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." When the master heard this he said,
"Well, if he is willing neither to walk nor to carry a load, kill him and give his vitals to the dogs,
but save his flesh for the work-people, and if any
questions are asked as to the manner of his death
lay it to the wolf." The rascally boy, my driver,
was charmed, and was for killing me at once, but
in the dead of night a messenger came from the
village to the farm, saying that the bride, the one
who was stolen by the robbers, had been walking
with her bridegroom late in the evening on the
sea-shore, when suddenly the sea rose, caught
them, and carried them out of sight, and that this
was the end of their happiness and their agony.
This news, that the house was bereft of its young
master and mistress, determined the farm-people
to live in slavery no longer. They laid their
hands on everything in the house and fled. The
master of the horses took me, too, collected all
the goods he could, and packed them on me and


 


the mares. I was put out at having to carry the
load of a real ass, but I was glad to accept this
trial in place of the knife.
We travelled all night over a painful road, and
in three days more we finished our journey and
came to Beroia, a large and populous town in
Macedonia. There our drivers determined to
settle us and themselves, and we beasts were sold
at auction by a loud-voiced crier in the middle
of the market-place. The by-standers wished to
open our mouths and look at them, and they saw
the age of each by his teeth. They bought the
others one by one, but I was left last of all, and
the auctioneer bade them take me home again.
"See," he said, "this fellow only has found no
master."

But fickle Nemesis who whirls our fortunes
constantly about brought a master even to me,
such as I should not have prayed for. He was
an old rascal of the sort who carry the Syrian
goddess around among the villages and farms,
and make her beg. This man bought me at the
handsome price of six dollars!