Having reached home, the first thing I did was to hang the contents of my sack in rows along the wall, which formed a very pleasant looking tapestry; after which I began to think of going to bed, for I stood much in need of rest after so hard a day’s work. My mistress, who slept in the lower parlour, was already in bed. I ascended to my apartment, which was a garret into which the sun darted its rays from morning till night, making it as hot by night as by day. I threw off my shirt to be more cool, and stretched myself as naked as I was born on the sorry bed in which I usually lay; but my slumbers, sound as they were, were disturbed about an hour afterwards by a most frightful noise, occasioned by cats, who were fighting desperately, and the gallery appeared to me to be the field of battle. This made me uneasy: “there will be the devil to pay,” said I to myself, “if these malicious animals should fall upon our provender! it were best for me to go and see what is the matter, that creates so terrible a din.” Hereupon I jumped out of bed; and not staying to put on my shirt that I might not lose so much time, I hastened to descend into the gallery; but scarcely had I set foot on my ladder, for I had no other staircase, than I perceived a light before me, which stopped me short. I looked round to discover whence it proceeded, and observed a figure all naked like myself, and so black, that I took it to be no other than the devil himself. This phantom, which made me tremble like an aspen-leaf, was my mistress, who, having been also waked by the cats, had come to the assistance of our pheasants and partridges, with a lamp in her hand, and clothed like myself _in puris naturalibus_, having neglected to put her shift on again on so pressing an occasion. As we thought each other sound asleep, this precaution had been considered superfluous by us both. We perceived each other at the same moment, and if I took her for a devil, she took me for a spright. I shrieked out most horribly, and she echoed me with equal strength of lungs, and ran into her chamber almost frightened to death, whilst I endeavoured to regain my garret; but as my ill-luck would have it, I slipped from the ladder, and fell with such violence into the gallery that I was bruised from head to foot.