Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/218

 210 who sniffs him, and smelling royal blood spares him on condition of his giving him one of his three daughters to wife. The youngest consents, and the dragon, having wedded her, takes her to his palace, which is described with many details of great splendour,—"but there was always heard in that castle a distant, hollow groaning." He gives her the keys, forbidding her only to open one room. Once when the dragon has left her for three months, the heroine, hearing the groaning and tracing it to the Forbidden Chamber, is overcome by curiosity and opens the door. She finds within a deep chasm and a youth at the bottom, wounded and thrown there by the dragon. She releases him, heals his wounds, and instructs him on leaving to get a golden chest made, opening only from the inside, and to contrive that it shall be sold to her. She proposes to enter this before the dragon's return, anticipating that he will then believe he has lost her and will sell everything belonging to her, that he may have nothing to remind him of her; and she directs the youth (who it need hardly be said is a prince) to send and buy the chest back again in due time, warning him not to allow his mother to kiss him, otherwise he will forget her to whom he owes his deliverance. The prince, returning home, orders the chest: but in the night, while he sleeps, his mother comes and kisses him. The inevitable result follows: he forgets the heroine and all that relates to her. Consequently, when the goldsmith brings him the chest he repudiates the order; and the goldsmith causes the chest to be sold publicly. The heroine buys it and carries out her intention of entering it. As she had foreseen, the dragon, believing himself deserted, sells his wife's goods; and the chest is ultimately bought by the prince and placed in his room. In his absence the heroine steals his food twice; on the third occasion he watches and catches her. It all flashes back upon his memory now, and his love and gratitude revive. He keeps the heroine in concealment for a time; but compelled to go to the wars he gives strict orders to his mother not to move the chest, and also to place food everyday in his room. Previous to this he has been betrothed to his cousin, whose mother, hearing of his strange orders, becomes suspicious and begs the loan of the chest. She obtains it, and commands it to be cast into the fire. But the heroine from within overhears this direction,