When Blanca heard this, she turned pale; nevertheless, she could not see him go without her, and still asked to go.
The shepherd walked on without saying a word. Blanca followed him as if drawn by magic.
Away they went, sad and silent: far, far away; over rocks and declivities, through streams and torrents, past briars and brakes. For months they went on thus; the count going on before,—Blanca, sad and silent, after him. They never entered any town; and their only food was the berries they found in the wood, and the water of the brooks they crossed. Blanca’s fair soft skin was burnt brown by the sun and parched up by the wind; her hands were torn by the thorns, and her feet bleeding from the unevennesses of the way. At last a day came when she could go no farther. She sank down fainting on the earth, but she was so humble now, she did not so much as proffer a word of complaint.
“What is the matter, Blanca?” inquired the count. “Do you give up following me any farther?”
“Pastorcillo! mock me not. You see I would follow you gladly, but you see too my strength is at an end; I can go no farther;” and with that her senses failed.
When the count saw her in this condition, he took pity on her, and, lifting her up in his arms, carried her to a shepherd’s hut at no great distance along the moor, and there the good wife attended to her, putting her in her poor bed, and gently trying to bring her to again. But it was all of no use, she continued in the swoon, and the poor peasant’s restoratives were of no avail.
When the count saw this, he was in despair, and sitting down under shadow of a rock, he took out his ring to ask it what was to be done, now being almost ready to reproach it for having led him to be so cruel.
But the ring told him to be of good heart, and all the promises of the milk-white dove would be fulfilled. “Blanca has now learnt a lesson, and acquired a habit of submission which she will not forget all through her life. And besides, after she has given such strong proofs of love and devotion towards you, she will have no inclination to resume the provoking ways with which she tormented you before, so you may safely discover yourself to her now.”
Then the good ring suddenly pronounced some words near the peasant’s hut, and it became a fine palace, and the bed on which Blanca was lying became covered with beautiful embroidered coverlets, and all around were clothes fit for a countess to wear. The Count, too, was provided with a shining suit of armour and a prancing charger, and by its side a palfrey for his bride, and a train of noble knights and dames to attend them. Over Blanca, too, the ring said some words, and her consciousness came back to her, and when she saw the Count standing by her side, looking just as he did the day he dropped the pomegranate pip, it seemed as if she had never seen him in any other garb, only that he kept singing a verse the ring had taught him—
“She spurned me, bridegroom, in her pride!