As soon as they
bring you your bran and straw, rise up and eat heartily. Our
master will, by this, think that you are cured, and no doubt will
recal his orders for killing you; whereas, if you do otherwise,
you are certainly gone.
This discourse had the effect which the ass designed. The ox was
strangely troubled at it, and bellowed out for fear. The
merchant, who heard the discourse very attentively, fell into
such a fit of laughter, that his wife was surprised at it, and
said, Pray, husband, tell me what you laugh at so heartily, that
I may laugh with you. Wife, said he, you must content yourself
with hearing me laugh. No, replies she, I will know the reason. I
cannot give you that satisfaction, answers he, but only that I
laugh at what our ass just now said to our ox. The rest is a
secret, which I am not allowed to reveal. And what hinders you
from revealing the secret, says she? If I tell it you, answers
he, it will cost me my life. You only jeer me, cried his wife;
what you tell me now cannot be true. If you do not satisfy me
presently with what you laugh at, and tell me what the ox and ass
said to one another, I swear by Heaven that you and I shall never
bed together again.
Having spoken thus, she went into the house in a great fret, and,
setting herself in a corner, cried there all night.
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