The King took it into his head that perhaps she did not think him handsome enough. [[175]]So he thought he would bathe his face with the water from the Fountain of Beauty, which was in a flask on a shelf in the Queen’s room. She had put it there so that she might look at it often. Now it happened that one of the housemaids in chasing a spider had knocked the flask off the shelf. It had broken and all the water had been spilled. She swept up the pieces in great haste, and was at her wits’ end what to do, when she remembered that she had seen in the King’s room a flask just like this, filled with clear water. Without saying a word to any one, she fetched that and placed it on the Queen’s shelf.
Now the liquid in the King’s flask was what was used in the kingdom for getting rid of unruly nobles. Instead of having their heads cut off, these nobles had their faces bathed with this water, and they fell asleep and never woke up. So one evening the King, thinking to make himself handsome, took the flask and bathed his face in the water. Then he fell asleep and never woke up again. [[176]]
Little Frolic was the first to find out what had happened, and he ran to tell Charming, who told him to go to Princess Goldilocks and beg her not to forget the poor prisoner. All the court was in great confusion because of the King’s death, but Frolic made his way through the crowd and said to the Queen, “Madam, do not forget poor Charming.”
She remembered all he had done and suffered for her, and without saying a word to any one she went straight to the tower, and with her own hands took off Charming’s chains. Then, placing a crown upon his head and the royal mantle on his shoulders, she said, “Come, dear Charming, I make you King, and take you for my husband.”
Charming threw himself at her feet and thanked her.
Every one was delighted that he should be King. The wedding, which took place at once, was the prettiest ever seen, and Prince Charming and Princess Goldilocks lived happily ever after. [[177]]
NOTES
In his critical edition of “Perrault’s Popular Tales,” Andrew Lang has said that “all the incidents of popular tales, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, may be shaken into a practically limitless number of combinations.” All that can be done in a book of this size is to choose the best of these combinations. The notes below indicate parallels where the resemblance between tales is close and where a version originally foreign has practically superseded the early English rendering.
Page 1. [Rumpelstiltskin]. Source: “Kinder- und Hausmärchen,” by Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859). These German brothers made a large and valuable collection of fairy tales, gathering them from oral tradition and retelling them. English Parallel: “Tom Tit Tot.” This is the best of a group of stories involving the task of guessing a name, with which is here combined the demand by a supernatural being for a human child.