Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came
there, and he heard how she cried:
'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'
Let down your hair to me.'
Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up
to her.
'If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,' said
he, and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and
cried:
'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'
Let down your hair to me.'
Immediately the hair fell down and the king's son climbed up.
At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had
never yet beheld, came to her; but the king's son began to talk to her quite
like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let
him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her
fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw
that he was young and handsome, she thought: 'He will love me more than old
Dame Gothel does'; and she said yes, and laid her hand in his.
She said: 'I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get
down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave
a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and you will take me
on your horse.'
They agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the
old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until once
Rapunzel said to her: 'Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so
much heavier for me to draw up than the young king's son - he is with me in a
moment.'
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