When bath-time came Yanchi took the candle as if he wished to snuff it, and put it out. The king’s son, meanwhile, poured the sleeping-powder and wine into the bath quietly. The gypsy queen thought that he had drunk it, but she gave such a cuff to poor Yanchi that his eyes saw stars; but Yanchi, for the sake of his master, took the cuff as if a pretty girl had kissed him.
As the clock struck twelve, the king’s son feigned sleep; but he was just as much awake as good myself. I say, the clock struck twelve. The little bird came to the window, knocked with her beak, the window opened before and closed behind her; she shook herself and became such a maiden as neither before that, nor since, was born, so that the starry heavens would have looked at her with smiles. She bent over the king’s son; when at last she cried, the king’s son put his arm around her and drew her to him, that she might not become a little bird again; that she might not fly away any more.
He assembled, next day, all the dukes and counts in the kingdom, and all the doers of good, and taking before them the hand of the world-beautiful Reed Maiden, he asked,—
“What does that person deserve who tries to separate from each other a couple?”
Because the gypsy thought that the question was in favor of her own leathery face, she called out in an instant: “That person, my royal husband, deserves to be put in a cask, with spikes driven inward from the outside all through it, and rolled from the highest mountain in the kingdom.”
“Oh, dog-given wretch, thou hast pronounced thy own sentence!”
And they took by the neck the queen, once a gypsy, and put her in a cask like that, with spikes driven in, and let the cask roll from the highest mountain in the kingdom.