The wolf says to him: “When you shall wish to become a wolf, you shall say, ‘Jesus, wolf!’ and you shall be a wolf.”
And the dog, he said to him the same thing, too.[6] He goes off, then, well pleased, further into the forest. A woodpecker says to him:
“Malbrouk, where are you going?”
“To fetch such a daughter of a king.”
“You will not find her easily. Since they have delivered her sisters, he has carried her to the farther side of the Red Sea,[7] in an island, and keeps her there in prison, in a beautiful house, with the doors and windows so closely shut that only the ants can get into that house.”
Malbrouk goes off happy at hearing this news, and that he would find the princess. He goes on, and on, and on, and he arrives opposite to this island, and remembering what the hawk had said to him, he said, “Jesus, hawk!” and immediately he becomes a hawk.[8] He flies away, and goes on until he comes to the island of which the woodpecker had told him; he sees that he can only get in there like an ant, and he says, “Jesus, ant!” and he gets through the little lattice-work. He is dazed at the sight of the beauty of this young lady. He says, “Jesus, man!” and he becomes a man again. When the young lady sees him, she says to him:
“Be off quickly from here. It is all over with your life. He is about to come, this horrible body without a soul,[9] before a quarter of an hour, and you will be done away with.”
“I will become an ant again, and I will place myself in your bosom; but do not scratch yourself too hard, else you will crush me.”
As soon as he has said that the monster comes. He gives her partridges and pigeons for her dinner, but he himself eats serpents and horrible vermin. He tells her that he has a slight headache, and to take the hammer and rap him on the head. She could not lift it, it was so big; but she knocks him as well as she is able. The monster goes off. The ant comes out from where he was, and prepares to eat the partridges and pigeons with the young lady. Malbrouk said to her:
“You must ask him, as if you were in great trouble about it, what would have to be done to kill him? and you will tell him how unhappy you would be if he should be killed—that you would die of hunger in prison in this island.”