"Never mind, open it."
"No! I will not do it."
"I am going to break in the door."
"Do what you will, but I will not open it."
He breaks open the door, as he said, and goes in. He sees this young
girl on a little straw, covered only by her dress. The man wants to
go near her. The girl says:
"You may kill me if you like, but you shall not come near me."
They were like that a long time. The man says to her:
"Give me your promise of marriage, then?"
The young girl says, "What do you mean? I so poor and you so rich--how
can we marry?"
The man says that they will do so. The young girl will not believe him,
and the gentleman says to her:
"If you will give me your promise I will go away at once." And the
young girl says "Yes," in order to make him go away. Then he goes away.
The next day he goes to a priest and tells him what has taken place,
and gives him forty thousand francs, and tells him to build a fine
house with it, and to furnish it, and if anything more is wanting
he will pay it at his next voyage. The young girl, too, goes to the
priest, for before this she had been helped and comforted by him. The
priest tells her how the captain had given him forty thousand francs
for her to build a fine house with, and for her to make use of for all
she wanted. The priest said that he would undertake building the house,
and she said that she would see to all that was wanting for herself.
The captain goes off, and has as successful a voyage as could be
made--he had nothing but fair weather. He brought back plenty of
money, and they were married soon after his arrival. His mother and
his brothers and sister were at the wedding. After some time the
captain wished to go and make another voyage. He left his fine house
to take his wife to his mother's house, and he said to her:
"My wife will be better with you than all alone. You will have her
always dressed as becomes her position, and keep a good table for her,
and take good care of her."
The husband went to sea. He often wrote to his wife; but what do the
captain's mother and her daughter do after he is gone? They take away
from this lady all her pretty dresses, and make her put on old ones,
and wooden shoes too with straw inside, and send her off to keep the
geese with a bit of bread, telling her that she must bring home a
load of small wood (to light the fire with), and that she must keep
spinning while she is watching the geese. This poor young girl says
nothing. She goes off with her flock of geese. When night comes
she returns with four skeins of thread spun and a load of small
wood. Every day she does the same. They do not even tell her that
her husband has written to her.
The captain has a fine voyage. He had some fears about his mother and
his sister, and he thought to himself that it would be best to come
home secretly, in silence, and see how they were treating his wife. He
comes then as a foreigner, in the dress of a captain. He says that
he comes from a distance, and that he wishes to pass a week in their
house. The mother and the daughter receive him very well. They tell
him to choose his own room, and he chooses his own wedding-chamber. At
nightfall the geese come home, cackling, cackling, and with them the
young girl. This gentleman tells them that it is his habit to have
some young girl with him when he travels like that, and asks them
if they can get him one. They tell him "Yes," that there would be
none more glad than this young girl, and that they will give her to
him. They go and tell it to the goose girl.
She says that certainly she will not go. They say to her that he has
chests full of gold, and that they would willingly go, but that he has
chosen her; and they push her by force into the room. The gentleman
orders an excellent supper, and says that he has the habit of supping
well. The goose girl stands sadly before the table. She would not eat
anything; the gentleman presses her, and she kept saying that she was
not hungry--that she had eaten as much as she usually did. He asks her:
"Where have you eaten? and what have you eaten?"
"A piece of bread that I took with me in the morning."
He tells her again to eat these good things. She says that she does
not want anything, and that the greatest pleasure he can give her is
to let her go off to her geese. The gentleman says to her:
"You do not know then why you have come here? You are to sleep
with me."
The young girl says: "You shall cut me in pieces on the spot before
I will go to your bed. I have a husband, and I wish to be faithful
to him."
And she tells, on his asking her, how that she was very poor, and no
one loved her, and how a rich gentleman had wished to marry her--how
very good he had been to her even after the marriage, and how when
he went on a voyage he had left her at his mother's house, thinking
that she would be best there, and that since he was gone she had had
no news of her husband. The gentleman said to her:
"Would you recognise your husband?" She says, "Yes."
"Has he any marks?"
The young girl says, "Yes; he has a mole between his two breasts with
three hairs on it."
The gentleman opens his shirt and shows her his birthmark.
This young girl was seized with such joy that she fainted away, and
fell down on the floor. As this gentleman knew the ways of the room
he burst open the closet, and took a bottle of liqueur to bring his
wife round again, and at last she came to herself, and passes a sweet
night with her husband.
The next morning the geese come, cackle, cackle, before the door, and
the mistress of the house and her daughter come to the gentleman's
door, calling out, if they have not stopped there long enough, that
it is time to set off, and that it is a shame to be in bed at that
hour. The gentleman gets up and says to his mother:
"What, mother, was this the way that you ought to have treated my
dearly-loved wife?"
And he was in such a rage that, if his wife had not begged him to
forgive her, he would even have beaten her; but his wife prevented
him. He sent his mother and his sister out of the house, and he and
his wife lived for many years happy and pleased with each other;
and as they lived well they died well too.
The Sister of Laurentine.
This may be Toutou, but in the Basque country it is sometimes difficult
to get hold of a person's surname. "Who is Laurentine?" you ask. "She
is Toutou's sister," is the reply. "But who is Toutou?" "She is
Laurentine's sister." If you want to get anything more out you have
to cross-examine for half-an-hour. Some of our tales are not signed;
we believe these are to be divided between Catherine Elizondo and
Laurentine Kopena. Fresh names we think we always put down, but these
brought so many tales that we sometimes omitted it with them, and in
the rearrangement for printing we have lost our clue.
We have some thirteen other tales of all kinds, besides variations,
which we have not given. They are mostly short, and not very different
in character from those given above, except in being more stupid in
two or three cases; and a few of them are to be found in M. Cerquand's
collection.