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 I will forgive you, on condition that one of them come willingly, and suffer for you. Let me have no words, but go about your business, and swear that, if your daughters refuse to die in your stead, you will return within three months.” The merchant had no mind to sacrifice his daughters to the ugly monster, but he thought, in obtaining this respite, he should have the satisfaction of seeing them once more; so he promised upon oath he would return, and the Beast told him he might set out when he pleased; “but,” added he, “you shall not depart empty handed. Go back to the room where you lay, and you will see a great empty chest; fill it with whatever you like best, and I will send it to your home, and at the same time the Beast withdrew.”

“Well,” said the good man to himself, “if I must die, I shall have the comfort, at least, of leaving something to my poor children.”

He returned to the bed-chamber, and finding a quantity of broad pieces of gold, he filled the great chest the Beast had mentioned, locked it, and afterwards took his horse out of the stable, leaving the palace with as much grief as he had entered it with joy. The horse, of his own ac-