open the great doors, and the walls were covered with beautiful tapestry, and in the apartments were gilded chairs and tables, and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and all the rooms were beautifully carpeted. The best of food and drink also was set before them when they wished to dine. And outside the house was a large courtyard with horse and cow stables and a coach-house—all fine buildings; and a splendid garden with most beautiful flowers and fruit, and in a park quite a league long were deer and roe and hares, and everything one could wish for.
‘Now,’ said the wife, ‘isn’t this beautiful?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the fisherman. ‘Now we will stay here and live in this beautiful castle, and be very happy.’
‘We will consider the matter,’ said his wife, and they went to bed.
The next morning the wife woke up first at daybreak, and looked out of the bed at the beautiful country stretched before her. Her husband was still sleeping, so she dug her elbows into his side and said:
‘Husband, get up and look out of the window. Could we not become the king of all this land? Go down to the founder and tell him we choose to be king.’
‘Ah, wife!’ replied her husband, ‘why should we be king? I don’t want to be king.’
‘Well,’ said his wife, ‘if you don’t want to be king, I will be king. Go down to the flounder; I will be king.’
‘Alas! wife,’ said the fisherman, ‘why do you want to be king? I can’t ask him that.’
‘And why not?’ said his wife. ‘Go down at once. I must be king.’
So the fisherman went, though much vexed that his wife wanted to be king. ‘It is not right! It is not right,’ he thought. He did not wish to go, yet he went.
When he came to the sea, the water was a dark-grey colour, and it was heaving against the shore. So he stood and said:
Into a flounder in the sea.
Come! for my wife, Ilsebel,
Wishes what I dare not tell.’
‘What does she want now?’ asked the flounder.
‘Alas!’ said the fisherman, ‘she wants to be king.’
‘Go home; she is that already,’ said the flounder.
