Helena kissed him tenderly at parting on his left cheek, and begged him
not to let anyone else kiss him there while they were parted, and she
promised to sit and wait for him under the lime-tree, for she never
doubted that the Prince would be faithful to her and would return as
quickly as he could.
And so she sat for three days and three nights under the tree without
moving. But when her lover never returned, she grew very unhappy, and
determined to set out to look for him. She took as many of her jewels
as she could carry, and three of her most beautiful dresses, one
embroidered with stars, one with moons, and the third with suns, all of
pure gold. Far and wide she wandered through the world, but nowhere did
she find any trace of her bridegroom. At last she gave up the search in
despair. She could not bear to return to her own castle where she
had been so happy with her lover, but determined rather to endure
her loneliness and desolation in a strange land. She took a place as
herd-girl with a peasant, and buried her jewels and beautiful dresses in
a safe and hidden spot.
Every day she drove the cattle to pasture, and all the time she thought
of nothing but her faithless bridegroom. She was very devoted to a
certain little calf in the herd, and made a great pet of it, feeding it
out of her own hands. She taught it to kneel before her, and then she
whispered in its ear:
‘Kneel, little calf, kneel; Be faithful and leal, Not like Prince
Fickle, Who once on a time Left his fair Helena Under the lime.’
After some years passed in this way, she heard that the daughter of the
king of the country she was living in was going to marry a Prince called
‘Fickle.’ Everybody rejoiced at the news except poor Helena, to whom
it was a fearful blow, for at the bottom of her heart she had always
believed her lover to be true.
Now it chanced that the way to the capital led right past the village
where Helena was, and often when she was leading her cattle forth to
the meadows Prince Fickle rode past her, without ever noticing the poor
herd-girl, so engrossed was he in thoughts of his new bride. Then it
occurred to Helena to put his heart to the test and to see if it weren’t
possible to recall herself to him. So one day as Prince Fickle rode by
she said to her little calf:
‘Kneel, little calf, kneel; Be faithful and leal, Not like Prince
Fickle, Who once on a time Left his poor Helena Under the lime.’
When Prince Fickle heard her voice it seemed to him to remind him of
something, but of what he couldn’t remember, for he hadn’t heard the
words distinctly, as Helena had only spoken them very low and with a
shaky voice. Helena herself had been far too moved to let her see what
impression her words had made on the Prince, and when she looked round
he was already far away. But she noticed how slowly he was riding, and
how deeply sunk he was in thought, so she didn’t quite give herself up
as lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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