'As for me,' said one very fat and doleful woman, 'I never have any luck; I never win at any game. And perhaps that's why St. Antony does not listen to me. I gave forty sous on three occasions, once for my goat which was ailing, but all the same it died; the next time for a ring I lost, and which I never found; and then, the third time, for some potatoes which were rotting, but it was no good, I couldn't find a buyer for them. Ah! I am really unlucky and no mistake!' 'You are too patient, my dear,' a little dark wizened old woman answered. 'As for me, when St. Antony won't lend ear, I make him listen.' 'But how, my dear?' 'Oh! I punish him. For instance, there was that little house of mine which I couldn't let because people complain that it's too damp and that children get ill and die there. Well, I gave three francs, and then I waited. Nothing, not a sign of a tenant! I gave three francs a second time, and still there was no result. That made me cross and I hustled the statuette of the Saint which stands on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. As he still did nothing for me, I turned his face to the wall to let him reflect. He spent a week like that, but still nothing came of it, for it did not humiliate him sufficiently. I had to think of something else; I felt quite furious, and I ended by tying him to a cord and lowering him into my well, head downwards. Ah! my dear, he then understood that I was bound to have the last word with him; for he hadn't been in the well two hours when some people called and I let them my little house.' 'But you pulled him out of the well?' 'Oh! at once. I set him on the drawers again, after wiping him quite clean and apologising to him.... We are not on bad terms together on account of that affair, oh! dear no; only, do you see, when one has paid one's money, one ought to be energetic.' 'All right, my dear, I'll try.... I have some worries with the Justice of the Peace, so I will go inside and give two francs. And if the Saint doesn't help me to win the suit, I will show him my displeasure.' 'That's it, my dear! Tie a stone to his neck, or wrap him up in some dirty linen. He doesn't like that at all. It will make him do the right thing.'