The eldest went away, and searched all day, but when evening came, he had only found the first hundred, and it happened as the inscription foretold—he was turned to stone.
The next day the second brother undertook the quest; but he fared no better than the first, for he found only two hundred pearls, and he too was turned to stone.
At last came the Blockhead's turn; he searched in the moss, but the pearls were hard to find, and he got on but slowly.
Then he sat down on a rock and cried, and as he was sitting there, the Ant King, whose life he had saved, came up with five thousand ants, and it was not long before the little creatures had found all the pearls and laid them in a heap.
Now the second task was to get the key of the Princess's room out of the lake.
When the Blockhead came to the lake, the ducks, which he had once saved, swam up, dived, and brought up the key from the depths.
But the third task was the hardest. The Prince had to find out which was the youngest and prettiest of the princesses while they were asleep.
They were exactly alike, and could not be distinguished in any way, except that before going to sleep each had eaten a different kind of sweet. The eldest a piece of sugar, the second a little syrup, and the third a spoonful of honey.
Then the Queen of the Bees, whom the Blockhead had saved from burning, came and tried the lips of all three. Finally, she settled on the mouth of the one who had eaten the honey, and so the Prince recognized the right one.