expressed. I interrogated the story-tellers of every country, Indian,
Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, German,
English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Lithuanian, and
even the hoary old wayside narrators of the far Thibet. I plunged into
this ocean of fancy with the recklessness of an accomplished diver,
but,--must I acknowledge it?--less fortunate than even Montaigne with
his history, I have succeeded in bringing back only one woman that I can
call really good, and her I have had to disinter from under the ice and
snows of the North, in a wild country, too, and among a people who are
not so delicate and refined as though Paris were in Norway. From Cadiz
to Stockholm, from London to Cairo and Delhi, from Paris to Teheran and
Samarcand, if the stories are to be believed, there are artful girls and
scheming mothers, in any quantity; but the _good woman_!--where does she
lie hid, and why do they never tell us anything about her? Here is a
hiatus to which I specially call the attention of the learned. In
observing it myself, I feel the more emboldened to relate the story of
the only good woman and wife I have unearthed. It is a simple narrative,
and not thoroughly in accordance with every-day experience, and, indeed,
there may be some squeamish people who will say that it is ridiculous.
No matter--it has one good quality which no one can dispute--it is not
in the ordinary style of either adventure or narration. Novelty is all
the rage at the present day, and what imparts value to things is not
their intrinsic merit, but their strangeness.

Here, then, is my story presented to you, kind reader, just as Messrs.
Asbjoernsen and Moe give it, in their curious collection of Norwegian
tales and legends.


PART II.