If ever I fell down, worn out with carrying my
load, that would be the occasion of unendurable
suffering. He who ought to have dismounted
and given me the assistance of his hand by raising me from the earth, and, if need were, taking
off my load, would neither get down nor lift a finger to help me, but from his seat he would batter
me with his stick, beginning at my head and ears,
until the blows aroused me. And he played an
even more intolerable trick on me than this. He
collected a fagot of the sharpest thorns, tied
them with a cord, and hung them behind on my
tail. As may be imagined, they dangled and fell
forward against me as I descended the mountain
and pricked my hind-quarters till they were covered with wounds. I was helpless to protect myself, for the source of my pain followed me at


 


each step, hanging from my own body. If I advanced gingerly to avoid the thorns I was halfkilled with the club; if I shunned the club then
that horror at my back attacked me sharply. In
fact, my
driver's one object in life was to kill me.
 
Once, when I could no longer bear my many
cruel sufferings, I let out at him with my heels,
and he never forgot that kick. He was ordered
one day to carry some tow from one village to
another, so he took me, collected a mass of tow,
tied it on my back, and made it fast with an additional and painful strap, brewing a fearful plot
against me as he adjusted the load. When it was
time to start he stole an ember still hot from the
hearth, and when we were at some distance from
the house he hid it in the tow. The tow immediately burst into flame-for what else would it
do?—and my load was nothing but a huge conflagration. I saw that I should be roasted in an
instant, and, coming upon a deep mud-hole in the
road, I flung myself into the wettest part of it.
There I rolled the tow, and twisted and turned
myself until I had sprinkled that hot and painful
burden with mud. Then I made the rest of the
journey with more safety, for the boy could not
set me on fire any more because the tow was
mixed with mud. And when he arrived he had
the impudence to tell this lie about me: that I
had plunged into the fireplace of my own accord


 



as I was passing it. Well, that time I survived
the tow, though I did not expect to; but the villain of a boy invented something much worse
than this for me. He took me up the mountain
and put a great load of wood on me, but this he
sold to a neighboring farmer, and drove me home
with no load and no wood, and accused me falsely
to his master. "I don't see the good, sir," said
he, "of supporting this ass, for he is terribly lazy
and slow."