covered to be the head of a band of robbers. In three of these stories, told in Italy, the command laid upon the heroine is to be always on the alert to let the robbers in the moment they knock at the door. They keep a mortuary chamber and healing ointment, and at length she finds and heals the king's son, whom they have wounded and left for dead, and flees with him. In a Sicilian variant[1] the direction to be on the alert for the robbers' return is not expressed, though it is to be inferred. They give the maiden, whom they have bought from her mother, the keys of all the chambers but one. She finds the remaining key, opens the door, and falls dead on the threshold. The robbers, coming home, call out to her. Finding she does not reply they conclude, and rightly, that she has opened the Forbidden Chamber. They fetch the next sister, on pretence that the first wants her company, and afterwards, consecutively, all the other sisters on a similar plea. But the youngest (for no apparent reason) is not so unfortunate as her sisters. She opens the chamber safely, and in it finds a king's son still living. As the price of deliverance, she exacts from him a promise of marriage. The robbers, finding her still living when they return, trust her, and confide to her the secret of the healing ointment, of which, though she is inquisitive about it, she makes no use. Afterwards, in their absence, she disguises herself as a ragseller, puts the king's son into a sack stuffed with cotton, and the sack on an ass, and drives it off. She meets the robbers on the way; but they, having tried the sack with a poniard, and found nothing to corroborate their suspicions, let the lovers go. The latter reach the palace, and are in due course married. Then follows the robbers' attempted revenge. They gain access to the palace by corrupting the porter's wife, whom they induce to put an enchanted note, which causes sleep, under the heroine's husband's pillow; and it may be noted, as an indication of the rustic story-teller, that the palace porter is a cobbler, who keeps his stall in the gateway, as in some alley in the streets of an Italian town. In this instance, the hollow statue, or case, which usually secretes the assassin, is wanting, as it is likewise in a Swabian tale, given by Meier,[2] where the robbers
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THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER.
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