“Baron,” replied the king, frowning, “some crafty enemy has prompted you to this.  The daughter of a king should only wed with the son of a king.  Nevertheless, there is an ancient law, never fulfilled, since the conditions are impossible, which says that any one of noble birth, who has saved the king’s life, vanquished the king’s enemies in battle, and built a castle forty cubits high in a single night, may wed the king’s daughter.  Though you have saved my life and vanquished my enemies, yet you are not of noble birth, nor, were you so, could you build such a castle in such a space of time.”

“I am of noble blood, nevertheless,” said Ranier, proudly, “although I have been a wood-chopper.  My father, who died in banishment, was the Duke of Manylands, falsely accused of having conspired against the late king, your august father; and I can produce the record of my birth.  Our line is as noble as any in your realm, sire, and nobler than most.”

“If that be true, and I doubt it not,” answered King Dagobert, “the law holds good for you.  But you must first build a palace where we stand, and that in a single night.  So your suit is hopeless.”

The king turned and entered the palace, leaving Ranier in deep sorrow, for he thought the condition impossible.  As he stood thus, the fairy, Rougevert, appeared.

“Be not downcast,” she said; “but build that castle to-night.”

“Alas!” cried Ranier, “it cannot be done.”

“Look at your ax,” returned the fairy.  “Do you not see that the back of the blade is shaped like a hammer?”

So she taught Ranier what words to use, and vanished.

When the sun was down, Ranier came to the court-yard, and raising his ax with the blade upward, he said aloud:  “Ax! ax! hammer! hammer! and build for my profit!” The ax at once leapt forward with the hammer part downward, and began cracking the solid rock on which the court-yard lay, and shaping it into oblong blocks, and heaping them one on the other.  So much noise was made thereby that the warders first, and then the whole court, came out to ascertain the cause.  Even the king himself was drawn to the spot.  And it seemed to them, all through the magic of the fairy, that there were hundreds on hundreds of workmen in green cloth hose and red leather jerkins, some engaged in quarrying and shaping, and others in laying the blocks, and others in keying arches, and adjusting doors and windows, and making oriels and towers and turrets.  And still as they looked, the building arose foot by foot, and before dawn a great stone castle, with its towers and battlements, its portcullis, and its great gate, forty cubits high, stood in the court-yard.

When King Dagobert saw this, he embraced Ranier, continued to him the title of his father, whose ducal estates he restored to the son, and sending for the Princess Isaure, who appeared radiant with joy and beauty, he betrothed the young couple in the presence of the court.