Beauty and the Beast: The Rose, the Castle and the Broken Spell | Fairy Tale Sleep Story

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Come and sit by the fire, let the day loosen from your shoulders, the way a knotted ribbon loosens under patient fingers, one gentle pull at a time, until it slips free and falls away and is forgotten. The room around you is quiet now, and the quiet is a soft and generous thing, Everything wide enough to hold you and everything you carried through the day and kind enough to ask for none of it. Tonight an old story from France, from the lamplit parlors and the country hearths of that green and storied land, a tale first written down long ago by patient French tellers and carried ever since by governesses and grandmothers told in low and unhurried voices to listeners already halfway gone into sleep. It was never a tale meant for the bright and busy hours. It was meant to be received the way you receive it now, in the soft dark, with your breath growing slow, with nothing left to do and nowhere left to go. So let your breath grow slow. There is nothing here that you must remember and nothing you must follow closely and no question that will ever be asked of you. Feel the mattress take the whole weight of you, feel the pillow accept the weight of your head and let your thoughts come down to rest the way rose petals come down onto still water, one by one, each landing without a sound and floating there, going nowhere, needing nothing. The old tellers say that a story loved for hundreds of winters knows the road into sleep far better than any listener does. And if that is so, then you have only to lie still and let the words move slowly over you, and the tale itself will carry you the rest of the way down. Draw the blanket close and let us begin. This is a story about a rose and about a great, strange, gentle creature in an enchanted palace and about a young woman with a true and quiet heart.

And beneath all of that, it is a story about learning to see. And under the hole of this tale, there runs one soft question laid down like a warm coal beneath the ash to keep until morning, when Beauty asked her father for nothing in all the world but a single rose. Was that the smallest gift a daughter ever asked for? Or was it, in some hidden way, the greatest one ever given? And when the long enchantment broke at last, in a garden full of roses, was it broken by beauty at all, or by something slower and deeper and kinder?

A heart that had learned, evening by quiet evening, to see the goodness hidden beneath a strange outward form. Hold that question loosely, the way you would hold a warm cup in both hands on a cold night, not gripping it, only letting the warmth of it move into you. There is no need to answer it, and no hurry anywhere in this hour. Tonight, our path will wander gently through many rooms. We will stand in a tall merchant's house in a busy city, and follow a family down into a small, quiet life in the country.

We will ride through a snow-filled forest to a palace where every lamp is lit and no one is home, and watch a single rose picked from a winter garden and hear a low sorrowful voice make a strange bargain. We will sit at supper, night after night, with the gentlest monster in any old story, and dream strange soft dreams and look into a magic glass and see at the very end a light move through a garden like sunrise. But all of that lies far ahead of us and there is no hurry in any of it. For now let us go back to the beginning while the fortune is still whole and the rose is still years away.

Long ago and far away, in the old land of France, there stood a great trading city by a river, full of bells and bridges and tall narrow houses. And in one of the tallest and finest of those houses, there lived a merchant who had done well in the world. His ships went out and came home again, heavy with silks and spices. His warehouses were full, his table was generous, and his name was good in every street of that city, for he was honest in his dealings and open-handed to those who had less.

But the true wealth of his house was not in the warehouses at all. The true wealth of his house was his six children, three sons and three daughters, who filled the tall rooms with their voices and their comings and goings, and who were, each in their own way, the pride of his heart. The merchant had been a widower for some years, and he had raised his children with much love and no little indulgence, sparing nothing for their teaching and their pleasure. The sons were open-hearted young men, fond of riding and of company, and good sons to their father.

The two elder daughters were handsome and clever and knew it well, and they loved fine gowns and fine society, and went out to balls and to the theatre and to the promenades, and came home talking of who had worn what and who had bowed to whom. It was a full, bright, comfortable life in the tall house by the river, and it seemed to everyone in it that life would always be so. But it is the way of old stories, as it is sometimes the way of the world, that fortunes turn, and before we speak of that turning, we must speak a little more of the youngest daughter, for it is at her side that this whole tale walks.

