Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/313

 Rh "It is impossible, my king and master," said the sad lad, "until the dream is fulfilled." "You will tell my daughter," said the Magyar king smiling. "To none!" said the lad resolutely, and his sword gave a terrific clank. The king and the handsome lad arrived at Buda in a few days. The king's daughter was just promenading in the garden when her father arrived with the handsome lad. The pretty girl hurried to her father, and as she kissed his hand she noticed the handsome lad, the like of whom she had never seen before. "Have you brought him for me?" inquired the love-sick maid, "from fairy land? No woman has yet carried, has yet borne, such a child in her arms!"

"My dear daughter, I've brought him not from fairy land, but from the gallows," replied the king, who was vexed with his daughter for having so quickly fallen in love with him, although she had never spoken to a man before. "I don't care, my dear father," said the blushing maid, "even if you brought him from the gallows, he's mine, and I am his, and we shall die together." The last words were addressed by the king's daughter to the handsome lad, who smothered the pretty princess with kisses. "You will soon be angry with him, my dear daughter," said the sorrowful king, "if you ask his secret; he's a coarse fellow, he's of no royal blood, his place is among the servants." "If he killed me, if he gouged out my eyes, or bit off my nose, I could'nt get angry with him," said the princess. "He will tell me his secret, his lodging will be in the room set apart for my guests, and he will find a place in the middle of my heart!"

But the king shook his head, and sent the lad down into the summer-house, where he could amuse himself with reading. No sooner had a week passed than the girl, who was as pretty as a fairy, put her best dress on and went to the summer-house to pay a visit to the lad who lived secluded there, to get his secret out of him. When the young lad saw the pretty girl and had examined her beautiful dress, the book dropped from his hand, and he stared but could not utter a single word. The princess thereupon