Was it a miracle? Or was it some kind of bad joke?

An aristocrat ,short of the readies ,has turned his desirable mansion into a textile workshop,where he works with his wife ,his son and his mother-in-law ;he's grumpy,stingy and unkind;in the village ,the wealthy solicitor wants his ugliest daughter to marry his half-witted young son,so she'll become a countess. But saint Francis Assisi appears and the count changes overnight;he does not want his family to kill the spiders (your sister ,the spider)and he begins to ignore the social conventions: his son will marry "La Langouste" (=the lobster) ,the local hooker who keeps a strong clientele among the billeted troops .Now,the aristocrat ,imitating our Lord's apostles ,divests himself of all possessions of the material world and intends to hit the road in a horse-drawn caravan .—dbdumonteil