Page:Sleeping beauty in the wood (1).pdf/21

This page has been validated.

( 21 )

Do it, said she, stretching out her neck, execute your orders, and then I shall go and see my children whom I so dearly loved, for she thought them dead ever since they had been taken from her.

No, no, fair Princess, cried the humane clerk of the kitchen, all in tears, you shall see your children again, but then you shall go with me to my lodgings, wncre I have concealed them, and I shall deceive the Queen once more, by giving her another young kid in your stead

Upon this he forewith couducted her to his chamber, where leaving her to embrace her children, and cry aloud with them, he went and dressed a young kid, which the Queen had for supper, and devoured it with the same appetite, as though it had been the young Queen

Now was she exceedingly delighted with this unheard of cruelty, and she had invented a story to tell the King at his return, how the mad wolves had eaten up the Queen his Wife, with her two children.

One evenin some time rfter, as she was, according to her usual custom