he saw the ships in great distress, dancing and tossing on the waves. Still the sky was very blue in the middle, although at the sides it was an angry red as in a great storm. So he stood shuddering in anxiety, and said:
Into a flounder in the sea.
Come! for my wife, Ilsebel,
Wishes what I dare not tell.’
‘Well, what does she want now?’ asked the flounder.
‘Alas!’ said the fisherman, ‘she wants to be pope.’
‘Go home, then; she is that already,’ said the flounder.
Then he went home, and when he came there he saw, as it were, a large church surrounded by palaces. He pushed his way through the people. The interior was lit up with thousands and thousands of candles, and his wife was dressed in cloth of gold and was sitting on a much higher throne, and she wore three great golden crowns. Round her were numbers of Church dignitaries, and on either side were standing two rows of tapers, the largest of them as tall as a steeple, and the smallest as tiny as a Christmas-tree candle. All the emperors and kings were on their knees before her, and were kissing her foot.
‘Wife,’ said the fisherman looking at her, ‘are you pope now?’
‘Yes,’ said she; ‘I am pope.’
So he stood staring at her, and it was as if he were looking at the bright sun. When he had watched her for some time he said:
‘Ah, wife, let it be enough now that you are pope.’
But she sat as straight as a tree, and did not move or bend the least bit. He said again:
‘Wife, be content now that you are pope. You cannot become anything more.’
‘We will think about that,’ said his wife.
With these words they went to bed. But the woman was not content; her greed would not allow her to sleep, and she kept on thinking and thinking what she could still become. The fisherman slept well and soundly, for he had done a great deal that day, but his wife could not sleep at all, and turned from one side to another the whole night long, and thought, till she could think no longer, what more she could become. Then the sun began to rise, and when she saw the red dawn she went to the end of the bed and
