One day he thought to himself:
"No one can
get to see the princess, but still they all say she is very pretty.
That seems
strange enough. Maybe I can see her?
Where is my tinder-box?" he said and
struck a spark.
The dog with eyes as large as saucers came to him at once.
"It is the middle of the night," said
the soldier; "but I should very much like to see the princess for a
moment."
The dog rushed out of the door, and before the
soldier could look round, in he came with the princess.
She was lying asleep on
the dog's back, and was so beautiful
that he could not refrain from kissing her
once or twice.
Then the dog ran back with the princess.
When it was morning and the king and queen were
drinking tea,
the princess said that the night before she had had such a strange
dream about a dog and a soldier:
she had ridden on the dog's back, and the
soldier had kissed her.
"That is certainly a fine story," said
the queen.
But next night one of the ladies-in-waiting was to watch at the
princess's bed,
in case something like that actually happened.
The soldier longed to see the princess again,
so
the dog came in the middle of the night and fetched her, running as fast as he
could.
But the lady-in-waiting slipped on India rubber shoes and followed them.
When she saw them disappear into a large house, she thought to herself:
"Now I know where it is; "and made a great cross on the door with a
piece of chalk.
Then she went home and lay down, and the dog came back with the
princess.
But when the dog saw that a cross had been made on the door of the house
where the soldier lived,
he took a piece of chalk and made crosses on all the
doors in town.
How smart it was, was seen early next morning,
when the king,
queen, ladies-in-waiting, and officers came out to see where the princess had
been.
"There it is!" said the king, when he
saw the first door with a cross on it.
"No, there it is, my dear!" said the
queen, when she likewise saw a door with a cross.
"But here is one, and there is
another!" they all exclaimed;
wherever they looked there was a cross on the
door.
Then they realized that the sign would not help at all.
But the queen could do a great deal more than
give up.
Later that day she took her scissors, cut up a piece of silk,
and made
a little bag that she filled with buckwheat grains.
She tied the bag round the
princess' neck and cut a little hole in the bag.
Now the grains would fall on
the road wherever the princess went.
In the night the dog came again, took the
princess on his back and ran away with her to the soldier.
He had fallen so in
love with her by now that he wished he could have her for his wife.