‘Bel giavone!’ she exclaimed, ‘I pray you think me not intrusive, but I know by your voice that your heart is heavy as the load I carried awhile ago. Tell me your grief, that if the Fates so will, I may in my turn help you.’
‘In truth, good mother,’ said the Prince, ‘no mortal can aid me now except by telling me where I may find the White Princess, whom I seek day and night in anguish, since she is my dear love.’
‘Even that can I do!’ cried the old woman, straightening her bent figure until she stood before him tall and queenly, her squalid rags changing into flowing robes of purple velvet. ‘I am the Witch Lucretia, and my spells are a match for those of the Sorcerer with the Seven Heads. You have travelled far from your White Princess, for the Sorcerer lurks in the forest through which you passed, and Fiorita is his prisoner. No man yet has entered his castle to leave it alive, but I will show you how this may be done, if you are willing to change your shape and become one of Earth’s humblest creatures.’
The Prince feared nothing so that he might once reach the side of Fiorita, and gladly submitted himself to the enchantments of the Witch. Lucretia lifted the silver wand that was hid in the fold of her gown, and at its touch the Prince became a cricket, just such another as the one which you lately restored to liberty.
‘You will find no difficulty now,’ she said, ‘in entering the Sorcerer’s castle, for the pitfalls he has prepared for man are as nought to they who traverse the air. And that you may be one of many, and so a match for his spells, I will summon my Witches and Fairies to protect you.’
Having muttered an incantation, she blew thrice on an opalescent shell which dangled from her waist upon a ruby chain; and troops of Fays and Witches came hurrying down the road. Some were slender and stately, with faces as fair as dreamland; some were twisted and bent, and some so small that a dozen could hide in the cup of a flower. With a second wave of her silver wand, Lucretia transformed them into a myriad crickets. Hailing Fiola as their king, she placed him at their head, and reminding him solemnly that persistence conquers where force must fail, bade him lead them back to the forest.
In an incredibly short time this aerial army arrived at the castle of the Sorcerer with the Seven heads. It stood in the midst of a dense thicket, surrounded by a moat, the lurking place of demons with long forked tongues, and eyes that shot evil fires. Undaunted by their snarls, the crickets flew over the draw-bridge, and finding a way into the castle through the close-barred windows, swarmed round the Sorcerer’s head. A cauldron swung from the domed ceiling, over a quenchless fire, and in this the wretch was even then concocting a potion by which he should overcome Fiorita. Her purity had hitherto protected her, and though he had bound her body with chains, he could not fetter her spirit.
