Feeling a little better after that,I closed it up again and went back to my straw mat.I rested there and even slept a while.But I didn't sleep very well,and I thought it was because I hadn't eaten enough.And that's what it must have been because at that time all the troubles of the King of France wouldn't have been able to keep me awake.The next day my master saw the damage that had been done to the bread along with the hole I'd made,and he began to swear at the mice and say,"How can this be?I've never even seen a mouse in this house until now!"
And I really think he must have been telling the truth.If there was one house in the whole country that by rights should have been free of mice,it was that one,because they don't usually stay where there's nothing to eat.He began to look around on the walls of the house again for nails and pieces of wood to keep them out.Then when night came and he was asleep,there I was on my feet with my knife in hand,and all the holes he plugged up during the day I unplugged at night.
That's how things went,me following him so quickly that this must be where the saying comes from:"Where one door is closed,another opens."Well,we seemed to be doing Penelope's work on the cloth because whatever he wove during the day I took apart at night.And after just a few days and nights we had the poor pantry box in such a shape that,if you really wanted to call it by its proper name,you'd have to call it an old piece of armor instead of a chest because of all the nails and tacks in it.
When he saw that his efforts weren't doing any good,he said,"This chest is so beat up and the wood in it is so old and thin that it wouldn't be able to stand up against any mouse.And it's getting in such bad shape that if we put up with it any longer it won't keep anything secure.The worst
part of it is that even though it doesn't keep things very safe,if I got rid of it I really wouldn't be able to get along without it,and I'd just end up having to pay three or four pieces of silver to get another one.The best thing that I can think of,since what I've tried so far hasn't done any good,is to set a trap inside the chest for those blasted mice."
Then he asked someone to lend him a mousetrap,and with the cheese rinds that he begged from the neighbors,the trap was kept set and ready inside the chest.And that really turned out to be a help to me.Even though I didn't require any frills for eating,I was still glad to get the cheese rinds that I took out of the mousetrap,and even at that I didn't stop the mouse from raiding the bread.
When he found that mice had been into the bread and eaten the cheese,but that not one of them had been caught,he swore a blue streak and asked his neighbors,"How could a mouse take cheese out of a trap,eat it,leave the trap sprung,and still not get caught?"The neighbors agreed that it couldn't be a mouse that was causing the trouble because it would have had to have gotten caught sooner or later.So one neighbor said to him,"I remember that there used to be a snake around your house--that must be who the culprit is.It only stands to reason:it's so long it can get the food,and even though the trap is sprung on it,it's not completely inside,so it can get out again."
Everyone agreed with what he'd said,and that really upset my master.From then on he didn't sleep so soundly.Whenever he heard even a worm moving around in the wood at night,he thought it was the snake gnawing on the chest.Then he would be up on his feet,and he'd grab a club that he kept by the head of the bed ever since they'd mentioned a snake to him,and he would really lay into that poor old chest,hoping to scare the snake away.He woke up the neighbors with all the noise he made,and he wouldn't let me sleep at all.He came up to my straw mat and turned it over and me with it,thinking that the snake had headed for me and gotten into the straw or inside my coat.Because they told him that at night these creatures look for some place that's warm and even get into babies'cribs and bite them.Most of the time I pretended to be asleep,and in the morning he would ask me,"Didn't you feel anything last night,son?I was right behind the snake,and I think it got into your bed:they're very cold-blooded creatures,and they try to find a place that's warm."
"I hope to God it doesn't bite me,"I said."I'm really scared of it."