The youngest daughter of the merchant was lovely, but that was the least of her. She had been lovely from the cradle, so lovely that while she was still small, the whole household fell into the way of calling her simply Beauty, La Belle, and the name followed her as she grew and never once seemed to sit wrongly on her. But those who knew her soon forgot to think of her face at all, for the loveliness that mattered in her went deeper. She was gentle, she was patient, she spoke kindly to the oldest servant and the smallest child alike, and she had that rarest of gifts, a heart that was glad of quiet things.

While her sisters dressed for the evening, beauty would curl herself into the window seat of her father's library, with a book in her lap and the light falling over her shoulder, and be as content as any soul in that city, for she loved reading and music and the garden and her father's company and needed very little else. Her elder sisters, it must be said, found her a puzzle and a mild annoyance, in the soft way that busy hearts are annoyed by peaceful ones. They teased her for staying at home and called her dull, for loving books better than balls. And Beauty only smiled and never answered unkindly and loved them anyway, for that was her nature.

Suitors came to the tall house for all three daughters, and more than a few came for Beauty. But she told them each, gently, that she was too young yet to marry, and that she wished to stay some years more with her father, and she said it so sweetly that not one of them could be sorry he had asked. So the household went its bright way, the sisters to their pleasures, the brothers to theirs, and beauty to her books and her music and her quiet corner of the garden. And it might have gone that way for many years more, had not the news come up from the harbour one grey morning, the news that turns this tale, and it is toward that grey morning that our path now gently bends.

So the old tellers say, the merchant's fortune, which had been so long in the building, came down all at once the way an old wall will stand for a hundred years and then fall in a single night of rain. Word came that his richest ships had been lost at sea in storms one after another. And close behind that came word of partners who had failed him in distant cities, and of goods seized and debts called in, until, in the space of one turning season, there was almost nothing left. The tall house by the river had to be given up, and the fine furniture sold, and the servants let go with what kindness could still be afforded.

And when all the accounts were closed, there remained to the merchant only one small farmhouse, far off in the deep country, and enough besides, if they lived very plainly, to keep body and soul together. He gathered his six children in the emptied parlor and told them the truth of it plainly. For he was an honest man even in sorrow, that they were poor now, and that the only life left to them was the little house and the land around it, and their own hands. It would be pleasant to say that the whole family bore it bravely.

But old stories are honest, and this one is honest too, in its gentle way. The elder sisters wept and stormed, and were sure some rich friend or hopeful suitor would save them from so dreadful a fall. But the friends of fair weather melted away, as such friends do, and the suitors looked elsewhere, and there was nothing for it at last but to pack what little remained and go. And so, on a soft grey morning, the merchant and his six children rode slowly out of the city that had been their whole world over the last bridge and past the last houses and turned their faces toward the deep country and the small life that waited there.

road beside her father, and if her heart was heavy she kept it to herself, and watched the fields open out on either side, green and patient and very old. And what they found at the end of that long road, and what beauty made of the little house when she got there, the quiet turning toward which we now go softly on. The farmhouse stood a long day's ride from the city, at the end of a lane, with a wood at its back, and fields before it, low and thick walled and thatched, with a well in the yard and a garden gone half wild.

To the elder sisters it looked like the end of the world. To beauty, though she said nothing of it that first evening, it looked like something that needed only warmth to be loved, and warmth was a thing she had to give. She rose the next morning before the sun, while the whole house still slept, and kindled the fire and swept the hearth and set what food they had in order. And when the others came down, there was something on the table and something gentle in the air. And the first day of the new life had begun. And so it went on. Beauty rose early. Every day of that year she cooked and washed and mended, she milked and churned, she weeded the old garden back into rows, and she did it all not grimly as a burden borne, but lightly singing at her work until the little house began to shine the way small well-loved houses do. And a strange thing happened to beauty in that year, A thing she had not looked for.

She found that she was happy. Not happy in spite of the plain life, but happy inside it, the way a foot is happy in a well-worn shoe. The work made her strong and made her sleep sweet. The fields gave her their slow calendar of ploughing and greening and harvest. And in the evenings, when the work was done, she read her few saved books by the fire, or played and sang to her father, whose grief for his lost fortune softened month by month in the warmth she kept around him. Her brothers took to the farm work with good hearts.

