Riquet with the Tuft, in order to meditate more uninterruptedly over
what she had to do. While she was walking, deep in thought, she heard a
dull sound beneath her feet, as of many persons running to and fro, and
busily occupied. Having listened more attentively, she heard one say,
"Bring me that saucepan;" another, "Give me that kettle;" another, "Put
some wood on the fire." At the same moment the ground opened, and she
saw beneath her what appeared to be a large kitchen, full of cooks,
scullions, and all sorts of servants necessary for the preparation of a
magnificent banquet. There came forth a band of about twenty to thirty
cooks, who went and established themselves in an avenue of the wood, at
a very long table, and who, each with the larding-pin in his hand and
the tail of his fur cap over his ear, set to work, keeping time to a
harmonious song.
The Princess, astonished at this sight, asked the men for whom they were
working.
"Madam," replied the chief among them, "for Prince Riquet with the Tuft,
whose marriage will take place to-morrow." The Princess, still more
surprised than she was before, and suddenly recollecting that it was
just a twelvemonth from the day on which she had promised to marry
Prince Riquet with the Tuft, was overcome with trouble and amazement.
The reason of her not having remembered her promise was, that when she
made it she had been a very foolish person, and when she became gifted
with the new mind that the Prince had given her, she had forgotten all
her follies.
She had not taken another thirty steps, when Riquet with the Tuft
presented himself before her, gaily and splendidly attired, like a
Prince about to be married. "You see, madam," said he, "I keep my word
punctually, and I doubt not that you have come thither to keep yours,
and to make me, by the giving of your hand, the happiest of men."
"I confess to you, frankly," answered the Princess, "that I have not yet
made up my mind on that matter, and that I do not think I shall ever be
able to do so in the way you wish." "You astonish me, madam," said
Riquet with the Tuft. "I have no doubt I do," said the Princess; "and
assuredly, had I to deal with a stupid person, with a man without
intelligence, I should feel greatly perplexed. 'A Princess is bound by
her word,' he would say to me, 'and you must marry me, as you have
promised to do so.' But as the person to whom I speak is, of all men in
the world, the one of greatest sense and understanding, I am certain he
will listen to reason. You know that, when I was no better than a fool,
I nevertheless could not decide to marry you--how can you expect, now
that I have the mind which you have given me, and which renders me much
more difficult to please than before, that I should take to-day a
resolution which I could not then? If you seriously thought of marrying
me, you did very wrong to take away my stupidity, and so enable me to
see more clearly than I saw then." "If a man without intelligence,"
replied Riquet with the Tuft, "who reproached you with your breach of
promise, might have a right, as you have just intimated, to be treated
with indulgence, why would you, madam, that I should receive less
consideration in a matter which affects the entire happiness of my life?
Is it reasonable that persons of intellect should be in a worse position
than those that have none? Can you assert this--you who have so much,
and who so earnestly desired to possess it? But let us come to the
point, if you please. Setting aside my ugliness, is there anything in me
that displeases you? Are you dissatisfied with my birth, my
understanding, my temper, or my manners?"
"Not in the least," replied the Princess; "I admire in you everything
you have mentioned."
[Illustration: _Then said the Princess "I wish that you may be the
handsomest prince in the world."_ _Riquet with the Tuft._]
"If that is so," rejoined Riquet with the Tuft, "I shall soon be happy,
as you have it in your power to make me the most pleasing looking of
men."
"How can that be done?" asked the Princess.
"It can be done," said Riquet with the Tuft, "if you love me
sufficiently to wish that it should be. And, in order, madam, that you
should have no doubt about it, know that the same fairy, who, on the day
I was born, endowed me with the power to give intelligence to the person
I chose, gave you also the power to render handsome the man you should
love, and on whom you should wish to bestow this favour."
"If such be the fact," said the Princess, "I wish, with all my heart,
that you should become the handsomest and most lovable Prince in the
world, and I bestow the gift on you to the fullest extent in my power."
