6
"Lovely Palaistra,” said I, “how gracefully you turn and sway your body and the kettle at the same time! My marrow melts at the sight. He is a lucky man who dips his finger in that dish." The girl was of a very lively humor and full of charming ways. "Fly, young man,” said she, “if you are in your senses and want to live. I am made of fire and smoke. If you should but touch me you will sit here covered with blisters, burned through by me. No doctor will heal you, not even a god, save only me who burned you. Strangest of all, I will make you suffer the more, and you will cherish the painful cure and cling to it, and you would be stoned rather than escape from your pleasant pain. Why do you laugh? You see before you a scientific cook of men. These trumpery eatables are not the only things I can prepare; no, I know well how to butcher and flay and carve that great and noble viand, man. My dearest pleasure is to lay hold of his very vitals and heart." "You are perfectly right," I said; "for even while I was at a distance, before I had come near you, you not only burned me, by Heavens! but set me all in a blaze. Through my eyes you flung your invisible fire into my vitals and are roasting me, though I never did you any harm. So, heal me, in the name of goodness, with those bittersweet remedies you speak of yourself. I am butchered already; take me and flay me as you will." At this she burst into a peal of sweet laughter, and after that she was a complete conquest.
