However,John was not at all afraid of his trial.Far from it!he was jubilant,and thought only of how lovely the Princess was.He felt sure that help would come to him,though he didn't know how it would come,and he preferred not to think about it.He fairly danced along the road when he returned to the inn,where his comrade awaited him.John could not stop telling him how nicely the Princess had treated him,and how lovely she was.He said that he could hardly wait for tomorrow to come,when he would go to the palace and try his luck in guessing.But his comrade shook his head,and was very sad.
“I am so fond of you,”he said,“and we might have been comrades together for a long while to come,but now I am apt to lose you soon,poor,dear John!I feel like crying,but I won't spoil your happiness this evening,which is perhaps the last one we shall ever spend together.We shall be as merry as merry can be,and tomorrow,when you are gone,I'll have time enough for my tears.”
Everyone in the town had heard at once that the Princess had a new suitor,and therefore everyone grieved.The theatre was closed;the women who sold cakes tied crape around their sugar pigs;the King and the preachers knelt in the churches;and there was widespread lamentation.For they were all sure that John's fate would be no better than that of all those others.
Late that evening,the traveling companion made a large bowl of punch,and said to John,“Now we must be merry and drink to the health of the Princess.”But when John had drunk two glasses of the punch he felt so sleepy that he couldn't hold his eyes open,and he fell sound asleep.His comrade quietly lifted him from the chair and put him to bed.As soon as it was entirely dark he took the two large wings he had cut off the swan,and fastened them to his own shoulders.Then he put into his pocket the biggest bunch of switches that had been given him by the old woman who had:fallen and broken her leg.He opened the window and flew straight over the house tops to the palace,where he sat down in a corner under the window which looked into the Princess's bedroom.