—Well, you are a true philosopher, he said then. I am only a man with a living to get. And hard as it may seem to require so well-spoken a creature as yourself to carry, the work still needs doing.

—Fair enough, said the Ass. If you will grant my poor self the general honor due to a being capable of speech, therefore reason, I will go on doing the work my shape suits me for. It's the best I could hope for, I suppose.

—That's fine then, said the merchant sleepily.

They didn't know their conversation was overheard.

Late in the night, before he could fully awaken and perceive what was happening to him, the Ass felt a bag slipped suddenly over his head.

—There is, said a voice, a pistol pointed at your head. It were best you be still.

And indeed the beast felt the prod of it behind his left ear.

—Come along, said the voice, and it will be to your advantage. Don't cry out.

The Ass understood immediately that the one, or ones, who were around him knew he was possessed not only of language but reason, if they could speak thus to him. He wondered if they also knew that his asinine nature wouldn't permit him to take even a step with his eyes blind. They must have, for after a moment the bag was drawn down enough for him to see; and—his heart huge to know his life and his adventure weren't to end, whether to grow worse or better—he went along with them. There were three, and they hurried him through the darkened grounds and the crowd of sleeping or unsleeping merchants, farmers, Gypsies, whores, out onto the highway, thence after a long walk (the Ass kept prudently silent) to the stable yard of a low inn, where more of their gang was gathered, who whistled and cheered softly to see their fellows bring in the prize, himself.

Who were they? Thieves? The pistol held to his head, he could perceive now, was only a stick of wood. What did they intend? And why, above all, did they speak to him, and to one another, in English?

—Masters, he said, in their own tongue—which caused a noise of delight or awe among them—masters, what do you want with me? Why have you abducted me?

—Because, said the largest of them, red cheeked and black whiskered and grinning with a set of cheerful gleaming white teeth, because you will make our fortune. And your own. We have, he said, a proposition.

They weren't thieves, or not usually thieves; they were a troupe of actors, traveling as the Ass and his (former) master did from fair to fair and town to town, as many English companies did. They weren't one of the great troupes with noble patrons that would entertain the Prince and Princess Palatine in Heidelberg, and then make progress through the courts and cities of Europe; they had a few bags filled with costumes, masks, crowns and foils, a set of moth-holed curtains, a drum, and a pipe. The six or eight of them played many parts in every play, changing behind the curtain from lord's cape and sword to swain's jerkin and bottle and rushing on stage again. They had been about to pack all their properties and go home again, no richer than they had come. Then this.

—Join our troop, they said. You'll never carry again, or carry no more than any of us. You'll be a comedian, you'll make us rich, and yourself as well, for we share and share alike, even the asses among us, ha ha.

It was an easy decision to make. The short summer night was past; dawn had come, and a ray of the all-giving sun now fell into that little stable yard. What rich might mean to one like himself he couldn't say, but if ease, and scope, and intellectual delight were all he got, it was more than the Ass he was could have aspired to, and ought to be enough for the man.

—What play shall we play? he said.

They laughed, they cheered, and their chief, or anyway the largest among them, pulled from his pack a greasy and leaf-curled book without a cover, and as everyone laughed some more, he proffered it and the Ass noticed, on the third finger of the man's hand, a ring: a ring cut with a curious figure that he was sure he remembered, or had once imagined, or in future might conceive. The player splayed open the pages and put the book before the Ass, who looked upon it, found he could read it, and trembled in amazement, for the story was his own:

Once as I grazed vpon the Lippe of steepe and stoney Rauine, conceiving the Desire to chew vpon a louely Cardoon or Thistle, growing some little way downe the Precipice, and Satisfyed that I coulde Stretch my longe Necke so farre without Perill, defying the pricks alike of Conscience and naturall Reason, I leaned out, and farther out, ‘til I could no longer lean; and I fell from that Cliffy Height; and thereupon my Master knew, that he had bought mee but for Crow's-meate.

Freed from the Prison of my Flesshe, I became a wandering Spirit, without Members; and I saw that, as to my Substance Spirituall, I was in no different case than all other Spirits, who vpon the dissoluing of their Animal or compound Bodies, begin straightaway to Transmigrate. For (as I saw) Fate not only remoueth all distinctioun (as regards their Corporality) between the Ass's flesshe and Man's, likewise between the Brute and the wholly Inanimate: also it remoueth all Distinctioun between the Asinine and the Human Soul, indeed betweene those souls and the soul that is found in all things.

It was his own story, that is, his own work—it was the Cabala del Caballo Pegaseo, which he had written long years before, here translated from the Italian into English by his friend and follower Alexander Dicson, who missed him dreadfully after his departure from England, and who earned not a penny from the little book on whose title page his name stood beneath the author's, with his Oxford degree appended, and the date (1599). In surprise and pity the Ass studied the book, holding its pages down with an unhandy forefoot and tempted to eat the leaves rather than reading them. How had it come into the hands of this company? How was the Ass able to read it with his ass's poor eyes, and recognize it? How did Tom the grinning principal player come by the ring on his finger, just that ring with just that figure? And why did the Ass, as the players pointed out, bear the same figure on his own back, where all other asses bear the cross of Christ? How come? Because without these wonders, and all the others like them preceding and to come, there wouldn't be a story to tell, and without a story no one would come to hear—as every player knows.

* * * *

For a year the company (they now called themselves I Giordanisti after the Ass had told them his tale, as much of it as he could remember) went up and down High Germany, playing the play of The Transformations of Ass Onorius, the Cabalistical Steed, partly in German, partly Italian, partly English, mostly in the universal language. In university towns they played the scenes of Onorius's metempsychosis into Aristotle, Pythagoras, a Grammarian, a Schoolman, as the students howled encouragement, an easy audience. They also played Lucius, or the Life and Adventures of the Golden Ass, from the book of Apuleius; performances might or might not, depending, include the scene of poor Lucius inveigled into the Matron's bed, but always included the final Transformation, of Lucius the Ass into Lucius the Man, by the sweet power of all-seeing Isis, clothed in the sky and the stars.

Their success was huge, and not so surprising; for after all the Ass, or his inhabiting spirit rather, had begun his writing life years ago with what? A play. A comedy in fact, Il Candelaio. And ever after he had set people to talking in his works, in his dialogues, and in his poems—fools, philosophers, pedants, gods, and goddesses.

Then the wind began to blow from another quarter. Maybe they should have been more cautious; maybe they should have avoided Apuleius, that infamous magician; maybe they shouldn't have become so far famed so quickly.