The Spanish Widow
(Day 6, Story 5)
"Pray tell us that tale," said Saffredent.
"I had not intended to tell so short a tale," replied Nomerfide; "but since it comes so à propos, you shall have it."
THERE was at Saragossa a merchant who, feeling his end approach and seeing that he must quit his possessions, which he had, perhaps, acquired with bad faith, thought to make satisfaction in part for his sins after his death by giving some little present to God, as if God gave his grace for money. After giving orders respecting his house, he desired that a fine Spanish horse, which constituted nearly the whole of his wealth, should be sold, and the money bestowed on the poor Mendicants, and he charged his wife to do this with fail immediately after his death.
The burial being over, and the first tears shed, the wife, who was no more of a simpleton than Spanish women are in general, said to the man-servant, who, like her, had heard her husband deliver his last will, "Methinks I lose enough in losing my husband, whom I so tenderly loved, without losing, also, the rest of my property. I would by no means, however, contravene the orders he laid upon me, but would rather improve upon his intentions. The poor man, beguiled by the avarice of the priests, thought to make a sacrifice to God in giving away after his death a sum, one crown of which he would not have given in his lifetime, however pressing might be the need, as you very well know; it has occurred to me, then, that we will do what he ordered us much better than he could have done it himself had he lived a few days longer, but no one in the world must know a word about it."
The man having promised to keep the secret, she continued: "You will take the horse to the market, and when you are asked the price you will say one ducat. But I have a very good cat which I want to sell also. You will sell it along with the horse, and charge for it ninety-nine ducats, making of the two one hundred ducats, which is the price at which my husband wished to sell the horse alone."
The man promptly obeyed his mistress's orders. As he was walking the horse about in the market-place, carrying the cat under his arm, a gentleman, who knew the horse and had before wished to buy it, came up and asked what he would take for it at a word. "A ducat," said the man.
"I would thank you not to make game of me," said the gentleman.
"I assure you, sir," said the man, "it will cost you more. It is true you must buy this cat at the same time, and I want ninety-nine ducats for it."
The gentleman, who thought it a pretty good bargain, paid him forthwith a ducat for the horse, and then the remainder for the cat, and had his two purchases taken home. The man on his side went off with the money to his mistress, who was delighted to get it, and failed not to bestow on the poor Mendicants, according to her husband's intentions, the ducat for which the horse had been sold, and kept the rest to provide for her own wants and those of her family.
Don't you think she was wiser than her husband, and did she not take more care of the fortune of her family than of his conscience?
"I believe she loved her husband," said Parlamente, "but seeing that most men wander in their wits on their death-bed, and knowing his intentions, she interpreted them to the advantage of her children, and in this, I think, she showed laudable prudence."
"Do you not think it a great fault," said Geburon, "to contravene the last wishes of our deceased friends?"
"A very great one," replied Parlamente, "when the testator is in his sound senses, and not raving."
"Do you call it raving," returned Geburon, "to bequeath one's property to the Church and to the poor Mendicants?"
"I do not call it raving," she answered, "to give to the poor what God has given to us, but to give away as alms what belongs to another appears to me no great proof of good sense. How commonly you see the greatest usurers in the world erecting the finest and most sumptuous chapels, as thinking to make their peace with God for a hundred thousand ducats' worth of robbery by ten thousands ducats' worth of building, just as though God did not know how to count."
"Truly, I have often wondered," said Oisille, "how they think to make their peace with God by means of things which he himself reprobated when he was on earth, such as great buildings, gildings, painting, and decorations, but if they rightly understood what God has said, that the only offering he requires of us is a humble and contrite heart, and another text in which St. Paul says that we are the temple of God in which he desires to dwell, they would have taken pains to adorn their consciences while they were alive and not have waited for the time when a man can no longer do either good or ill; nor would they have done what is still worse, in laying upon those they leave behind the burden of giving their alms to those they would not have deigned to look upon all through their lives. But He who knows the heart cannot be deceived, and will judge them not according to their works merely, but according to the faith and charity that was in them."
(1000 words)
