What do you think they saw there? The room was bare of furniture, but in the middle of it stood a large table covered with a beautiful cloth, and on the top of it was a wide-open book.
The girls, all full of impatience, wanted to find out what was written in this book, and the eldest went up to it and read these words: “The eldest daughter of the Emperor will marry a son of the Emperor of the East.”
Then the second daughter went up to the book, and turning over the leaf, read these words: “The second daughter of the Emperor will marry a son of the Emperor of the West.”
The girls laughed and made merry at these words, and giggled and joked among themselves. But the youngest daughter would not go up to the book.
But the elder ones would not leave her in peace, but dragged her up to the long table, and then, though very unwillingly, she turned over the leaf and read these words—
“The youngest daughter of the Emperor will have a pig for her spouse.”
A thunderbolt falling from the sky could not have hurt her more than the reading of these words. She was like to have died of horror, and if her sisters had not held her she would have dashed her head to pieces against the ground.
When she had come to herself again, her sisters began to try to comfort her. “How canst thou believe all that nonsense?” said they. “When didst thou ever hear of the daughter of an Emperor marrying a pig?”
“What a baby thou art!” added the eldest, “as if papa hadn’t armies enough to save thee, even if so loathsome a monster as that did come and try and make thee his wife!”
The youngest daughter of the Emperor would very much have liked to believe what her sisters said, but her heart would not allow it. She thought continually of the book which promised her sisters such handsome bridegrooms, while it foretold that that should happen to her which had never yet happened since the world began. Then she reflected how she had transgressed the commands of her father, and her heart smote her. She began to grow thin, and ere a few days had passed she had so changed that none could recognize her. She became sad and sallow, instead of rosy and rollicking, and could take part in nothing at all. She ceased to play with her sisters in the garden; she ceased to cull posies and make garlands of them for her head, and when her sisters sang over their distaffs and embroideries her voice was dumb.