Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/393

 wants to know how her father and sifters at home are. The beast takes her to a mirror where she sees her father lying ill from grief on her account, and her sisters weeping. Her heart grows heavy and she entreats the beast to allow her to go home. "Yes," says he; "but promise me to return again in a week." She does so, and then hurries home to her father; but sorrow has already eaten too deeply into his heart, and after he has had the joy of seeing her, he dies. She mourns and weeps, and when she remembers the beast, the week is long past. She anxiously hastens to him, but when she arrives, everything is changed, the music is silent, the castle entirely hung with black crape, and the summer-garden covered with snow. The beast himself is gone; she seeks him everywhere, but cannot find him. Full of grief because of this, she goes into the garden and sees a heap of cabbages which are already old and decayed. She spreads them out, and when she has turned a few of them over, she sees her dear beast lying as if dead beneath them. She runs, draws water, and pours it over him, on which he revives, springs up, loses his former shape, and a king's son is standing before her. And now all is joy, the black crape is torn down, the musicians play, the summer-garden blooms again, and the two celebrate their wedding.

A third story comes from Hanover. A certain King has three daughters who become ill, and in order that they may recover, they must eat some game. The huntsman is sent into the forest, but can find no game at all. At length he sees a raven, and as he thinks, "that, too, is game," he aims at it, but the raven cries, "Huntsman, do not fire, for if you will promise me one of the King's daughters, I will procure you as much game as you like." The huntsman goes and tells this to the King, who says, "Thou canst always promise this to the raven; there is no necessity to keep thy word." So the huntsman promises the princess to the raven, who drives as much game up to him as he wants to shoot. The three princesses eat some of it and are cured. A great feast is made ready, and in the evening when a window is open, the raven comes in and demands his promised bride. The King will not give her, but at length he says, "I will ask my daughters if one of them is inclined to be thy wife." The eldest and the second say no; the youngest says "Yes, I will go with the raven, if my waiting-maid may accompany me." The raven consents to this, takes the princess beneath one wing, and the waiting-maid beneath the other, and carries them to a magnificent castle. A mirror hangs in the princess's bedroom in which she can see everything which happens in the castle which has been her home, only she is not to let the waiting-maid look in it. For this reason the King's daughter always carries the key of the room about with her; but once she leaves it in the door, and the