EVERY one knows the end of the enchantment, and how, after a hundred
terrestrial cycles, a prince favoured by the fairies penetrated the
enchanted wood, and reached the bed where slept the Princess. He was a
little German princeling, with a pretty moustache, and rounded hips. As
soon as she woke up, she fell, or rather rose so much in love, that she
followed him to his little principality in such a hurry that she never
said a word to the people of her household, who had slept with her for a
hundred years.
Her first lady-in-waiting was quite touched thereby, and exclaimed with
admiration: “I recognize the blood of my kings.” Boulingrin woke up
beside the Duchess de Cicogne at the same time as the Princess and all
her household. As he rubbed his eyes, his mistress said: “Boulingrin,
you have been asleep.” “Not at all, dear lady, not at all.” He spoke in
good faith. Having slept without dreaming for a hundred years, he did
not know that he had been asleep.
“I have been so little asleep,” he said, “that I can repeat what you
said a minute ago.”
“Well, what did I say?”
“You said, ‘I suspect a dark intrigue.’”
As soon as it awoke, the whole of the little Court was discharged; every
one had to fend for himself as best he could.
Boulingrin and Cicogne hired from the castle steward an old
seventeenth-century trap drawn by an animal which was already very aged
before it went to sleep for a hundred years, and drove to the station of
Eaux-Perdues, where they caught a train which, in two hours, deposited
them in the capital of the country. Great was their surprise at all
that they saw and heard. But by the end of a quarter of an hour they had
exhausted their astonishment, and nothing surprised them any more. As
for themselves, nobody took the slightest interest in them. Their story
was perfectly incomprehensible, and awakened no curiosity, for our minds
are not interested in anything that is too obvious, or too difficult to
follow.
As one may well believe, Boulingrin had not the remotest idea what had
happened to him. But when the Duchess said that it was not natural, he
answered:
“Dear lady, allow me to observe that you have been badly trained in
physics. Nothing exists which is not according to Nature.”
There remained to them neither friends, relations, nor property. They
could not identify the position of their house. With the little money
they had they bought a guitar, and sang in the streets. By this means
they gained sufficient to support themselves. At night Cicogne staked
at manille, in the inns, the coppers that had been thrown her during
the day, while Boulingrin, with a bowl of warm wine in front of him,
explained to the company that it was ridiculous to believe in fairies.