“To bring you a present of two curiosities he has just received from the country of the Moors,—this apple of delight, and the female slave whom you see there. If you eat the first, you will always have a heart as much at rest as that of a poor man who has found a purse of a hundred crowns in his wooden shoe; and if you take the second into your service, you will have nothing left you to desire in the world.”
“Give me then the apple, and make the Moorish woman dismount,” replied Rogéar.
The idiot obeyed; but the instant the giant had set his teeth into the fruit, the yellow lady laid her hand upon him, and he fell to the ground like a bullock in the slaughter-house.
Then Peronnik entered the palace, holding the laughing flower in his hand. He traversed more than fifty halls, one after the other, and came at length before the cavern with the silver door. This opened of its own accord before the flower, which also gave the idiot sufficient light to find the golden basin and the diamond lance.
But scarcely had he seized them when the earth shook under his feet; a terrible clap of thunder was heard; the palace disappeared; and Peronnik found himself once more in the midst of the forest, holding his two talismans, with which he set forward instantly to the court of the King of Brittany.
He only delayed long enough at Vannes to buy the richest costume he could find there, and the finest horse that was for sale in the diocese of White-Wheat.
Now when he came to Nantes, this town was besieged by the Franks, who had so mercilessly ravaged the surrounding country, that there were scarcely more trees left than would serve a single goat for forage; and more than that, famine was in the city; and those soldiers died of hunger whose wounds had spared their lives. And on the very day of Peronnik’s arrival, a trumpeter proclaimed aloud in every street that the King of Brittany would adopt that man as his heir who could deliver the city, and drive the enemy out of the country.
Hearing this promise, Peronnik said to the trumpeter,
“Proclaim no more, but lead me to the king; for I am able to do all he asks.”
“Thou!” said the herald, seeing him so young and small; “go on thy way, fine goldfinch;[6] the king has now no time for taking little birds from cottage-roofs.”[7]