The Old Man Made Young Again

When our Lord was still walking on earth, he stopped one evening with St. Peter at a blacksmith's and was willingly given lodging. Now it happened that a poor beggar, oppressed by old age and infirmity, came into this house and demanded alms from the blacksmith. Peter took pity on him and said, "Lord and Master, if it pleases you, heal his plague so that he may win his own bread." on me coals, I will rejuvenate the sick old man at that time.” The blacksmith was quite ready, and St. Peter drew the bellows, and when the coal fire ignited, great and high, our Lord took the little old man and pushed it in the forge, in the middle of the red fire, so that it glowed like a rosebush, and God praised with a loud voice. Then the Lord went to the quenching trough, pulled the glowing little man in so that the water splashed over him, and after he had cooled down in a decent manner, G but he gave him his blessing: behold, the little man jumped out, tender, straight, healthy, and like twenty years old. The blacksmith, who had been watching closely, invited them all to supper. But he had an old, half-blind, hunchbacked sister-in-law who approached the young man and seriously inquired whether the fire had burned him hard. He had never felt better, he replied, he had sat there in the embers as if in a cool dew.

What the young man had said rang in the old woman's ears all night, and when the gentleman walked down the street early in the morning and had thanked the smith, he said he could make his old sister-in-law young too, since he was neat watched everything and incorporated it into his art. So he called her and asked if she wanted to hop around like an eighteen-year-old girl. She spoke "with all my heart," because the young man had received it so gently. So the smith made great embers and pushed in the old woman, who now and then bent over and let out a cruel murderous cry. "Sit still, why are you screaming and jumping, I want to blow hard enough first." Pulled the bellows again until all her rags were on fire. The old woman cried out incessantly, and the blacksmith thought, "Art is not right," took her out and threw her into the slaking trough. Then she cried out so loudly that the blacksmith and her cord heard it upstairs: they both ran down the stairs and saw the old woman lying weeping and moaning, all purred in the trough, her face wrinkled, wrinkled and uncreated. The two, who were both walking with children, were so horrified that the same night they gave birth to two youngsters, who were not made like humans, but like apes, ran into the forest; and from them descended the race of the apes."