THE story of the Sleeping Beauty is well known; we have excellent
accounts of it, both in prose and in verse. I shall not undertake to
relate-it again; but, having become acquainted with several memoirs of
the time which have remained unpublished, I discovered some anecdotes
relating to King Cloche and Queen Satine, whose daughter it was that
slept a hundred years, and also to several members of the Court who
shared the Princess’s sleep. I propose to communicate to the public such
portions of these revelations as have seemed to me most interesting.
After several years of marriage, Queen Satine gave the King, her
husband, a daughter who received the names of Paule-Marie-Aurore. The
baptismal festivities were planned by the Duc des Hoisons, grand master
of the ceremonies, in accordance with a formulary dating from the
Emperor Honorius, which was so mildewed and so nibbled by rats that it
was impossible to decipher any of it.
There were still fairies in those days, and those who had titles used
to go to Court. Seven of them were invited to be god-mothers, Queen
Titania, Queen Mab, the wise Vivien, trained by Merlin in the arts of
enchantment, Melusina, whose history was written by Jean d’Arras, and
who became a serpent every Saturday (but the baptism was on a Sunday),
Urgèle, White Anna of Brittany, and Mourgue who led Ogier the Dane into
the country of Avalon.
They appeared at the castle in robes of the colour of time, of the sun,
of the moon, and of the nymphs, all glittering with diamonds and pearls.
As all were taking their places at table an old fairy called Alcuine,
who had not been invited, was seen to enter.
“Pray do not be annoyed, madame,” said the King, “that you were not of
those invited to this festivity; it was believed that you were either
dead or enchanted.”
Since the fairies grew old, there is no doubt that they used to die.
They all died in time, and everybody knows that Melusina became a
kitchen wench in Hell. By means of enchantment they could be imprisoned
in a magic circle, a tree, a bush, or a stone, or changed into a statue,
a hind, a dove, a footstool, a ring, or a slipper. But as a fact it was
not because they thought her dead or enchanted that they had not invited
the fairy Alcuine; it was because her presence at the banquet had been
regarded as contrary to etiquette. Madame de Maintenon was able to state
without the least exaggeration that “there are no austerities in the
convents like those to which Court etiquette subjects the great.” In
accordance with his sovereign’s royal wish the Duc des Hoisons had not
invited the fairy Alcuine, because she had one quartering of nobility
too few to be admitted to Court. When the Ministers of State represented
that it was of the utmost importance to humour this powerful and
vindictive fairy, of whom they would make a dangerous enemy if they
excluded her from the festivities, the King replied in peremptory tones
that she could not be invited, as she was not qualified by birth.
This unhappy monarch, even more than his predecessors, was a slave to
etiquette. His obstinacy in subordinating the greatest interests and
most urgent duties to the smallest exigencies of an obsolete ceremonial,
had more than once caused serious loss to the monarchy, and had involved
the realm in formidable perils. Of all these perils and losses, those
to which Cloche had exposed his house by refusing to stretch a point
of etiquette in favour of a fairy, without birth, yet formidable and
illustrious, were by no means the hardest to foresee, nor was it least
urgent to avert them.
The aged Alcuine, enraged by the contempt to which she had been
subjected, bestowed upon the Princess Aurore a disastrous gift. At
fifteen years of age, beautiful as the day, this royal child was to die
of a fatal wound, caused by a spindle, an innocent weapon in the hands
of mortal women, but a terrible one when the three spinstress Sisters
twist and coil thereon the thread of our destinies and the strings of
our hearts.
The seven godmothers could modify, but could not annul Alcuine’s decree,
and thus the fate of the Princess was determined. “Aurore will prick her
hand with a spindle; she will not die of it, but will fall into a sleep
of a hundred years, from which the son of a king will come to arouse
her.”