‘Nay, but bring now thy youngest daughter.’
So the next evening the merchant made the youngest daughter go with him to the ball, and the two elder daughters were left at home.
As the youngest was wont never to leave her room, the others, how jealous soever they were of her, were never able to do her any harm. But now that they felt secure she was absent for a considerable space, they went into her apartment and set fire to it, and the whole place was burnt, and also the garden, and the plant of rue.
If the king’s son had come in haste for the burning of a single leaf, I leave it to be imagined with what speed he came for the burning of the whole plant. With such impetus, indeed, he came, that he was bruised and burnt all over with the flaming beams of which the apartment was built, and cut all over with the broken glass; so that when he reached home again he was in a sorry plight indeed.
But the youngest daughter, coming home with her father from the ball, and finding all her apartment burnt to the ground, as well as all the plants in the garden, and with them the pot of rue, she said, ‘I will stay no more in this place.’ So she dressed herself in man’s clothes and wandered forth.
On, on, on, she went, till night came, and she could go no further, but she laid herself to sleep under a tree. In the middle of the night came an ogre and an ogress,[2] and laid themselves down also under the tree. Then she heard the ogre speaking to the ogress, and saying, ‘Our king’s eldest son, the flower of the land, is sore ill and like to die, having fallen through the window of the highest story of the palace, and is cut with the glass, and bruised all over. What shall be done to heal the king’s eldest son, the flower of the land?’
And the ogress made answer: ‘This is what should be done—but it is well no one knows it. They should kill us, and take the fat that is round our hearts and make an ointment, and anoint therewith the wounds of the king’s son.’
When the merchant’s daughter heard this, she waited till the ogre and ogress were gone to sleep; then she took out a brace of pistols—for with the man’s dress she had also a brace of pistols—and with one in each hand she killed the ogre and ogress together, and with her knife she ripped them open, and took out the fat that was round their hearts. Then she journeyed on till she came to the king’s palace. At the door of the palace stood a guard, who told her there was no entrance for such as her; but she said, ‘To heal the wounds of the king’s eldest son am I come.’
Then the sentinel laughed, and said, ‘So many great and learned surgeons have come, and have benefited him nothing, there is no entrance for a mountebank like thee. Begone! begone!’
But she, knowing certainly that she had the only means of healing, would not be sent away; and when the sentinel would have driven her off she struggled so bravely that he had to call out all the guard to resist her; and when they all used their strength against her, she protested so loudly that the noise of the struggle made the king himself begin to inquire what was the matter. Then they told him, ‘Behold, there stands without a low and base fellow, who would fain pretend to heal the wounds of the king’s son.’