“Why do you stand there gaping?” cried the dwarf, his ash-colored face turning vermilion with anger.
With these cross words he was going away when he heard a loud roaring, and a black bear trotted out of the woods towards them. The dwarf sprang up terrified, but he could not get to his lurking-hole again—the bear was already close upon him. Then he called out in anguish:
“Dear Mr. Bear, spare me, and you shall have all my treasures; look at the beautiful precious stones that lie there. Give me my life; for what do you want with a poor thin little fellow like me? You would scarcely feel me between your teeth. Rather seize those two wicked girls; they will be tender morsels for you, as fat as young quails; pray, eat them at once.”
The bear, without troubling himself to answer, gave the malicious creature one single stroke with his paw, and he did not move again. The girls had run away, but the bear called after them: “Snow-white and Rose-red, do not be frightened; wait, I will go with you.” Recognizing the voice of their old friend, they stood still, and when the bear came up to them his skin suddenly fell off; and behold he was not a bear, but a handsome young man dressed all in gold.
“I am a king’s son,” said he; “I was changed by the wicked dwarf, who had stolen all my treasures, into a wild bear, and obliged to run about in the wood until I should be freed by his death. Now he has received his well-deserved punishment.”
So they all went home together to the widow’s cottage, and Snow-white was married to the prince and Rose-red to his brother. They divided between them the great treasures which the dwarf had amassed. The old mother lived many quiet and happy years with her children; but when she left her cottage for the palace she took the two rose-trees with her, and they stood before her window and bore every year the most beautiful roses—one white and the other red.
THE WILD SWANS |
FAR away, where the swallows take refuge in winter, lived a king who had eleven sons and one daughter, Elise. The eleven brothers—they were all princes—used to go to school with stars on their breasts and swords at their sides. They wrote upon golden slates with diamond pencils, and could read just as well without a book as with one, so there was no mistake about their being real princes. Their sister Elise sat upon a little footstool of looking-glass, and she had a picture-book which had cost the half of a kingdom. Oh, these children were very happy; but it was not to last thus forever.