ing
and she swore that it was, and all happy, she said that now he would see
her again.

Meanwhile the servant went to her room, took off her wooden dress, and
put on one all of silk, so that she appeared a beauty, and went to the
room of the sick man. His mother saw her and began to cry: "Here she is;
here she is!" She went in and saluted him, smiling, and he was so beside
himself that he became well at once. He asked her to tell him her
story,--who she was, where she came from, how she came, and how she knew
that he was ill. She replied: "I am the woman dressed in wood who was
your servant. It is not true that I was a poor girl, but I had that
dress to conceal myself in, for underneath it I was the same that I am
now. I am a lady; and although you treated me so badly when I asked to
go to the ball, I saw that you loved me, and now I have come to save
you from death." You can believe that they stayed to hear her story.
They were married and have always been happy and still are.[17]

* * * * *

In the various stories thus far mentioned which involve the family
relations, we have had examples of treachery on the part of brothers,
ill-treatment of step-children, etc. It remains now to notice the trait
of treachery on the part of sister or mother towards brother or son. The
formula as given by Hahn (No. 19) is as follows: The hero, who is
fleeing with his sister (or mother), overcomes a number of dragons or
giants. The only survivor makes love to the sister (or mother), and
causes her, for fear of discovery, to send her brother, in order to
destroy him, on dangerous adventures, under the pretence of obtaining a
cure for her illness. The hero survives the dangers, discovers the
deception, and punishes the guilty ones. Traces of this formula are
found in several Italian stories,[18] but it constitutes only two entire
stories: one in Pitre (No. 71) the other in Comparetti (No. 54, "The
Golden Hair," from Monferrato, Piedmont). The latter is in substance as
follows: A king with three sons marries again in his old age. The
youngest son falls in love with his step-mother and the jealous father
tries to poison her. The son and wife flee together, and fall in with
some robbers whom they kill, and set at liberty a princess who has the
gift of curing blindness and other diseases. They afterward find a cave
containing rooms and all the necessaries of life, but see no one. They
spend the night there,