ss's face and did all they could to restore her, but nothing would
bring her to. The king, who had heard the noise and confusion, came up
also, and remembering what the fairy had said, he had the princess
carried to the finest apartment and laid upon a richly embroidered bed.
She lay there in all her loveliness, for the swoon had not made her
pale; her lips were cherry-ripe and her cheeks ruddy and fair; her eyes
were closed, but they could hear her breathing quietly; she could not be
dead. The king looked sorrowfully upon her. He knew that she would not
awake for a hundred years.

The good fairy who had saved her life and turned her death into sleep
was in the kingdom of Mataquin, twelve thousand leagues away, when this
happened, but she learned of it from a dwarf who had a pair of
seven-league boots, and instantly set out for the castle, where she
arrived in an hour, drawn by dragons in a fiery chariot. The king came
forward to receive her and showed his grief. The good fairy was very
wise and saw that the princess when she woke would find herself all
alone in that great castle and everything about her would be strange. So
this is what she did. She touched with her wand everybody that was in
the castle, except the king and queen. She touched the governesses,
maids of honour, women of the bedchamber, gentlemen, officers,
stewards, cooks, scullions, boys, guards, porters, pages, footmen; she
touched the horses in the stable with their grooms, the great mastiffs
in the court-yard, and even little Pouste, the tiny lap-dog of the
princess that was on the bed beside her. As soon as she had touched them
they all fell asleep, not to wake again until the time arrived for their
mistress to do so, when they would be ready to wait upon her. Even the
spits before the fire, laden with partridges and pheasants, went to
sleep, and the fire itself went to sleep also.

It was the work of a moment. The king and queen kissed their daughter
farewell and left the castle, issuing a proclamation that no person
whatsoever was to approach it. That was needless, for in a quarter of an
hour there had grown up about it a wood so thick and filled with thorns
that nothing could get at the castle, and the castle top itself could
only be seen from a great distance.

A hundred years went by, and the kingdom was in the hands of another
royal family. The son of the king was hunting one day when he discovered
the towers of the castle above the tops of