And our Holy Father says to him, “When you shall find this key, your mother will be saved.”
He starts off, begging his way as before, and takes seven more years before arriving in his own country. He goes from house to house asking alms. His father meets him and asks him where he comes from. He says, “From Rome.” He asks him if he has not seen on the road a boy of his own age. He says to him, “Yes, yes,” and tells him that he has gone on walking for seven years, shedding his blood to save his mother. And he keeps on talking about his son. His mother comes out on the staircase and tells her husband to send that poor man away—that he must be off from there. But he pays no attention to her. He brings him in, and tells her that he is going to dine with them. His wife is not pleased. He sends the servant to market, telling her to buy the finest fish that she can find. When the young girl comes back, she goes to the poultry yard to clean the fish. The young man follows her, and as she was cleaning the fish she found a key inside it.
The young man said to her, “That key belongs to me.”
And she gives it to him.
The lady could not endure this young man, and she gives him a push, and he falls into the well. All on a sudden the water of the well overflows, and the young man comes out all dripping. The husband had not seen that his wife had pushed him into the well, and the young man told him that he had fallen into it. This poor man wishes to give him some clothes, but he will not accept them, saying that he will dry himself at the fire. At table the lady is not at all polite to him. The young man asks her if she would recognise her son.
She says, “Yes, yes; he has a mark between his two breasts.”
And the young man opens his clothes, and shows the mark. At the same time he gives the key to his mother that she may open his hair-cloth shirt, and the mother sees nothing but blood and gore. He has suffered for her. The three die. And the servant sees three white doves fly away. I wish I could do like them in the same way.
Gachina,
the Net-maker.