The Princess had no sooner pronounced these words than Riquet with the
Tuft appeared to her eyes, of all men in the world, the handsomest, the
best made, and most attractive she had ever seen. There are some who
assert that it was not the spell of the fairy, but love alone that
caused this metamorphosis. They say that the Princess, having reflected
on the perseverance of her lover, on his prudence, and on all the good
qualities of his heart and mind, no longer saw the deformity of his
body, or the ugliness of his features; that his hump appeared to her
nothing more than a good-natured shrug of his shoulders, and that
instead of noticing, as she had done, how badly he limped, she saw in
him only a certain lounging air, which charmed her. They say also that
his eyes, which squinted, only seemed to her the more brilliant for
this; and that the crookedness of his glance was to her merely
expressive of his great love; and, finally, that his great red nose had
in it, to her mind, something martial and heroic. However this may be,
the Princess promised on the spot to marry him, provided he obtained the
consent of the King, her father. The King, having learned that his
daughter entertained a great regard for Riquet with the Tuft, whom he
knew also to be a very clever and wise Prince, received him with
pleasure as his son-in-law. The wedding took place the next morning, as
Riquet with the Tuft had foreseen, and according to the orders which he
had given a long time before.
No beauty, no talent, has power above
Some indefinite charm discern'd only by love.
LITTLE THUMBLING
Once upon a time there was a woodcutter and his wife who had seven
children, all boys. The eldest was but ten years old, and the youngest
only seven. People wondered that the woodcutter had so many children so
near in age, but the fact was, that several of them were twins. He and
his wife were very poor, and their seven children were a great burden to
them, as not one of them was yet able to earn his livelihood. What
troubled them still more was, that the youngest was very delicate, and
seldom spoke, which they considered a proof of stupidity rather than of
good sense. He was very diminutive, and, when first born, scarcely
bigger than one's thumb, and so they called him Little Thumbling.
This poor child was the scapegoat of the house, and was blamed for
everything that happened. Nevertheless, he was the shrewdest and most
sensible of all his brothers, and if he spoke little, he listened a
great deal.
There came a year of bad harvest, and the famine was so severe that
these poor people determined to get rid of their children. One evening,
when they were all in bed, and the woodcutter was sitting over the fire
with his wife, he said to her, with an aching heart, "You see plainly
that we can no longer find food for our children. I cannot let them die
of hunger before my very eyes, and I have made up my mind to take them
to the wood to-morrow, and there lose them, which will be easily done,
for whilst they are busy tying up the faggots, we have only to run away
unseen by them." "Ah!" exclaimed the woodcutter's wife, "Can you find
the heart to lose your own children?" In vain her husband represented to
her their great poverty; she would not consent to the deed. She was
poor, but she was their mother. After a while, however, having thought
over the misery it would be to her to see them die of hunger, she
assented to her husband's proposal, and went weeping to bed.
Little Thumbling had overheard all they said, for having found out, as
he lay in his bed, that they were talking of their affairs, he got up
quietly and crept under his father's stool, so as to listen to what they
were saying without been seen. He went to bed again, but did not sleep a
wink the rest of the night, thinking what he should do. He got up early,
and went down to the banks of the stream; there he filled his pockets
with small white pebbles, and then returned home. They set out all
together, and Little Thumbling said not a word to his brothers of what
he had overheard. They entered a very thick forest, wherein, at ten
paces distant, they could not see one another. The woodcutter began to
cut wood, and the children to pick up brushwood for the faggots. The
father and mother, seeing them busy at work, gradually stole farther and
farther away from them, and then suddenly ran off down a little winding
path.
