One thing at least was true: the poor Saint Joseph's ass had a more endurable existence at last, because the widow regarded it as a treasure by reason of the few soldi that it had cost her, and she went out nights in search of straw and hay for it, and she kept it in her hut next her own bed because its vital heat was as good as a fire, and in this way one hand washed the other, as the proverb has it.
The woman driving the ass loaded with a mountain of wood so that its ears could not be seen, built air-castles as she went, and her son ravaged the hedges, and risked his life in the borders of the woodlands to gather together his load, while both mother and son had an idea that they were going to become rich by that business, until, finally, the baron's campiere caught the boy breaking off branches, and gave him a terrible beating.
The doctor, for the price of curing the lad, devoured all the spare soldi knotted in the handkerchief, the store of wood, and whatever else vendible she had,—and that was not much in all conscience,—so that the widow one night when her son was in a raging fever, with his face turned to the wall, and there was not a mouthful of bread in the house, went out, raging and talking to herself, as if she, too, had the fever, and she went to break off an almond-tree near by in such a way that it would not appear how it happened, and at dawn she loaded it on the ass to go and sell it. But the ass on the way up stumbled under the weight, and went down on its knees, just as Saint Joseph's ass knelt before the infant Jesus, and would not get up again.
"Souls of the dead!" stammered the woman, "won't you carry this load of wood for me."
And the passers-by pulled the ass's tail, and they bit its ears, so as to make it get up.
"Don't you see it's dying?" at last remarked a carter, and so at least the others let it alone, because the ass had the eye of a dead fish, a cold nose, and a shudder ran over its skin.
The woman, meantime, thought of her son, who was delirious with fever, and a flushed face, and cried,—
"Now what shall we do,—what shall we do?"
"If you will sell it, and all the wood on its back for five tarì, I'll give that much," said the carter who had an empty cart; and as the woman looked at it with squinting eyes, he added, "I'll only take the wood, for the ass isn't worth that—"
And he gave a kick to the carcass, which sounded like a burst drum.