The next morning the three wives were buried, and on returning from the cemetery, their husbands met Touéno-Buéno driving a magnificent flock of sheep. At the sight of him the three farmers stood still with astonishment.
'What! you scoundrel!' they cried at last, 'we drowned you yesterday, and to-day we find you again, as well as ever!'
'It does seem odd, doesn't it?' answered he. 'But perhaps you don't know that beneath this world there lies another yet more beautiful and far, far richer. Well, it was there that you sent me when you flung me into the river, and though I felt a little strange at first, yet I soon began to look about me, and to see what was happening. There I noticed that close to the place I had fallen, a sheep fair was being held, and a bystander told me that every day horses or cattle were sold somewhere in the town. If I had only had the luck to be thrown into the river on the side of the horse fair I might have made my fortune! As it was, I had to content myself with buying these sheep, which you can get for nothing.'
'And do you know exactly the spot in the river which lies over the horse fair?'
'As if I did not know it, when I have seen it with my own eyes.'
'Then if you do not want us to avenge our dead flocks and our murdered wives, you will have to throw us into the river just over the place of the horse fair.'
'Very well; only you must get three sacks and come with me to that rock which juts into the river. I will throw you in from there, and you will fall nearly on to the horses' backs.'
So he threw them in, and as they were never seen again, no one ever knew into which fair they had fallen.
From 'Littérature Orale de l'Auvergne,' par Paul Sébillot.