Her sisters, alas, did not take to anything. They lay lay to bed, and sighed for the city, and let Beauty carry the household, and said among themselves that her contentment only proved what a dull creature she had always been. And Beauty heard some of this, and forgave all of it, for that was her nature. And the year turned, and the little house stood warm in its fields. Let your breath be as slow now as that year was, drawing in the way a mild morning comes over quiet fields and going out the way lamplight goes out gently over them in the evening, for the tale is about to knock at the farmhouse door, and it comes, as such things often come, wearing the plain clothes of ordinary news.

So the old tellers say, when the family had lived in the little house a full year and a little more, there came a letter up the lane, and the letter said a wonderful thing. One of the merchant's ships, long given up for lost, had come safely into harbor after all with her cargo-hole. All at once the house was in a happy uproar. The sisters, hearing riches in the very word ship, were dancing before the letter was fairly read out, and talking of the city, and of gowns, and of taking back their old life entire, as though it had only been folded away in a chest. The merchant, more cautious but hopeful too, made ready to ride at once to the harbor town to see to his rights before the cargo should be picked over. And as he stood in the doorway, on the morning he left, he turned back to his children and asked them, in the old fond way of fathers in old stories, what gifts he should bring home for each of them when the business was done. The elder sisters were not shy. One asked for gowns of the newest fashion and the other for lace and jewels, and both together named enough fine things to load a mule, for they had already spent, in their hearts, a fortune that no one yet held in his hand. The brothers asked for this and that, plain useful things, but Beauty stood quiet at the door with her father's cloak over her arm, and asked for nothing at all until her father pressed her, saying that she too must name a gift, for it would give him joy to bring it. And beauty, partly because her heart truly wanted no finery, and partly, so the old tellers say, so that her asking might not shame her sister's long smiled up at him and said, Then bring me a rose, father, only a rose.

For no roses grow in our garden here, and I have not seen one since we left the city, and I do miss them. And the merchant laughed gently and kissed her, and promised her her rose, as though it were the easiest of all the gifts in the world to carry home. He could not know, nor could she, what a strange long road That one small wish would open under his feet, And it is down that road, through gathering winter, That our path now slowly bends. Come and sit by the fire, and do not fear the winter that is coming into the tale, For it is a gentle winter, as we shall tell it, all hush and lantern light, and it leads to the warmest rooms in any old story.

The merchant rode away to the harbor town, and there, as so often happens, the bright news dimmed as he came close to it. The cargo was real enough, but there were creditors waiting at the key, and old debts with long memories, and men of law with papers, And when everything had been argued and divided and signed away, there was hardly anything left for the merchant at all. He had made the long journey for nothing. He turned his horse toward home, no richer than he had come, and poorer by his hopes. And because he wished to reach his children quickly, and perhaps because a sad heart does not always choose wisely, he took the shorter way home, the way that ran through the great forest. And as he rode in, under the old trees, the snow began. It came down first in a few slow wandering flakes, and then thicker and thicker still until the whole air was full of soft white movement, and the path before him began to soften and fade. The wind rose among the branches with a long, low voice, not angry, only vast and old. The early dark of winter came down, and somewhere in that white and whirling dimness the merchant lost his way. He was not the first in an old story to be lost in a great wood. And he would not be the last. And though he was cold and tired and afraid, in the mild, worn way of a tired traveller, no harm came near him. For this forest, whatever else it held, held nothing cruel. He gave his horse its head at last, as lost riders learned to do.

and the good beast plodded slowly on through the snow, choosing its own way among the trees, while the merchant bowed his head into his collar and hoped. And what the horse found, deep in that white forest, where no house had any earthly business being, is the wonder toward which our path now bends. For now, Now, let this be enough of the cold, because warmth is coming, more warmth than the merchant could have dreamed. For as he rode, hardly lifting his eyes, the snow ahead of him began to glow faintly gold, and he looked up and saw lights, not one light but many, a long avenue opening among the trees, lined on either side with tall lamps all burning steady in the falling snow, as though someone had lit them just for him and set the storm itself to hold its breath around them. For within that avenue no snow fell and no wind blew, And the air was soft as an evening in spring, and at the end of the avenue, where it rose gently to a low hill, there stood a palace. It stood all alone in the heart of the forest, vast and fair, its long ranks of windows lit from within, warm gold on the winter dark, Its courts swept clean, its great gates standing open, and from somewhere inside it, faint and sweet, there came a thread of music, though he could see no one and hear no voice at all.

