“Be off with you, quickly, or I will give you two good boxes on the ear.” This woman was a witch. This man was sorry a moment afterwards for not having listened to this old woman, and he goes off after her:
“Just now I treated you very badly, but I must now tell you my trouble. I have lost all that I possess in a bet with Mr. Laur-Cantons that I would get into his wife’s house, but I have passed the whole night there, and have not been able to get in.”
“If you have only that it is nothing, and I will arrange that.”
She goes with a basket of apples and knocks at the door, and says that she is the lady’s nurse, and asks them to open. They open for her. The young lady shows her her dresses for the marriage day and for the next day too, her gold chain, and all her pretty things. While she is putting by her dresses the witch takes her gold chain, which had the lady’s name on it; and the lady did not observe it, and did not miss anything when she shut up the others, because she had full confidence in her, believing that she was really her nurse, since she said so.
The witch goes off to find the merchant and gives him the gold chain. The merchant gives her as a reward a complete set of new clothes. The merchant goes off joyfully to find Mr. Laur-Cantons, and shows him from a distance the gold chain. Imagine what was the rage of the gentleman. He goes off home immediately. He knocks at the door, saying that it is the master who is there; he enters, and says to his wife, with harsh voice, to go upstairs and put on her wedding dress and her gold ornaments. She comes down without putting it on at all, and he says to her:
“Where are your gold ornaments?”
“Not being able to find them, I have put on those of the next day.”
When he has got on horseback he tells her to get up behind him. This young lady, having suspected something, had taken a great deal of money with her. When they had gone a short way he dismounts. He puts his wife into a chest and throws her into the sea. On the sea-shore there are always people looking about, and when the chest was seen they caught hold of it as best they could. They begin to knock it, wishing to open it. She says to them from inside:
“Gently, gently, there is someone alive inside here.”
After they had opened it she gave them a handsome present, and goes to an hotel, and dresses herself like a gentleman. She asks if there is anyone seriously ill in the town. They say to her: