He stood speechless for
an instant before he ventured to touch her hand, when, to his
amazement, he found that she was fashioned out of wood.

'"Ah! I can make you more beautiful still," said he. And fetching from
a shelf a roll of yellow silk which he had bought that day from a
merchant, he cut and draped and stitched, till at length a lovely robe
clothed the slender figure. When this was finished, the restlessness
had departed from him, and he went back to bed.

'As dawn approached the student arose and prepared to go to the mosque
with the first ray of sunlight. But, when he saw the maiden standing
there, he fell on his knees and lifted his hands in ecstasy.

'"Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of ten
thousand stars," he murmured to himself. "Surely a form so rare was
never meant to live without a soul." And forthwith he prayed with all
his might that life should be breathed into it.

'And his prayer was heard, and the beautiful statue became a living
girl, and the three men all fell in love with her, and each desired to
have her to wife.

'Now,' said the nightingale, 'to which of them did the maiden really
belong? It seems to me that the carpenter had the best right to her.'

'Oh, but the student would never have thought of praying that she
might be given a soul had not the tailor drawn attention to her
loveliness by the robe which he put upon her,' answered the prince,
who guessed what he was expected to say: and they soon set up quite a
pretty quarrel. Suddenly the princess, furious that neither of them
alluded to the part played by the student, quite forgot her vow of
silence and cried loudly:

'Idiots that you are! how could she belong to any one but the student?
If it had not been for him, all that the others did would have gone
for nothing! Of course it was he who married the maiden!' And as she
spoke the seven veils fell from her, and she stood up, the fairest
princess that the world has ever seen.

'You have won me,' she said smiling, holding out her hand to the
prince.

And so they were married: and after the wedding-feast was over they
sent for the old woman whose pitcher the prince had broken so long
ago, and she dwelt in the palace, and became nurse to their children,
and lived happily till she died.

(Adapted from _Tuerkische Volksmaerchen aus Stambul gesammelt, uebersetzt
und eingeleitet_ von Dr. Ignaz Kuenos. Brill, Leiden.)

Transcriber's Note

Punctua