Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/35

The Sleeping Beauty years or so, when the time came for the Princess to awake she would be distressed at finding herself orphaned and alone in this old castle.

So this is what she did. She touched with her wand everything and everybody in the palace: the King the Queen; the ministers and privy councillors; the archbishop (who was the Grand Almoner), the bishops and the minor clergy; the maids-of-honour, ladies of the bedchamber, governesses, gentlemen-in-waiting, equerries, heralds, physicians, officers, masters of the household, cooks, scullions, lackeys, guards, Switzers, pages, footmen. She touched the Princess's tutors and the Court professors in the midst of their deep studies. She touched likewise all the horses in the stables, with the grooms; the huge mastiffs in the yard; even Tiny, the Princess's little pet dog, and Fluff, her black-and-white cat, that lay coiled on a cushion by her bedside.

The instant the Fairy Hippolyta touched them they all fell asleep, not to awake until the same moment as their mistress, that all might be ready to wait on her when she needed them. The very spits at the fire went to sleep, loaded as they were 13