Fairy Tales, Volume 2 (of 2) — Story, Setting & Ideas

y quick and a trifle heedless, or because the decree of the fairy has so ordained, she pierced her hand with it and fell in a swoon.

The good old woman, in great alarm, cried out for help. People came running in from all directions. They threw water on the Princess’s face; they unlaced her; they struck her on the palms of her hands and rubbed her temples with cologne water; but nothing would bring her to.

Then the King, who had come up on hearing the noise, remembered the prediction of the fairies. He knew very well that this must come to pass, since the fairies had decreed it. He had the Princess carried into the finest apartment in the palace, and laid upon a bed embroidered with gold and silver. One would have taken her for a little angel, she was so beautiful; her cheeks were carnation, and her lips like coral. Her eyes were closed, it is true, but she was heard to breathe softly, which satisfied those about her that she was not dead. The King gave orders that they should let her sleep quietly until the time came for her to awake.

The good fairy who had saved her life by condemning her to sleep a hundred years was in the kingdom of Mataquin, twelve thousand leagues away, when this accident happened to the Princess; but she was promptly told of it by a little dwarf who had a pair of seven-league boots,—that is, boots with which he could cover seven leagues of ground at a single stride. The fairy set out immediately, and arrived at the castle about an hour later in a fiery chariot drawn by dragons.

The King handed her out of the chariot. She approved everything he had done; but, as she had great foresight, she thought that when the Princess awoke she would be much perplexed and troubled at finding herself all alone in this old palace. So this is what she did. She touched with her wand everything in the palace except the King and Queen,—governesses, maids of honor, ladies of the bedchamber, gentlemen, officers, stewards, cooks, scullions, guards, porters, pages, and footmen; she touched also all the horses in the stable with their grooms, the great mastiffs in the courtyard, and even little Pouste, the Princess’s tiny spaniel that was lying on the bed beside her.

The moment she touched them they all fell asleep, not to wake again till their mistress did. This was done in order that they might be ready to serve her again when she had need of them. Even the spits that stood before the fire, as full as they could hold of partridges and pheasants, fell asleep, and the fire itself as well. All this was done in a moment. Fairies are not long in doing their business!

And now the King and Queen, having kissed their dear child without waking her, left the castle, issuing a proclamation that no one should come near it. These commands were not necessary, for in less than a quarter of an hour there grew up all around the park such a vast number of trees great and small, and of bushes and brambles, twining one within another, that neither man nor beast could pass through, and nothing could be seen but the very top of the towers of the palace, and that, too, only from a great distance. Every one knew that this was the work of the fairy in order that the Princess, while she slept, should have nothing to fear from curious people.

A hundred years passed, and the kingdom was in the hands of another royal family. The son of the reigning King was hunting one day in that part of the country, and asked what those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great dense wood. Every one answered according as he had heard. Some said it was an old haunted castle; others, that all the witches of the country held their revels there. But the common opinion was that an ogre lived there, and that he carried thither all the little children he could catch, secure that no one would follow him, for he alone had power to make his way through the wood.

The Prince did not know what to believe; but finally an aged man spoke to him thus: “May it please your Highness, more than fifty years ago I heard my father tell that there was in that castle a Princess, the most beautiful ever seen; and that she was to sleep there a hundred years, and that she would be wakened by a King’s son for whom she was waiting.”