ang so
sweetly that the king himself fell asleep. But a servant awakened him at
once, because he had commanded it, and he said to the prince and his
daughter: "Now you can enjoy your love at liberty. But to-morrow, on
arising, you must present me with a child two years old, who can speak
and call you by name. If not, you will both be killed." "Now let us
retire, my dear wife," said the prince to the fair Fiorita. "Between now
and to-morrow some saint will aid us." The next morning the prince
remembered the bone which his brother-in-law the grave-digger had given
him. He rose and threw it to the ground, and lo! a beautiful child,
with a golden apple in his right hand, who cried papa and mamma. The
king entered the room, and the child ran to meet him, and wished to put
the golden apple on the crown which the king wore. The king then kissed
the child, blessed the pair, and taking the crown from his head, put it
on his son-in-law's, saying: "This is now yours." Then they gave a great
feast at the court for the wedding, and they invited the prince's three
sisters, with their husbands. And the prince's father, receiving such
good news of the son whom he believed lost, hastened to embrace him, and
gave him his crown too. So the prince and the fair Fiorita became king
and queen of two realms, and from that time on were always happy.[23]

* * * * *

In the above story the wife is won by the performance of difficult tasks
by the suitor. A somewhat similar class of stories is the one in which
the bride is won by the solution of a riddle. The riddle, or difficult
question, is either proposed by the bride herself, and the suitor who
fails to answer it is killed, or the suitor is obliged to propose one
himself, and if the bride fails to solve it, she marries him; if she
succeeds, the suitor is killed. The first of the above two forms is
found in three Italian stories, two of which resemble each other quite
closely.

In the Pentamerone (I. 5, "The Flea"), the King of High-Hill, "being
bitten by a flea, caught him by a wonderful feat of dexterity; and
seeing how handsome and stately he was, he could not in conscience pass
sentence on him upon the bed of his nail. So he put him into a bottle,
and feeding him every day with the blood of his own arm, the little
beast grew at such a rate that at the end of seven months it was
necessary to shift his quarters, for he was grown bigger than a sheep.
When the k