A second cushion fell from under the empress.
"Let them go home with their nonsense!" she said to her husband.
"Oh! no, let them sing," replied the emperor. "You only wanted to see them, but I wish to hear them. Sing, boys!"
The empress was silent, and the princes began to sing the story of their lives.
"There was once an emperor," they began, and a third cushion fell from under the empress.
When they described the emperor's departure to the war, three cushions fell at once, and when the princes had finished their song not a single one remained. But when they took off their caps and showed their golden hair and the golden star on their foreheads, guests, courtiers and emperor closed their eyes, that they might not be dazzled by so much radiance.
Afterward, what ought to have been from the beginning, happened.
Laptitza sat at the head of the table beside her husband, but the step-mother's daughter served as the humblest maid in the palace, and the wicked step-mother was fastened to the tail of a wild mare and dragged around the earth seven times, that the whole world might know and never forget, that whoever plans evil comes to a bad end.