Grimm's Household Tales

Two kings’ sons once went out in search of adventures and fell into a wild, disorderly way of living, so that they never came home again. The youngest, who was called Simpleton, set out to look for his brothers, but when at length he found them, they mocked him for thinking that he, with his simplicity, could get through the world when the two of them could not make their way, even though they were so much cleverer. All three traveled on together and came to an anthill. The two older brothers wanted to destroy it, to see the little ants creeping about in their terror and carrying their eggs away, but Simpleton said, “Leave the creatures in peace; I will not allow you to disturb them.” Then they went onward and came to a lake on which a great number of ducks were swimming. The two brothers wanted to catch a couple and roast them, but Simpleton would not permit it and said, “Leave the creatures in peace; I will not let you kill them.” At length they came to a bees’ nest in which there was so much honey that it ran out of the trunk of the tree where it was. The two wanted to make a fire beneath the tree and suffocate the bees in order to take away the honey, but Simpleton stopped them again and said, “Leave the creatures in peace; I will not allow you to burn them.” At length the three brothers arrived at a castle where stone horses were standing in the stables and no human being was to be seen, and they went through all the halls until, quite at the end, they came to a door with three locks in it. In the middle of the door, however, there was a little pane through which they could see into the room. There they saw a little gray man who was sitting at a table. They called him once, then twice, but he did not hear; at last they called him a third time, and he got up, opened the locks, and came out. He said nothing, however, but led them to a handsomely spread table, and when they had eaten and drunk, he took each of them to a bedroom. Next morning the little gray man came to the eldest, beckoned to him, and led him to a stone table on which three tasks were inscribed, by the performance of which the castle could be set free. The first was this: the princess’s pearls, a thousand in number, lay in the forest beneath the moss and had to be picked up, and if by sunset a single pearl was missing, the one who had looked for them would be turned into stone. The eldest went there and searched the whole day, but when it came to an end, he had found only one hundred, and what was written on the table came to pass, and he was changed into stone. The next day the second brother undertook the adventure; it did not, however, go much better with him than with the eldest. He found no more than two hundred pearls, and he was changed to stone. At last it was Simpleton’s turn as well, and he searched in the moss. It was, however, so hard to find the pearls, and he made such slow progress, that he sat down on a stone and wept. And while he was sitting there, the King of the ants, whose life he had once saved, came with five thousand ants, and before long the little creatures had gathered all the pearls together and laid them in a heap. The second task, however, was to fetch from the lake the key to the King’s daughter’s bedchamber. When Simpleton came to the lake, the ducks that he had saved swam up to him, dived down, and brought the key out of the water. But the third task was the most difficult: from among the three sleeping daughters of the King, the youngest and dearest was to be picked out. They, however, resembled each other exactly and could be distinguished only by the different sweets they had eaten before they fell asleep: the eldest a bit of sugar, the second a little syrup, and the youngest a spoonful of honey. Then the Queen of the bees, which Simpleton had protected from the fire, came and tasted the lips of all three, and at last she remained sitting on the mouth that had eaten honey, and thus the king’s son recognized the right princess. Then the enchantment was at an end; everything was released from sleep, and those who had been turned to stone received their natural forms once more. Simpleton married the youngest and sweetest princess, and after her father’s death he became King, and his two brothers received the other two sisters.