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Meanwhile they began at once to talk with each other about the girl. "What shall we do with the runaway?" asked one of them. "There is nothing to do," said another, "but throw her down on top of our old woman. She has robbed us of as much treasure as she could, and was on her way to betray our whole establishment. For be assured, my friends, that if she had reached her kinsmen not one of us would have been left alive, for our enemies would have fallen on us with every preparation and captured us all. So let us take our revenge on the foe, but not by giving her such an easy death as falling onto the rock. Let us invent for her the most painful and lingering death, and one that will only kill her after keeping her a prisoner in long torment." Then they set themselves to think out a form of death, and some one said, “I know you will applaud my invention. We must kill the ass who is a nuisance, and, moreover, pretends at present to be lame, and helped and ministered to the girl's flight into the bargain. Let us slaughter him, then, early in the morning, cut open his belly, take out all his vitals, and place this virtuous maiden in the ass. We will let her head project so that she may not be stifled at once, but all the rest of her body shall be hidden inside. Then we will stitch her securely in and throw them both out to the vultures, preparing them a novel breakfast. Note, my friends, the horror of the torture: in the first place, to live in the dead body of an ass, then to bake with the beast in the hottest sun of summer, and to die of lingering starvation, unable even to strangle herself. And, finally, the vultures will make their way in through the ass, and tear her flesh along with his while she is yet alive."
