Half asleep, the lad goes off to bed; the others were still asleep on their horses. He mounts on the horse—he had chosen the finest—and opens the doors very gently, and goes off at a trot, without looking behind him. He goes home, and his mother is very delighted to see her son.
The next day he goes to market to sell his horse. When the mayor gets up he goes to the stable, and sees that his finest horse is missing. The servants were sleeping on their horses, and the others in bed. He gets into a rage, and does not know what to do. He sends to the mother’s to ask her where her son is. She replies that he is gone to sell a horse. They tell her that the mayor summons him immediately. The mother grows sad again, and tells her son what they have said to her, and off he goes.
The mayor says to him, “What a fellow you are! You won the game yesterday, but if you do not steal from our oven to-night all the bread that is in it, it shall be all over with you.”
The mayor assembles all the municipal council and all his friends, thinking he would have some fun while guarding his oven. They had dances, and music, and games, and brilliant lights, and all sorts of amusements, and all this in front of the oven. What does our lad do? He takes a little hammer, and goes behind the oven. He makes a hole, and by that takes out all the loaves, and puts them in his basket, and goes home.
The next day the mayor was proud because they had not stolen his loaves, and because they had so well guarded the door of the oven, and he sends his servant to fetch a loaf for breakfast. When she opens the door of the oven, she sees the sun through the other end of the oven. Judge of their astonishment! The mayor was in a red-hot passion. He sends to fetch the lad. They go and ask his mother where her son is. She answers, “Selling bread.” And they tell the mayor. He sends to tell her to tell her son to come to him as soon as he comes home. The poor mother is again in great distress. When her son arrives, she tells him the message, and off he goes.
The mayor says to him, “Yesterday, too, you have hit the mark; but you have not finished yet. This very night you must steal the sheets which we have under us in our bed, otherwise your life shall be put an end to.”[66]
He goes home, and he makes an image of himself from his old clothes; and, when night is come, he goes off dragging it to the mayor’s. The mayor had placed guards at all the windows and doors, with arms. Our lad ties his image to a long stick, and, by drawing a cord, he hoists it against the wall. When the guards see a man climbing up the wall near a window, they fire, and all begin to cry out “Hurrah!” At this noise the mayor leaps out of bed, thinking that they have killed him, and that he must go and see him too. Our lad takes advantage of this moment to enter the house, and he goes to the mayor’s bed, and says—
“It is cold, it is cold;” and keeps pulling and pulling all the bed-clothes to his side. When he has all, he says to the lady:
“I must go and look again, to be quite sure, and to see if they have buried him.”
The wife said to him, “Stop here then; you will come back dead of cold.”