The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault Gustave Doré

Author:Charles Perrault, Gustave Doré
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Undefined
ISBN: 9780199236831
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who were ever so unhappy, because they had no children; so unhappy I can’t tell you. They went to all the spas to drink the waters there, gave presents to all the saints, went on pilgrimages, and always said their prayers; everything was tried and nothing worked. But at last the Queen did become pregnant, and had a baby daughter. They held a beautiful service for her to be christened; all the fairies they could find in the country were to come (there were seven of them), to be godmothers for the little Princess, which meant that each would bestow a gift on her, which was the custom for fairies in those days, and then she would be as perfect as you could possibly imagine.

When the christening service was finished, all the guests went back to the royal palace, where a banquet was to be given in honour of the fairies. Each of them had her place laid magnificently at table with a solid gold case, which contained a knife, a fork, and a spoon made out of pure gold, and decorated with diamonds and rubies. But as everyone was sitting down to table, they saw an aged fairy come in, who had not been invited, because for more than fifty years she had never left the tower she lived in, so that she was believed to be dead, or under a spell. The King had a place laid for her at table, but there was no means of giving her a case of solid gold like the others, because only seven cases had been made, one for each of the seven. The aged fairy believed herself insulted, and muttered threatening words between her teeth. Sitting beside her, one of the younger fairies heard what she said, and guessed that the gift that she would give to the little Princess might be dangerous for her; so she went and hid behind a tapestry on the wall as soon as the meal was finished, in order to speak last of all, and prevent if possible any harm that the old fairy might do.

Meanwhile the fairies began to present their gifts to the Princess. The gift that the youngest fairy gave was that she would be the loveliest person in the world; the next one’s gift was that she would be as clever as an angel; the third gift was that she would do everything with all the grace imaginable; the fourth that she would dance to perfection; the fifth that she would sing like a nightingale; and the sixth, that she would play beautiful music on all kinds of instruments. When it came to the turn of the very old fairy, whose head was shaking, but not so much from age as from bad temper, she said that the Princess would prick her hand on the point of the spindle on a spinningwheel, and that she would die.

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