will bring you to
sorrow, my pretty princess. You want to get rid of your fish's tail,
and to have two supports instead of it, like human beings on earth, so
that the young prince may fall in love with you, and that you may have
an immortal soul." And then the witch laughed so loud and
disgustingly, that the toad and the snakes fell to the ground, and lay
there wriggling about. "You are but just in time," said the witch;
"for after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you till the
end of another year. I will prepare a draught for you, with which
you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the
shore and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up
into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a
sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that
you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still
have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will
ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if
you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow.
If you will bear all this, I will help you."

"Yes, I will," said the little princess in a trembling voice, as
she thought of the prince and the immortal soul.

"But think again," said the witch; "for when once your shape has
become like a human being, you can no more be a mermaid. You will
never return through the water to your sisters, or to your father's
palace again; and if you do not win the love of the prince, so that he
is willing to forget his father and mother for your sake, and to
love you with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join your
hands that you may be man and wife, then you will never have an
immortal soul. The first morning after he marries another your heart
will break, and you will become foam on the crest of the waves."

"I will do it," said the little mermaid, and she became pale as
death.

"But I must be paid also," said the witch, "and it is not a trifle
that I ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the
depths of the sea, and you believe that you will be able to charm
the prince with it also, but this voice you must give to me; the
best thing you possess will I have for the price of my draught. My own
blood must be mixed with it, that it may be as sharp as a two-edged
sword."

"But if you take away my voice," said the little mermaid, "what is
left for me?"

"Your beautiful form,