[Illustration: '_The boys followed him._']
When the children found themselves all alone, they began to scream and
cry with all their might. Little Thumbling let them scream, well knowing
how he could get home again, for on their way to the forest, he had
dropped all along the road the little white pebbles he had in his
pockets. He then said to them, "Have no fear, brothers; my father and
mother have left us here, but I will take you safely home; only follow
me." They followed him, and he led them back to the house by the same
road that they had taken to the forest. They were afraid to go inside at
once, but placed themselves close to the door, to listen to what their
father and mother were saying. It chanced that just at the moment that
the woodcutter and his wife reached home, the lord of the manor sent
them ten crowns, which he had owed them a long time, and which they had
given up all hope of receiving. This was new life to them, for the poor
things were actually starving. The woodcutter immediately sent his wife
to the butcher's, and, as it was many a day since they had tasted meat,
she bought three times as much as was sufficient for two people's
supper. When they had appeased their hunger, the woodcutter's wife said,
"Alas! where now are our poor children? They would fare merrily on what
we have left. But it was you, William, who would lose them. Truly did I
say we should repent it. What are they now doing in the forest? Alas!
Heaven help me! the wolves have, perhaps, already devoured them. Cruel
man that you are, thus to have lost your children!"
The woodcutter began at last to lose his temper, for she repeated over
twenty times that they would repent the deed, and that she had said it
would be so. He threatened to beat her if she did not hold her tongue.
It was not that the woodcutter was not, perhaps, even more sorry than
his wife, but that she made so much noise about it, and that he was like
many other people, who are fond of women who say the right thing, but
are annoyed by those who are always in the right. The wife was all in
tears. "Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?" She uttered
her cry, at last, so loudly, that the children, who were at the door,
heard her, and began to call out all together, "Here we are! here we
are!" She rushed to the door to open it, and embracing them, exclaimed,
"How thankful I am to see you again, my dear children; you are very
tired and hungry; and you, little Peter, how dirty you are! come here
and let me wash you." Peter was her eldest son, and she loved him better
than all the rest, because he was red-headed, and she was rather
red-haired herself. They sat down to supper and ate with an appetite
that delighted their father and mother, to whom they related how
frightened they had been in the forest, nearly all keeping on speaking
at the same time. The good people were overjoyed to see their children
around them once more, and their joy lasted as long as the ten crowns.
When the money was spent, however, they fell back into their former
state of misery, and resolved to lose their children again; and to make
quite sure of doing so this time, they determined to lead them much
further from home than they had before.
They could not talk of this so secretly, but that they were overheard by
Little Thumbling, who reckoned upon being able to get out of the
difficulty by the same means as the first time; but though he got up
very early to collect the little pebbles, he did not succeed in his
object, for he found the house door double locked. He was at his wit's
end what to do, when his mother having given each of them a piece of
bread for their breakfast, it occurred to him that he might make the
bread take the place of the pebbles, by strewing crumbs along the path
as they went, and so he put his piece in his pocket. The father and
mother led them into the thickest and darkest part of the forest, and as
soon as they had done so, they turned into a bypath, and left them
there. Little Thumbling did not trouble himself much, for he believed he
could easily find his way back by help of the crumbs which he had
scattered wherever he had passed; but he was greatly surprised to find
not a single crumb left--the birds had come and picked them all up. The
poor children were now, indeed, in great distress; the further they
wandered, the deeper they plunged into the forest. Night came on, and a
great wind arose, which filled them with terror. They fancied they heard
nothing on every side but the howling of wolves, running towards them to
devour them. They scarcely dared to speak or look behind them. Then
there came a heavy rain, which drenched them to the skin; they slipped
at every step, tumbling into the mud, out of which they scrambled
covered with dirt, not knowing what to do with their hands. Little
Thumbling climbed up a tree to try if he could see anything from the top
of it. Having looked about on all sides, he saw a little light, like
that of a candle, but it was a long way off, on the other side of the
forest. He came down again, and when he had reached the ground, he could
no longer see the light. He was in despair at this, but having walked on
with his brothers for some time in the direction of the light, he caught
sight of it again as they emerged from the forest.
