And that was the most frightful piece of antiquity that ever eye beheld in the shape of an old woman. She came nodding towards me, and in a hollow, rattling tone (for she spoke more with her chops than her tongue) “Pray’e,” says she, “is there not somebody come lately hither from the other world?” This apparition, thought I, is undoubtedly one of the devil’s scarecrows. Her eyes were so sunk in their sockets, that they looked like a pair of dice in the bottom of a couple of red boxes. Her cheeks and the soles of her feet were of the same complexion. Her mouth was pale, and open too; the better to receive the distillations of her nose. Her chin was covered with a kind of goose-down, as toothless as a lamprey; and the flaps of her cheeks were like an ape’s bags; her head danced, and her voice at every word kept time to’t. Her body was veiled, or rather wrapped up in a shroud of crape. She had a crutch in one hand, which served her for a supporter; and a rosary in t’other, of such a length, that as she stood stooping over it, a man would have thought she had been fishing for death’s heads. When I had done gaping upon this epitome of past ages, “Hola! grannum,” quoth I, good lustily in her ear, taking for granted that she was deaf, “what’s your pleasure with me?” With that she gave a grunt, and being much in wrath to be called grannum, clapped a fair pair of spectacles upon her nose, and pinking through them, “I am,” quoth she, “neither deaf, nor grannum; but may be called by my name as well as my neighbours,” (giving to understand, that women will take it ill to be called old, even in their very graves). As she spake, she came still nearer me, with her eyes dropping, and the smell about her perfectly of a dead body. I begged her pardon for what was past, and for the future her name, that I might be sure to keep myself within the bounds of respect. “I am called,” says she, “Doüegna, or Madam the Gouvernante.” “How’s that?” quoth I, in a great amazement. “Have ye any of those cattle in this country? Let the inhabitants pray heartily for peace then; and all little enough to keep them quiet. But to see my mistake now. I thought the women had died, when they came to be gouvernantes, and that for the punishment of a wicked world, the gouvernantes had been immortal. But I am now better informed, and very glad truly to meet with a person I have heard so much talk of. For with us, who but Madam the Gouvernante, at every turn? ‘Do ye see that mumping hag,’ cries one? ‘Come here ye damned jade,’ cries another. ‘That old bawd,’ says a third, ‘has forgotten, I warrant ye, that ever she was a whore, and now see if we do not remember ye.’” “You do so, and I’m in your debt for your remembrance, the great devil be your paymaster, ye son of a whore, you; are there no more gouvernantes than myself? Sure there are, and ye may have your choice, without affronting me.” “Well,