Page:The Allies Fairy Book.djvu/100

 to sleep there for a hundred years. He told me, too, that she would be wakened by a king’s son, whose bride she was destined to be.”

When he heard this, the young prince was on fire with eagerness. Without worrying about any difficulties, he believed the adventure as good as accomplished, and, urged forward by thoughts of love and of glory, resolved to see straight away what was to be found there. Hardly had he reached the outskirts of the wood, when all the great trees, the brambles and the briars, parted of their own accord to let him pass through. He marched onwards to the castle, which he saw at the end of a great avenue, down which he duly made his way. It surprised him a little, however, to notice that none of his companions had been able to follow him, because the trees closed together again as soon as he had gone past. But a young man—and a prince and lover to boot—is ever valiant! He did not allow himself to pause in his path, and soon came to a larger outer court. Here everything that he cast his eye upon was of a sort to make his blood run cold. Over all was a fearful silence. The semblance of death met his gaze on every side—nothing but the stretched-out bodies of men and animals, all of them to every appearance dead. It was not long, however, before he recognized by the bulbous noses and still red faces of the porters that they were only asleep. Their glasses, where some drops of wine still lingered, served to show that they must have gone to sleep in the very act of drinking.

He passes a large court paved with marble. He mounts the staircase; he enters the hall of the guards, who were drawn up in a row, their carbines on their shoulders, snoring for all they were worth. He goes through several rooms full of lords and ladies, all asleep, some upright, others sitting down. At last he enters a gilded room, where he saw upon a bed—the curtains of which were open at each side—the most beautiful sight that he had ever known, the