The child grew angry and said to the judge, “I know my father better than you know yours, and your mother knows better who sired you than mine knows who fathered me.”

The judge grew angry and said, “If you have anything to say about my mother, I will certainly hold it to be the truth!”

He answered, “I can say enough about her so that, if you made the right judgment, she would deserve death more than my mother. And if I make you admit this, you must leave my mother in peace, for she is not guilty of what people blame her for, and everything she said about my conception was true.”

And when the judge heard this, he became very angry indeed, and said, ‘You have truly rescued your mother from being burned! You can be sure that if you cannot say enough about my mother to make me believe you and leave your mother in peace, I will burn you with her!”

Then they set a day to meet again in two weeks, and the judge sent for his mother. And he had the child and his mother guarded well; he himself went with the guards many times, and many times he tried to get the child to talk about his mother, but never during the whole two weeks could they draw a word out of him. And when the judge’s mother came, they brought them out of prison and took them before the people.

Then the judge said, “Here is my mother, about whom you must speak.”

The child answered, ‘You are not nearly as clever as you think you are. Go, take your mother into a house by yourselves and call your most intimate counsellors, and I will call the counsellors of my mother, that is, the almighty God and her confessor."

Those who heard him were so astonished that hardly anyone could find an answer, but the judge recognized that he spoke wisely. Then the child asked one and all, “If I free my mother from this man justly, need she fear the others?”

And they all answered, “If she is freed by him, no one else will ever hold her accountable for anything concerning this.”

Then they went into a room: the judge took his mother there and two men among his closest friends, and the child
took his mother’s confessor. After they had gathered, the judge said, “Now say what you will about my mother whereby your mother will be acquitted."

The child answered, “I will never say anything about your mother whereby mine should be acquitted—I will not say whether she has done any misdeed—for I am not willing to defend my mother against what is wrong. Rather, I mean to uphold the right of the Lord God—and hers. You can be sure that my mother has not deserved the torment you wish to give her; if you will believe my advice, you will acquit my mother and let yours be tried.”

The judge answered, ‘You won’t get away from me like that, for you must say more.”

The child said, ‘You promised me and my mother too that I could defend her.”

“This is true,” answered the judge, “and we are gathered here to hear what you will say concerning my mother.”

‘You want,” said the child, “to burn my mother and me as well because she will not say and does not know who my father is. But if I wanted her to, she could say that better than you can say who your father is.”

And the judge said, “Dear mother, was I not the son of your lawful husband?”

The mother answered, “For God’s sake, dear son, whose son would you then be but my husband’s who is now dead?”

“Lady, lady, you must tell the truth,” said the child. “Nevertheless, if your son were willing to acquit my mother and me, I would be satisfied.”

But the judge answered, “I will not be satisfied!”

“What you’ll learn from your mother’s testimony,” said the child, “is that your father is still alive.”

When those who were there heard him, they were amazed. Then the child said to the judge’s mother, “You must tell your son whose son he is.”

The lady crossed herself and said, “The devil Satan, and I never told him!”

The child answered her, “You know it’s true that he is not the son of the man he thinks.”

The lady was abashed and asked him, “Whose then?"

And he said to her, “By these signs you know very well indeed that he is the son of your priest: that the first time
you had intercourse with him you said that you were afraid of getting pregnant, that he told you you would never have a child by him, that he said he would write down all the times he lay with you because he was himself afraid that you might go to bed with another man, and that your husband was estranged from you at the time. And when your son was conceived, hardly any time passed before you told him that you were pregnant by him. Now say whether it is true just as I have told you. And if you don’t admit it, I will tell you still other signs."

The judge was very angry, and he asked his mother whether what he had said was the truth. The mother was terrified, and she said, “Dear son, do you believe that devil?”

But the child said, “If you don’t admit this thing, I will tell you yet another that you well know is true.”

And the lady fell silent.

The child said, “I know everything that happened. It is true that when you felt that you were pregnant, you begged the priest to make peace between your husband and yourself in order to hide that you were already pregnant. He did his best, until in the end he got you two to lie together. You led your husband to believe that the child was his, and many people thought it was so, and your son, the very one who is here, thought it was true. From then until now you have led this life and you still do. The night you left to come here the priest lay with you. In the morning
he rode along with you quite a way, and before leaving you he said to you alone, smiling, ‘Take care to do and say
whatever my son wishes,’ for he well knows that he is his son because of what he had written down.”

When the lady heard him out, she knew well that everything he said was true, so she sat down and was very distraught

Vulgate Merlin