Who felt foolish but John, when he awoke, twenty-four hours after, and
found himself without purse, without mantle, and without Princess? He
tore his hair, he beat his breast, he trampled on the bouquet, and tore
the scarf of the traitress to atoms.
Besides this he was very hungry, and he had nothing to eat.
He thought of all the wonderful things his grandmother had told him when
he was a child, but none of them helped him now. He was in despair,
when suddenly he looked up and saw that the tree under which he had been
sleeping was a superb plum, covered with fruit as yellow as gold.
‘Here goes for the plums,’ he said to himself, ‘all is fair in war.’
He climbed the tree and began to eat steadily. But he had hardly
swallowed two plums when, to his horror, he felt as if something was
growing on his forehead. He put up his hand and found that he had two
horns!
He leapt down from the tree and rushed to a stream that flowed close
by. Alas! there was no escape: two charming little horns, that would not
have disgraced the head of a goat.
Then his courage failed him.
‘As if it was not enough,’ said he, ‘that a woman should trick me, but
the devil must mix himself up in it and lend me his horns. What a pretty
figure I should cut if I went back into the world!’
But as he was still hungry, and the mischief was done, he climbed boldly
up another tree, and plucked two plums of a lovely green colour. No
sooner had he swallowed two than the horns disappeared. The little
soldier was enchanted, though greatly surprised, and came to the
conclusion that it was no good to despair too quickly. When he had done
eating an idea suddenly occurred to him.
‘Perhaps,’ thought he, ‘these pretty little plums may help me to recover
my purse, my cloak, and my heart from the hands of this wicked Princess.
She has the eyes of a deer already; let her have the horns of one. If I
can manage to set her up with a pair, I will bet any money that I shall
cease to want her for my wife. A horned maiden is by no means lovely to
look at.’ So he plaited a basket out of the long willows, and placed
in it carefully both sorts of plums. Then he walked bravely on for many
days, having no food but the berries by the wayside, and was in great
danger from wild beasts and savage men. But he feared nothing, except
that his plums should decay, and this never happened.
At last he came to a civilised country, and with the sale of some jewels
that he had about him on the evening of his flight he took passage on
board a vessel for the Low Countries. So, at the end of a year and a
day, he arrived at the capital of the kingdom.