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give you new Advice. As ſoon as they bring you your Bran and Straw riſe up and eat heartily. Our Maſter will by this think that you are cur’d, and no doubt will recal his Orders for killing you; whereas if you do otherwiſe, you are certainly gone,
This Diſcourſe had the effect which the Aſs deſign’d. The Ox was ſtrangely troubled at it, and bellow’d out for Fear. The Merchant, who heard the Diſcourſe very attentively, fell into ſuch a Fit of Laughter, that his Wife was ſurpriz’d at it, and ſaid, Pray Husband tell me what you laugh at ſo heartily; that I may laugh with you. Wiſe, ſays he, you muſt content your ſelf with hearing me laugh. No, replies ſhe, I will know the. Reaſon. I cannot give you that Satisfaction, anſwers he, but only that laugh at what our Aſs juſt now ſaid to our Ox. The reſt is a Secret, which I am not allow’d to reveal. And what hinders you from revealing the Secret, ſays ſhe? If I tell it you, anſwers he, it will coſt me my Life. You only jeer me, cry’d his Wife, what you tell me now cannot be true. If you don’t ſatisfy me preſently what you laugh at, and tell me what the Ox and Aſs ſaid to one another, I ſwear by Hegven that you and I ſhall never bed again.
Having ſpoke thus, ſhe went into the Houſe in a great Fret, and ſetting her ſelf in a Corner, cried there all Night. Her Husband lay alone, and finding next Morning that ſhe continued in the ſame Humour, told her, ſhe was a very fooliſh Woman to afflict her ſelf in that manner, the thing was not worth ſo much, and that it did concern her as little to know the matter, as it concern’d him much to keep
it ſecret. Therefore I conjure you to think no more of it. I ſhall ſtill think ſo much of it, ſays ſhe, as never to forbear weeping till you have ſatisfy’d my Curioſity. But I tell you very ſeriouſly, replied he, that it will coſt me my Life, if I yield to your Indiſcretion. Let what will happen, ſays ſhe, I do infiſt upon it. I perceive, ſays the Merchant, that ’tis impoſſible ts bring you to Reaſon, and ſince I foreſee that you will occaſion your own Death by your Obſtinacy, I will call in your Children, that they may ſee you before you die. Accordingly he call’d for ’em, and ſent for her Father and Mother, and other Relations. When they