Charles Perrault

“ With that the dream melted away, but only to be succeeded by another. She found herself face to face with a stately and beautiful lady; and the lady was speaking to her with dignity, yet most kindly.
'Dear Beauty,' she said, 'do not grieve for what you have left behind; a far higher destiny lies before you. Only, if you would deserve it, beware of being misled by appearances.'
Beauty found her dreams so agreeable that she was in no hurry at all to awake, and even when her eyes opened to the daylight she had more than half a mind to close them again. ”

“ The Beast will be hurt in his feelings and very angry no doubt; but by that time we shall be beyond his power.'
'You forget,' Beauty reminded him sharply, 'that I have promised him to return, and that, moreover, he says he will die of grief if I break my word.'
'And what if he does?' demanded her lover. 'Is not your happiness worth more than the life of a monster? Of what use is he in the world except to frighten folks out of their wits?'
'Ah, you do not understand!' cried Beauty. 'This monster—as you call him—is only a monster in his face, and through no fault of his. ”

“ And now Beauty and her father would fain have spent a long time in bidding one another farewell. But the two horses neighed and pawed the ground so impatiently that he was afraid to linger. Tearing himself from his daughter's arms he mounted in haste, and could scarcely turn to say good-bye before both horses sprang away swift as the wind and he was lost to sight in an instant.
Poor Beauty! She gazed and gazed through her tears, and so mounted the stairs sorrowfully back to her own chamber. ”

“ She was wondering what this might mean, when the curtain went up and in a sudden flood of light she found herself gazing, as from a box, into a theatre crowded from floor to ceiling, and with an audience brilliant in dresses and jewels.
An orchestra played the overture, and gave place to the actors—real actors this time, not apes and parrots. The play was charming, and Beauty in ecstasy with every scene of it. When the curtain fell she still lingered in her box, hoping to see the fashionable crowd disperse ”

“ I am not "my lord." I am the Beast; and your words will not save you from the death you deserve.'
The merchant, although in fear of his life, plucked up courage to tell the monster that the rose which he had been bold to pluck was for one of his daughters, by name Beauty. Then, in hope either to delay the Beast's vengeance or to touch his compassion, he launched into the tale of all his misfortunes, and of his reasons for the journey, not forgetting to mention Beauty again and her request. ”

“ On top of this came a rap at the door, and in walked the Fairy Godmother, who, by a touch of her wand upon Cinderella's clothes, made them still more magnificent than they had been before.
And now her two sisters knew Cinderella to be the same beautiful creature they had seen at the ball. They threw themselves at her feet, begging her pardon for all the ill-usage they had made her suffer. Cinderella raised and kissed them, saying that she forgave them with all her heart, and entreated them to be loving to her always. ”

“ But one day—the King and Queen being absent at one of their country houses—she gave her governess the slip, and running at will through the palace and upstairs from one chamber to another, she came at length to a turret with a winding staircase, from the top of which a strange whirring sound attracted her and seemed to invite her to climb. As she mounted after the sound, on a sudden it ceased; but still she followed the stairs and came, at the very top, to an open door through which she looked in upon a small garret where sat an honest old woman alone, winding her distaff. ”

“ With the last stroke of twelve, coach and footmen had whisked away, and poor Cinderella, barefoot now as well as in rags, panted homeward over roads where the flints cut her until she bled, and the owls and great moths blundered out of the bushes against her face. To make matters worse, a thunderstorm broke before she had ran half the distance, and she arrived home in a terrible plight, muddy, drenched to the skin, and almost more dead than alive. ”

“ She ought, you will say, to have been happy as the day was long. But no: a life becomes flat and stale which is a perpetual round of pleasure and leaves nothing to sigh or to hope for. Beauty began to long for a sight of her father and her brothers and sisters. ”

“ They grew until nothing but the tops of the castle towers could be seen.
Leaping down from his horse he started to run towards the wood, and had almost reached the edge of it before the attendant courtiers guessed his design. They called to him to come back, but he ran on, and was about to fling himself boldly into the undergrowth, when as by magic all the great trees, the shrubs, the creepers, the ivies, briars and brambles, unlaced themselves of their own accord and drew aside to let him pass. ”

“ Seats of honour had been set for the seven fairy godmothers, and before each was laid a dish of honour, with a dish-cover of solid gold, and beside the dish a spoon, a knife, and a fork, all of pure gold and all set with diamonds and rubies. But just as they were seating themselves at table, to the dismay of every one there appeared in the doorway an old crone, dressed in black and leaning on a crutched stick. ”

“ If you over-stay the stroke of twelve, your coach will become but a pumpkin again, your horses will change back into mice, your footmen into lizards, and your ball dress shrink to the same rags in which I found you.'
Cinderella promised that she would not fail to take her departure before midnight: and, with that, the coachman cracked his whip and she was driven away, beside herself with joy. ”

“ The next evening the two sisters were at the ball; and so was Cinderella, but in even finer attire than before. Her godmother had spared no pains, and as for the expense, that hardly needs to be considered when you can turn pumpkins into gilt coaches, cobwebs into Valenciennes lace, and beetles' wings into rubies, with the tap of a wand. ”

“ Thereat the sisters turned upon Beauty and started to upbraid and rail against her.
'It is all your fault,' they declared; 'and this is what comes of your pretended modesty! Why could you not have asked for dresses and jewels as we did? Even if you could not get them, at least the demand would have cost nothing. But you chose to be singular—you, with your precious rose! and now our father must die, and we must all suffer through your affectation!'
Poor Beauty controlled her tears and answered them: 'Yes, I am to blame for all this, though, indeed, dear sisters, I did it innocently ”

