When she had received the servant’s promise to keep it secret, she said to him—­

“You will go and sell the horse, and when you are asked, ‘How much?’ you will reply, ‘A ducat.’  I have, however, a very fine cat which I also wish to dispose of, and you will sell it with the horse for ninety-nine ducats, so that cat and horse together will bring in the hundred ducats for which my husband wished to sell the horse alone.”

The servant readily fulfilled his mistress’s command.  While he was walking the horse about the market-place, and holding the cat in his arms, a gentleman, who had seen the horse before, and was desirous of possessing it, asked the servant what price he sought.

“A ducat,” replied the man.

“I pray you,” said the gentleman, “do not mock me.”

“I assure you, sir,” said the servant, “that it will cost you only a ducat.  It is true that the cat must be bought at the same time, and for the cat I must have nine and ninety ducats.”

Forthwith, the gentleman, thinking the bargain a reasonable one, paid him one ducat for the horse, and the remainder as was desired of him, and took his goods away.

The servant, on his part, went off with the money, with which his mistress was right well pleased, and she failed not to give the ducat that the horse had brought to the poor Mendicants, (2) as her husband had commanded, and the remainder she kept for the needs of herself and her children. (3)

     2 The allusion is not to the ordinary beggars who then, as
     now, swarmed in Spain, but to the Mendicant friars.—­Ed.

3 In Boaistuau’s and Gruget’s editions of the Heptameron the dialogue following this tale is replaced by matter of their own invention.  They did not dare to reproduce Queen Margaret’s bold opinions respecting the clergy, the monastic orders, &c., at a time when scores of people, including even Counsellors of Parliament, were being burnt at the stake for heresy.—­L. and Ed.

“What think you?  Was she not far more prudent than her husband, and did she not think less of her conscience than of the advantage of her household?”

“I think,” said Parlamente, “that she did love her husband; but, seeing that most men wander in their wits when at the point of death, and knowing his intentions, she tried to interpret them to her children’s advantage.  And therein I hold her to have been very prudent.”

“What!” said Geburon.  “Do you not hold it a great wrong not to carry out the last wishes of departed friends?”

“Assuredly I do,” said Parlamente; “that is to say if the testator be in his right mind, and not raving.”

“Do you call it raving to give one’s goods to the Church and the poor Mendicants?”

“I do not call it raving,” said Parlamente, “if a man distribute what God has given into his hands among the poor; but to make alms of another person’s goods is, in my opinion, no great wisdom.  You will commonly see the greatest usurers build the handsomest and most magnificent chapels imaginable, thinking they may appease God with ten thousand ducats’ worth of building for a hundred thousand ducats’ worth of robbery, just as though God did not know how to count.”