At length they reached the house where the candle was shining, not
without many alarms, for often they lost sight of it altogether, and
always when they went down into the hollows. They knocked loudly at the
door, and a good woman came to open it. She asked them what they wanted.
Little Thumbling told her they were poor children who had lost their way
in the forest, and who begged a night's lodgings for charity's sake. The
woman, seeing they were all so pretty, began to weep, and said to them,
"Alas! my poor children, to what a place have you come! Know you not
that this is the house of an ogre who eats little children?" "Alas!"
replied Little Thumbling, who trembled from head to foot, as indeed did
all his brothers, "what shall we do? We shall certainly be all eaten up
by the wolves to-night, if you do not give us shelter, and, in that
case, we would rather be eaten by the ogre; perhaps he may have pity
upon us, if you are kind enough to ask him." The ogre's wife, who
thought that she might be able to hide them from her husband till the
next morning, let the children come in, and led them where they could
warm themselves by a good fire, for there was a whole sheep on the spit,
roasting for the ogre's supper.
Just as they were beginning to get warm they heard two or three loud
knocks at the door. It was the ogre who had come home. His wife
immediately made the children hide under the bed, and went to open the
door. The ogre first asked if his supper was ready, and if she had drawn
the wine, and with that he sat down to his meal. The mutton was all but
raw, but he liked it all the better for that. He sniffed right and left,
saying that he smelt fresh meat. "It must be the calf I have just
skinned," said his wife. "I tell you, I smell fresh meat," replied the
ogre, giving an angry glance at his wife; "there is something here I do
not understand." With these words, he rose from the table and went
straight towards the bed. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "so this is the way in
which you would deceive me, you wretched woman! I do not know what
hinders me from eating you also! It is well for you that you are such an
old creature! But here is some game, which comes in handy, and will
serve to feast three of my ogre friends, who are soon coming to pay me a
visit." He dragged the children from under the bed, one after the other.
They fell upon their knees, begging for mercy, but they had to deal with
the most cruel of all the ogres, and who, far from feeling pity for
them, devoured them already with his eyes, and said to his wife that
they would be dainty bits, when she had made a good sauce for them. He
went and took up a large knife, and as he came towards the children
again, he whetted it on a long stone that he held in his left hand. He
had already seized one of them, when his wife said to him, "Why are you
doing that at this hour of night? Will it not be time enough to-morrow?"
"Hold your peace," replied the ogre. "They will be the more tender."
"But you have already too much food," continued his wife. "Here are a
calf, two sheep, and half a pig." "You are right," said the ogre, "give
them a good supper, that they may keep plump, and then put them to bed."
The good woman was rejoiced, and brought them plenty of supper; but they
could not eat, they were so overcome with fright. As for the ogre, he
seated himself to drink again, delighted to think he had such a treat in
store for his friends. He drained a dozen goblets more than usual, which
made him feel sleepy and heavy, and obliged him to go to bed.
The ogre had seven daughters, who were still young children. These
little ogresses had the most beautiful complexions, as they lived on
fresh meat like their father; but they had very small round grey eyes,
hooked noses, and very large mouths, with long teeth, exceedingly sharp,
and wide apart. They were not very wicked as yet; but they promised to
become so, for they already began to bite little children, that they
might suck their blood. They had been sent to bed early, and were all
seven in a large bed, each wearing a crown of gold on her head. In the
same room was another bed of the same size. It was in this bed that the
ogre's wife put the seven little boys to sleep, after which she went to
bed herself.
Little Thumbling, who had noticed that the ogre's daughters had golden
crowns on their heads, and who was afraid that the ogre might repent not
having killed him and his brothers that evening, got up in the middle of
the night, and, taking off his own nightcap, and those of his brothers,
went very softly and placed them on the heads of the ogre's daughters,
first taking off their golden crowns, which he put on his brothers and
himself, in order that the ogre might mistake them for his daughters,
and his daughters for the boys whom he wanted to kill.
