ran, stopped, then ran again, sometimes crying,
sometimes silent, then tearing his hair, then thumping his breast like
some unfortunate madman. Yet he seemed to be both handsome and young:
his garments had been magnificent, but he had torn them all to tatters.
The prince, moved with compassion, made toward him, and mildly accosted
him. "Sir," said he, "your condition appears so deplorable that I must
ask the cause of your sorrow, assuring you of every assistance in my
power."

"Oh, sir," answered the young man, "nothing can cure my grief; this day
my dear mistress is to be sacrificed to a rich old ruffian of a husband
who will make her miserable."

"Does she love you, then?" asked Leander.

"I flatter myself so," answered the young man.

"Where is she?" continued Leander.

"In the castle at the end of this forest," replied the lover.

"Very well," said Leander; "stay you here till I come again, and in a
little while I will bring you good news."

He then put on his little red cap and wished himself in the castle. He
had hardly got thither before he heard all sorts of music; he entered
into a great room, where the friends and kindred of the old man and the
young lady were assembled. No one could look more amiable than she;
but the paleness of her complexion, the melancholy that appeared in
her countenance, and the tears that now and then dropped, as it were by
stealth from her eyes, betrayed the trouble of her mind.

Leander now became invisible, and placed himself in a corner of the
room. He soon perceived the father and mother of the bride; and coming
behind the mother's chair, whispered in her ear, "If you marry your
daughter to that old dotard, before eight days are over you shall
certainly die." The woman, frightened to hear such a terrible sentence
pronounced upon her, and yet not know from whence it came, gave a loud
shriek and dropped upon the floor. Her husband asked what ailed her:
she cried that she was a dead woman if the marriage of her daughter went
forward, and therefore she would not consent to it for all the world.
Her husband laughed at her and called her a fool. But the invisible
Leander accosting the man, threatened him in the same way, which
frightened him so terribly that he also insisted on the marriage being
broken off. When the lover complained, Leander trod hard upon his gouty
toes and rang such an alarm in his ears that, not being able any longer
to hear himself speak, away he limped,