“Do not weep, Your Majesties, your daughter will not die. It is true that I have not power enough to entirely undo the evil that my elder sister has done. The Princess will hurt her hand with a spindle, but, instead of dying, she will fall asleep for a hundred years, and then a royal Prince will come and waken her.”
The King, hoping to prevent this calamity, forbade any person in the Kingdom either to spin or even to keep a spindle in the house. Any one who disobeyed was to be punished with death.
Sixteen years after this, the King and Queen went with their Court to a castle in the country, when it happened that the young Princess, wandering curiously from room to room, mounted to the top of a tower. There she found an old woman sitting alone before her wheel. This old woman had never heard that the King had forbidden any one to spin.
“What are you doing, my good mother?” asked the Princess.
“I am spinning, my beautiful child,” answered the old woman.
“Oh, how pretty it is!” exclaimed the Princess. “How do you do it? Give that to me, so I may see if I can do as well!”
And as she spoke, she took the spindle so eagerly and so quickly, that it pierced her hand, and she sank fainting to the floor. The poor old woman, in the greatest distress, cried for help. People came hurrying from all sides. They dashed water on the Princess. They unlaced her robes. They bathed her temples with perfumes. But she did not move. Then the King, who, hearing the commotion, was come into the tower-room, remembered the malediction of the old Fairy. He perceived that the misfortune was a thing that had to come about, since the Fairies had foretold it.
He caused the Princess to be carried to the most splendid apartment in the castle, and to be laid on a couch of down and on pillows of down embroidered with gold and silver. Her eyes were closed, but her soft breathing showed that she was not dead. Then, too, her cheeks were flushed a delicate rose-colour, and her lips were like coral. She seemed a sleeping angel, she was so beautiful.
The kind Fairy, who had saved the Princess’s life, was in the Kingdom of Mataquin, twelve thousand miles away, but the King instantly sent word of the misfortune, by a little dwarf, who travelled in seven-league boots—which are boots that pass over seven leagues at each step—and she arrived directly at the castle, in a chariot of fire drawn by dragons.
She approved of all that the King had done. But being exceedingly wise, she knew that the poor Princess would be in a pitiable condition when at the end of a hundred years she awoke to find herself alone in that old castle. She knew of but one thing to do, and she did it. At a wave of her wand every one fell asleep—ladies of honour, waiting-maids, squires, pages, stewards, cooks, scullions, porters, footmen,—every breathing thing, even the horses in the stables with the grooms, the mastiffs in the courtyard, and little Pouffi, the Princess’s lap dog, who was nestling beside her on the couch—all slept. The spits full of partridges over the fire, and even the fire itself, waited silently to serve their mistress when she should wake and need them.