[[81]]
The hair fell down at once, and the Prince climbed up by it.
At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man came in, for she had never seen one before; but the Prince spoke to her very kindly, and told her that his heart had been so touched by her singing that he could have no peace until he had seen her. So Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her to marry him she thought, “He is young and handsome, and he will certainly love me far more than old Dame Gothel does”; so she said “Yes,” and put her hand in his.
“I will gladly go with you,” she continued, “but I do not see how I am to get down out of this tower. When you come, bring with you a skein of silk each time, and I will weave a ladder out of them; when it is finished, I will climb down by it, and you shall take me away on your horse.”
They arranged that until the ladder was ready he should come and see her every [[82]]evening, bringing skeins of silk, for the witch came in the daytime.
The witch knew nothing of all this till one day Rapunzel, not thinking what she was saying, made this remark: “Tell me, Dame Gothel, how is it that you are so much harder to pull up than the young Prince? He is always with me in a moment.”
“Oh, you wicked, wicked child!” cried the witch. “What is this I hear? I thought I had separated you from the whole world, and yet you have deceived me.”
In her rage she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful hair, twisted it round and round her left hand, snatched up a pair of scissors with her right, and snip, snap, she cut it all off; and the beautiful tresses lay on the ground. Then she was so hard-hearted that she took poor Rapunzel to a lonely desert place and there left her to live in utter loneliness and misery.
But on the evening of the day on which she had carried Rapunzel away she fastened the braids which she had cut off to a hook [[84]]by the window, and when the Prince came and called: