They travelled on, and Simpleton prevented his brothers from destroying an ant hill, killing some ducks, and suffocating a bee hive with smoke.

In the morning, he showed the oldest son a stone table, on which were written three tasks.

Unlike in Grimm's tale there are only two brothers instead of three, called the eldest Hellmerich and the youngest Hans, who are the sons of a leather craftsman instead of a king.

In the castle the person who tells them the tasks they need to accomplish to break the spell is not a dwarf but an old woman.

[2] In a literary treatment of a Languedoc variant, by Samuel Jacques Brun (How young Anglas became a Marquis, or the Story of the Ducks, the Ants, and the Flies), a young peasant named Anglas arrives in Paris after a multitude of young men that have been in the city in the past month to recover the key to the king's treasury, in exchange for marrying the princess.