"Anything you'll give me! Cursed be he and the saint who made him!" replied massaro Cirino. "Now we haven't any more bread to eat, or fodder to give the beast."
"I'll give you fifteen lire for it, seeing that you are ruined, but the ass isn't worth so much, for it won't last out more than six months! See how thin it is!"
"You might have got more than that," grumbled massaro Cirino's wife, after the bargain was settled. "Compare Luciano's mule's dead, and he hadn't money enough to buy another. Now if he hadn't bought our Saint Joseph's ass, he wouldn't have known what to do with his cart and harnesses; you'll see that ass'll be a fortune to him."
The ass was set to work drawing the cart, but the shafts of it were much too high for it, and brought all the weight on its shoulders, so that it would not have survived even six months; for it went limping along over the hilly roads under compare Luciano's cruel cudgelling, who tried to put a little spirit into it; and when it went down hill, the case was even worse, for then the whole load rested on it, and pushed against it so hard that it had to make its back like an arch to hold the cart back, and push with those poor scarred legs, and people would laugh to see it, and when it fell it would have taken all the angels of Paradise to get it to its feet again. But compare Luciano knew that he carried three quintals of merchandise more than a mule, and the load would bring him five tarì a quintal.
"Every day that Saint Joseph's ass lives," said he, "I make fifteen tarì, and his keep costs me less than a mule's would."
Every time the people who happened to be sauntering along behind the cart saw the poor beast, which could hardly put one leg in front of the other, arching its spine and panting heavily, with discouragement clouding its eye, they would say,—
"Block the wheel with a rock, and let that poor creature have a chance to get its breath."
But compare Luciano would reply,—
"If I let him do as he pleases, I should not make my fifteen tarì a day. His hide's got to pay for mine. When he can't do any more work I shall sell him to the lime dealer; for the beast is good enough for his work. I tell you there's no truth at all in the idea that St. Joseph's asses are vigliacchi. Besides, I got this one of massaro Cirino for a piece of bread, after he was 'poverished."
In this way the Saint Joseph's ass passed into the hands of the lime-dealer, who already possessed a score or more of asses all lean and moribund, which carried his sacks of plaster, and picked up a wretched living by means of the mouthfuls of weeds that they could snatch as they went along the road.