Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/402

392 to have such a nice and handsome Lad to help him. The Gardener was also pleased, because, until then, the Emperor's daughters had always laughed at him for choosing the ugliest and filthiest boys to work for him. "This time," thought he, "they can't laugh at me. Oh, no!" And he looked smilingly on the Lad. Then the Lad was bathed, and new clothes were given to him; you know, nice clothes, such as court people wear. And you should have seen how nice the beautiful figure of our Lad looked in them!

Then he was told what to do, and besides gardening, his chief job was to make twelve bunches of flowers, and give them to the twelve daughters of the Emperor when they left the castle to take a walk through the gardens each morning.

Now these Princesses were fore-doomed, and they couldn't marry until someone was found who would guess their doom and make one of them love him. The doom that weighed upon them was a passion for dancing. They were mad on dancing, and so every night they wore out a new pair of white silk slippers each.

No one knew where they danced at night.

The Emperor began to get thoughtful; he had too much expense over his daughters' slippers; and then, thought he, why on earth do they have such icy hearts and never love anybody?

So the Emperor announced throughout the whole of his Kingdom, that if anyone could find out why his daughters wore out a pair of slippers every night, he could choose whichever of the princesses he liked, and make her his wife.

You see, the Emperor knew that at night, all his daughters were locked up in one room of his castle, with nine iron doors, and nine big iron locks. However, no one knew how they wore out their slippers, for no one had ever seen them go out of the castle; beside how could they?

It seemed that they were to spend their lives dancing. It was their Doom.

As soon as the people heard of the Emperor's offer, young lads, of all sorts, began to pour in,—Emperors' sons, and Kings' sons, nobles' sons and poor people's sons. Each one of them tried to watch the twelve princesses during the night, but, next morning.