Curiosities of Olden Times
animal that bit her till her demand for compensation was satisfied. If she fed and tended it, she was amply repaid by the use she and her husband made of it for carrying heavy burdens daily to market.
"On the other hand, Ferron has suffered from the loss of his ass, through its unjustifiable detention. He has been compelled to hire a horse during two months to carry on his business, and this has involved him in expenses beyond his means. For this loss Ferron will claim indemnification at the hands of Leclerc."
Such was the case of the defendant. Along with it were handed in the two following certificates, the latter of which, as giving a character for morality and respectability to a donkey, is certainly a curiosity.
Certificate of the Sieur Nepveux, grocer, at whose shop-door the ass was tied.
I, the undersigned, certify that on the 2nd July 1750 the day after the ass of the defendant Jacques Ferron, which had been attached to my door, had followed the female ass of the person Leclerc, there came, at seven o'clock in the morning, a woman to ask whether an ass had not been lost here; whereupon I replied in the affirmative. She told me that the individual who had lost it might come and fetch it, and that it would be returned to her; and that it was at a floral gardener's in the Faubourg St. Marcel, near the Gobelins: in testimony to the truth of which I set-to my hand.
(Signed) Nepveux, grocer.
PORTE SAINT JACQUES, PARIS,
20th August 1720.
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