The merchant rode slowly up the shining avenue, too tired to be as astonished as the place deserved, and into the great court, and no one came, and he called out, and no one answered. But the stable door stood open, and inside it one stall was ready, deep in clean straw, with hay in the manger and water in the trough, as though his coming had been known to the hour, and his weary horse walked straight in and fell to its supper like any sensible creature. So the merchant, murmuring his thanks to the empty air, for he was a courteous man even to no one at all, went up the broad steps and in at the great door. Warmth folded itself around him like a a coverlet, fires were burning in the halls, lamps were lit all along the passages, and in a small fine room off the great hall he found a table drawn close to the hearth and laid with supper for exactly one, hot soup and roasted fowl and good bread and old wine, all of it steaming and fresh, as though the cook had that moment gone out by another door.

He waited long for politeness, growing warm and drowsy by that generous fire. And when the great clock struck eleven and still no one had come, hunger won over ceremony at last, and he sat down alone and ate. And it was the best supper of his whole hard journey, and whose table it truly was, and what watched over that quiet house, the merchant could not begin to guess. But we shall come to it, all in good time, all in good time. When supper was done, there was still no host to thank.

So the merchant, wandering and warm and heavy-eyed, took up a candle from the table and went softly exploring, and found at the end of a passage a bed-chamber made ready, the bed turned down, a fire burning low and even, a night-shirt of fine linen laid out over a chair as though someone had known the very measure of him. When such a tiredness came over him then, so deep and so kind that he had no strength left for wondering, he said his thanks aloud once more to the quiet house, for it seemed to him the house was listening, and perhaps it was, and he lay down in the deep bed, and And the linen was cool and then warm, And the fire murmured, and far off, through many walls That faint sweet music went on playing to itself, And the lost merchant fell into a sleep As deep and dreamless and safe as any he Had known since he was a child.

Let him sleep so, warm in the heart of the winter forest, And may something of that same deep safety come and settle over you, here in your own warm bed, as our tale rests a moment with him in the hush of the enchanted house. And what he found when he woke, and the one small thing he did in the garden that changed everything, is the turning toward which we now go softly on. So the old tellers say, the merchant woke late the next morning to sunlight on the coverlet, and found the enchanted house had been busy about him while he slept.

His own worn travelling clothes were gone, and in their place lay a good suit of clothes that fitted him as though his own tailor had cut it. And on the little table by the fire there stood hot chocolate in a silver pot and fresh bread. He rose and dressed and breakfasted, shaking his head all the while, and said aloud to whatever kind unseen hands kept this place, that he thanked them with all his heart, and that surely some good spirit or gentle fairy had taken pity on a lost old man.

And the quiet house made no answer, but the fire brightened a little, as fires sometimes will. Then he went down through the silent shining halls and out into the morning to fetch his horse and be on his way home to his children. And there he stopped, for the world had changed in the night. All around, beyond the walls, the forest stood deep in snow, white and still to the end of sight. But within the palace grounds, there was no winter at all. The sun lay warm on green lawns, fountains were playing, birds were singing in leafed and blossoming trees, and everywhere, on every side, there were roses, arbors of roses, walls of roses, long walks lined with roses, white and blush and gold and deepest red, all open and glowing and breathing out their sweetness into the soft air, more roses than the merchant had ever seen in any garden in any city of the world, blooming full and fearless with the snow looking on from beyond the wall. He walked down among them like a man in a dream, and as he walked he remembered. He remembered a doorway and a girl with his cloak over her arm, and a smile, and a small wish.

