"You cannot stop here," said they to her, "this is a house belonging to robbers; if they come home, and find you, they will kill you."
"Cannot you protect me?" asked the little sister.
"No," answered they, "we can only take off our swan"s-skins for a quarter of an hour every evening, and have our natural shape for that time, but afterwards we are turned into swans again."
The little sister cried and said, "Cannot you be released?"
"Oh, no!" answered they, "the conditions are too hard. You must not speak or laugh for six years, and must make for us six shirts out of st.i.tchweed during that time. If while you are making them a single word comes from your mouth, all your work will be of no use." When her brothers had said this, the quarter of an hour was over, and they turned into swans again, and flew out of the window.
But the little girl made a firm resolution to release her brothers, even if it cost her her life. She left the house, and went into the middle of the wood, and climbed up in a tree and spent the night there. Next morning she got down, collected a quant.i.ty of st.i.tchweed, and began to sew. She could not speak to any one, and she did not want to laugh; so she sat, and only looked at her work.
When she had been there a long time, it happened that the king of the country was hunting in the wood, and his hunters came to the tree on which the little girl sat. They called to her, and said, "Who are you?"
But she gave them no answer.
"Come down to us," said they, "we will not do you any harm."
But she only shook her head. As they kept teasing her with their questions, she threw them down her gold necklace, and thought they would be satisfied with that. But they did not leave off, so she threw her sash down to them, and as that was no good, she threw down her garters, and at last everything that she had on, and could spare; so that she had nothing left but her shift. But the hunters would not be sent away, and climbed up the tree and brought down the little girl and took her to the king.
The king asked, "Who are you? what were you doing up in the tree?"
But she did not answer. He asked it in all the languages that he knew, but she remained as dumb as a fish. But, because she was so beautiful, the king"s heart was moved, and he fell deeply in love with her. He wrapped his cloak round her, took her before him on his horse, and brought her to his castle. Then he had her dressed in rich clothes, and she shone in her beauty like bright sunshine; but they could not get a word out of her. He set her by him at the table, and her modest look and proper behaviour pleased him so much, that he said, "I will marry her, and no one else in the world," and after a few days he was married to her.
But the king had a wicked mother, who was not pleased with this marriage, and spoke ill of the young queen. "Who knows where the girl comes from," said she, "she cannot speak; she is not good enough for a king."
A year after, when the queen brought her first child into the world, the old mother took it away, and smeared her mouth with blood while she was asleep. Then she went to the king, and accused her of eating her child. The king would not believe it, and would not let anyone do her any harm. And she always sat and sewed the shirts, and took no notice of anything else. Next time, when she had another beautiful baby, the wicked stepmother did the same as before; but the king could not resolve to believe what she said.
He said, "My wife is too pious and good to do such a thing; if she were not dumb, and if she could defend herself, her innocence would be made clear."
But when for the third time the old woman took away the new-born child, and accused the queen, who could not say a word in her own defence, the king could not help himself; he was forced to give her up to the court of justice, and she was condemned to suffer death by fire.
When the day came upon which the sentence was to be executed, it was exactly the last day of the six years, in which she might not speak or laugh; and she had freed her dear brothers from the power of the spell. The six little shirts were finished, except that on the last one a sleeve was wanting. When she came to the place of execution, she laid the shirts on her arm, and when she stood at the stake, and the fire was just going to be lit, she looked round, and there came six swans flying through the air. Then her heart leaped with joy, for she saw that her deliverance was near.
The swans flew to her, and crouched down, so that she could throw the shirts over them; as soon as the shirts were touched by them, their swan"s-skins fell off, and her brothers stood before her. They were all grown up, strong and handsome; only the youngest had no left arm, but instead of it a swan"s wing.
They hugged and kissed their sister many times, and then the queen went to the king, and began to speak, and said, "Dearest husband, now I may speak, and declare to you that I am innocent and falsely accused;" and she told him about the deceit of the old mother, who had taken away her three children, and hidden them.
