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.