Everything turned out as Little Thumbling had expected. The ogre awoke
at midnight, and regretted having put off till the morning what he might
have done the evening before. He, therefore, jumped suddenly out of bed,
and seizing his great knife, "Let us go, and see," said he, "how the
young rogues are getting on! I will not think twice about it this time."
So he stole on tiptoes up to his daughters' bedroom, and went up to the
bed in which lay the little boys, who were all asleep except Thumbling,
who was dreadfully frightened when the ogre put his hand on his head to
feel it, as he had in turn felt those of his brothers. The ogre, feeling
the golden crowns, said, "Truly, I was about to do a pretty piece of
work! It's plain I drank too much wine last night." He then went to the
bed where his daughters slept, and having felt the little nightcaps that
belonged to the boys, "Aha!" cried he, "here are our fine young fellows.
Let us to work boldly!" So saying, he, without pause, cut the throats of
his seven daughters.
Well satisfied with his deed, he returned and lay down beside his wife.
As soon as Little Thumbling heard the ogre snoring, he awoke his
brothers, and bade them dress themselves quickly and follow him. They
crept down into the garden and jumped over the wall. They ran nearly all
night long, trembling the whole time, and not knowing whither they were
going. The ogre, awaking in the morning, said to his wife, "Go upstairs
and dress those young scamps you took in last night." The ogress was
astonished at her husband's kindness, never guessing what he meant, and
only fancying that he wished her to go and put on their clothes. She
went upstairs, where she was horrified to find that her own children had
been killed. The first thing she did was to faint, for it is the first
thing that almost all women do in similar circumstances. The ogre,
fearing that his wife would be too long over the job he had given her to
do, went upstairs to help her. His surprise was not less than had been
his wife's, when his eyes fell on the frightful spectacle.
"Ah! what have I done?" he exclaimed. "The young wretches shall pay for
it, and that at once." He threw a jugful of water in his wife's face,
and having brought her to, said, "Quick! fetch me my seven-league
boots, that I may go after them and catch them." He set out, and after
running in every direction, came at last upon the track of the poor
children, who were not more than a hundred yards from their father's
house. They saw the ogre striding from hill to hill, and stepping over
rivers as easily as if they were the smallest brooks. Little Thumbling,
who caught sight of a hollow rock close by where they were, hid his
brothers in it, and crept in after them, keeping his eye on the ogre all
the while. The ogre, feeling very tired with his long journey to no
purpose--for seven-league boots are very fatiguing to the
wearer--thought he should like to rest, and, by chance, sat down on the
very rock in which the little boys had concealed themselves. As he was
quite worn out, he had not rested long before he fell asleep, and began
to snore so dreadfully, that the poor children were not less frightened
than they were when he took up the great knife to cut their throats.
Little Thumbling was not so much alarmed, and told his brothers to run
quickly into the house while the ogre was sound asleep, and not to be
uneasy about him. They took his advice and soon reached home. Little
Thumbling then going up to the ogre, gently pulled off his boots, and
put them on himself. The boots were very large and very long; but as
they were enchanted boots, they had the quality of becoming larger or
smaller according to the leg of the person who wore them, so that they
fitted him as if they had been made for him. He went straight to the
ogre's house, where he found the wife weeping over her murdered
daughters. "Your husband," said Little Thumbling to her, "is in great
danger, for he has been seized by a band of robbers, who have sworn to
kill him if he does not give them all his gold and silver. Just as they
had their daggers at his throat, he saw me, and begged me to come and
tell you what had happened to him, and sent word that you were to give
me all his ready money, without keeping back any of it, as otherwise
they will kill him without mercy. As time pressed, he insisted on my
taking his seven-league boots, which you see I have on, in order that I
might make haste, and also that you might be sure I was not imposing
upon you."
The good woman, very much alarmed, immediately gave him all the money
she could find, for the ogre was not a bad husband to her, although he
ate little children. Little Thumbling, thus laden with all the ogre's
wealth, hastened back to his father's house, where he was received with
great joy.