Now, his bride had been thinking things over, on her side, since he had been turned from her door in the shape of a donkey. She noticed that the village-folk shunned her more of late, and besides, they had always held a kind of suspicious attitude towards her and her mother.
What if the bridegroom should have let out the horrid truth, during those few hours that he had spent in the village, after awaking from his enchanted sleep? What if she should get no one else to woo her now? So, when she saw the poor donkey appear beneath her window, with lean ribs and drooping ears, her heart was quite prepared to be softened, and she listened graciously to his bray of apology and repentance.
“Well, I will forgive thee this once,” she said, “on one condition, and that is, that thou dost wed me within twelve hours of the time thou art rid of thy donkey’s skin. If thou wilt promise this, I will tell thee how to get back thy proper shape.”
The donkey went feebly down on his knees in the dust, and held up one hoof, as a solemn sign that his promise was given.
“Listen, then,” said the little witch; “thou must watch for a child to be christened in the village, and wait at the church door till the water from the font is thrown out; if some only falls on thy back, thou wilt be changed directly.”
The donkey threw up his hoofs in glee, and trotted off to the village. It was a long time before any christening took place; never had there seemed such a scarcity of births before. But at last the donkey heard that the son and heir of his old friend the farmer was to be christened the following Sunday, and he watched eagerly for the party to go to church, and return again, and then for the beadle to come out upon the porch and empty away the water from the font. When at last he did so, the donkey stood right in his way. “Get away, foolish beast,” called the beadle; but the donkey did not budge. “What care I?” the beadle thereupon angrily exclaimed, and threw the whole pan of water over the donkey’s back. He nearly fell to the ground when he saw his old friend the bridegroom, who had so long been missing, standing in the donkey’s place; but the young fellow gave him a golden crown to hold his tongue, and trump up some tale about his having been away on a journey, and he firmly believed ever after that the beadle had done so.
Then the bridegroom hurried to claim his bride, and keep his promise, which was not so very hard after all, for she was a pretty bride, and one only had to forget that little matter of the Brocken, and take care to sleep sound on every future Walpurgis-night. But she kept him in order—“For, mind,” said she, “if ever thou dost treat me to any foolish behaviour, back into the donkey’s skin thou shalt go again, and this time every one shall know of it.”