The gnome laughed to himself to see how the trapper was being trapped in his own avarice as, with the most melancholy air, he answered: “I can make you the richest man in the world; but I know of no way of making the king’s son marry your daughter, except one.”
“What way?” asked the rat-catcher.
“Why,” answered the gnome, “for three years your daughter must come and live with me underground, and by the end of the third year her skin will be changed into pure gold like ours. And do you know any king’s son who would refuse to marry a beautiful maiden who was pure gold from the sole of her foot to the crown of her head?”
The rat-catcher had so greedy an inside that he could not believe in any king’s son refusing to marry a maiden of pure gold. So he clapped hands on the bargain, and let the gnome go.
The gnome went down into the ground, and fetched up sacks and sacks of gold, until he had made the rat-catcher the richest man in the world. Then the father called his daughter, whose name was Jasome’, and bade her follow the gnome down into the heart of the earth. It was all in vain that Jasome’ begged and implored; the rat-catcher was bent on having her married to the king’s son. So he pushed, and the gnome pulled, and down she went; and the earth closed after her.
The gnome brought her down to his home under the hill upon which stood the town. Everywhere round her were gold and precious stones; the very air was full of gold dust, so that when she remained still it settled on her hands and her hair, and a soft golden down began to show itself over her skin. So there in the house of the gnome sat Jasome’, and cried; and, far away overhead, she heard the days come and go, by the sound of people walking and the rolling of wheels.
The gnome was very kind to her; nothing did he spare of underground commodities that might afford her pleasure. He taught her the legends of all the heroes that have gone down into earth, and been forgotten, and the lost songs of the old poets, and the buried languages that once gave wisdom to the world: down there all these things are remembered.
She became the most curiously accomplished and wise maiden that ever was hidden from the light of day. “I have to train you,” said the gnome, “to be fit for a king’s bride!” But Jasome’, though she thanked him, only cried to be let out.
In front of the rat-catcher’s house rose a little spring of salt water with gold dust in it, that gilded the basin where it sprang. When he saw it, he began rubbing his hands with delight, for he guessed well enough that his daughter’s tears had made it; and the dust in it told him how surely now she was being turned into gold.
And now the rat-catcher was the richest man in the world: all his traps were made of gold, and when he went rat-hunting he rode in a gilded coach drawn by twelve hundred of the finest and largest rats. This was for an advertisement of the business. He now caught rats for the fun of it, and the show of it, but also to get money by it; for, though he was so rich, ratting and money-grubbing had become a second nature to him: unless he were at one or the other, he could not be happy.