Grimms' Fairy Tales

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he who seeks them will be turned into marble.'

The eldest brother set out, and sought for the pearls the whole day:
but the evening came, and he had not found the first hundred: so he was
turned into stone as the tablet had foretold.

The next day the second brother undertook the task; but he succeeded no
better than the first; for he could only find the second hundred of the
pearls; and therefore he too was turned into stone.

At last came the little dwarf's turn; and he looked in the moss; but it
was so hard to find the pearls, and the job was so tiresome!--so he sat
down upon a stone and cried. And as he sat there, the king of the ants
(whose life he had saved) came to help him, with five thousand ants; and
it was not long before they had found all the pearls and laid them in a
heap.