THERE was once a merchant, so rich that he might have paved the whole street where he lived and an alley besides with pieces of silver, but this he did not do; he knew another way of using his money, and whenever he laid out a shilling he gained a crown in return: a merchant he lived, and a merchant he died.
All his money then went to his son. But the son lived merrily and spent all his time in pleasures, went to masquerades every evening, made bank-notes into paper kites, and played at ducks and drakes in the pond with gold pieces instead of stones. In this manner his money soon vanished, until at last he had only a few pennies left, and his wardrobe was reduced to a pair of slippers and an old dressing-gown. His friends cared no more about him, now that they could no longer walk abroad with him; one of them, however, more good-natured than the rest, sent him an old trunk, with this advice, ‘Pack up, and be off!’ This was all very fine, but he had nothing that he could pack up, so he put himself into the trunk.
It was a droll trunk! When the lock was pressed close it could fly. The merchant’s son did press the lock, and lo! up flew the trunk with him through the chimney, high into the clouds, on and on, higher and higher; the lower part cracked, which rather frightened him, for if it had broken in two, a pretty fall he would have had!
However, it descended safely, and he found himself in Turkey. He hid the trunk under a heap of dry leaves in a wood, and walked into the next town: he could do so very well, for among the Turks everybody goes about clad as he was, in dressing-gown and slippers. He met a nurse, carrying a little child in her arms. ‘Hark ye, Turkish nurse,’ quoth he; ‘what palace is that with the high windows close by the town?’
THE SON LIVED MERRILY
‘The King’s daughter dwells there,’ replied the nurse; ‘it has been prophesied of her that she shall be made very unhappy by a lover, and therefore no one may visit her, except when the King and Queen are with her.’
‘Thank you,’ said the merchant’s son, and he immediately went back into the wood, sat down in his trunk, flew up to the roof of the palace, and crept through the window into the Princess’s apartment.
She was lying asleep on the sofa. She was so beautiful that the merchant’s son could not help kneeling down to kiss her hand, whereupon she awoke, and was not a little frightened at the sight of this unexpected visitor; but he told her, however, that he was the Turkish prophet, and had come down from the sky on purpose to woo her, and on hearing this she was well pleased. So they sat down side by side, and he talked to her about her eyes, how that they were beautiful dark-blue seas, and that thoughts and feelings floated like mermaidens therein; and he spoke of her brow, how that it was a fair snowy mountain, with splendid halls and pictures, and many other such like things he told her.
