While the three princesses and the remaining guests were walking in the garden, she stole into the chamber of Yarmil’s bride, found the twelve shirts and the tapers, hid them in her own apartments, and in the evening, when the king had returned from the chase and all were sitting in the banqueting-hall at table, she went to the garden, where she burned the shirts and the tapers. At that moment Yarmil’s bride felt great faintness, so that she went for fresh air in the garden.
Yarmil hurried after her, but he had scarcely gone through the door, when she cried: “Woe is me, Yarmil! Thou hast told what I forbade thee to tell. Forget me; I must now to the glass mountain, from which there is no liberation.” Straightway she vanished in the darkness of night.
Yarmil remained a moment as if paralyzed; then he ran through the garden as if he had lost his wits, and called his bride by the most endearing names, but in vain. The guests ran out at the sound of his lamentation, and were greatly terrified when Yarmil told his misfortune. The queen also came quickly, and listened as if with terrified wonder to what had happened.
“That was a witch,” said she; “and ’tis well that other mishaps have not come.”
But the king was grieved more than all, and put an end to the rejoicing. Next day the two elder brothers went away with their brides, and poor Yarmil stayed home alone. In vain did his father try to comfort him; in vain did he promise that he would go himself to seek another bride for him. Yarmil was not to be consoled; and when the first onrush of sorrow had passed, he resolved to go to the glass mountain for his bride.
“In what direction wilt thou go?” objected his father. “While I live no one has heard of a glass mountain.”
“Still I will go,” said Yarmil, firmly. “It will come to the same whether I perish on the road or at home; in any event I shall die of disappointment.”
The king tried in all ways to dissuade him from going, but Yarmil would not let him talk. He mounted his horse, dropped the reins, and let him go whithersoever he would. He travelled long in this objectless way, hither and thither; but at last he saw that he must act differently if he meant to reach the glass mountain. But now came his real trouble; for wherever he asked about the glass mountain, people stared at him, and said that there was no such mountain in the world. Yarmil did not let himself be frightened; and now he galloped the more eagerly on his horse, and asked the more carefully everywhere. He had passed through towns without number, but still no one knew of a glass mountain. At last he heard the name.
In a certain town there was a juggler,—a showman with every kind of wonder. Yarmil was just going past him at the moment when he cried out: “The witch with her twelve daughters on the glass mountain!”
Yarmil called the juggler aside and said: “Here are ten goldpieces, tell me where the glass mountain is.”