Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/146

130 And exactly the same thing happened as before, and he killed his wife.

The white lamb then informed his mother that he meant to ask the king's youngest daughter in marriage, and the mother, much astonished, made the same remark as before.

The prince again went to the palace in his natural form, looking a most handsome prince. He asked the young and beautiful princess: "Would you, young maiden, marry a lamb?"

"Why should I not, if God gave him to me?"

Now, the white lamb, in order to change himself into a prince, had to throw off seven skins; so, on the night of his marriage, he divested himself of these seven coverings, and told the princess that he was a prince who had been changed into a lamb at his birth; but that no one knew it, not even his own mother, who thought him a lamb: and he charged her not to mention it to anyone.

The maiden was delighted to hear such happy news, and she gazed upon his handsome figure with ecstasy. After a while she found she could not contain herself from disclosing the secret to the lamb's mother, and told her that her son was really an enchanted prince. That night, however, when they retired to rest, the prince approached her, and, looking very sad, said to her: "I charged you to tell no one that I was enchanted, and you went at once and