Revenge Is Sweet

A teacher had two pupils who could never agree on anything. At the slightest pretext, these two pupils would shout and storm at each other, and it took all the teacher’s time to prevent them from coming to blows.

The teacher was quite elderly and suffered severely from rheumatic leg pains. So every night, he got the two pupils to massage his legs to relieve the pain and allow him to sleep.

But even doing this, the pupils would bicker and scream at one another as to which leg each should massage. In the end, the teacher said that one pupil would always massage the left leg and the other the right leg.

This worked until the pupil who massaged the left leg had to visit a sick relative. During his absence, the teacher asked the other pupil to massage both legs. The pupil refused to do so, as it was the other pupil’s task. When the teacher remonstrated with him, the pupil lost his temper and rushed out of the house, picking up a big stone, which he threw on the teacher’s left leg, shouting, “That will teach him to go off and leave me to massage both legs.”

The poor teacher swooned with the pain of his broken leg, and a servant had to run and fetch the doctor, who set the portion in splints.

The following day the other pupil returned and was surprised to find his teacher propped up in bed, with his leg swathed in bandages.

The teacher ruefully shook his head when asked how such an accident occurred. “Your fellow student broke my leg with a big stone to express his anger against you just because I asked him to massage both legs.”

“What wickedness,” shouted the pupil as he rushed into the street and, picking up the giant stone he could find, carried it back into the house and banged it on the teacher’s right leg.

As the teacher screamed in pain, the pupil shouted with delight. “That will teach that blackguard to break my leg. An eye for an eye, a leg for a leg.”