Then, shortly afterwards, the king’s daughter married the son of the poor old couple; and the king built for the princess and her husband a palace close to his own. There they lived long and had plenty of children, and people say that some of their descendants are living at present, and that these go constantly to pray in the church, which is always open because the key of it turned itself into a young man who married the king’s daughter, after he had shown to her that he had done as she wished, and learnt, for her sake, ‘the trade that no one knows.’
THE THREE SUITORS.
IN a very remote country there formerly lived a king who had only one child,—an exceedingly beautiful daughter. The princess had a great number of suitors, and amongst them were three young noblemen, whom the king loved much. As, however, the king liked the three nobles equally well, he could not decide to which of the three he should give his daughter as a wife. One day, therefore, he called the three young noblemen to him, and said, ‘Go all of you and travel about the world. The one of you who brings home the most remarkable thing shall become my son-in-law!’
The three suitors started at once on their travels, each of them taking opposite ways, and going in search of remarkable things into distant and different countries.
A long time had not passed before one of the young nobles found a wonderful carpet which would carry rapidly through the air whoever sat upon it.
Another of them found a marvellous telescope, through which he could see everybody and everything in the world, and even the many-coloured sands at the bottom of the great deep sea.
The third found a wonder-working ointment, which could cure every disease in the world, and even bring dead people back to life again.
Now the three noble travellers were far distant from each other when they found these wonderful things. But when the young man who had found the telescope looked through it he saw one of his former friends and present rivals walking with a carpet on his shoulder, and so he set out to join him. As he could always see, by means of his marvellous telescope, where the other nobleman was, he had no great difficulty in finding him, and when the two had met, they sat side by side on the wonderful carpet, and it carried them through the air until they had joined the third traveller.
One day, when each of them had been telling of the remarkable things he had seen in his travels, one of them exclaimed suddenly, ‘Now let us see what the beautiful princess is doing, and where she is.’ Then the noble who had found the telescope looked through it and saw, to his great surprise and dismay, that the king’s daughter was lying very sick, and at the point of death. He told this to his two friends and rivals, and they, too, were as thunderstruck at the bad news—until the one who had found the wonder-working ointment, remembering it suddenly, exclaimed, ‘I am sure I could cure her, if I could only reach the palace soon enough!’ On hearing this, the noble who had found the wonderful carpet, cried out, ‘Let us sit down on my carpet, and it will quickly carry us to the king’s palace!’