<h3><SPAN name="chap147"></SPAN>147 The Old Man Made Young Again</h3>
<p>In the time when our Lord still walked this earth, he and St. Peter stopped one
evening at a smith’s and received free quarters. Then it came to pass
that a poor beggar, hardly pressed by age and infirmity, came to this house and
begged alms of the smith. St. Peter had compassion on him and said, “Lord
and master, if it please thee, cure his torments that he may be able to win his
own bread.” The Lord said kindly, “Smith, lend me thy forge, and
put on some coals for me, and then I will make this ailing old man young
again.” The smith was quite willing, and St. Peter blew the bellows, and
when the coal fire sparkled up large and high our Lord took the little old man,
pushed him in the forge in the midst of the red-hot fire, so that he glowed
like a rose-bush, and praised God with a loud voice. After that the Lord went
to the quenching tub, put the glowing little man into it so that the water
closed over him, and after he had carefully cooled him, gave him his blessing,
when behold the little man sprang nimbly out, looking fresh, straight, healthy,
and as if he were but twenty. The smith, who had watched everything closely and
attentively, invited them all to supper. He, however, had an old half-blind
crooked, mother-in-law who went to the youth, and with great earnestness asked
if the fire had burnt him much. He answered that he had never felt more
comfortable, and that he had sat in the red heat as if he had been in cool dew.
The youth’s words echoed in the ears of the old woman all night long, and
early next morning, when the Lord had gone on his way again and had heartily
thanked the smith, the latter thought he might make his old mother-in-law young
again likewise, as he had watched everything so carefully, and it lay in the
province of his trade. So he called to ask her if she, too, would like to go
bounding about like a girl of eighteen. She said, “With all my heart, as
the youth has come out of it so well.” So the smith made a great fire,
and thrust the old woman into it, and she writhed about this way and that, and
uttered terrible cries of murder. “Sit still; why art thou screaming and
jumping about so?” cried he, and as he spoke he blew the bellows again
until all her rags were burnt. The old woman cried without ceasing, and the
smith thought to himself, “I have not quite the right art,” and
took her out and threw her into the cooling-tub. Then she screamed so loudly
that the smith’s wife upstairs and her daughter-in-law heard, and they
both ran downstairs, and saw the old woman lying in a heap in the
quenching-tub, howling and screaming, with her face wrinkled and shrivelled and
all out of shape. Thereupon the two, who were both with child, were so
terrified that that very night two boys were born who were not made like men
but apes, and they ran into the woods, and from them sprang the race of apes.</p>
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