imself; 'these wretches will break it like glass, and if I can't
think of anything else, I am a dead man.' At this moment his eyes fell
on the door, which was made of oak, thick and heavy. He wrenched it
off its hinges and held it over his head, and then went straight at the
goblins, whom he crushed beneath it. After that he took the shoes and
stockings out of the closet and brought them to Ludovine, who, directly
she had put them on, became a woman all over.

When she was quite dressed in her white silk stockings and little blue
slippers dotted over with carbuncles, she said to her deliverer, 'Now
you must go away, and never come back here, whatever happens. Here is a
purse with two hundred ducats. Sleep to-night at the inn which is at the
edge of the wood, and awake early in the morning: for at nine o'clock
I shall pass the door, and shall take you up in my carriage.' 'Why
shouldn't we go now?' asked the little soldier. 'Because the time has
not yet come,' said the Princess. 'But first you may drink my health in
this glass of wine,' and as she spoke she filled a crystal goblet with a
liquid that looked like melted gold.

John drank, then lit his pipe and went out.

II

When he arrived at the inn he ordered supper, but no sooner had he sat
down to eat it than he felt that he was going sound asleep.

'I must be more tired than I thought,' he said to himself, and, after
telling them to be sure to wake him next morning at eight o'clock, he
went to bed.

All night long he slept like a dead man. At eight o'clock they came to
wake him, and at half-past, and a quarter of an hour later, but it was
no use; and at last they decided to leave him in peace.

The clocks were striking twelve when John awoke. He sprang out of bed,
and, scarcely waiting to dress himself, hastened to ask if anyone had
been to inquire for him.

'There came a lovely princess,' replied the landlady, 'in a coach of
gold. She left you this bouquet, and a message to say that she would
pass this way to-morrow morning at eight o'clock.'

The little soldier cursed his sleep, but tried to console himself by
looking at his bouquet, which was of immortelles.

'It is the flower of remembrance,' thought he, forgetting that it is
also the flower of the dead.

When the night came, he slept with one eye open, and jumped up twenty
times an hour. When the birds began to sing he could lie still no
longer, and climbed out of his window into the branches of on