The Venice Lawyer and the Ape

From the chronicles of the Capuchin Fathers, concerning Father Matthew da Basso.

In Venice there lived a successful lawyer who had grown rich through dishonest and fraudulent dealings. His whole way of life was bad, and he seemed to have only one good habit: every day he said a certain prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yet even this small devotion saved him from eternal death, through Our Lady's mercy. It happened this way.

He had a great respect for Father Matthew da Basso and kept pressing him to come and dine, until one day the friar accepted. When he arrived, the lawyer said, "Now, Father, I will show you something you have never seen. I have a remarkable ape who serves as my valet: he washes my glasses, sets the table, and opens the door." "Perhaps this is not an ape," the friar answered. "It may be something more than an ape. Tell him to come here."

The ape was called again and again, and searched for everywhere, but could not be found. At last he was discovered hiding under a bed in the lower part of the house, refusing to come out. "Come, then," said the friar, "let us go and see him." He went with the lawyer to the hiding place and said, "Infernal beast, come out, and in the name of God I command you to tell me what you are." The creature answered that he was the devil, and that he was waiting for the day the lawyer would fail to say his daily prayer to the Mother of God; the first time he left it off, God had given him leave to strangle him and carry him to hell.

At these words the lawyer fell to his knees and begged the friar's help. The friar reassured him and ordered the devil to leave the house without doing any harm, allowing him only, as proof that he had truly gone, to break a piece of the wall. No sooner had he spoken than a hole was torn in the wall with a great crash. The lawyer changed his life, and we may hope he held to his new course until death.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the "example" stories that St. Alphonsus Liguori placed at the end of each section of The Glories of Mary. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the 1888 English translation. Liguori himself, in his author's "Protest," noted that the miracles and apparitions in the book are offered on human authority only, not as articles of faith.