The hermit and the princess looked at each long and earnestly without saying a word. At length, however, the old man said, ‘Tell me, are you an angel or a daughter of this world?’
Then the princess answered, ‘Old man, let me rest a moment, and then I will tell you all about myself, and what brought me here!’ So the hermit brought out some wild pears, and when the princess had taken some of them, she began to tell him who she was, and how she came in that desert. She said, ‘I am a king’s daughter, and once, many years ago, three young nobles of my father’s court asked the king for my hand in marriage. Now the king had such an equal affection for all these three young men that he was unwilling to give pain to any of them, so he sent them to travel into distant countries, and promised to decide between them when they returned.
‘The three noblemen remained a long time away; and whilst they were still abroad somewhere, I fell dangerously ill. I was just at the point of death, when they all three returned suddenly; one of them bringing a wonderful ointment which cured me at once; the two others brought each equally remarkable things—a carpet that would carry whoever sat on it through the air, and a telescope with which one could see everybody and everything in the world, even to the sands at the bottom of the sea.’
The princess had gone on thus far with her story, when the hermit suddenly interrupted her, saying, ‘All that happened afterwards I know as well as you can tell me. Look at me, my daughter! I am one of those noblemen who sought to win your hand, and here is the wonderful telescope.’ And the hermit brought out the instrument from a recess in the side of his cave before he continued, ‘My two friends and rivals came with me to this desert. We parted, however, immediately, and have never met since. I know not whether they are living or dead, but I will look for them.’
Then the hermit looked through his telescope, and saw that the other two noblemen were living in caves like his, in different parts of the same desert. Having found this out, he took the princess by the hand, and led her on until they found the other hermits. When all were re-united, the princess related her adventures since the ship, in which her husband was, had gone down, and she alone had been saved.
The three noble hermits were pleased to see her alive once again, but at once decided that they ought to send her back to the king, her father.
Then they made the princess a present of the wonderful telescope, and the wonder-working ointment, and placed her on the wonderful carpet, which carried her and her treasures quickly and safely to her father’s palace. As for the three noblemen, they remained, still living like hermits, in the desert, only they visited each other now and then, so that the years seemed no longer so tedious to them. For they had many adventures to relate to each other.
The king was exceedingly glad to receive his only child back safely, and the princess lived with her father many years but neither the king nor his daughter could entirely forget the three noble friends who, for her sake, lived like hermits in a wild desert in a far-off land.