A father and his daughter were living together. The daughter told her
father to marry again. The father said, "Why? you will be unhappy." "It
is all the same to me; I prefer to see you happy." And after some
time he marries again. This lady asked her husband to give her full
power over this young girl to do what she will with her. The husband
consents, and does not think any more about her; he did not even see
her again. This lady says to the young girl, "If you do all I tell
you, you will be the better for it." The king lived near their house,
and one day her step-mother gave her the keys of the king's house and
told her to go at such an hour of the night into the king's bed-room,
"and without waking him you will bring me back his sash." The daughter
did not like it at all, but in spite of that she goes off, and without
any person seeing her, she returns home with the king's girdle. The
next day the step-mother says to her step-daughter, "You must go again,
and you must bring the king's watch chain." While she was taking it,
the king moved in his bed, and the young girl is so frightened that
she runs off, and loses her shoe at the door of the king's room. At the
end of some days they hear that the king has made a proclamation that
he will go from house to house with a shoe, and that she whom it fits
perfectly shall be his wife. The king goes looking and looking, first
of all, in the houses of the rich; but he had said that he would go
into all the houses. He goes then to this gentleman's who had married
again, because it was close at hand. The persons of his suite asked
him why he went there, for they were only poor people. The king will
go all the same. He finds this lady, who says that they are poor, and
that she is ashamed to receive the king in her bed-room; but it was
there she had her step-daughter very nicely dressed, with only one
shoe on her feet. She was dazzling with beauty, and the king finds
her very much to his taste. They are married immediately; he takes
the father and step-mother to his house, and they all live happily,
and this step-daughter owed her good fortune to her step-mother.
Louise Lanusse.
There are two curious versions of these tales in Bladé's "Contes
Populaires Recueillis en Agenais" (Paris, Baer, 1874), Nos. I. and
VIII. Those who wish to compare others may follow up the references
there given by Reinhold Köhler, on pp. 145 and 153; also those given
at pp. 44 and 47 of Brueyre's "Contes Populaires de la Grande Bretagne"
(Paris, Hachette, 1875).