his father often said to him . ` You have everything you can possibly wish for : a good bed , good food , and tuns full of beer . The only thing you want , in order to become as fat as a pig , is a wife that can bring you broad , rich lands . So marry , and you will be perfectly happy . ' ' I ask nothing better than to marry , ' replied Desire , ` but I have never seen a woman that pleases me . All the girls here are pink and white , and I am tired to death of their eternal lilie and roses . ` My faith ! ' cried Tubby ; ` do you want to marry a negress , and give me grandchildren as ugly as monkeys and as stupid as owls ? ' ` No , father , nothing of the sort . But there must be women somewhere in the world who are neither pink nor white , and I tell you , once for all , that I will never marry until I have found one exactly to my taste . ' II Some time afterwards , it happened that the Prior of the Abbey of Saint Amand sent to the Lord of Avesnes a basket of oranges , with a beautifully-written letter saying that these golden fruit , then unknown in Flanders , came straight from a land where the sun always shone . That evening Tubby and his son ate the golden apples at supper , and thought them delicious . Next morning as the day dawned , Desire went down to the stable and saddled his pretty white horse . Then he went , all dressed for a journey , to the bedside of Tubby , and found him smoking his first pipe . ` Father , ' he said gravely , ' I have come to bid you farewell . Last night I dreamed that I was walking in a wood , where the trees were covered with golden apples . I gathered one of them , and when I opened it there came out a lovely princess with a golden skin . That is the wife I want , and I am going to look for her . ' The Lord of Avesnes was so much astonished that he let his pipe fall to the ground ; then he became so diverted at the notion of his son marrying a yellow woman , and a woman shut up inside an orange , that he burst into fits of laughter . Desire waited to bid him good-bye until he was quiet again ; but as his father went on laughing and showed no signs of stopping , the young man took his hand , kissed it tenderly , opened the door , and in the twinkling of an eye was as at the bottom of the staircase .
He jumped lightly XXXXX his horse , and was a mile from home before Tubby had ceased laughing . '
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