“All well; and the emperor has told me that I am to shave him in future.”
Then he showed the twelve ducats he had received; but as to the emperor’s goat’s ears, of that he said nothing.
From this time forth the apprentice went regularly to Trojan to shave him, and for each shaving he received twelve ducats; but he told no one that the emperor had goat’s ears.
At last it began to worry and torment him that he dare tell no one his secret; and he became sick and began to pine away. His master, who could not fail to observe this, asked him what ailed him, and after much pressing the apprentice confessed that he had something on his heart which he dared not confide to anyone, and he added, “If I could only tell it to somebody, I should feel better at once.”
Then said the master—
“Tell it to me, and I will faithfully keep it from everybody else; or if you fear to trust me with it, then go to the confessor and confide it to him; but if you will not do even that, then go into the fields outside the town, there dig a hole, thrust your head into it, and tell the earth three times what you know, then throw the mold in again and fill up the hole.”
The apprentice chose the last course; went into the field outside the city, dug a hole, into which he thrust his head, and called out three times—
“The Emperor Trojan has goat’s ears.”
Then he filled up the hole again, and with his mind quite relieved went home.
When some time had passed by, there sprang an elder tree out of this very hole, and three slender sterns grew up, beautiful and straight as tapers. Some shepherds found this elder, cut off one of the stems, and made a pipe of it. But as soon as they began to blow into the new pipe, out burst the words: