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LEVON AND: FINETTE When the pail was full the old woman rose, put her arm through the handle, and said to Finette, " Madam, all is yours, the house, the cow, and everything else. Hurrah! I am going to the town to live like a lady with nothing to do. Oh dear, how I wish I were only sixty!" And, shaking her crutch, without looking backward, she set out on a run toward Kerver Castle. Finette entered the house. It was a wretched hovel, dark, low, damp, bad-smelling, and full of dust and spiders’ webs—a horrible refuge for a woman accustomed to living in the giant’s grand castle. Without seeming troubled, Finette went to the hearth, on which a few green boughs were smoking, took another golden bullet from her purse, and threw it into the fire, saying, “Golden bullet, precious treasure, Save me, if it be thy pleasure." The gold melted, bubbled up, and spread all over the house like running water, and behold! the whole cottage, the walls, the thatch, the wooden rocking - chair, the stool, the chest, the bed, the cow’s horns—everything, even to the spiders in their webs, was turned to gold. The house gleamed in the moonlight, among the trees, like a star in the night. When Finette had milked the cow and drank a little new milk, she threw herself on the bed without undressing, and, 2
