"I will wash him, and I will put him some of your new clothes on."
The father then says, "Yes," and he makes them do as Marie Louise
wished. They place him at table, but Marie Louise alone recognised
him. After dinner they asked Juan Dekos to tell a story in his turn
like the rest.
He says, "Yes, but if you wish to hear my story you must shut all
the doors and give me all the keys."
They give them to him.
He begins: "There was a father and a mother who had a son who was not
very bright, and they decide that they must send him to sea. They load
a ship with sand for him. He sells this sand very well, and pays the
heavy debts of a dead man whom they were keeping at the church doors
(without burial)."
When the second officer saw and heard that, he perceived that his life
was in danger, and that it was all up with him, and he begs the king
for the key of the door, saying that he must go out; but he could
not give it him, so he was forced to remain, and not at all at his
ease. Juan Dekos begins again:
"His father loaded the ship again with iron, and he sells it and
bought with this money seven Christians, and," pointing to the king's
daughter, "there is the eighth."
The king knew this story already from his daughter. What do they do
then? When they see how wicked the second officer had been, they had
a cartload of faggots brought into the middle of the market-place,
they put a shirt of sulphur upon him, and burn him in the midst of
the place.
Juan Dekos and Marie Louise marry and are very happy. They had a child,
and at the end of a year an angel comes to fetch the half of it. Juan
Dekos was very sorry, but as he had given his word he was going to
cut it in half. The angel seizes him by the arm, and says to him:
"I see your obedience; I leave you your child."
If they lived well, they died well too.