complete the misfortune, she heard the great lions coming, roaring tremendously, for they had smelt her.
"Alas, what will become of me!" she exclaimed piteously; "I shall be devoured!" She wept, and not having strength to fly, she clung to the tree under which she had slept. At that moment she heard, "Hist! Hist! A-hem! A-hem!" She looked all about her, and raising her eyes, she saw up in the tree a little man not above a cubit in height. He was eating oranges, and said to her, "Oh! I know you well, Queen, and I know the fear you are in that the lions will devour you; and not without reason are you alarmed, for they have devoured many before you, and to complete your misfortune you have no cake."
"I must submit to die!" said the Queen, sighing. "Alas, I should do so with less pain if my dear daughter were but married!" "How? you have a daughter!" exclaimed the Yellow Dwarf. (He was so called from the colour of his skin, and his living in an orange-tree.) "Truly, I am delighted to hear it, for I have sought a wife by land and sea. Look now, if you will promise her to me, I will save you from lions, tigers, or bears." The Queen looked at him, and she was scarcely less frightened at his horrible little figure than she was at the lions. She mused, and made no answer. "What! do you hesitate, Madam?" cried he. "You cannot be very fond of life." At the same moment the Queen perceived the lions on the brow of a hill running towards her. Each had two heads, eight feet, four rows of teeth, and their skin was as hard as shell, and as red as morocco. At this sight, the poor Queen, trembling more than a dove at the view of a falcon, cried out with all her might—"My Lord Dwarf! Toutebelle is yours." "Oh!" said he, with a disdainful air, "Toutebelle is too much of a belle;[1] I will have none of her. You may keep her." "Ah, my Lord," continued the afflicted Queen, "do not refuse her!—she is the most charming Princess in the world!" "Well," said he, "out of charity I accept her: but recollect the gift you have made me!" The trunk of the orange-tree, in which he was seated, immediately opened. The Queen rushed headlong into it; it closed, and the lions were balked of their prey.
The Queen was so agitated that she did not notice a door
- ↑ "Toutebelle est trop belle."
