While yet wondering and mechanically finishing his mulberries, he felt a very uncomfortable sensation coming over his own head and legs. He rose from the ground and shook himself, but instead of the accustomed rattle of his steel armour no sound was produced. He wished to scratch his nose, but his arms appeared kept down before him. He tried to call Le Crapeau, but instead of his manly voice, which had so often shouted loudly in the battle, a timid cry alone proceeded from his throat. He looked at the donkey, and the donkey looked at him, and shook its head with an expression truly mournful. Something strange must have occurred he feared. Wherever he went the donkey followed. He wandered away from the mulberry-tree till he reached a lake of crystal water; he approached it, when, on its mirror-like surface, instead of a steel-clad warrior, he beheld a deer with long antlers and shaggy hide, he started back with dismay. When hunger pressed him he found himself cropping the grass or thrusting his nose into the purling brook, with his attendant donkey ever by his side. Pitiable as was Saint George's condition that of Saint Denis was infinitely worse. Thus for many years he continued unable to recover his natural form. Often he returned to the mulberry-tree, the cause, as he believed, of his misfortune. It did not occur to him that the fairy, whose hospitality he had enjoyed, had anything to do with it. Once, as he came to the tree, so enraged was he that he ran his horns against it and nearly broke them. His attendant donkey did the same, and not having the same protection to his scull, he received a blow so severe that he was sent reeling backwards till he sunk exhausted on the ground. Saint Denis was a second time going to butt, when he heard a hollow voice breathe forth from the trunk the following words:-- "Cease to lament, thou famous man of France, With gentle ears, oh, listen to my moan! Once on a time it was my fatal chance To be the proudest maid that ere was known. By birth I am the daughter of a king, Though now a breathless tree and senseless thing. "My pride was such that Heaven confounded me-- A goddess in my own conceit I was: What nature lent too base I thought to be, But deem'd myself all others to surpass. And therefore nectar and ambrosia sweet, The food of demigods, for me I counted meet. "My pride despised the finest bread of wheat, And richer food I daily sought to find; Refined gold was boil'd up with my meat, Such self-conceit my senses all did blind. For which the cruel fates transformed me, From human substance to this senseless tree. "Seven years in shape of stag thou must remain, And then a purple rose, by magic's firm decree, Shall bring thee to thy former shape again, And end at last thy woeful misery: When this is done, be sure you cut in twain This fatal tree, wherein I do remain."