I should be a fool."

Cinderella, indeed, expected well such answer, and was very glad of the
refusal; for she would have been sadly put to it if her sister had lent
her what she asked for jestingly.

The next day the two sisters were at the ball, and so was Cinderella,
but dressed more magnificently than before. The King's son was always by
her, and never ceased his compliments and kind speeches to her; to whom
all this was so far from being tiresome that she quite forgot what her
godmother had recommended to her; so that she, at last, counted the
clock striking twelve when she took it to be no more than eleven; she
then rose up and fled, as nimble as a deer. The Prince followed, but
could not overtake her. She left behind one of her glass slippers, which
the Prince took up most carefully. She got home but quite out of breath,
and in her nasty old clothes, having nothing left her of all her finery
but one of the little slippers, fellow to that she dropped. The guards
at the palace gate were asked:

If they had not seen a princess go out.

Who said: They had seen nobody go out but a young girl, very meanly
dressed, and who had more the air of a poor country wench than a
gentlewoman.

When the two sisters returned from the ball Cinderella asked them: If
they had been well diverted, and if the fine lady had been there.

They told her: Yes, but that she hurried away immediately when it struck
twelve, and with so much haste that she dropped one of her little glass
slippers, the prettiest in the world, which the King's son had taken up;
that he had done nothing but look at her all the time at the ball, and
that most certainly he was very much in love with the beautiful person
who owned the glass slipper.

What they said was very true; for a few days after the King's son caused
it to be proclaimed, by sound of trumpet, that he would marry her whose
foot the slipper would just fit. They whom he employed began to try it
upon the princesses, then the duchesses and all the Court, but in vain;
it was brought to the two sisters, who did all they possibly could
to thrust their foot into the slipper, but they could not effect it.
Cinderella, who saw all this, and knew her slipper, said to them,
laughing:

"Let me see if it will not fit me."

Her sisters burst out a-laughing, and began to banter her. The gentleman
who was sent to try the slipper looked earnestly at Cinderella, and,
finding her very handsome, said:

It wa