Falsely accused of a murder committed in the room in which he had slept at an inn, poor Michel is sentenced to be hanged. He is carried through a hooting crowd to the gallows. There proclamation is made that, according to old custom, his life will be spared if any young woman will have pity on him and take him for her husband. And behold, Folly Girlfree, a merry, pretty girl who has always liked him, approaches the scaffold, prepared to save him. But he asks time for reflection. He likes Folly Girlfree, and she is both good and beautiful, but he does not love her; he has only one love, his ardently, secretly adored ideal, the Fairy Belkis. He looks tenderly and gratefully at Folly, deliberates, and—requests to be hanged. This deliberation with the rope round his neck, this conclusion that, as Shakespeare puts it, "many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage," is described with delightful humour, with a naïve philosophy which is unforgettable from the fact that some such idea has occurred at one time or other to all of us.
They are proceeding to hang Michel, when loud cries are heard, and the Crumb Fairy, followed by all the street boys, arrives breathless, bringing proofs of the prisoner's innocence. He marries her out of gratitude, but hardly has the door on the wedding night been hermetically closed between him and his aged wife, hardly has he shut his eyes than Belkis in her bridal veil approaches his couch.
"Alas! Belkis, I am married, married to the Crumb Fairy."
"I am she."
"Nay, that is impossible; you are almost as tall as I."
"That is because I have stretched myself."
"But this beautiful, curly, golden hair falling over your shoulders, Belkis? The Crumb Fairy has none of it."
"No, for I show it only to my husband."
"But the Fairy's two great teeth, Belkis; I do not see them between your fresh, fragrant lips?"
"No, they are a superfluity only permissible to old age."