Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/87

 Rh prince had enjoined her not. The mother then said that if the prince objected to having that room opened it was because it contained something which he wished to conceal from her. At last she insisted so much upon it that she obtained the key of the room and opened it. They both went in, and the first thing that they saw was a large iron chest. The mother then said, "Ah! I shall see what we can find in that large chest." She opened it and found inside a most beautiful maiden with a star on her forehead, who was sitting down engaged in embroidering. When the mother saw her she said to her daughter, "Did not I tell you that there was some hidden secret here?" The wife now, jealous of the maiden's beauty, heated an iron, took the maiden out of the chest, and burnt her skin with the heated iron, so that she remained all over scorched. When the prince returned from the hunt his wife said to him, "Do you know that I have bought a mulatta girl to serve us to run errands?" The prince, who was going to the fair, asked his wife what she would like him to bring her; but she told him to ask the mulatta girl what she also would like. So the prince asked the maid what she wished from the fair. The girl replied that she did not wish anything, but as he persisted in asking her to tell him something she would like to have, she asked him to bring her a talisman. When the prince returned from the fair he gave the girl the talisman. She took it to her room and lay on her bed. As the prince was curious to know what she would do with it, he hid himself under the bed. The mulatta girl began to tell her history to the stone, saying, "Oh! talisman, I am the daughter of a princess, sister to the prince my uncle, who lives in this palace and is married. But he does not know that I am his niece, for I was kept spell-bound in an iron chest; and his wife and her mother burnt my skin all over with a hot iron, and I remained scorched and browned; and when the prince returned home from the hunt they told him that I was a mulatta girl,