He told her that on the evening of the same day that he had left the Palace of the Beast, he had reached his own house without the least fatigue. That on the road he had cogitated how he could best manage to conceal his trunks from the sight of his children, and wished that they could be carried without their knowledge into a little cabinet adjoining his bed-chamber, of which he alone had the key: that he had looked upon this as an impossibility; but that, on dismounting at his door, he found the horse on which his trunks had been placed had run away, and therefore saw himself suddenly spared the trouble of hiding his treasures. "I assure thee," said the old man to his daughter, "that the loss of these riches did not distress me. I had not possessed them long enough to regret them greatly; but the adventure appeared to me a gloomy prognostic of my fate. I did not hesitate to believe that the perfidious Beast would act in the same manner by thee. I feared that the favours he conferred upon thee would not be more durable. This idea caused me great anxiety. To conceal it, I feigned to be in need of rest,--it was only to abandon myself without restraint to my grief. I looked upon thy destruction as certain, but my sorrow was soon dissipated. The sight of the trunks I thought I had lost renewed my hopes of thy happiness. I found them placed in my little cabinet, precisely where I had wished them to be. The keys of them, which I had forgotten and left behind me on the table in the saloon wherein we had passed the night, were in the locks. This circumstance, which afforded me a new proof of the kindness of the Beast, and his constant attention, overwhelmed me with joy. It was then that, no longer doubting the advantageous result of thy adventure, I reproached myself for entertaining such unjust suspicions of the honour of that generous Monster, and craved his pardon a hundred times for the abuse which, in my distress, I had mentally lavished upon him.