So the prince said, “Come with me, and I will take you to my father’s palace, and there nobody shall mock you, but you shall sit all your days in the sunshine, and be happy.” And as they went, more and more he wondered at her great beauty--so spoiled that he could not look at her without grief--and was taken with increasing wonder at the beautiful wisdom stored in her golden mind; for she told him the tales of the heroes which she had learned from the gnome, and of buried cities; also the songs of old poets that have been forgotten; and her voice, like the rest of her, was golden. The prince said to himself, “I shut my eyes, and am ready to die loving her; yet, when I open them, she is but a talking statue!” One day he saki to her, “Under all this disguise you must be the most beautiful thing upon earth! Already to me you are the dearest!” and he sighed, for he knew that a king’s son might not marry a figure of gold. Now one day after this, as Jasome’ sat alone in the sunshine and cried, the little old gnome stood before her, and said, “Well, Jasome’, have you married the king’s son?” “Alas!” cried Jasome’, “you have so changed me: I am no longer human! Yet he loves me, and, but for that, he would marry me.” “Dear me!” said the gnome. “If that is all, I can take the gold off you again: why, I said so!” Jasome’ entreated him, by all his former kindness, to do so for her now. “Yes,” said the gnome, “but a bargain is a bargain. Now is the time for me to get back my bags of gold. Do you go to your father, and let him know that the king’s son is willing to marry you if he restores to me my treasure that he took from me; for that is what it comes to.” Up jumped Jasome’, and ran to the rat-catcher’s house. “Oh, father,” she cried, “now you can undo all your cruelty to me; for now, if you will give back the gnome his gold, he will give my own face back to me, and I shall marry the king’s son!” But the rat-catcher was filled with admiration at the sight of her, and would not believe a word she said. “I have given you your dowry,” he answered; “three years I had to do without you to get it. Take it away, and get married, and leave me the peace and plenty I have so hardly earned!” Jasome’ went back and told the gnome. “Really,” said he, “I must show this rat-catcher that there are other sorts of traps, and that it isn’t only rats and gnomes that get caught in them! I have given him his taste of wealth; now it shall act as pickle to his poverty!” So the next time the rat-catcher put his foot out of doors the ground gave way under it, and, snap!--the gnome had him by the leg. “Let me go!” cried the rat-catcher; “I can’t get out!” “Can’t you?” said the gnome. “If I let you out, what will you give me?” “My daughter!” cried the rat-catcher; “my beautiful golden daughter!” “Oh no!” laughed the gnome. “Guess again!”