'Tis my darling, my Lisette,—
Little pet!—
'Tis Lisette whom I adore,
And with reason, more and more!
When Prudence o'er our playtime
Would hold a distant threat,—
'Twixt now and what comes after,
Who throws her merry laughter?—
'Tis my darling, my Lisette,—
Little pet!—
'Tis Lisette whom I adore,
And with reason, more and more!
CINDERELLA A FAIRY TALE FROM THE FRENCH
Once upon a time there lived a gentleman who married twice. He had one fair daughter by his first wife. Ella was sweet and gentle, taking after her dear dead mother, who had been the most lovable of women. His second wife, a widow with two hard-featured daughters, was very proud and overbearing; and, if her two daughters had only never been born, or, being born, had died, she would then have possessed the vilest temper in all the world. As it was, the three were all equally gifted in that respect.
From the very day of the wedding the step-mother and her daughters took a violent dislike to the young girl, for they could see how beautiful she was, both outwardly and inwardly; and green envy soon turns to hate. They dared not show it openly, for fear of the father's anger; but he, poor man, finding he had taken too heavy a burden upon his shoulders, fell ill and died,—simply worried into his grave. Then his young daughter reaped the full measure of jealousy and spite and malice which her step-mother and sisters could now openly bestow upon her. She was put to do the drudgery of the household at no wages at all, and what was saved in this way was spent on the finery so sorely needed to make the two hard-featured ones at all passable. The poor girl scrubbed the floors, polished the brights, swept the rooms and stairs, cleaned the windows, turned the mangle, and made the beds; and in the evening, when all the work was done, she would sit by the kitchen fire darning the stockings for recreation. When bedtime came she would gaze awhile into the fire, answer the door to her step-sisters coming home from the theatre in all their finery; and then, with their stinging words still in her ears, she would creep up to bed in the garret, there, on a wretched straw mattress, to sleep fast for very weariness and dream of princes and palaces till at morning light she had to begin her dreary round again.
And it was indeed a dreary round. No sooner had she begun to sift the cinders when the bell would ring, and ring again. One of the sisters wanted her,—sometimes both wanted her at once. It was merely a matter of a pin to be fixed, or a ribbon to be tied, but when she came to do it she met with a shower of abuse. 'Look at your hands, you dirty little kitchen slut! How dare you answer the bell with such hands? And your face!—go and look in the glass, Ella: no, go straight to the kitchen pump,—you filthy little slut!'
The 'glass' was corrected to the 'kitchen pump' because they knew very well that if she stood before the glass she would see the reflection of a very beautiful girl—a reflection which they themselves spent hours looking for but could never find.