Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/37

The Sleeping Beauty sudden decision, and returning to his home he caused notices to be posted up, forbidding any one to approach the castle, the inmates of which were suffering from an Eastern but temporary affliction known as the Sleeping Sickness.

These notices were unnecessary, for within a few hours there grew up, all around the park, such a number of trees of all sizes, and such a tangle of briars and undergrowth, that neither beast nor man could find a passage. They grew until nothing but the tops of the castle towers could be seen, and these only from a good way off. There was no mistake about it: the Fairy had done her work well, and the Princess might sleep with no fear of visits from the inquisitive.

One day, many, many years afterwards, the incomparable young Prince Florimond happened to ride a-hunting on that side of the country which lay next to the tangled forest, and asked: 'What were those towers he saw pushing up above the midst of a great thick wood?'

They all answered him as they heard tell. Some said it was an old castle haunted by ghosts. 15