ASS OR PIG.[1]
A countryman was going along driving a pig before him. ‘Let’s have a bit of fun with that fellow,’ said the brother porter of a monastery to the father guardian,[2] as they saw him coming along the road. ‘I’ll call his pig an ass, and of course he’ll say it’s a pig; then I shall laugh at him for not knowing better, and he will grow angry. Then I’ll say, “Well, will you have the father guardian to settle the dispute? and if he decides I’m right I shall keep the beast for myself.” Then you come and say it is an ass, and we’ll keep it.’
The father guardian agreed, with a hearty laugh; and as soon as the countryman came up the brother porter did all as he had arranged.
The countryman was so sure of his case that he willingly submitted to the arbitration of the father guardian; but great was his dismay when the father guardian decided against him, and he had to go home without his pig.
But what did the countryman do? He dressed himself up as a poor girl, and about nightfall, and a storm coming on, he rang at the bell of the monastery and entreated the charity of shelter for the night.
‘Impossible!’ said the brother porter; ‘we can’t have any womenkind in here.’
‘But the dark, and the storm!’ clamoured the pretended girl; ‘think of that. You can’t leave me out here all alone.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said the porter, ‘but the thing’s impossible. I can’t do it.’
The good father guardian, hearing the dispute at that unusual hour, put his head out of the window and asked what it was all about.
‘It is a difficult case, brother porter,’ he said when he had heard the girl’s request. ‘If we take her in we infringe our rule in one way; if we leave her exposed to every kind of peril we sin against its spirit in another direction. I only see one way out of it. I can’t send her into any of your cells; but I will let her pass the night in mine, provided she is content not to undress, and will consent to sit up in a chair.’