But her brother could only answer, ‘I can give help to none, for I also am in peril of death, being bound and shut up ready to be slain!’
Then a voice of lamentation came up from within the whale saying, ‘Woe is me that my brother is to be slain, and I and my children are shut up in this horrible place! Woe is me!’
Presently, the gardener hearing these lamentations, went to the king, saying, ‘O, king! come down thyself and hear the voice of one that waileth, and the voice cometh as from within the whale.’
The king went down, and at once recognised the voice of the queen; then he commanded that the whale should be ripped open; no sooner was this done than the queen and her two children were brought to light. The king embraced them all, and said, ‘Who then is she that is in the queen’s bed?’ and he commanded that she should be brought before him. When the queen had seen her she said, ‘This is my stepmother;’ and when the pilgrim’s weeds, which she had taken off, were also found, and it was shown that it was she who had worked all this mischief, the king pronounced that she was a witch, and she was put to death, and the viceroy was set at liberty.
[I now come to three stories more strictly of the Cinderella type than the two last, but no stepmother appears in them.]
[1] ‘Il Rè che va a Pranzo.’ [↑]
[2] I am inclined to think there was some forgetfulness here on the part of the narrator; such artifices always fulfil the conditions they evade in some underhand way—they never set them utterly at defiance, as in the instance in the text. Such conditions also always go in threes; the third was probably forgotten in this instance. [↑]