she had done for her. When the fairy saw such a base want
of gratitude she determined to punish the girl, and, cursing her, she
turned her face into a goat's head. In a moment Renzolla's pretty mouth
stretched out into a snout, with a beard a yard long at the end of it,
her cheeks sank in, and her shining plaits of hair changed into two
sharp horns. When the king turned round and saw her he thought he must
have taken leave of his senses. He burst into tears, and cried out:
'Where is the hair that bound me so tightly, where are the eyes that
pierced through my heart, and where are the lips I kissed? Am I to be
tied to a goat all my life? No, no! nothing will induce me to become the
laughing-stock of my subjects for the sake of a goat-faced girl!'

When they reached his own country he shut Renzolla up in a little turret
chamber of his palace, with a waiting-maid, and gave each of them ten
bundles of flax to spin, telling them that their task must be finished
by the end of the week.

The maid, obedient to the king's commands, set at once to work and
combed out the flax, wound it round the spindle, and sat spinning at her
wheel so diligently that her work was quite done by Saturday evening.
But Renzolla, who had been spoilt and petted in the fairy's house, and
was quite unaware of the change that had taken place in her appearance,
threw the flax out of the window and said: 'What is the king thinking of
that he should give me this work to do? If he wants shirts he can buy
them. It isn't even as if he had picked me out of the gutter, for he
ought to remember that I brought him seven thousand golden guineas as my
wedding portion, and that I am his wife and not his slave. He must be
mad to treat me like this.'

All the same, when Saturday evening came, and she saw that the
waiting-maid had finished her task, she took fright lest she should be
punished for her idleness. So she hurried off to the palace of the
fairy, and confided all her woes to her. The fairy embraced her
tenderly, and gave her a sack full of spun flax, in order that she might
show it to the king, and let him see what a good worker she was.
Renzolla took the sack without one word of thanks, and returned to the
palace, leaving the kind fairy very indignant over her want of
gratitude.

When the king saw the flax all spun, he gave Renzolla and the
waiting-maid each a little dog, and told them to look after the animals
and train them carefully.

The waiting-m