She says to him, “What! You! Do not you know what it is? No one returns from there. You know yourself what happens there, since you have been there yourself.”
He said to her, “I must go and see it again.”
The princess would not let him go; but he broke away from her. He takes his horse and his dog, and starts off. He looks, and looks all round, and cannot find the door. An old woman appears to him, and says to him—
“What do you think will become of you here? They who go in there do not come out.”
“But that is why I wish to go in, to know what passes within.”
Then the old woman gives him a pigeon, cooked and prepared for eating, and said to him,
“Inside there is an old woman. She will try and force you to eat; but, if you are wise, you will not eat. You will show her the pigeon that you have in your pocket which remains after your repast, and you must make her eat some of the pigeon, and you will have full power over her.”
When he has found the door, he knocks. This old woman comes, and asks him what he wants. He says that he only wishes to see this house. She lets him in. He takes his dog, also, with him. He sees this splendid table. She wishes absolutely to make him eat; but he says that it is altogether impossible—that he has in his pocket a pigeon which he has not been able to eat, and that she must eat some of that. The old woman says she will not. He compels her, and tells her she must; and at last she eats it. He then asks her what she has done with his brothers. She says that she knows nothing about them; that she does not know what he means. He forces her to tell him, and says to her,
“I will make my dog strangle you if you do not tell me.”
He frightens her so, that she shows him some terrible monsters. He tells her to restore them as they were before, otherwise some misfortune shall happen to her, and to mind what she is about. At last she set to work to change them as they were before, and their horses and dogs as well.