it could not be a
massive gold one like the others, for only seven had been ordered made.
The old fairy thought herself ill-used and muttered between her teeth.
One of the young fairies, overhearing her, and fancying she might work
some mischief to the little baby, went and hid herself behind the
hangings in the hall, so as to be able to have the last word and undo
any harm the old fairy might wish to work. The fairies now began to
endow the princess. The youngest, for her gift, decreed that she should
be the most beautiful person in the world; the next that she should have
the mind of an angel; the third that she should be perfectly graceful;
the fourth that she should dance admirably well; the fifth, that she
should sing like a nightingale; the sixth, that she should play
charmingly upon every musical instrument. The turn of the old fairy had
now come, and she declared, while her head shook with malice, that the
princess should pierce her hand with a spindle and die of the wound.
This dreadful fate threw all the company into tears of dismay, when the
young fairy who had hidden herself came forward and said:

"Be of good cheer, king and queen; your daughter shall not so die. It is
true I cannot entirely undo what my elder has done. The princess will
pierce her hand with a spindle, but, instead of dying, she will only
fall into a deep sleep. The sleep will last a hundred years, and at the
end of that time a king's son will come to wake her."

The king, in hopes of preventing what the old fairy had foretold,
immediately issued an edict by which he forbade all persons in his
dominion from spinning or even having spindles in their houses under
pain of instant death.

Now fifteen years after the princess was born she was with the king and
queen at one of their castles, and as she was running about by herself
she came to a little chamber at the top of a tower, and there sat an
honest old woman spinning, for she had never heard of the king's edict.

"What are you doing?" asked the princess.

"I am spinning, my fair child," said the old woman, who did not know
her.

"How pretty it is!" exclaimed the princess. "How do you do it? Give it
to me that I may see if I can do it." She had no sooner taken up the
spindle, than, being hasty and careless, she pierced her hand with the
point of it, and fainted away. The old woman, in great alarm, called for
help. People came running in from all sides; they threw water in the
prince