As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says:
“Comb, with thy power make a cake of this wheat when you have cut it.”
Our lad was curious to know what was taking place, but the young lady said to him:
“Woe to you and to me if you open (your eyes).[51] Nothing will be finished for us.”
He does not open them, and the cake is cooked. Twelve o’clock was going to strike. She says to him:
“Go with speed, you have no time to lose.”
The lad goes to the king and brings him the cake. The king is astonished. He says (to himself), “That is a clever lad, that,” and he wishes to be assured of it by looking out of window; and, after having seen that this huge forest had been torn up, he is astonished. He sends away the lad, and goes and tells it to his wife. His wife says to him, “Take care that he is not in league with your daughter.”[52]
The husband says to her, “What do you mean? They have never seen each other.”
This husband was a devil. The young lady told our lad that her father is going to send him to fetch a ring in a river far away. “He will tell you to choose a sword from the midst of ever so many others, but you will take an old sabre and leave the others.”
The next day his wife told him that he ought to send him to fetch a ring which he had lost in the bed of a river. He sends him then, and tells him that he must choose a sword; that he will have quantities of evil fish to conquer. The lad says to him that he will not have those fine swords, that he has enough with this old sabre, which was used to scrape off the dirt.