He gives a 20 euro painting to his mother-in-law but behind it there is a 20 thousand lire government bond that is worth 90 thousand euros today

It's always been said that there's bad blood between a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law... But the story we're about to tell you seems to contradict this age-old assumption. Around mid-December, Stefania Marino, a forty-year-old office worker, went out to buy Christmas presents for relatives and friends, having been a guest at her widowed mother-in-law's house for Christmas Eve dinner with her husband and two children. She certainly couldn't help but also make a little gift for her nearly ninety-year-old mother-in-law, Maria Luigia Ferrara, a widow for many years. Arriving at a Christmas market, she decided to buy a very beautiful painting (attached) for just 20 euros (but it's best not to mention the price so as not to offend her mother-in-law... although one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth...), as Maria Luigia is a lover of paintings. And so we arrive at Christmas Eve. First the Christmas dinner, then, after midnight, the presents are unwrapped. Mrs. Ferrara unwraps the package her daughter-in-law gave her and finds the painting inside. Naturally, she thanks her daughter-in-law, though we can't say whether she truly appreciated the gift. That same night, perhaps in a (mischievous!?) attempt to determine whether it was a valuable painting or a cheap one, she begins fiddling with the painting and is very surprised to discover that behind the (openable) frame is an envelope that has been there for who knows how long. It contains an old bearer government bond worth 20 lire, dating back to the 50s. Mrs. Ferrara, through her son Marco, emailed yesterday afternoon to the Giustitalia Association, which handles the reimbursement of old bonds, as they are experts in the reimbursement of such bonds. He is, to say the least, surprised when we tell him that a bond from the same year and worth 10 lire was reimbursed by the Ministry of Economy and Finance just a few months ago for 45 euros. The Ferrari family is doing some calculations on the value of the precious Treasury bill. We only have one doubt left: who knows if the daughter-in-law is biting her elbow for having given such a precious gift.