“Ha!” said Maraud, “the fairies are baking to-day. Suppose we ask them for a cake or two.” “No, no!” replied his friend. “Ask them if you wish, but I will have none of them.”
“Pah!” cried Maraud, “what are you afraid of?” And he cried: “Below there! Bring me a cake, will you?”
Two fine cakes at once appeared. Maraud seized upon one, but when he had cut it he perceived that it was made of hairs, and he threw it down in disgust.
“You wicked old sorcerer!” he cried. “Do you mean to mock me?”
But as he spoke the cakes disappeared.
Now there lived in the village a widow with seven children, and a hard task she had to find bread for them all. She heard tell of Maraud’s adventure with the fairies, and pondered on the chance of receiving a like hospitality from them, that the seven little mouths she had to provide for might be filled. So she made up her mind to go to a fairy grotto she knew of and ask for bread. “Surely,” she thought, “what the good people give to others who do not require it they will give to me, whose need is so great.” When she had come to the entrance of the grotto she knocked on the side of it as one knocks on a door, and there at once appeared a little old dame with a great bunch of keys hanging at her side. She appeared to be covered with limpets, and mould and moss clung to her as to a rock. To the widow she seemed at least a thousand years old.
“What do you desire, my good woman?” she asked.
“Alas! madame,” said the widow, “might I have a little bread for my seven children? Give me some, I beseech you, and I will remember you in my prayers.”
“I am not the mistress here,” replied the old woman. “I am only the porteress, and it is at least a hundred years since I have been out. But return to-morrow and I will promise to speak for you.”