At daybreak Zelinda and her father arose, and were served with everything for breakfast by invisible hands. Then they descended to the garden, and began to seek the Monster. When they came to the rose-bush he appeared in all his frightful ugliness. Zelinda, on seeing him, became pale with fear, and her limbs trembled, but the Monster regarded her attentively with his great fiery eyes, and afterward said to the poor man: "Very well; you have kept your word, and I am satisfied. Now depart and leave me alone here with the young girl." At this command the old man thought he should die; and Zelinda, too, stood there half stupefied and her eyes full of tears; but entreaties were of no avail; the Monster remained as obdurate as a stone, and the poor man was obliged to depart, leaving his dear Zelinda in the Monster's power.
When the Monster was alone with Zelinda he began to caress her, and make loving speeches to her, and managed to appear quite civil. There was no danger of his forgetting her, and he saw that she wanted nothing, and every day, talking with her in the garden, he asked her: "Do you love me, Zelinda? Will you be my wife?" The young girl always answered him in the same way: "I like you, sir, but I will never be your wife." Then the Monster appeared very sorrowful, and redoubled his caresses and attentions, and, sighing deeply, said: "But you see, Zelinda, if you should marry me wonderful things would happen. What they are I cannot tell you until you will be my wife."
Zelinda, although in her heart not dissatisfied with that beautiful place and with being treated like a queen, still did not feel at all like marrying the Monster, because he was too ugly and looked like a beast, and always answered his requests in the same manner. One day, however, the Monster called Zelinda in haste, and said: "Listen, Zelinda; if you do not consent to marry me it is fated that your father must die. He is ill and near the end of his life, and you will not be able even to see him again. See whether I am telling you the truth." And, drawing out an enchanted mirror, the Monster showed Zelinda her father on his death-bed. At that spectacle Zelinda, in despair and half mad with grief, cried: "Oh, save my father, for mercy's sake! Let me be able to embrace him once more before he dies. Yes, yes, I promise you I will be your faithful and constant wife, and that without delay. But save my father from death."
Scarcely had Zelinda uttered these words when suddenly the Monster was transformed into a very handsome youth. Zelinda was astounded by this unexpected change, and the young man took her by the hand, and said: "Know, dear Zelinda, that I am the son of the King of the Oranges. An old witch, touching me, changed me into the terrible Monster I was, and condemned me to be hidden in this rose-bush until a beautiful girl consented to become my wife."
The remainder of the story has no interest here. Zelinda and her husband strive to obtain his parents' consent to his marriage. They refuse and the young couple run away from the royal palace and fall into the power of an ogre and his wife, from whom they at last escape.[5]
A characteristic trait of this class of stories is omitted in the above version, but found in a number of others. In a Sicilian version (Pitrè, No. 39, "The Empress Rosina") the monster permits Rosina to visit her family, but warns her that if she does not return at the end of nine days he will die. He gives her a ring the stone of which will grow black in that event. The nine days pass unheeded, and when Rosina looks at her ring it is as black as pitch. She returns in haste, and finds the monster writhing in the last agony under the rose-bush. Four days she rubbed him with some ointment she found in the palace, and the monster recovered. As in the last story, he resumes his shape when Rosina consents to marry him. In one of Pitrè's variants the monster allows Elizabeth to visit her dying father, if she will promise not to tear her hair. When her father dies she forgets, in her grief, her promise, and tears out her hair. When she returns to the palace the monster has disappeared. She seeks him, exclaiming:—
"Fierce animal mine,
If I find thee alive
I will marry thee although an animal."
She finds him at last, and he resumes his form.[6]
The fourth class consists of stories more or less distantly connected with the first and third classes above mentioned, and which turn on the heroine's separation from, and search after, her lost husband, usually an animal in form.