However they were soon fetched safely back, to the great joy of the king; and the wicked mother-in-law was tied to the stake, and burnt to ashes. But the king and queen, with their six brothers, lived many years in peace and happiness.
THE PRINCE WITH THE NOSE.
There was once a king who was pa.s.sionately in love with a beautiful princess, but she could not be married because a magician had enchanted her. The king went to a good fairy to inquire what he should do. Said the fairy, after receiving him graciously; "Sir, I will tell you a secret. The princess has a great cat whom she loves so well that she cares for nothing and n.o.body else; but she will be obliged to marry any person who is adroit enough to walk upon the cat"s tail."
"That will not be very difficult," thought the king to himself, and departed, resolving to trample the cat"s tail to pieces rather than not succeed in walking upon it. He went immediately to the palace of his fair mistress and the cat; the animal came in front of him, arching its back in anger as it was wont to do. The king lifted up his foot, thinking nothing would be so easy as to tread on the tail, but he found himself mistaken. Minon--that was the creature"s name--twisted itself round so sharply that the king only hurt his own foot by stamping on the floor. For eight days did he pursue the cat everywhere: up and down the palace he was after it from morning till night, but with no better success; the tail seemed made of quicksilver, so very lively was it. At last the king had the good fortune to catch Minon sleeping, when tramp, tramp! he trod on the tail with all his force.
Minon woke up, mewed horribly, and immediately changed from a cat into a large, fierce-looking man, who regarded the king with flashing eyes.
"You must marry the princess," cried he, "because you have broken the enchantment in which I held her; but I will be revenged on you. You shall have a son with a nose as long as--that;" he made in the air a curve of half a foot; "yet he shall believe it is just like all other noses, and shall be always unfortunate till he has found out it is not. And if you ever tell anybody of this threat of mine, you shall die on the spot." So saying, the magician disappeared.
The king, who was at first much terrified, soon began to laugh at this adventure. "My son might have a worse misfortune than too long a nose," thought he. "At least it will hinder him neither in seeing nor hearing. I will go and find the princess, and marry her at once."
He did so, but he only lived a few months after, and died before his little son was born, so that n.o.body knew anything about the secret of the nose.
The little prince was so much wished for, that when he came into the world they agreed to call him Prince Wish. He had beautiful blue eyes and a sweet little mouth, but his nose was so big that it covered half his face. The queen, his mother, was inconsolable; but her ladies tried to satisfy her by telling her that the nose was not nearly so large as it seemed, that it would grow smaller as the prince grew bigger, and that if it did not a large nose was indispensable to a hero. All great soldiers, they said, had great noses, as everybody knew. The queen was so very fond of her son that she listened eagerly to all this comfort. Shortly she grew so used to the prince"s nose that it did not seem to her any larger than ordinary noses of the court; where, in process of time, everybody with a long nose was very much admired, and the unfortunate people who had only snubs were taken very little notice of.
Great care was observed in the education of the prince; and as soon as he could speak they told him all sorts of amusing tales, in which all the bad people had short noses, and all the good people had long ones.
No person was suffered to come near him who had not a nose of more than ordinary length; nay, to such an extent did the courtiers carry their fancy, that the noses of all the little babies were ordered to be pulled out as far as possible several times a day, in order to make them grow. But grow as they would, they never could grow as long as that of Prince Wish. When he was old enough his tutor taught him history; and whenever any great king or lovely princess was referred to, the tutor always took care to mention that he or she had a long nose. All the royal apartments were filled with pictures and portraits having this peculiarity, so that at last Prince Wish began to regard the length of his nose as his greatest perfection, and would not have had it an inch less even to save his crown.
