As for his wife, Jasmine, she had long red-gold hair and great green eyes set wide apart in her flower-like face, and she possessed a mirror in which she could see her shimmering loveliness. So she ought to have been very happy and very grateful. She was so beautiful that when she walked abroad, men would lean far out of their windows to watch her pass and then wonder why their own wives and daughters should look so much like suet puddings.
But, though you will scarcely believe it, Jasmine was quite as discontented as her husband, and pouted and sighed through the days.
For she, too, was consumed by this perpetual craving for riches. Whether she had caught this uncomfortable sort of illness from her husband, or whether she had given it to him, I do not know, but there they were both wasting their youth, their beauty, and their love for one another, in foolish, petulant longing.
Whenever Jasmine saw other women clad in rich raiment and adorned with jewels, envy would blight her loveliness as frost blights a flower.
“Of what use is my beauty if I cannot adorn it?” she cried. “I must have pearls—ropes of pearls, crowns of glittering diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires!”
“Yes,” said Anselm, “and I must have a hundred horses, a thousand slaves, and fountains that spout forth wines!”
One day, as Jasmine walked sadly through a deep, dark forest she suddenly saw a very strange looking house moving slowly towards her. The roof of the house was most beautifully thatched with brightly-coloured feathers, and across its face in rainbow letters ran the queer inscription:
THE BARGAIN HOUSE
Money For Sale. Enquire Within.
“Money for sale?” read the wondering Jasmine. “What can this mean? Some foolish jest, no doubt.”