Bring me a rose, Father, only a rose. Here around him were ten thousand roses, in a garden so rich that one bloom could surely never be missed. And his heart lifted at the thought of laying that one small gift, at least in beauty's hands when all the grander hopes had come to nothing. So the merchant chose the loveliest rose within his reach, a deep red rose only half open, still cool with dew, and he plucked it. And in the instant that the stem parted, the whole garden seemed to draw one long breath, And what came to him then, down the rose walk, is the meeting toward which this whole tale has been quietly bending.

Do not tighten, dear listener, and do not fear, for though the tale now brings us face to face with the beast himself, remember whose story this is, and remember that no harm comes to anyone in the whole length of it. There was a sound on the path, heavy and slow, and the merchant turned, and the beast was there. He was very great, taller than any man, and his shape was strange, and his face was such a face as belongs to no one creature, but seems made of the wildness of all of them together, and he was dressed, strangest of all, in rich and sober clothes, like a great lord.

The merchant's legs failed him, and he sank to his knees in the path, the rose trembling in his hand. But when the beast spoke, his voice, though deep as a well is deep, was not a roar at all. It was low and grave and full of an old sorrow. And what it said was this, that he had opened his house to the lost traveller with a whole heart, had warmed him and fed him, and kept him safe the night long, and asked nothing, and that the traveller had repaid all that welcome by taking from him the one thing in all his grounds that he loved.

You have taken what I love best, said the beast, and the sorrow in the deep voice was heavier than any anger could have been. The merchant, kneeling in the warm path with the winter woods beyond the wall, stammered out the truth, for he had no other coin left, that he was a poor man who had lost his fortune, that the rose was not for himself, but for his youngest daughter, who had asked for nothing else in the world, that he begged forgiveness, and had meant no wrong. And the beast was silent a long moment, and the fountains played, And the roses breathed, and when he spoke again, the deep voice was slower still.

He would not take the merchant's life for a rose, he said. He was not what he seemed, and this house did not deal in cruelty. But a price there must be, for the rose had been dearly loved. Let the merchant go home then, free and unharmed, and carrying gifts besides. But if one of his daughters, knowing the whole truth, should choose of her own free will to come and live in this palace in her father's stead, then let her come. And if none would come freely, why then? The merchant must promise to return himself within three months and live out his days here in the forest, in this house.

Mark this, said the beast and his great head bowed, of her own free will or not at all. I will have no one brought to me weeping and forced. Say to your daughters only the truth, and let the choice be wholly theirs, and how that strange, sad bargain was carried home to a small farmhouse, and what Beauty said when she heard it, is the turning toward which our path now bends. Come and sit by the fire, and let us follow the merchant home. The beast, having spoken, was as good as his strange word and better.

He would not let the merchant leave that day empty-handed. He bade him rest one more night in the warm palace. And in the morning, the merchant found beside his bed a great chest filled with gold pieces, than enough to keep his family gently for years, and his horse stood saddled in the court, and the deep red rose lay fresh upon the saddle-bow, no wit faded, as though it had been cut that minute, and the deep voice spoke once more from the doorway of the great sorrowful and even. Remember your promise, and remember that the choice must be free." Then the merchant rode down the avenue of lamps, and the forest took him, and this time the way home lay plain before him, mile after white mile, as though the road itself had been told to be kind, and by the evening of the next day he saw at last the low thatched roof of the farmhouse, and the one lit window, and the smoke rising, and his children came running out to him through the winter dusk.

There was joy first, as there always is, and hot supper and the chest of gold to make the sister's gasp. And then, when the fire had burned low and the little ones of the household were quiet, the merchant took the rose from his coat and laid it in Beauty's hands and said, in a voice that made the whole room go still, "'Take it, my dear, though it has cost your poor father dearer than you know.' And then he told them everything from the snowstorm to the lamps among the trees, from the supper laid by no one, to the garden of roses in the heart of winter, and the great sorrowful voice, and the bargain and the promise. And when he was done, there was a silence around that hearth, and then everyone spoke at once. The sisters, weeping angrily, blamed beauty and her miserable rose for the whole of it. The brothers sprang up and swore they would ride to the forest and deal with this beast, and were gently reminded that no sword in a story like this one has ever settled anything. And the Father said, over all of them, that no child of His would go anywhere at all, that the promise bound only Himself, that He was old and had had His life, and would go back when the three months were done and there was an end of it.

