"Yes, if you like, you may go for three days."
He gives her a ring, and says to her, "If that changes colour, I shall
be ill, and if it turns to blood, I shall be in great misery." [156]
The young lady sets out for her father's house. Her father was very
glad (to see her). Her sisters said to her:
"You must be happy there. You are prettier than you were before. With
whom do you live there?"
She told them, "With a serpent." They would not believe her. The three
days flew by like a dream, and she forgot her serpent. The fourth
day she looked at her ring, and she saw that it was changed. She
rubs it with her finger, and it begins to bleed. Seeing that she
goes running to her father, and says to him that she is going. She
arrives at the castle, and finds everything sad. The music will not
play--everything was shut up. She called the serpent (his name was
Azor, and hers Fifine). She kept on calling and crying out to him,
but Azor appeared nowhere. After having searched the whole house,
after having taken off her shoes, she goes to the garden, and there
too she cries out. She finds a corner of the earth in the garden
quite frozen, and immediately she makes a great fire over this spot,
and there Azor comes out, and he says to her: [157]
"You had forgotten me, then. If you had not made this fire, it would
have been all up with me."
Fifine said to him, "Yes, I had forgotten you, but the ring made me
think of you."
Azor said to her, "I knew what was going to happen; that is why I
gave you the ring."
And coming into the house, she finds it as before, all full of
rejoicings--the music was playing on all sides. Some days after that
Azor said to her:
"You must marry me."
Fifine gives no answer. He asks her again like that three times,
and still she remained silent, silent. The whole house becomes sad
again. She has no more her meals ready. Again Azor asks her if she
will marry him. Still she does not answer, and she remains like that in
darkness several days without eating anything, and she said to herself,
"Whatever it shall cost me I must say, Yes."
When the serpent asks her again, "Will you marry me?" she answers,
"Not with the serpent, but with the man."
As soon as she had said that the music begins as before. Azor says to
her that she must go to her father's house and get all things ready
that are necessary, and they will marry the next day. The young lady
goes as he had told her. She says to her father that she is going to
be married to the serpent to-morrow, (and asks him) if he will prepare
everything for that. The father consents, but he is vexed. Her sisters,
too, ask her whom she is going to marry, and they are astounded at
hearing that it is with a serpent. Fifine goes back again, and Azor
says to her:
"Which would you prefer, from the house to the church, serpent,
or from the church to the house, (serpent)?"