When he was twenty years old his mother and his people wished him to marry. They procured for him the likenesses of many princesses, but the one he preferred was Princess Darling, daughter of a powerful monarch and heiress to several kingdoms. Alas! with all her beauty, this princess had one great misfortune, a little turned-up nose, which, every one else said, made her only the more bewitching. But here, in the kingdom of Prince Wish, the courtiers were thrown by it into the utmost perplexity. They were in the habit of laughing at all small noses; but how dared they make fun of the nose of Princess Darling? Two unfortunate gentlemen, whom Prince Wish had overheard doing so, were ignominiously banished from the court and capital.
After this, the courtiers became alarmed, and tried to correct their habit of speech; but they would have found themselves in constant difficulties, had not one clever person struck out a bright idea. He said that though it was indispensably necessary for a man to have a great nose, women were different; and that a learned man had discovered in a very old ma.n.u.script that the celebrated Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, the beauty of the ancient world, had a turned-up nose.
At this information Prince Wish was so delighted that he made the courtier a very handsome present, and immediately sent off amba.s.sadors to demand Princess Darling in marriage.
She accepted his offer at once, and returned with the amba.s.sadors. He made all haste to meet and welcome her; but when she was only three leagues distant from his capital, before he had time even to kiss her hand, the magician who had once a.s.sumed the shape of his mother"s cat, Minon, appeared in the air and carried her off before the lover"s very eyes.
Prince Wish, almost beside himself with grief, declared that nothing should induce him to return to his throne and kingdom till he had found Darling. He would suffer none of his courtiers or attendants to follow him; but, bidding them all adieu, mounted a good horse, laid the reins on the animal"s neck, and let him take him wherever he would.
The horse entered a wide-extended plain, and trotted on steadily the whole day without finding a single house. Master and beast began almost to faint with hunger; and Prince Wish might have wished himself safe at home again, had he not discovered, just at dusk, a cavern, where there sat, beside a bright lantern, a little woman who might have been more than a hundred years old.
She put on her spectacles the better to look at the stranger, and he noticed that her nose was so small that the spectacles would hardly stay on; then the prince and the fairy,--for it was a fairy--burst into a mutual fit of laughter.
"What a funny nose?" cried the one.
"Not so funny as yours, madam," returned the other. "But pray let us leave our noses alone, and be good enough to give me something to eat, for I am dying with hunger, and so is my poor horse."
"With all my heart," answered the fairy. "Although your nose is ridiculously long, you are no less the son of one of my best friends.
I loved your father like a brother; _he_ had a very handsome nose."
"What is wanting to my nose?" asked Wish, rather savagely.
"Oh! nothing at all. On the contrary there is a great deal too much of it; but never mind, one may be a very honest man, and yet have too big a nose. As I said, I was a great friend of your father"s; he came often to see me. I was very pretty then, and oftentimes he used to say to me, "My sister--""
"I will hear the rest, madam, with pleasure, when I have supped; but will you condescend to remember that I have tasted nothing all day?"
"Poor boy," said the fairy, "I will give you some supper directly; and while you eat it I will tell you my history in six words, for I hate much talking. A long tongue is as insupportable as a long nose; and I remember when I was young how much I used to be admired because I was not a talker; indeed, some one said to the queen, my mother,--for poor as you see me now I am the daughter of a great king, who always--"
"Ate when he was hungry, I hope," interrupted the Prince, whose patience was fast departing.
"You are right," said the imperturbable old fairy; "and I will bring you your supper directly, only I wish first just to say that the king my father--"
"Hang the king your father!" Prince Wish was about to exclaim, but he stopped himself, and only observed that however the pleasure of her conversation might make him forget his hunger, it could not have the same effect upon his horse, who was really starving.
The fairy, pleased at his civility, called her servants and bade them supply him at once with all he needed. "And," added she, "I must say you are very polite and very good-tempered, in spite of your nose."
"What has the old woman to do with my nose?" thought the prince. "If I were not so very hungry I would soon show her what she is--a regular old gossip and chatter-box. She to fancy she talks little, indeed! One must be very foolish not to know one"s own defects. This comes of being born a princess. Flatterers have spoiled her, and persuaded her that she talks little. Little, indeed! I never knew anybody chatter so much."