"The cloak touched the ground, and my guide said, 'You are now safe, friend Rutilio, and in a place, where none of human race can harm you;' and saying this, she clasped me in her arms, to embrace me in a very shameless manner. I repulsed her, when, as it appeared to me, she, who had just embraced me, bore the shape of a wolf, which sight made my blood freeze within me, and disturbed my senses; but, as it often happens that in the worst perils, the very absence of hope makes one gain strength from despair, so mine impelled me to seize a knife I had with me by chance, which I plunged into the heart of what seemed to me a wolf, with such fury, that she fell on the earth, and in falling she lost her enchanted form, and I saw the miserable sorceress lying before me a bleeding corpse. "Conceive, sirs, what a condition for me, alone, in an unknown land, without any one to guide me. I remained expecting that day would dawn at last, but it came not, nor could I discern the faintest sign in the horizon that the sun was rising. I removed to a distance from the corpse of the sorceress, for it caused me a feeling of horror to be near it. Frequently I raised my eyes to heaven, contemplating the motions of the stars, and it seemed to me by the course they had made that it ought to be day. I was in this dilemma, when I suddenly heard voices, and hastening towards the place whence these sounds proceeded, I called out in the Italian tongue, and asked, what country I was in. I was answered in the same language, 'This land is Norway; but who art thou that askest this question, and in a language few here understand?' "'I am,' I replied, 'a miserable wretch, who, to escape death, have come here to meet it in another shape;' and then I briefly related the history of my journey, and also the death of the witch. He to whom I spoke seemed to compassionate me, and said, 'Then, good man, return infinite thanks to Heaven for having saved thee from the power of these accursed witches, of whom there is an abundance in these northern parts. It is said of them, that they change themselves into wolves, male and female, for there are both sorcerers and sorceresses. How this can be I know not, and, as a good Catholic Christian, I do not believe it; but nevertheless, experience proves the contrary, and all I can make out of it is, that such transformations are illusions of the evil one, and by God's permission as a punishment for the abominable sins of this accursed sort of persons.'