“What will you have? what do you want? riches or beauty? Speak a wish, and we will fulfil it for you.”
“Are you in earnest?” asked the labourer.
“May we be doomed to pick up grain by grain all the millet in the diocese, if we deceive thee,” they replied.
“Well,” said Guilcher, “if you want to make me a present, and leave me to choose what it shall be, I have one thing only to desire from you, and that is, that you take away what I have got here set betwixt my shoulders, and make me as straight as the flagstaff of Loqueltas.”
“Good, good!” replied the Korils. “Be easy, come here.” And seizing Guilcher, they threw him in the air, tossing him from one to another like a worsted ball, until he had made the round of the entire circle. Then he fell upon his feet, giddy, breathless, but—without his hump! Benead had grown younger, fatter, beautiful! Except his mother, no one could have recognised him.
You may guess the surprise his appearance created on his return to Loqueltas. No one could believe it was Guilcher; his wife herself was doubtful about receiving him. Before she could recognise in him her old humpback, he was compelled to tell her exactly how many headdresses she had in her press, and what was the colour of her stockings. At last, when every body knew for certain that it was he, they became wonderfully anxious to find out what had effected so strange a transformation; but Benead thought that if he told the truth, he should be looked on as an accomplice of the Korigans; and that every time an ox strayed, or a goat was lost, he should be applied to for its restoration. So he told all those who asked him questions, that it happened unknown to him whilst sleeping on the heath. Thenceforth went all the crooked folk who were silly enough to believe him, and spent their nights upon the open heath, hoping to rise like arrows in the morning; but many people suspected that there was a secret in the matter, which Guilcher was unwilling to disclose.
Amongst these latter was a tailor with red hair and squinting eyes, called, from his stammering speech, Perr Balibouzik. He was not, as is usual with his craft, a rhymester, lively on his board as a robin on its twig, and one who scented pancakes from afar as dogs do game; Balibouzik never laughed, never sung, and fed upon such coarse black barley bread that one could count the straws in it. He was a miser, and, worse than that, a bad Christian; lending out his money at such heavy interest, that he ruined all the poor day-labourers of the country. Guilcher had long owed him five crowns, and had no means of paying them. Perr went in quest of him, and demanded them once more.
The ci-devant hunchback excused himself, promising to pay after fair-time; but Balibouzik declared that the only condition upon which he would agree to any further delay was that of being at once put in possession of the secret how to grow young and handsome. Thus driven to extremities, Guilcher related his visit to the Korils, what words he had added to their song, and how the choice had been given him between two wishes.
Perr made him repeat every detail many times over, and then went away, warning his debtor that he would give him eight days longer to lay hands on the five crowns.
But what he had heard awakened within him all the rage of avarice. He resolved that very night to visit the Motenn-Dervenn, to mix in the dance of Korigans, and to gain the choice between two wishes, as proposed to Guilcher,—namely, riches and beauty.