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Updated: May 18, 2025
He gave three taps with his wand the feathers flew by millions out of the basket, and arranged themselves in little heaps, each belonging to a different bird. "What do I not owe you?" cried Graciosa. "Love me!" answered the prince, tenderly, and said no more. When Grognon arrived, she found the task done.
She remembered what Percinet had said: that she would never return to the fairy palace, until after she was buried. Perhaps this final cruelty of Grognon would be the end of her sorrows. So she took courage, crept through the little door, and lo! she came out into a beautiful garden, with long alleys, fruit-trees, and flower-beds.
The cruel Grognon ordered four women, ugly as witches, to take her and strip off her fine clothes, and whip her with rods till her white shoulders were red with blood. But lo! as soon as the rods touched her, they turned into bundles of feathers, and the women tired themselves to death with whipping, without hurting Graciosa the least in the world! "Ah! kind Percinet, what do I not owe you?
Without more ado, he abandoned his daughter to her stepmother's will. Grognon, transported with joy, dragged her to a dark prison, took away her clothes, made her dress in rags, feed on bread and water, and sleep upon straw. Forlorn and hopeless, Graciosa dared not now call upon Percinet; she doubted if he still loved her enough to come to her aid.
I might longer have concealed myself from you, but for your present sorrow, in which, however, I hope to be of both comfort and assistance a page and yet a prince, and your faithful lover." At these words, at once tender and respectful, the princess, who had long heard of the fairy-prince Percinet, felt so happy that she feared Grognon no more.
Then he bade her look, and she saw as hi a picture, or as in a play upon the stage, the King and Grognon sitting together on their throne. The latter was telling how Graciosa had hanged herself in a cave. "She will not be much loss, sire; and as, when dead, she was far too frightful for you to look at, I have given orders to bury her at once."
When she was reproached by Fetis for using ad captandum effects too lavishly in the admonition: "With the degree of elevation to which you have attained, you should impose your opinion on the public, not submit to theirs," she answered, with a laugh and a shrug of her charming shoulders: "Mon cher grognon, there may perhaps be two or three connoisseurs in the theatre, but it is not they who give success.
No knight ventured to dispute this fact, until there appeared one who carried a little box adorned with diamonds, and proclaimed aloud that Grognon was the ugliest woman in the universe, and that the most beautiful was she whose portrait was in the box. He opened it, and behold the image of the Princess Graciosa!
The fairy promised to think of it, and soon brought a skein as thick as four persons, yet composed of thread so fine, that it broke if you only blew upon it, and so tangled that it had neither beginning nor end. Grognon, delighted, sent for her poor prisoner. "There, miss, teach your clumsy fingers to unwind this skein, and if you break a single thread I will flay you alive.
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