“Oh, my heart’s golden bird,” said Miklos, “I am taking thee for myself; but thou canst not be mine till I know where the strength of the Lead Friend lies. If we can discover that, it will be easy to destroy him.”
“If that is thy grief, my heart’s heart,” said she, “I will soon help thee; leave that to me. Thou must know I am a woman.”
With that Miklos and the princess kissed each other, and there was holy peace; they said: “I am thine, thou art mine.”
They travelled and journeyed across forty-nine kingdoms, till Kiss Miklos could say, “We are at home,”—for they were at the Lead Friend’s mansion,—and could say to the princess, “Come out of thy coach; it won’t cost thee a copper.” Here the Lead Friend ran panting out of his mansion to the beautiful princess, but she turned from him. This pleased not the Lead Friend, and though one word is not much, he uttered not that much, but brought her into the lead mansion in silence.
Next day at sunrise the Lead Friend had to go to his furnace, taking Kiss Miklos with him. The young woman remained all alone. She took a lamp and started to search through the lead house. From chamber to chamber she went till she came to the cellar, but that was closed against her with seven iron doors. Now the question was to get into the cellar. Another would not have been able to pass the first door, but every iron door opened of itself before the magic of the Green Daughter of the Green King. She passed through the seven doors and entered the cellar. She saw there seven leaden vats placed in a row, and every one of them filled to the brim with gold and silver. She took off her apron and filled it with gold, went up, summoned the goldsmith, and gilded the lead threshold a hand in thickness. The Lead Friend was such a miser that he had not bread enough to eat, and every little coin he turned seven times between his teeth before he let it go once from his hand.
Well, in the evening the Lead Friend came home from his furnace, saw the housekeeping and what the young woman had done. Then, ’pon my soul! he plucked out his own lead beard and hair, trampled them like tow, and roared till the lead house was trembling.
“Who, in the name of a hundred thousand thunders, did this?” asked the Lead Friend.
“I did it,” answered quite bravely the princess.
“How didst thou dare to do it without my knowledge,—without informing me?” With that the Lead Friend went to the Green Daughter of the Green King, and seized in his hand the golden hair which reached her heels. Twelve times did he drag her on the lead floor, and he wanted to take the lead flail to her. Kiss Miklos did not permit that, but took the maiden from his grasp and placed her on the silken bed. She was neither dead nor alive, but lay as a lifeless block of wood. But the Green Daughter of the Green King had no more pain than good myself; being a magic woman, seest thou, she had much in her power.
Now, what did she do? When the Lead Friend wound around his hand the golden hair reaching to her heels, she suddenly sprang out of her skin, and a devil jumped into it. And if the Lead Friend had struck him with the back of an axe, he would not have felt a dog’s trouble; for the more he was beaten the more he would have laughed.