Page:Crane Italian Popular Tales.djvu/147

Rh other treasures, and behold! the scale with gold sank and weighed exactly as much as the silk. "Where did you get this silk?" asked the king. "Royal Majesty, it was a present from my mistress," answered Catherine. "No, that is impossible," cried the king. "If you do not tell me the truth, I will have your head cut off." Then Catherine related all that had happened to her since she was a rich maiden.

Now there lived at the court a wise lady, who said: "Catherine, you have suffered much, but you will now see happy days; and that it was not until the golden crown was put in the scale that the balance was even, is a sign that you will be a queen." "If she is to be a queen," cried the king, "I will make her one, for Catherine and none other shall be my wife." And so it was; the king informed his betrothed that he no longer wished her, and married the fair Catherine. And after Catherine in her youth had suffered so much, she enjoyed nothing but happiness in her old age, and was happy and contented.4

In the class of stories of which "The Bucket" is an example, we have seen the good sister rewarded, and the naughty one punished. Another well-known moral story is the one in which a king's daughter is punished for her pride, in refusing to marry a suitable lover, by being made to marry the first one who asks her hand. This is the case in the Grimm story "King Thrush-Beard," or rather the king gives his proud daughter to the first beggar who comes to the palace gate. The same occurs in one of the Italian versions of this story, but usually the haughty princess, after refusing a noble suitor, either falls in love with the same suitor, who has disguised himself as a person of ignoble rank, or she sells herself to the disguised lover for some finery with which he tempts her. At all events, her pride is thoroughly humbled. An example of the more common version is found in Coronedi-Berti's Bolognese tales (No. 15), and is as follows: