‘When I am dead, you will want to marry again; but take my advice: marry no woman but her whose foot my shoe fits.’
But this she said because the shoe was under a spell, and would fit no one whom he could marry.
The king, however, caused the shoe to be tried on all manner of women; and when the answer always was that it would fit none of them, he grew quite bewildered and strange in his mind.
After some years had passed, his young daughter, having grown up to girl’s estate, came to him one day, saying,
‘Oh, papa; only think! Mamma’s shoe just fits me!’
‘Does it!’ replied the simple king; ‘then I must marry you.’
‘Oh, that cannot be, papa,’ said the girl, and ran away.
But the simple king was so possessed with the idea that he must marry the woman whom his wife’s shoe fitted, that he sent for her every day and said the same thing. But the queen had not said that he should marry the woman whom her shoe fitted, but that he should not marry any whom it did not fit.
When the princess found that he persevered in his silly caprice, she said at last,
‘Papa, if I am to do what you say, you must do something for me first.’