THE VEILED MAN
“Bad companies have ruined me. I am a bad subject, a worthless nothing. But, by my soul, I have finished doing wrong, and I will try to prove it. »
At midnight, the king's son set off again through the woods. The next day he arrived in a city seven times the size of Bordeaux. There he sold his horse, with bridle and saddle. He sold his fine clothes and kept only his sword. This done, he bought some used clothes and a poor man's bag. He also bought a black veil, through which he could see a little. Then he entered a church and went to find the priest.
“Hello, priest."
"Hello, poor man. What do you want from me?"
"Priest, what I am going to tell you is a secret confession. Priest, I am of great blood. However, I will not give you the names of my father and my mother, because I do not want to shame them. Priest, until the age of seventeen, I led a good life. Then, bad companies lost me. I became a gambler, a drunkard, a wicked person, a libertine. But, by my soul, I have finished doing wrong, and I will try to prove it. Here, priest. Here is gold and silver. You will give them to the poor. Here is my sword and a black veil. Hide them under the high altar of your church, and return them to me when I come to ask for them."
"Poor man, I will do as you said."
The king's son left. For seven weeks he walked, from sunrise to sunset, living on alms, sleeping in the stables, for the love of God. One evening, he stopped on the threshold of a farm.
—“Good evening, good people. Sharecropper, don’t you need a valet?"
"Yes, my friend. I need a swineherd, to tend, from sunrise to sunset, a herd of a hundred pigs, in the woods, all along the great sea."
"Well, sharecropper, take me to the test."
So the king's son hired himself out as a swineherd. Every morning, he left to take his herd of a hundred pigs to the woods along the great sea. Every evening he took them back to the stable.
It lasted a long, long time. The king's son had finished doing bad things. In the country, everyone loved him, because he was strong and bold, as hardworking as anyone, and always ready to be of service to everyone.
One evening, the king's son was bringing his herd of a hundred pigs back to the stable. Arriving at the edge of the woods, he heard loud cries. It was a black wolf, as big as a horse, who was carrying away a poor old woman's goat. Immediately, the king's son knocks out the black wolf with heavy blows of a stick and returns the goat to his mistress.
“Swineherd, thank you, said the poor old woman. Swineherd, I know what you think about night and day; but I don't want to tell you. Swineherd, you have done me a great service, and I intend to repay you. Look at this hollow oak tree. This is where I stay. When you are in trouble, return here at the stroke of midnight, and shout three times: “Goatherd! goatherd! goatherd!" You won't wait for me long, and I will put you out of trouble."
The poor old woman left again, with her goat, and the king's son began his daily work again.
One evening, at supper, the sharecropper, who was returning from the fair, was discussing what he had seen and heard there.
“Swineherd, sad things are happening in this kingdom. A Fog Giant has come, for the perdition of this country, a Fog Giant a hundred fathoms high, with a diamond eye in the middle of his forehead. From sunrise to sunset, the beggar runs the countryside. Wherever it passes, the wheat, the vines, the trees dry up, never to green up again. They say that the old king is dying of grief. What to do there? Many men, strong and bold, wanted to fight. But you have to strike at the diamond eye, and weapons can do nothing against the body of the Fog Giant."
The king's son seemed to listen out of complacency. Yet he didn't miss a word. When bedtime came, he pretended to go to bed, but he went out slowly, very slowly, and took the path to the woods. At the stroke of midnight, he was near the hollow oak:
"Goatherd! goatherd! goatherd!"
Immediately, a lady appeared, young and beautiful as the day.