I had just finished the last cabbage and the last lettuce in that basket when my mistress came back. She cried out when she saw the empty basket, and I looked at her with such an impudent and self-satisfied air, that she at once guessed that I was the culprit. I won’t repeat to you the mean things she said to me. When she was angry she used language which was enough to make me blush, donkey as I am. So after heaping me with abuse, of which I took no notice, she seized her stick and began to beat me so severely, that at last I lost patience and launched out three kicks. The first kick broke her nose and two teeth, the second sprained her wrist, and the third knocked her flat.
A score of people at once set upon me and knocked me about. They picked up my mistress and carried her away, leaving me fastened to the post, by the side of which were spread out the things I had brought to be sold in the market. I remained there a long while, and finding that no one paid any more attention to me, I ate a second basketful of excellent vegetables, and then with my teeth I gnawed through the cord that tied me up, and quietly took the road home.
The people I passed on the way were astonished to see me all alone.
“Look,” said one, “see that ass with the broken nose! He has run away.”
“Then he has run away from prison,” said the other, and they all began to laugh.
“He doesn’t carry a heavy load upon his back,” said a third.
“Certainly he has done some mischief,” a fourth one said.
“Catch him and we will put the little one upon his back,” said a woman.
“He will carry you as well as the little boy,” answered her husband.