Xantus had a wife of very delicate tastes, who was extremely particular as to the style of persons she allowed to be about her. Xantus knew, therefore, that to present his new slave to her in the ordinary way would be to excite not only her ridicule but her anger. He resolved, accordingly, to make the presentation a subject of pleasantry, and spread a report through the mansion that he had purchased a young slave as handsome as ever was seen. Having heard this, the young girls who waited on the mistress were ready to tear each other to pieces for the sake of having the new slave as her own particular servant; and their astonishment at the appearance of the new-comer may well be imagined. One hid her face in her hands, another fled, and a third screamed. The mistress of the house, for her part, said that she could very well see that this monster had been brought to drive her away from the house, and that she had long perceived that the philosopher was tired of her. Word followed word, and the quarrel at length became so hot that the lady demanded her goods, and declared that she would return to her parents. Xantus, however, by means of his patience, and Æsop by means of his wit, contrived to arrange matters. The lady resigned her project of insisting upon a divorce from bed and board, and admitted that she might possibly in time become accustomed to even so ugly a slave.
I have omitted many little circumstances in which Æsop displayed the liveliness of his wit; for although they all serve as proofs of the keenness of his mind, they are not sufficiently important to be recorded. We will merely give here a single specimen of his good sense and of his master's ignorance. The latter on a certain occasion went to a gardener's to choose a salad for himself; and when the herbs had been selected, the gardener begged the philosopher to satisfy him with respect to something which concerned him, the philosopher, as much as it concerned gardening in general, and it was this: that the herbs which he planted and cultivated with great care did not prove so valuable as those which the earth produced of itself without any thought. Xantus attributed the whole thing to the will of Providence, as persons are apt to do when they are puzzled. Æsop having overheard the conversation, began to laugh, and having drawn his master aside, advised him to say that he had made so general a reply because it was not suited to his dignity to answer such trivial questions, but that he would leave its solution to his slave-boy, who would doubtless satisfy the inquirer. Then, Xantus having gone to walk at the other end of the garden, Æsop compared the garden to a woman who, having children by a first husband, should espouse a second husband who should have children by a first wife. His new wife would not fail to form feelings of aversion for her step-children, and would deprive them of their due nourishment for the sake of benefiting her own. And it was thus with the earth, which adopted only with reluctance the productions of labour and culture, and reserved all her tenderness and benefits for her own productions alone--being a step-mother to the former, and a passionately fond mother of the latter. The gardener was so delighted with this answer, that he offered Æsop the choice of anything in his garden.