. I ESCAPE Hast thou the nerve to follow me, my friend? My martyrdom was severe, but, after all, brief. Comfort thyself with the thought of the brilliant moth which is to emerge from this sad chrysalis. My master was an itinerant sweep. He jogged from town to village and from village to town in his little cart, an untaxed Bohemian, and carried me always with him. I had wild weepings at first, and frantic schemes of escape, and fits of sullen rebellion; but they were all persuaded out of me presently by his thick black hand. Then, as the past grew obscured behind me in ever-densifying clouds of soot, I came by degrees provisionally reconciled to my destiny, and even--canst thou believe it?--to some enjoyment of its compensations.