John discovered himself to his parents, and Elizabeth to hers, and the wedding-day was soon fixed, and such a wedding was never seen before or since in the island of Rügen; for John sent to Stralsund and Greifswald for whole boatloads of wine, and sugar, and coffee, and whole herds of oxen, sheep, and pigs were driven to the wedding. The quantity of harts, and roes, and hares that were shot on the occasion, it were vain to attempt to tell, or to count the fish that was caught. There was not a musician in Rügen and Pomerania that was not engaged, for John was immensely rich, and he wished to display his wealth.
John did not neglect his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd. He gave him enough to make him comfortable the rest of his days, and insisted on his coming and staying with him as often and as long as he wished.
After his marriage, John made a progress through the country with his beautiful Elizabeth, and they purchased towns, and villages, and lands, until he became master of nearly half Rügen, and a very considerable count in the country. His father, old James Dietrich, was made a nobleman, and his brothers and sisters gentlemen and ladies—for what cannot money do?
John and his wife spent their days in doing acts of piety and charity. They built several churches, and they had the blessing of every one that knew them, and died universally lamented. It was Count John Dietrich that built and richly endowed the present church of Rambin. He built it on the site of his father's house, and presented to it several of the cups and plates made by the underground people, and his own and Elizabeth's glass shoes, in memory of what had befallen them in their youth. But they were all taken away in the time of the great Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, when the Russians came on the island, and the Cossacks plundered even the churches, and took away everything.
The Little Glass Shoe.
A peasant, named John Wilde, who lived in Rodenkirchen, found one time a glass shoe on one of the hills where the little people used to dance. He clapped it instantly into his pocket and ran away with it, keeping his hand as close on his pocket as if he had a dove in it; for he knew that he had found a treasure which the underground people must redeem at any price.
Others say that John Wilde lay in ambush one night for the underground people, and gained an opportunity of pulling off one of their shoes, by stretching himself there with a brandy-bottle beside him, and acting like one that was dead drunk; for he was a very cunning man, not over scrupulous in his morals, and had taken in many a one by his craftiness, and, on this account, his name was in no good repute among his neighbours, who, to say the truth, were willing to have as little to do with him as possible. Many hold, too, that he was acquainted with forbidden arts, and used to carry on an intercourse with the fiends and old women that raised storms, and such like.
However, be this as it may, when John had gotten the shoe, he lost no time in letting the folk that dwell under the ground know that he had it. So at midnight he went to the Nine-hills, and cried with all his might, "John Wilde, of Rodenkirchen, has got a beautiful glass shoe. Who will buy it? Who will buy it?" For he knew that the little one who had lost the shoe must go barefoot till he got it again, and that is no trifle, for the little people have generally to walk upon very hard and stony ground.
John's advertisement was speedily attended to. The little fellow who had lost the shoe made no delay in setting about redeeming it. The first free day he got, that he might come out into the daylight, he came as a respectable merchant, and knocked at John Wilde's door, and asked if John had not a glass shoe to sell? "For," says he, "they are an article now in great demand, and are sought for in every market." John replied that it was true he had a very little little, nice, pretty little glass shoe, but it was so small that even a Dwarf's foot would be squeezed in it; and that God Almighty must make people on purpose for it before it could be of any use; but that, for all that, it was an extraordinary shoe, and a valuable shoe, and a dear shoe, and it was not every merchant that could afford to pay for it.