. He knew them to be his wife's brothers, one a dragoon, the other
a musketeer, so that he ran away immediately to save himself; but the
two brothers pursued so close that they overtook him before he could get
to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords through his body
and left him dead. The poor wife was almost as dead as her husband, and
had not strength enough to rise and welcome her brothers.

Blue Beard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his
estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a
young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy
captains commissions for her brothers, and the rest to marry herself to
a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed
with Blue Beard.(1)

(1) Charles Perrault.

TRUSTY JOHN

Once upon a time there was an old king who was so ill that he thought to
himself, "I am most likely on my death-bed." Then he said, "Send Trusty
John to me." Now Trusty John was his favorite servant, and was so called
because all his life he had served him so faithfully. When he approached
the bed the King spake to him: "Most trusty John, I feel my end is
drawing near, and I could face it without a care were it not for my son.
He is still too young to decide everything for himself, and unless you
promise me to instruct him in all he should know, and to be to him as a
father, I shall not close my eyes in peace." Then Trusty John answered:
"I will never desert him, and will serve him faithfully, even though it
should cost me my life." Then the old King said: "Now I die comforted
and in peace"; and then he went on: "After my death you must show him
the whole castle, all the rooms and apartments and vaults, and all the
treasures that lie in them; but you must not show him the last room in
the long passage, where the picture of the Princess of the Golden Roof
is hidden. When he beholds that picture he will fall violently in love
with it and go off into a dead faint, and for her sake he will encounter
many dangers; you must guard him from this." And when Trusty John had
again given the King his hand upon it the old man became silent, laid
his head on the pillow, and died.

When the old King had been carried to his grave Trusty John told the
young King what he had promised his father on his death-bed, and added:
"And I shall assuredly keep my word, and shall be faithful to you as I
have been to him, even thou