s window crying his wares like a
huckster:

"Sweet grapes for sale! Who wants my fresh sweet grapes!"

Now it was not the season for grapes, so Peerless Beauty when she heard
the cry was surprised and said to her serving maid:

"Go quickly and buy me some grapes from that huckster and mind you don't
eat one yourself!"

The serving maid hurried out to Danilo and he sold her some of the red
grapes. As she carried them in, she couldn't resist the temptation of
slipping a few into her mouth. Instantly some horns grew out on her
head.

"That's to punish me for disobeying my mistress!" the poor girl cried.
"Oh, dear, what shall I do?"

She was afraid to show herself to Peerless Beauty, so she pretended she
was taken sick and she went to bed and pulled the sheet over her head
and sent in the grapes by another serving maid.

Peerless Beauty ate them all before she discovered their frightful
property. Then there was a great to-do, and cries of anger and of
fright, and a quick sending out of the guards to find the huckster. But
the huckster had disappeared.

What could Peerless Beauty do now? She tried to pull the horns out but
they wouldn't come. She tried to cut them off but they resisted the edge
of the sharpest knife. She was too proud to show herself with horns, so
she swathed her head with jewels and ribbons and pretended she was
wearing an elaborate head-dress.

Then she sent heralds through the land offering a huge reward to any one
who could cure her serving maid of some strange horns that had grown out
on her head. You see she thought if she could get hold of some one who
would cure the maid, then she could make him cure her, too.

Well, doctors and quacks and all sorts of people came and tried every
kind of remedy, but all in vain. The horns stayed firmly rooted.

A whole week went by and when the last of the quacks had come and gone,
Danilo, disguised as an old physician, presented himself and craved
audience with the Peerless one. He carried two small jars in his hands
one of which was filled with a conserve made from the white grapes and
the other with a conserve made from the red grapes.

Peerless Beauty, her horns swathed in silk and gleaming with jewels,
received him coldly.

"Are you one more quack?" she asked.

"Not a quack," he said, bowing low, "but a man who has happened upon a
strange secret of nature. I can cure your serving maid of her horns
provided she confess to me all her misdeeds an