Accordingly, when he had settled matters in respect of his house,
he declared it to be his desire that a fine Spanish horse which he
possessed should be sold for as much as it would bring, and the money
obtained for it be distributed among the poor. And he begged his wife
that she would in no wise fail to sell the horse as soon as he was dead,
and distribute the money in the manner he had commanded.
1 Whether the incidents here related be true or not, it is
probable that this was a story told to Queen Margaret at the
time of her journey to Spain in 1525. It will have been
observed (_ante_, pp. 36 and 42) that both the previous tale
and this one are introduced into the _Heptameron_ in a semi-
apologetic fashion, as though the Queen had not originally
intended that her work should include such short, slight
anecdotes. However, already at this stage--the fifty-fifth
only of the hundred tales which she proposed writing--she
probably found fewer materials at her disposal than she had
anticipated, and harked back to incidents of her earlier
years, which she had at first thought too trifling to
record.
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