But Beauty sat quiet in the middle of the storm, with the rose in her two hands, and into the fire, and what was growing in her heart while the others argued, is the still, bright center of this whole tale, and we come to it now. When the room at last was quiet, beauty spoke, and her voice was low and perfectly calm, the way still water is calm over a deep place. The rose was asked for by me, she said, and for my sake it was picked, and I will not sit safe by this fire, while my father pays for my wish. The beast asked for a daughter who would come of her own free will, and I do come of my own free will. I am not carried, and I am not forced, and I am not despairing. I choose it." And though they argued with her for days, the father with tears, the brothers with hot words, the sisters with a silence that was not entirely sorry, nothing moved her. For under all her gentleness, beauty carried that quietest kind of courage, the kind that does not blaze or shout, but simply stands, like a candle flame standing upright in a still room, and it was not in any of them, in the end, to overmatch it.

So when the three months were gone, Beauty put on her plain travelling cloak and kissed her weeping sisters and embraced her brothers and took her father's arm, and the two of them rode away together toward the great forest, the old man bowed with grief, and the girl, truth be told, pale but steady, with her heart beating quick and her small chin up, and the snow held off for them, and the road was strangely gentle all the way. And here, before they reach the lamps among the trees. Let us rest a moment, you and I, for this is the hinge of the tale, and it deserves a quiet breath on either side of it. Let the air come in slowly now, and fill you gently, and let it go its own way out again, unhurried, the way the wind lets go of a field of wheat. Feel how heavy your body has become on the bed, How deep the pillow has grown beneath your head, how far away the day now seems, with all its small business that no longer needs you.

Beauty is riding through the winter forest of her own free choosing, and she is not afraid or hardly, and you are lying in your own warm dark, and there is nothing for you to choose at all, and no road you must take, except the soft one downward into rest. Let her courage keep you company there. It is good company to fall asleep beside. And what the enchanted palace did when beauty came up the avenue of lamps, and how strangely tender was her welcome, is the turning toward which we now go softly on.

So the old tellers say, when the horse turned in among the trees at evening, the avenue of lamps was burning for them just as before, and the snow stood back from it, and the air within was soft as may. And as beauty and her father came up toward the great house, every window of it kindled, rank upon rank, until the whole palace stood blazing gently with light from end to end. The way a house lights up, when the one it has waited for, is coming up the road at last. In the court, fireworks of soft light rose and opened over the roofs without one sound, great slow flowers of gold, and faint music woke somewhere within and came out to meet them.

Beauty, who had braced her heart for a dungeon and a chain, sat still upon the horse and looked up with her lips parted, and her father, watching her face in the lamplight, took a little comfort in spite of all his grief. The stable received the horse, the great doors stood open, warmth folded them in, and in the small fine room off the hall a table was drawn up to the hearth, laid this night for two, with every gentle dish that a tired body could wish for. And the two of them supped together, hand-finding hand across the cloth, saying little, in the heart of the lit and listening house. When supper was almost done, there came a sound in the passage, heavy and slow, and Beauty set down her cup and folded her hands in her lap and made herself very still, and the beast came in. He came quietly, for all his great size and stopped a good way off, as though he knew what his shape cost the eyes that first fell upon it.

And in his deep, grave voice he asked her one question only. Beauty, have you come here of your own free will? And Beauty, though her heart was going like a bird's, looked up at him and did not look away and answered him steadily. yes, of my own free will, to save my father. Then you are welcome, said the beast. And there was something in the deep voice that trembled, as a great bell trembles long after it is rung. And to the merchant he said, gently enough that he should sleep this night in peace, and in the morning go home to his children, and And trust his daughter to this house, For no harm should come to her here, Not tonight, and not ever, While these walls stood.

And so it was. The morning came, and the parting came with it, And it was hard, as such partings are, The old man clinging to her at the door, The girl kissing him, and promising to be brave. And then the horse carried him away down the avenue, laden with gifts for the family, and the lamps went out behind him one by one, and Beauty stood alone on the steps of the enchanted palace, in the ringing quiet, with her whole new life about her. And what that house had made ready for her, while she wept a little and dried her eyes, the gentle wonder toward which our path now bends. For now, let this be enough of parting, for the palace, as though it could not bear her tears, set about comforting her at once.

