And again, man, whose greed can never be satisfied, stepped forward and asked also for these thirty years which the monkey had rejected. And again God gave them to him.
Then God dismissed all the animals and all his creatures, and each one went to his appointed station and to the life that has been granted to him.
And as man has asked, so has it come to pass.
Man lives as a king and ruler over all creatures for the thirty years which the Lord had given to him, in joy and in happiness, without care and without trouble.
Then come the years from thirty to fifty, which are the years of the ass; they are full of hard work, heavy burdens, and little food, for man is anxious to gather and to lay up something for the years to come. It could not be otherwise, for were not these the years which he had taken over from the ass? Then come the years from fifty to seventy, when man sits at home and guards with great trembling and fear the little that he possesses, fearful of every shadow, eating little, always keeping others away lest they rob him of that which he has gathered, and barking at every one whom he suspects of wanting to take away what belongs to him. And no wonder that he behaves like that, for these are the dog’s years, which man had asked for himself. And if a man lives beyond seventy, then his back gets bent, his face changes, his mind gets clouded, he becomes childish, a laughing-stock for children, an amusement for the fool, and these are the years which man had taken over from the monkey.
Thus far the story which I found in some old Rumanian MSS., and which may, therefore, not be quite of a popular origin. I have retold it here because we have in it the animal in the man. It may be a caricature, but it does not show up man to advantage in comparison with the animal world. And yet, he is endeavouring to conquer the animal, to shake off the fateful inheritance of greed, and to return to that rule and kingdom which are his own by the grace of God to his thirtieth year, and which he endeavours to carry even beyond that limited span of time.