Household Tales · Chapter
The Good Bargain explained
A peasant sells his cow for seven thalers, but loses the money to frogs who refuse to return it.
What happens
A peasant sells his cow for seven thalers, but loses the money to frogs who refuse to return it. He then sells a cow's meat to a dog, expecting payment in three days, but the butcher drives him away. He appeals to the King, who offers him his daughter's hand, but the peasant declines. The King then promises him five hundred thalers, but the peasant gives away the sum to a soldier and a Jew. After a series of deceptions, the King rewards him with money from the treasury, and the peasant outwits the Jew who tries to betray him.
Themes in this chapter
Greed and Its Downfall
The Jew's greed leads him to betray the peasant, but he is ultimately punished when the King sees through his deception.
Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished
The peasant, though simple, is rewarded for his honesty and wit, while the Jew's deceit is exposed and punished.
Characters to notice
- the luck-child
The peasant is referred to as a luck-child by the Jew after his apparent good fortune.
- the princess
The King's daughter laughs heartily at the peasant's story, fulfilling the King's promise to marry her to the one who makes her laugh.
- the King
The King listens to the peasant's complaint, offers his daughter in marriage, and later rewards the peasant with money from the treasury.
- the Jew
The Jew exchanges the peasant's thalers for bad coins and later betrays the peasant to the King, but is ultimately outwitted.
- the soldier
The sentry asks for a share of the peasant's reward and receives two hundred thalers, which are paid in blows.
Key passages
“Alas! said he, the frogs and the dogs have taken from me what is mine, and the butcher has paid me for it with the stick.”
The peasant complains that the frogs and dogs stole his money and the butcher beat him.
The peasant summarizes his misfortunes to the King.
“I cannot give you justice in this, but you shall have my daughter to wife for it—in her whole life she has never yet laughed as she has just done at thee, and I have promised her to him who could make her laugh.”
The King says he cannot provide legal justice but offers his daughter in marriage because the peasant made her laugh.
The King's offer is based on a prior promise to marry his daughter to the one who makes her laugh.
“What a Jew says is always false—no true word ever comes out of his mouth! That rascal there is capable of maintaining that I have his coat on.”
The peasant claims that Jews always lie and that the Jew might even say the coat belongs to him.
The peasant uses the Jew's own deceit against him to expose the lie.