Well, I grew very thin and weak in body, till
my master decided to sell me, and he disposed
of me to a man who was a market-gardener by
trade, for he had rented a garden to cultivate.
This was our daily work: My master would load
me with vegetables early in the morning, and take
them to the market. Having disposed of them
to the dealers, he would drive me back to the
garden. Then he would fall to digging and planting and watering, while I stood idle. Still this
life was terribly hard for me. In the first place,
when winter came my master could not afford
coverings for himself, and still less for me; and
I trod barefoot through the slimy mud and over
the hard, rough, frozen roads; and the only food


 


for man and beast alike was lettuces, hard and
bitter.

 
One day, when we were setting out for the
town, we happened upon a fine-looking man in a
soldier's uniform, who began to address us in the
Latin tongue, and asked the gardener whither he
was driving me, the ass. My master, not understanding the language, I suppose, made no reply.
The other grew angry at what he thought an insult, and struck with his whip at the gardener,
who thereupon closed with him, twirled him off
his legs, and stretched him in the road. As he
lay there he pounded him with hands and feet,
and a stone from the road. The soldier at first
resisted, and threatened that when he got on his
feet he would kill the gardener with his sword;
but my master, being thus instructed from the
very lips of his foe, chose the safer part, drew
the sword from him and hurled it to a distance.
Then he fell to pounding him again where he lay.
The soldier, seeing that his plight was already
past bearing, pretended to be killed by the blows.
This frightened the gardener, so that he left him
lying there just as he was, carried off the sword,
and rode away on me to the town.
 
When we were arrived there he confided the
charge of the garden to a partner of his, and,
fearing possible danger from the affair in the
road, he hid himself and me in the house of one


 



of his friends in the town. The next day they
laid their plans and acted as follows: my master
they concealed in a chest; me they hung by the
feet, and carried me up a ladder to the second
story, and shut me up there. The soldier, as we
heard afterwards, picked himself up out of the
road with difficulty when we were gone, and made
his way into the city, stunned with the beating he
had had. When he found the soldiers of his
company, he told them of the gardener's madness, and they, accompanying him, learned our
hiding-place. They brought the magistrates of
the city with them, who sent some of their people
into the house and bade all within come out.
When they appeared, the gardener was nowhere
to be seen. The soldiers, however, declared he
was in the house with me, his ass, but the people
of the house said no other creature was left inside, either man or ass. At this an uproar of vociferation rose in the narrow street, and I, in my
headstrong curiosity about everything, longed to
know who were shouting, so I peeped down from
above through the window. As soon as they saw
me they raised an outcry. The people of the
house were detected in their lie, and the magistrates, entering and ransacking everything, found
my master lying in the chest. Him they arrested
and packed off to prison, to give an account of
his desperate conduct, and me they brought down


 



and handed over to the soldiers. They all burst
into inextinguishable laughter at my having given.
information from the upper story and betrayed
my own master, and I was the origin, on this occasion, of the proverb about the "peeping ass."