rooms were chairs and tables of pure gold, and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and all the rooms and bedrooms had carpets, and food and wine of the very best were standing on all the tables so that they nearly broke down beneath it.  Behind the house, too, there was a great courtyard, with stables for horses and cows, and the very best of carriages; there was a magnificent large garden, too, with the most beautiful flowers and fruit-trees, and a park quite half a mile long, in which were stags, deer, and hares, and everything that could be desired.  “Come,” said the woman, “isn’t that beautiful?” “Yes, indeed,” said the man; “now let it be; we will live in this beautiful castle and be content.”  “We will consider about that,” said the woman, “and sleep upon it;” thereupon they went to bed.

Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just daybreak, and from her bed she saw the beautiful country lying before her.  Her husband was still stretching himself, so she poked him in the side with her elbow, and said, “Get up, husband, and just peep out of the window.  Look you, couldn’t we be the King over all that land?  Go to the Flounder, we will be the King.”  “Ah, wife,” said the man, “why should we be King?  I do not want to be King.”  “Well,” said the wife, “if you won’t be King, I will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King.”  “Oh, wife,” said the man, “why do you want to be King?  I do not like to say that to him.”  “Why not?” asked the woman; “go to him this instant; I must be King!” So the man went, and was quite unhappy because his wife wished to be King.  “It is not right; it is not right,” thought he.  He did not wish to go; but yet he went.

And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark-gray, and the water heaved up from below, and smelt putrid.  Then he went and stood by it, and said—­

  “Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
  Come, I pray thee, here to me;
  For my wife, good Ilsabil,
  Wills not as I’d have her will.”

“Well, what does she want, then?” asked the Flounder.  “Alas,” said the man, “she wants to be King.”  “Go to her; she is King already.”

So the man went, and when he came to the palace, the castle had become much larger, and had a great tower and magnificent ornaments, and the sentinel was standing before the door, and there were numbers of soldiers with kettle-drums and trumpets.  And when he went inside the house, everything was of real marble and gold, with velvet covers and great golden tassels.  Then the doors of the hall were opened, and there was the court in all its splendor, and his wife was sitting on a high throne of gold and diamonds, with a great crown of gold on her head, and a sceptre of pure gold and jewels in her hand, and on both sides of her stood her maids-in-waiting in a row, each of them always one head shorter than the last.

Then he went and stood before her, and said, “Ah, wife, and now you are King!” “Yes,” said the woman, “now I am King.”  So he stood and looked at her, and when he had looked at her thus for a time he said, “And now that you are King, let all else be; now we will wish for nothing more.”  “Nay, husband,” said the woman, quite anxiously, “I find time pass very heavily; I can bear it no longer; go to the Flounder.  I am King, but I must be Emperor, too.”