One evening as he was walking disguised through the streets of his capital, as it was his frequent custom to do, he stopped to listen near an open window where he heard three young girls chatting gaily together.
The girls were talking about a report which had been lately spread through the city, that the king intended soon to marry.
One of the girls exclaimed: “If the king would marry me I would give him a son who should be the greatest hero in the world.”
The second girl said: “And if I were to be his wife I would present him with two sons at once—the twins with golden hair.”
And the third girl declared that were the king to marry her, she would give him a daughter so beautiful that there should not be her equal in the whole wide world!
The young king listened to all this, and for some time thought over their words, and tried to make up his mind which of the three girls he should choose for a wife. At last he decided that he would marry the one who had said she would bring him twins with golden hair.
Having once settled this in his own mind, he ordered that all preparations for his marriage should be made forthwith, and shortly after, when all was ready, he married the second girl of the three.
Several months after his marriage the young king, who was at war with one of the neighbouring princes, received tidings of the defeat of his army, and heard that his presence was immediately required in the camp. He accordingly left his capital and went to his army, leaving the young queen in his palace to the care of his stepmother.
Now the king’s stepmother hated her daughter-in-law very much indeed, so when the young queen was near her confinement, the old queen told her that it was always customary in the royal family for the heirs to the throne to be born in a garret.
The young queen (who knew nothing about the customs in royal families except what she had learnt from hearing or seeing since her marriage to the king) believed implicitly what her mother-in-law told her, although she thought it a great pity to leave her splendid apartments and go up into a miserable attic.