After this the robbers dared not again go near their house; but everything prospered so well with the four town musicians of Bremen, that they did not forsake their situation! And there they are to this day, for anything I know.
THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE
BY WILHELM AND JAKOB GRIMM
T
HERE was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a miserable little hovel close to the sea. He went to fish every day, and he fished and fished, and at last one day, when he was [page 297] sitting looking deep down into the shining water, he felt something on his line. When he hauled it up there was a great flounder on the end of the line. The flounder said to him: "Look here, fisherman, don't you kill me; I am no common flounder, I am an enchanted prince! What good will it do you to kill me? I sha'n't be good to eat; put me back into the water, and leave me to swim about."
"Well," said the fisherman, "you need not make so many words about it. I am quite ready to put back a flounder that can talk." And so saying, he put back the flounder into the shining water, and it sank down to the bottom, leaving a streak of blood behind it.
Then the fisherman got up and went back to his wife in the hovel. "Husband," she said, "hast thou caught nothing to-day?"
"No," said the man; "all I caught was one flounder, and he said he was an enchanted prince, so I let him go swim again."