“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
  Let down thy hair.”

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 thee, but I do not know how to get down.  Bring with thee a skein of silk every time that thou comest, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and thou wilt take me on thy horse.”  They agreed that, until that time, he should always come to see her in the 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.”  “Ah! thou wicked child,” cried the enchantress, “what do I hear thee say?  I thought I had separated thee from all the world, and yet thou hast deceived me!” In her anger she clutched Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and, snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground.  And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

On the same day, however, that she cast out Rapunzel, the enchantress in the evening fastened the braids of hair which she had cut off to the hook of the window, and when the King’s son came and cried cried—­

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
  Let down thy hair,”

she let the hair down.  The King’s son ascended, but he did not find his dearest Rapunzel above-only the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks.  “Aha!” she cried mockingly, “thou wouldst fetch thy dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out thy eyes as well.  Rapunzel is lost to thee; thou wilt never see her more.”  The King’s son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair leapt down from the tower.  He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes.  Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife.  Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness.  He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went toward it, and, when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept.  Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again so that he could see with them as before.  He led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterward, happy and contented.