The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. Шарль Перро

green."

      "Come down quickly," cried Blue Beard, "or I will come up to you."

      "I am coming," answered his wife; and then she cried:

      "Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see any one coming?"

      "I see," replied sister Anne, "a great dust that comes this way."

      "Are they my brothers?"

      "Alas! no, my dear sister, I see a flock of sheep."

      "Will you not come down?" cried Blue Beard.

      "One moment longer," said his wife, and then she cried out:

      "Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see nobody coming?"

      "I see," said she, "two horsemen coming, but they are yet a great way off."

      "God be praised," she cried presently, "they are my brothers; I am beckoning to them, as well as I can, for them to make haste."

      Then Blue Beard bawled out so loud, that he made the whole house tremble. The distressed wife came down, and threw herself at his feet, all in tears, with her hair about her shoulders.

      "Nought will avail," said Blue Beard, "you must die"; then, taking hold of her hair with one hand, and lifting up his scimitar with the other, he was going to take off her head.

      The poor lady turning about to him, and looking at him with dying eyes, desired him to afford her one little moment to recollect herself.

      "No, no," said he, "recommend thyself to God," and was just ready to strike.

      At this very instant there was such a loud knocking at the gate, that Blue Beard made a sudden stop. The gate was opened, and presently entered two horsemen, who drawing their swords, ran directly to Blue Beard. He knew them to be his wife's brothers, one a dragoon, the other a musqueteer; so that he ran away immediately to save himself; but the two brothers pursued so close, that they overtook him before he could get to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords thro' his body and left him dead. The poor wife was almost as dead as her husband, and had not strength enough to rise and welcome her brothers.

      Blue Beard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy captains' commissions for her brothers; and the rest to marry herself to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed with Blue Beard.

The Moral

      O curiosity, thou mortal bane!

      Spite of thy charms, thou causest often pain

      And sore regret, of which we daily find

      A thousand instances attend mankind:

      For thou – O may it not displease the fair —