“You, such an one, you know what passed between us two in former days. I now repent of it bitterly, and if Our Lord does not show me the mercy I ask of Him, it will cost me dear in the next world. I have committed faults, I know, but to add another to them would be to make matters worse. Here are such and such of my children;—they are yours, and my husband believes that they are his. You cannot have the conscience to make him keep them, so I beg that after my death, which will be very soon, that you will take them, and bring them up as a father should, for they are, in fact, your own.”
She spoke in the same manner to the other man, showing him the other children:
“Such and such are, I assure you, yours. I leave them to your care, requesting you to perform your duty towards them. If you will promise me to care for them, I shall die in peace.”
As she was thus distributing her children, her husband returned home, and was met by one of his little sons, who was only about four years old. The child ran downstairs to him in such haste that he nearly lost his breath, and when he came to his father, he said,
“Alas, father! come quickly, in God’s name!”
“What has happened?” asked his father. “Is your mother dead?”
“No, no,” said the child, “but make haste upstairs, or you will have no children left. Two men have come to see mother, and she is giving them most of my brothers and sisters. If you do not make haste, she will give them all away.”
The good man could not understand what his son meant, so he hastened upstairs, and found his wife very ill, and with her the nurse, two of his neighbours, and his children.
He asked the meaning of the tale his son had told him about giving away his children.
“You will know later on,” she said; so he did not trouble himself further, for he never doubted her in the least.