Four and Twenty Fairy Tales: Selected from Those of Perrault, and Other Popular Writers
General
Four and Twenty Fairy Tales: Selected from Those of Perrault, and Other Popular Writers
Fairy tales
Nothing could be more prudent than this advice. The good man,
conformably to it, re-entered the saloon with his daughter. Seated
together on the sofa, they saw the breakfast instantly served. The
father ate with more appetite than he had done the preceding night.
That which had come to pass had diminished his despair and revived his
confidence. He would have departed without concern if the Beast had
not had the cruelty to make him understand that he must not dream of
seeing his palace again, and that he must wish his daughter an eternal
farewell. There is no evil but death without remedy. The good man was
not completely stunned by this order. He flattered himself that it
would not be irrevocable, and this hope prepared him to quit his host
with tolerable satisfaction. Beauty was not so well satisfied. Little
persuaded that a happy future was prepared for her, she feared that the
rich presents with which the Monster loaded her family was but the
price of her life, and that he would devour her immediately that he
should be alone with her, or at least that a perpetual prison would be
her fate, and that her only companion would be this frightful Monster.
This reflection plunged her into a profound reverie, but a second
stroke of the bell warned them that it was time to separate. They
descended into the court, where the father found two horses, the one
loaded with the two trunks, and the other destined for himself. The
latter, covered with a good cloak, and the saddle having two bags
attached to it full of refreshments, was the same which he had ridden
before. So much attention on the part of the Beast again supplied them
with subject of conversation; but the horses, neighing and stamping
with their hoofs, made known to them that it was time to part.
The merchant, afraid of irritating the Beast by his delay, bade his
daughter an eternal farewell. The two horses set off faster than the
wind, and Beauty instantly lost sight of them. She mounted in tears to
the chamber which was appropriated to her, where for some time she was
lost in sad reflections.
At length, being overcome with sleep, she felt a wish to seek repose,
which, during a month past, she had not enjoyed. Having nothing better
to do, she was about to go to bed, when she perceived on the table a
service of chocolate prepared. She took it, half asleep, and her eyes
almost immediately closed. She fell into a quiet slumber, which since
the moment she had received the fatal rose had been unknown to her.
During her sleep, she dreamt that she was on the bank of a canal, a
long way off, the two sides of which were ornamented with two rows of
orange trees and flowering myrtles of immense size, where, engrossed
with her sad situation, she lamented the misfortune which condemned her
to pass her days in this place without hope of ever leaving it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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