ntance atone for your ingratitude towards an
unhappy prince who loved you and only sought to make you happy!"

Saying these words, he withdrew slowly.

Rosalie threw herself upon her knees, bathed in tears and called him
tenderly but he disappeared without ever turning to contemplate her
despair. Rosalie was about to faint away, when she heard the little
discordant laugh of the gray mouse and saw it before her.

"Your thanks are due to me, my dear Rosalie, for having assisted you so
well. It was I who sent you those bewitching dreams of the mysterious
tree during the night. It was I who nibbled the cloth, to help you in
your wish to look in. Without this last artifice of mine, I believe I
should have lost you, as well as your father and your prince Gracious.
One more slip, my pet, and you will be my slave for ever!"

The cruel mouse, in her malicious joy, began to dance around Rosalie;
her words, wicked as they were, did not excite the anger of the guilty
girl.

"This is all my fault," said she; "had it not been for my fatal
curiosity and my base ingratitude, the gray mouse would not have
succeeded in making me yield so readily to temptation. I must atone for
all this by my sorrow, by my patience and by the firmness with which I
will resist the third proof to which I am subjected, no matter how
difficult it may be. Besides, I have but a few hours to wait and my dear
prince has told me that his happiness and that of my dearly loved father
and my own, depends upon myself."

Before her lay the smouldering ruins of the palace of the Prince
Gracious. So complete had been its destruction that a cloud of dust and
smoke hung over it, and hardly one stone remained upon another. The
cries of those in pain were borne to her ears and added to her
bitterness of feeling.

Rosalie continued to lie prone on the ground. The gray mouse employed
every possible means to induce her to move from the spot. Rosalie, the
poor, unhappy and guilty Rosalie, persisted in remaining in view of the
ruin she had caused.

THE CASKET

Thus passed the entire day. Rosalie suffered cruelly with thirst.

"Ought I not suffer even more than I do?" she said to herself, "in order
to punish me for all I have made my father and my cousin endure? I will
await in this terrible spot the dawning of my fifteenth birthday."

The night was falling when an old woman who was passing by, approached
and said:--

"My beautiful child, will you oblige me