When Beauty turned back through the great doors, she found the light in the halls had grown warmer, like afternoon, and as she wandered slowly through the beautiful rooms, wiping her eyes, she came upon a door she had not seen before, and over the door, in letters of gold, were written two words, Beauty's Apartment. She opened it, wandering, and stood very still on the threshold. Within was the loveliest set of rooms that a quiet heart could dream. A bedchamber all in soft green and rose, with a deep bed and a fire, a music room with a harpsichord and shelves of songs. And, best of all, a library, a real its walls sheeted in books from the floor to the high ceiling, thousands upon thousands of them, more books than she could read in a whole long lifetime, with deep chairs and good lamps and tall windows that looked out over the rose gardens, and on the table lay a book bound in white, and when she opened it, there was written on the first leaf, in a fine grave hand, Welcome, Beauty. Fear nothing here. You are queen and mistress in this house.

Ask, and everything shall be done. Beauty read it twice, and her fear loosened another turn, like a lace untied. If they had meant me sorrow, she thought sensibly, they would hardly have given me a library. And with that thought, which was a very beauty sort of thought, she hung up her travelling cloak and washed her face and began, shyly at first, and then with true delight, to be at home, unseen hands served her all that day as they had served her father. Dishes came warm to the little table when she was hungry. The fires tended themselves, doors opened softly where she wished to go, and whenever she spoke aloud, a thank you into the empty air. The lamps seemed to burn a shade brighter, as though the house itself were pleased. In the afternoon she walked in the gardens among the roses, where it was always summer, and found the fountain and the long walk under the arbors, and the birds were not afraid of her at all. But all the while, under everything, she was waiting for the evening, for she knew, without being told that when the supper was laid the master of the house would come, and what passed between them at that first supper, and every supper after it, is the warm, slow heart of this tale toward which we now draw close.

Come and sit by the fire, for we are coming now to the suppers, and of all the scenes in all the old French tales. There is none gentler to fall asleep inside. When the dusk had come down blue over the rose gardens and the lamps had lit themselves along the walls, Beauty sat down to her supper at the little table by the hearth. And presently there came the heavy step in the passage, and the beast stood in the doorway, great and strange and grave, and asked in his deep voice, Beauty, may I sit with you while you sup? And Beauty said, Yes, a small yes, that first night, but a real one. So he sat, at the far end of the table, careful as a mountain trying to take up less room, and he did not eat, but watched the fire, and asked her, courteously and a little stiffly, whether the house pleased her, and whether the books were to her liking, and whether anything at all was wanting. And she answered him, at first in short, shy words, and then, as the the fire warmed the silence between them in longer ones. And it happened, as it will happen when two lonely souls sit down together with time enough at last, that they began that very first evening to talk, not grandly, about small true things, about the books she had found, and which she would read first, about the roses and which walk was sweetest in the morning, about her father safely home now, for the beast assured her of it, and her brothers and sisters, and the farmhouse, and the year of plain work that had taught her her own strength.

listened, that great, strange creature, the way very few people in her bright old city life had ever listened, wholly, patiently, with his head a little bowed. And when he spoke, it was plainly and honestly, without one flourish, and more than once, what he said was so unexpectedly kind or so quietly droll that Beauty forgot for whole minutes together what he looked like. And she noticed that and wondered at it and put the wonder away in her heart. At last the clock struck and the beast rose to bid her good night, And at the door he paused and turned and asked her, in a voice gone suddenly low and unsteady, Beauty, will you be my wife?

And her heart jumped, and she was afraid again for a moment. And she answered him honestly, as gently as she knew how. No beast, I am sorry. No. And he sighed, a long, deep sigh like wind in a chimney, and said only, then good night, beauty, sleep sweetly, and was gone down the passage with his heavy tread. And why, he asked, and why he must ask, and what her gentle no cost him, each night he asked it, the tale will show us in its own good time. But that is a wandering for a few movements hence, and the night, for now, is deep and kind.

