." She, all trembling, called her maids; but obeying
her command, they did not come. Then she said to the prince: "You are
fortunate and have won. Draw near." And she gave him the kiss, and on
the prince's lips there remained a beautiful rose. "Take this rose," she
said, "and keep it on your heart, for it will bring you good luck." The
prince placed it on his heart, and then told his fair one all his
history from the time he had left his father's palace until he had
introduced himself into her chamber by the trick with the cymbal. The
fair Fiorita was well pleased, and said that she would willingly marry
him; but to succeed, he must perform many difficult tasks which the king
would lay upon him. First he must discover the way to a hiding-place
where the king had concealed her with a hundred damsels; then he must
recognize her among the hundred damsels, all dressed alike and veiled.
"But," she said, "you need not trouble yourself about these
difficulties, for the rose you have taken from my lips, and which you
will always wear over your heart, will draw you like the loadstone,
first to the hiding-place, and afterward to my arms. But the king will
set you other tasks, and perhaps terrible ones. These you must think of
yourself. Let us leave it to God and fortune."

The prince went at once to the king, and asked for the fair Fiorita's
hand. The king did not refuse it, but made the same conditions, that the
princess had told him of. He consented, and by the help of the rose
quickly performed the first tasks. "Bravo!" exclaimed the king, when the
prince recognized the fair Fiorita among the other damsels; "but this is
not enough." Then he shut him up in a large room all full of fruit, and
commanded him, under pain of death, to eat it all up in a day. The
prince was in despair, but fortunately he remembered the hog's bristles
and the advice which his first brother-in-law had given him. He threw
the bristles on the ground, and there suddenly came forth a great herd
of swine which ate up all the fruit and then disappeared. This task was
accomplished. But the king proposed another. He wished the prince to
retire with his bride, and cause her to fall asleep at the singing of
the birds which are the sweetest to hear and the most beautiful to see.
The prince remembered the bunch of feathers given him by his
brother-in-law the huntsman, and threw them on the ground. Suddenly
there appeared the most beautiful birds in the world, and s