However,John was not at all afraid of his trial.Far from it!he was jubilant,and thought only of how lovely the Princess was.He felt sure that help would come to him,though he didn't know how it would come,and he preferred not to think about it.He fairly danced along the road when he returned to the inn,where his comrade awaited him.John could not stop telling him how nicely the Princess had treated him,and how lovely she was.He said that he could hardly wait for tomorrow to come,when he would go to the palace and try his luck in guessing.But his comrade shook his head,and was very sad.
“I am so fond of you,”he said,“and we might have been comrades together for a long while to come,but now I am apt to lose you soon,poor,dear John!I feel like crying,but I won't spoil your happiness this evening,which is perhaps the last one we shall ever spend together.We shall be as merry as merry can be,and tomorrow,when you are gone,I'll have time enough for my tears.”
Everyone in the town had heard at once that the Princess had a new suitor,and therefore everyone grieved.The theatre was closed;the women who sold cakes tied crape around their sugar pigs;the King and the preachers knelt in the churches;and there was widespread lamentation.For they were all sure that John's fate would be no better than that of all those others.
Late that evening,the traveling companion made a large bowl of punch,and said to John,“Now we must be merry and drink to the health of the Princess.”But when John had drunk two glasses of the punch he felt so sleepy that he couldn't hold his eyes open,and he fell sound asleep.His comrade quietly lifted him from the chair and put him to bed.As soon as it was entirely dark he took the two large wings he had cut off the swan,and fastened them to his own shoulders.Then he put into his pocket the biggest bunch of switches that had been given him by the old woman who had:fallen and broken her leg.He opened the window and flew straight over the house tops to the palace,where he sat down in a corner under the window which looked into the Princess's bedroom.
All was quiet in the town until the clock struck a quarter to twelve.Then the window opened and the Princess flew out of it,cloaked in white and wearing long black wings.She soared over the town to a high mountain,but the traveling companion had made himself invisible,so that she could not see him as he flew after her and lashed her so hard with his switch that he drew blood wherever he struck.Ah,how she fled through the air!The wind caught her cloak,which billowed out from her like a sail,and the moonlight shone through it.
“How it hails!How it hails!”the Princess cried at each blow,but it was no more than she deserved.
At last she came to the mountain and knocked on it.With a thunderous rumbling,the mountainside opened and the Princess went in.No one saw the traveling companion go in after her,for he had made himself completely invisible.They went down a big,long passage where the walls were lighted in a peculiar fashion.Thousands of glittering spiders ran along he walls and gave off a fiery glow.Then they entered a vast hall,built of silver and gold.Red and blue blossoms the size of sunflowers covered the walls,but no one could pick them,for the stems were ugly poisonous snakes,and the flowers were flames darting out between their fangs.The ceiling was alive with glittering glow-worms,and sky-blue bats that zapped their transparent wings.The place looked really terrible!A throne in the center of the floor was held up by four horse skeletons in a harness of fiery red spiders.The throne itself was of milk-colored glass,and its cushions consisted of little black mice biting each other's tails.The canopy above it was made of rose-red spider webs,speckled with charming little green flies that sparkled like emeralds.
On the throne sat an old sorcerer,with a crown on his hideous head and a sceptre in his hand.He kissed the Princess on her forehead,and made her sit with him on the costly throne as the music struck up.Big black grasshoppers played upon mouth-harps,and the owl beat upon his own stomach,because he had no drum.It was a most fantastic concert!Many tiny goblins,with will-o'-the-wisps stuck in their little caps,capered around the hall.Nobody could see the traveling companion,who had placed himself behind the throne,where he could see and hear everything.The courtiers who now appeared seemed imposing and stately enough,but any-one with an observing eye could soon see what it all meant.They were mere cabbage heads stuck upon broomsticks,which the sorcerer had dressed in embroidered clothes and conjured into liveliness.But that didn't matter,for they were only needed to keep up appearances.
After the dance had gone on for a while,the Princess told the sorcerer that she had a new suitor,and she asked what question she should put to him when he came to the palace tomorrow.
“Listen to me,”said the sorcerer,“I'll tell you what;you must think of something commonplace and then he will never guess what it is.Think of one of your shoes.He won't guess that.Then off with his head,and when you come tomorrow night remember to fetch me his eyes,so that I may eat them.”
The Princess made a low curtsey,and promised not to forget about the eyes.The sorcerer opened the mountain for her,and she flew homeward.But the traveling companion flew behind her and thrashed her so hard with his switch that she bitterly complained of the fearful hailstorm,and made all the haste she could to get back through the open window of her bedroom.The traveling companion flew back to the inn,where John was still asleep.Taking off the wings he tumbled into bed,for he had good reason to feel tired.
