n all the good
qualities of his heart and mind, no longer saw the deformity of his
body, or the ugliness of his features; that his hump appeared to her
nothing more than a good-natured shrug of his shoulders, and that
instead of noticing, as she had done, how badly he limped, she saw in
him only a certain lounging air, which charmed her. They say also that
his eyes, which squinted, only seemed to her the more brilliant for
this; and that the crookedness of his glance was to her merely
expressive of his great love; and, finally, that his great red nose had
in it, to her mind, something martial and heroic. However this may be,
the Princess promised on the spot to marry him, provided he obtained the
consent of the King, her father. The King, having learned that his
daughter entertained a great regard for Riquet with the Tuft, whom he
knew also to be a very clever and wise Prince, received him with
pleasure as his son-in-law. The wedding took place the next morning, as
Riquet with the Tuft had foreseen, and according to the orders which he
had given a long time before.

No beauty, no talent, has power above
Some indefinite charm discern'd only by love.

LITTLE THUMBLING

Once upon a time there was a woodcutter and his wife who had seven
children, all boys. The eldest was but ten years old, and the youngest
only seven. People wondered that the woodcutter had so many children so
near in age, but the fact was, that several of them were twins. He and
his wife were very poor, and their seven children were a great burden to
them, as not one of them was yet able to earn his livelihood. What
troubled them still more was, that the youngest was very delicate, and
seldom spoke, which they considered a proof of stupidity rather than of
good sense. He was very diminutive, and, when first born, scarcely
bigger than one's thumb, and so they called him Little Thumbling.

This poor child was the scapegoat of the house, and was blamed for
everything that happened. Nevertheless, he was the shrewdest and most
sensible of all his brothers, and if he spoke little, he listened a
great deal.

There came a year of bad harvest, and the famine was so severe that
these poor people determined to get rid of their children. One evening,
when they were all in bed, and the woodcutter was sitting over the fire
with his wife, he said to her, with an aching heart, "You see plainly
that we can no longer find food for our children. I canno