Page:Fairytales00auln.djvu/285

Rh must have weighed more than a thousand pounds. It was all gold and diamonds. How beautiful! how amiable she is!" Finette said in a low voice, "So was I; so was I." "What dost thou mutter there?" said her sisters. She repeated in a still lower tone, "So was I; so was I." This little game was played for some time. There was scarcely a day that Finette did not appear in a new dress; for the casket was a fairy one, and the more you took out of it the more there came in, and everything so highly fashionable, that all the ladies dressed themselves in imitation of Finette.

One evening that Finette had danced more than usual, and had delayed her departure to a later hour, being anxious to make up for lost time and get home a little before her sisters, she walked so fast that she lost one of her slippers, which was of red velvet, embroidered with pearls. She tried to find it in the road, but the night was so dark, her search was in vain, and she entered the house one foot shod and the other not. The next day, Prince Chéri, the King's eldest son, going out hunting, found Finette's slipper. He had it picked up, examined it, admired its diminutive size and elegance, turned it over and over, kissed it, took care of it and carried it home with him. From that day he would eat nothing, he became thin, and altered visibly; was yellow as a quince, melancholy, depressed. The King and Queen, who loved him to distraction, sent in every direction for the choicest game and the best sweetmeats. They were less than nothing to him. He looked at it all without uttering a word in reply to his mother when she spoke to him. They sent everywhere for the first physicians, even as far as Paris, and Montpellier. When they arrived they saw the Prince, and after watching him for three days and three nights without once losing sight of him, they came to the conclusion that he was in love, and that he would die if they did not find the only remedy for him. The Queen who doted on her son, was nearly dissolved in tears, so great was her grief at not being able to discover the object of his love, that he might marry her. She brought into his apartment the most beautiful ladies she could find. He would not