The Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales

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Шарль Перро. The Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales

PREFACE

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

BLUE BEARD

CINDERELLA OR THE LITTLE GLASS SLIPPER

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

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Once upon a time there lived a King and a Queen, who lacked but one thing on earth to make them entirely happy. The King was young, handsome, and wealthy; the Queen had a nature as good and gentle as her face was beautiful; and they adored one another, having married for love – which among kings and queens is not always the rule. Moreover, they reigned over a kingdom at peace, and their people were devoted to them. What more, then, could they possibly want?

Well, they wanted one thing very badly, and the lack of it grieved them more than words can tell. They had no child. Vows, pilgrimages, all ways were tried; yet for a long while nothing came of it all, and the poor Queen especially was in despair.

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Now when the accident befell our Princess the good Fairy Hippolyta, who had saved her life, happened to be in the Kingdom of Mataquin, twelve thousand leagues away; but news of it was brought to her in an incredibly short space of time by a little dwarf who owned a pair of seven-league boots. (These were boots in which you could walk seven leagues at a single stride.) She set off at once to the help of her beloved goddaughter, and behold in an hour this good Fairy arrived at the palace, in a fiery chariot drawn by dragons.

Our King met her and handed her down from the chariot. She approved of all that he had done; but, greatly foreseeing as she was, she bethought her that, as all mortals perish within a hundred years or so, when the time came for the Princess to awake she would be distressed at finding herself orphaned and alone in this old castle.

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