Page:Fairytales00auln.djvu/294

250 Bedou has caused me." "Ah! Shepherdess," said the hen, "Let me live; and, as my fancy is to cackle, I will tell you some wonderful things.

"Do not imagine yourself the daughter of the husbandman who brought you up; no, beautiful Fortunée, he is not your father; but the Queen who gave you birth had already six girls, and, as if it was in her own power to have a boy, her husband and father-in-law threatened to stab her if she did not bring them a son and heir. The poor Queen was again about to become a mother, they shut her up in a castle, and placed round her guards, or more properly speaking, executioners, who had orders to kill her if she gave birth to another daughter.

"The Queen, trembling at the fate which awaited her, could neither eat nor sleep. She had a sister a fairy. To her she wrote, informing her of her just cause of alarm. The Fairy, who was also near her confinement, knew that she would have a son, and as soon as the boy was born, she loaded the zephyrs with a cradle, in which she put her own son, and ordered them to carry the little prince into the Queen's chamber, and change him for the daughter which would be born to her; but this forethought was of no avail, for the Queen, receiving no answer from her fairy sister, profited by the good-will of one of her guards, who, out of pity, allowed her to escape by a ladder of ropes.

"As soon as you were in the world, the afflicted Queen, trying to hide herself, came to this cottage nearly dead with grief and fatigue. I was the husbandman's wife, and a good nurse. She gave you in charge to me, and told me her misfortunes, by which she was so overwhelmed, that she died without having time to give us any directions respecting what was to be done with you. As I loved gossiping all my life, I could not help telling everybody this adventure; and so one day I told all I knew about it to a beautiful lady who came here. She instantly touched me with a wand, and I became a hen, without power to speak any more. My grief was excessive, and my husband, who was absent at the time of the metamorphose, knew nothing of it. On his return, he looked everywhere for me; finally he thought I was drowned, or that the beasts of the forest had devoured me. This same lady who had done me so much mischief