The Queen sighed. But she gave orders that an apartment should be made ready next to her own for the maiden; and the wedding was fixed for the following day.
The Queen desired to adorn her new daughter for it with her own hands, but she had a bitter struggle with her, because the maiden would on no account suffer any gold-threads to be laid upon her head. She fled from one end of the castle to the other like a hunted doe, she cast herself upon the ground, and hid beneath the coverings of the divans; she begged and prayed with streaming eyes that she might be spared. “Let the Queen put some of the beautiful silken threads of her own spinning upon her hair, only not the horrible gold!”
But as she knelt wailing and praying before her, the Queen gave a sign, and two of the attendant maidens bound her hands, while a third fastened on the golden veil. They all expected to see an outbreak of rage and despair; but Alba grew quite quiet. As pale as death, she bowed her head beneath its burden. “Thou art harder than my mother,” she said, “for she would not give me a husband, lest I should be unhappy, but thou dost thyself call down sorrow upon me!”
No one understood these words. Alba could not be prevailed upon to explain them, whereby the general mistrust of her was yet further increased. She looked so sad that the people no longer even recognised in her the beaming maiden of yesterday; and all her young husband’s words of love could not chase the clouds from her brow.
At court there was presently no talk of anything but the countless treasures of the young Queen, and many people urged the King to go up the mountain and examine them for himself. He cared nothing for the treasures; he only thought of how he could bring back the smile to his young wife’s face, and fancied that perhaps, if he fetched her the ornaments she was fond of, she would grow merry again. For she smiled pityingly at the little stones other people called jewels, and could not at all understand that such trifles should be costly. But as soon as she learnt that Porfirie intended to ride up to her castle again, she was terror-stricken, and implored and conjured him not to do so. “It will surely be thy death,” said she.
He, however, would not be convinced, and the more she depicted the dangers that awaited him there, the more did these very dangers attract him; so that one morning he set off secretly, while she still lay in a deep slumber.
With only a few followers, he dashed up towards Baba Coaja’s castle. But she spied his coming from afar, and cried out to him as he drew nearer: “A curse upon thee—thou who didst ravish my child, only to bring her to sorrow! See here, then—satisfy the greed that has driven thee back hither, miserable wretch! I never desired to have aught to do with thee—why didst thou seek me out?”
With these words she began to scatter down jewels in endless quantities upon the horsemen; but as they fell, the precious stones were changed into ice and snow, and whirled through the air in such clouds that the unhappy men were unable to shield themselves, and were, moreover, so dazzled that they could no longer see their way. The greater number of them fell over the precipices; but the young King, who, thirsting for vengeance, tried to reach the castle that he might strangle the terrible witch, was so completely caught in the avalanche that ere a moment was past he could no longer move a limb, and before he had time to utter a word he was buried deep beneath the snow.
As he disappeared, Baba Coaja said, with a malicious laugh: “Now she will come, to him, not to me—yet it will be to me, not to him, that she comes. I shall have my child again, for she may not remain in the wicked world, and among men, whom I hate.”
And indeed it was not long before Alba, weary with her long journey afoot, her white velvet dress dusty and travel-stained, came hastening up the mountain.