The king replied that Moufette should make her own choice of husband, for his only wish was to please her and make her happy. With this answer the prince was well satisfied, for he was already aware that the princess was not indifferent to him. He offered her his hand, and she declared that if he were not to be her husband, then no other man should be. Prince Moufy threw himself in rapture at her feet, and exacted, lover-like, a promise that she would keep her word with him.
The prince and princess were betrothed, and Prince Moufy then returned to his own realm, in order to make preparations for the marriage. Moufette wept much at his going, for she was oppressed by an inexplicable presentiment of evil. The prince likewise was much downcast, and the queen, noticing this, gave him a portrait of her daughter with an injunction to curtail the splendour of his preparations rather than allow his return to be delayed. The prince was nothing loth to obey her behest, and promised to adopt a course which so well consulted his own happiness.
The princess amused herself with music during his absence, for in a few months she had learned to play exceedingly well.
One day, when she was in the queen's apartment, the king rushed in. Tears were streaming down his face as he took his daughter in his arms and cried aloud: 'Alas, my child! O wretched father! O miserable king!' Sobs choked his utterance, and he could say no more.
Greatly alarmed, the queen and princess asked him what had happened, and at last he got out that there had just arrived an enormously tall giant, who professed to be an envoy of the dragon of the lake; and that in pursuance of the promise which the king had given in exchange for assistance in fighting the monsters, the dragon demanded that he should give up the princess, as he desired to make her into a pie for dinner. The king added that he had bound himself by solemn oaths to give the dragon what he asked--and in the days of which we are telling no one ever broke his word.
The queen received this dire news with piercing shrieks, and clasped her child to her bosom. 'My life shall be forfeit,' she cried, 'ere my daughter is delivered up to this monster. Let him rather take our kingdom and all that we have. Unnatural father! Is it possible you can consent to such cruelty? What! My child to be made into a pie! The bare notion is intolerable! Send this grim envoy to me; it may be the spectacle of my anguish will soften his heart.'