So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up loading the donkey with the best of her stores. There were ham, and maccaroni, and flour, and cheese, and wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying: ‘You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?’
‘Of course I would send him back; he’d be no use to us out there: but I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.’
‘To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal never mind the donkey.’
So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.
‘Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it!’ said he to himself; and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.
‘Good pilgrim!’ shouted the widow; ‘I forgot one thing. Would any money be of use to my poor dear husband?’
‘Oh dear yes, all the use in the world,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you can always get anything for money everywhere.’
‘Oh, do come back then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.’
The pretended pilgrim came back willingly for the hundred scudi, and the widow counted them out to him.
‘There is no help for it,’ soliloquised he as he went his way; ‘I must go back to those at home. I have actually found three women each more stupid than they.’