Beauty and the Beast by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Author:Arthur Quiller-Couch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Racehorse for Young Readers
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

E finished his meal, and they went down together to the courtyard, where two horses stood ready—the one laden with the two trunks, the other saddled for the merchant to ride. 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. On reaching it, she felt herself oppressed with sleepiness, for she had passed the night without undressing, and, moreover, for a month past her sleep had been broken and haunted with terrors. So, having nothing better to do, she went to bed, and was nestling down in the perfumed sheets when her eyes fell on the little table by the bedside. Someone had set a cup of hot chocolate there, and half asleep, she reached out her hand for it and drank it; whereupon her eyes closed and she fell into a delicious slumber, such as she had not known since the day when her father brought home the fatal rose.

She dreamed that she was walking alongside an endless canal, the banks of which were bordered with tall orange trees and myrtles in flower. There, as she wandered disconsolately lamenting her fate, of a sudden a young Prince stood before her. He was handsome as the God of Love in picture books, and when he spoke it was with a voice that went straight to her heart. “Dear Beauty,” he said, “you are not so unfortunate as you suppose. It is here you shall find the reward of your goodness, denied to you elsewhere. Use your wits to find me out under the disguise which hides me—that is, if as I stand here now you find me not altogether contemptible. For I love you tenderly—you alone—and in making me happy, you can attain to your own happiness. Beloved, never distrust your own true heart, and it shall lead you where the heart has nothing left to desire!” So saying, the charming apparition knelt at her feet, and again besought her to accept his devotion and become mistress over all his life.

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