“ But Beauty did not listen, because her mind was made up.
Nevertheless, she was awed, and all the more when, as the fleet horse galloped up to the courtyard, [Pg 92] they were met by a great salvo of guns and, as the echoes died away, by the sound of soft music within the palace.
The horse had come to a stop, by a flight of agate steps; a light shone down these steps from a porchway within which the violins kept their throbbing. Beauty slipped down from the saddle, and her father, alighting after her, took her by the hand and led her to the chamber in which he had first supped ”

“ In taking each of these liberties I have the warrant of tradition, which in the treatment of fairy-tales speaks with a voice more authoritative than the original author's, for it speaks with the united voices of many thousands of children, his audience and best critics. As the children have decreed that in Southey's tale of The Three Bears the heroine shall be a little girl, and not, as Southey invented her, a good-for-nothing old woman, so they have decreed the story of The Sleeping Beauty to end with the Prince's kiss, and that of Beauty and the Beast with the Beast's transformation. ”

“ In the East, in a city not far from Baghdad, there lived a man who had many possessions and might have been envied by all who knew him had these possessions been less by one. He had fine houses in town and country, retinues of servants, gold and silver plate in abundance, coffers heaped with jewels, costly carpets, embroidered furniture, cabinets full of curiosities, gilded coaches, teams of Arab horses of the purest breed. But unluckily he had also a blue beard, which made him so frightfully ugly that every woman wanted to scream and run away at sight of him. ”

“ To break faith then will avail nothing: she will but destroy you without winning her own release.'
Again the spirit-broken merchant repeated his promise.
The Beast appeared to be content at length. 'Retire to bed now,' he commanded, 'and do not get up to-morrow until you see the sun and hear a golden bell rung. Then, before starting, you will find breakfast laid for you here; your horse will be standing ready saddled in the courtyard; and you may carry back the rose to your daughter Beauty—as you call her. ”

“ She rose, therefore, and found her dressing-table set out with brushes and combs and everything she could want; and having dressed carefully, and with a lightness of heart for which she found it hard to account, she passed into the next room and found her dinner on the table.
Dinner does not take very long when you are [Pg 100] all by yourself. Beauty, when she had eaten enough, sat down on a sofa and began to think of the handsome youth she had seen in her dream. ”

“ The next spectacle was a gaming-room, with the players seated at their cards or roulette, the croupiers spinning the ball or raking the money. Beauty, with nothing to stake, had leisure to observe their faces, and how sadly some left the tables who had come smiling with money in their pockets. She saw, too, that some were being [Pg 113] cheated; and it vexed her, because she could not warn them.
Next, she was gazing at the Royal Palace, where the King and Queen were holding a reception. ”

“ When they were alone, Beauty and her father went into the next room, which proved to be a store-chamber piled with treasures a king and queen might have envied. After choosing and setting apart in heaps,—one for each of her sisters,—the most magnificent dresses she could find, Beauty [Pg 95] opened a cupboard which had a door of crystal framed in gold, and stood for a moment dazzled by the precious stones that lay piled on every shelf. After choosing a vast number and adding them to her heaps, she opened yet another wardrobe and found it full of money in gold pieces. ”

“ But His Majesty, after bowing from the balcony amid the banging of rockets and hissing of Catherine wheels, retired to a private room with his Chamberlain, and there, still amid the noise of explosions and cheering, drew up the first harsh proclamation of his reign. It forbade every one, on pain of death, to use a spindle in spinning or even to have a spindle in his house. ”

“ His second wife was a widow with two grown-up daughters, both somewhat past their prime, and this woman would have been the proudest and most overbearing in the world had not her daughters exactly resembled her with their fine airs and insolent tempers. The husband, too, had by his first wife a child of his own, a young daughter, and so good and so gentle that she promised to grow up into the living image of her dead mother, who had been the most lovable of women. ”

“ Poor Cinderella drew from under her bedraggled bodice a crystal slipper, fellow to the missing one. It was the one remnant of all her finery, and somehow, scarcely knowing why, she had hugged it to her while she ran and never let it slip in all her stumblings. ”

“ It was the child who scoured the pots and pans, scrubbed the floors, washed down the stairs, polished the tables, ironed the linen, darned the stockings, and made the beds. She herself slept at the top of the house in a garret, upon a wretched straw mattress, while her sisters had apartments of their own with inlaid floors, beds carved and gilded in the latest fashion, and mirrors in which they could see themselves from head to foot. ”

“ Now Beauty, whatever else she thought of the Beast, had by this time learnt to trust him for honest. It was a dreadful disappointment, therefore, to be forced to believe on his word that her [Pg 115] Prince Charming had no existence outside of her fancy. She slept ill that night. In her dream she was wandering again and sorrowfully alongside the canal when her lover appeared and took her hands between his while he scanned her face all bathed in tears.
'What has gone wrong, dear Beauty?' he demanded. 'Why are you in this distress?... Ah, it is the Beast who persecutes you! ”

“ For the first, indeed—which was to discover, digest and edit all the fairy tales in the world—I was equipped neither with learning, nor with command of languages, nor with leisure, nor with length of years. It is a task for many men, clubbing their lifetimes together. ”