"Now if your royal highness please," said he, "Sweep, our good Emperor, hath caused these to be made for our little friends, the Red Caps. They suffered greatly with the cold, he thought."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the Princess Cendre. "Then your little friends, the Red Caps, must suffer from the cold again, I fear. I have taken a great fancy to these pretty toys and mean to hang them in my own forests, that my goldfinches and nightingales may dwell therein in winter, instead of flying to the southland." She then desired her servants to cut down the tiny, brightly colored houses and rode off, little thinking of the mischief she had done.
That night, when the Red Caps flew home, they were agitated and buzzed about like so many angry little bees. They missed their tiny comfortable houses and shivered with the cold. They knew, of course, who had done this. They knew all things—these Red Caps of the olden days.
"Now this haughty Princess Cendre is impossible!" they declared most wrathfully. "She cares not though we freeze to death; although we have done noble things for her, she has quite forgot them. She has been princess long enough!" they cried. "Let her be Little Sweep again," and they clapped their hands in anger.
Then in that instant vanished the splendid castle by the sea, and Princess Cendre's robes of satin fell from her. She found herself dressed out in sweeper's rags, and once more, broom in hand, standing on her corner. The old master, back within his comfortable kitchen again, was disposed to treat her no better than he had before; and so, for all her days, Little Sweep was forced to dwell within her cold, bare attic. But there was no kind Sweep to toss her bread and buns each day nor buy her bright red apples or plum cake.
Sweep, on the other hand, lived long and happily as Emperor. He and the lovely Empress Yelva, it is said, were blessed with twenty children, all of whom inherited Sweep's noble nature and his kindly heart.