They say there was once a king who wanted to make his beautiful young
daughter marry an old, ugly king. Every time the king talked to his
daughter about this marriage, she cried and begged him to spare her;
but he only went on urging her the more, till at last she feared he
would command her to consent, so that she might not disobey; therefore
at last she said: 'Before I marry this ugly old king to please you,
you must do something to please me.'
'Oh, anything you like I will do,' replied he.
'Then you must order for me,' she replied, 'a splendid candelabrum,
ten feet high, having a thick stem bigger than a man, and covered
all over with all kinds of ornaments and devices in gold.'
'That shall be done,' said the king; and he sent for the chief
goldsmith of the court, and told him to make such a candelabrum;
and, as he was very desirous that the marriage should be celebrated
without delay, he urged him to make the candelabrum with all despatch.
In a very short space of time the goldsmith brought home the
candelabrum, made according to the princess's description, and the king
ordered it to be taken into his daughter's apartment. The princess
expressed herself quite pleased with it, and the king was satisfied
that the marriage would now shortly take place.
Late in the evening, however, the princess called her chamberlain to
her, and said to him: 'This great awkward candlestick is not the sort
of thing I wanted; it does not please me at all. To-morrow morning
you may take it and sell it, for I cannot bear the sight of it. You
may keep the price it sells for, whatever it is; but you had better
take it away early, before my father gets up.'
The chamberlain was very pleased to get so great a perquisite, and
got up very early to carry it away. The princess, however, had got
up earlier, and had placed herself inside the candlestick; so that
she was carried out of the palace by the chamberlain, and thus she
escaped the marriage she dreaded so much with the ugly old king.
The chamberlain, judging that the king would be very angry if
he heard of his selling the splendid candelabrum he had just had
made, did not venture to expose it for sale within the borders of
his dominions, but carried it to the capital of the neighbouring
sovereign. Here he set it up in the market-place, and cried, 'Who'll
buy my candelabrum? Who'll buy my fine candelabrum?' When all the
people saw what a costly candelabrum it was, no one would offer for
it. At last it got bruited about till it reached the ears of the son
of the king of that country, that there was a man standing in the
market-place, offering to sell the most splendid candelabrum that
ever was seen; so he went out to look at it himself.
No sooner had the prince seen it than he determined that he must have
it; so he bought it for the price of three hundred scudi, and sent
his servants to take it up into his apartment. After that, he went
about his affairs as usual. In the evening, however, he said to his
body-servant, 'As I am going to the play to-night, and shall be home
late, take my supper up into my own room.' And the servant did as he
told him.
When the prince came home from the play, he was very much surprised
to find his supper eaten and all the dishes and glasses disarranged.
'What is the meaning of this?' he exclaimed, calling his servant to
him in a great fury. 'Is this the way you prepare supper for me?'
'I don't know what to say, your Royal Highness,' stammered the man;
'I saw the supper properly laid myself. How it got into this condition
is more than I can say. With the leave of your Highness, I will order
the table to be relaid.'
But the prince was too angry to allow anything of the sort, and he
went supperless to bed.
The next night the same thing happened, and the prince in his
displeasure threatened to discharge his servant. The night after,
however, his curiosity being greatly excited as he thought over the
circumstance, he called his servant, and said: 'Lay the supper before
I go out, and I will lock the room and take the key in my pocket,
and we will see if anyone gets in then.'
But, though this is what he said outloud, he determined to stay hidden
within the room; and this is what he did. He had not remained there
hidden very long when, lo and behold, the candelabrum, on which he
had never bestowed a thought since the moment he bought it, opened,
and there walked out the most beautiful princess he had ever seen,
who sat down at the table, and began to sup with hearty appetite.
'Welcome, welcome, fair princess!' exclaimed the astonished
prince. 'You have heard me from within your hiding-place speaking
with indignation because my meal had been disturbed. How little did
I imagine such an honour had been done me as that it should have
served you!' And he sat down beside her, and they finished the
meal together. When it was over, the princess went away into her
candelabrum again; and the next night the prince said to his servant:
'In case anyone eats my supper while I am out, you had better bring
up a double portion.' The next day he had not his supper only, but
all his meals, brought into his apartment; nor did he ever leave it
at all now, so happy was he in the society of the princess.
Then the king and queen began to question about him, saying: 'What
has bereft our son of his senses, seeing that now he no more follows
the due occupations of his years, but sits all day apart in his room?'
Then they called him to them and said: 'It is not well that you should
sit thus all day long in your private apartments alone. It is time
that you should bethink yourself of taking a wife.'
But the prince answered, 'No other wife will I have but the
candelabrum.'
When his parents heard him say this they said: 'Now there is no doubt
that he is mad;' and they spoke no more about his marrying.
But one day, the queen-mother coming into his apartment suddenly,
found the door of the candelabrum open, and the princess sitting
talking with the prince. Then she, too, was struck with her beauty,
and said: 'If this is what you were thinking of when you said you would
marry the candelabrum, it was well judged.' And she took the princess
by the hand and led her to the presence of the king. The king, too,
praised her beauty, and she was given to the prince to be his wife.
And the king her father, when he heard of the alliance, he too was
right glad, and said he esteemed it far above that of the ugly old
king he wanted her to have married at the first.
[The mode of telling adopted by Roman narrators makes a way out of
the difficulty which this group of stories presents at first sight in
the king seeming to be fated by supernatural appointment to marry his
daughter. One says, 'the queen did not say he was to marry her the ring
fitted, but he was not to marry any it did not fit.' The other says,
the slipper was a supernatural slipper, and would not fit anyone whom
he could marry. Whether this was a part of the traditional story or the
gloss of the repeater, I do not pretend to decide. In the 'Candeliera,'
though similar in the main, this difficulty does not arise.
My Roman narrators seem to have been fonder of stories of maidens
than of youths. I have only one of the latter, and by no means an
uncommon one, to set off against all the Stepmother stories of the
former. It, however, is the male counterpart of a prolific family
in which the girls figure under similar circumstances. Grimm gives
several, particularly 'Frau Holle,' p. 104. Dr. Dasent gives 'The two
Stepsisters.' In the Tales of Italian Tirol are two, 'Cölla döllö doi
sores' and 'Le due sorelle.' And among the Russian Tales, 'Frost,'
p. 214. It has also been connected with the large group in which
a rich brother (sometimes the elder, sometimes the younger) leaves
his poor brother to starve, and ultimately gets terribly punished
for enviously grasping at the poor one's subsequent good fortune:
but the structure of these is very different.]