So the old tellers say, Beauty slept deep in the enchanted palace that first night, deeper than she had thought to sleep in a strange bed in a strange wood. For the house was full of a hush that seemed to hold sleep in it the way a cupped hand holds water. And into that deep sleep there came a dream, the first of many. She dreamed she was walking by a stream in a green place. And a young man came toward her along the bank, a stranger, tall and finely made, with dark, sad eyes that seemed somehow impossibly familiar. And he looked at her with such tenderness and such sorrow together that her dreaming heart ached. And he said to her, softly and urgently, as though much depended on it, Beauty, do not trust only to your eyes.

Look deeper than the seeming. Do not abandon me and seek me out wherever I may be hidden. And she wanted to ask him who he was and where he was hidden and how he knew her name. But the dream, as dreams do, moved like water and he was gone. And later in that same night, or on another night soon after, for the dreams came often from then on, she dreamed of a stately lady, grand and kind, with a face like a summer evening, who stood beside her in a place full of soft light, and said, in a voice that was both near and far, Beauty, dear child, do not mourn too much for what you have left.

A great reward is being woven for you. Only remember the eyes may be deceived. It is the heart that sees truly. Do not trust to the outward form. And beauty woke from these dreams in the wide gray mornings with the strangest feeling, warm and unquiet at once. as though someone had left a lamp burning for her in a room she had not found yet. She told no one, having no one to tell but the silent house. But she thought often of the sad-eyed stranger as she walked among the roses and caught herself looking for him down the long garden walks, which was foolish, she told herself, for he It was only a dream, only a dream, she said, and the old tellers, who know better, smile here and let her say it.

And how the days at the palace gathered themselves into weeks, and the weeks into a gentle round of months, is the slow, warm stretch of the tale toward which we now go on. Come and sit by the fire, and let the seasons turn with us a while, for now the tale slows to the pace of a happy, ordinary life, and there is no better pace for falling asleep. The days at the Enchanted Palace found their shape, as days will. In the mornings beauty walked in the gardens among the roses, where it was always high summer within the walls, though she could see, over the far hedges, the forest standing white with winter. And the birds came to her hands, and the fountains played, and she learned every walk and arbor and mossy seat of that great green place, until it was hers the way a childhood garden is one's own. In the afternoons there was the library, and oh, the library alone would have taken her years. She read history and poetry and travels, curled in the deep chairs while the light moved slowly across the shelves. And the house, which noticed everything, took to leaving small plates of fruit at her elbow. And once, when she laughed aloud at her book, she would have sworn the fire chuckled quietly along with her.

And every evening, when the blue dusk came down and the lamps lit themselves, there was supper and the heavy, gentle step in the passage, and the beast. It had become From the pole-star of her day, that hour, though she hardly marked when the change happened, they talked now like old friends, easily, of everything and nothing, of what she had read that day, for he knew the books, all of them, and would say of some grand famous volume in his deep rumble that it was very fine and very dull, which always made her laugh of the roses and the birds of her family whom she missed, of kindness and loneliness and the world of which he spoke as one who had once known it well and lost it. She found that he was wise, in a plain, sad, patient way, and that he was humble, and that he was, beneath the great, strange shape of him, the gentlest company she had ever kept. And always, at the end, at the striking of the clock, he rose and paused at the door and asked in that low, unsteady voice, Beauty, will you be my wife?

And always she answered no, gently, and more gently as the months went by. And he never once grew angry, and never once pressed her, but sighed his deep sigh and wished her sweet sleep, and went away down the passage. And she would sit awhile by the sinking fire, listening to his tread fade through the great house, with a soreness in her heart that she did not yet have the name for. The name was on its way to her. It comes to everyone in this tale, and to some of us listening, a little late, but it comes, so the old tellers say, and it is coming now. There was one more wonder in Beauty's rooms that must be told, For the whole turning of the tail hangs upon it.

On a table in her bedchamber stood a looking glass in a frame of silver roses, and it was a magic glass. The white book had told her so, in its fine grave hand. Whenever she wished with her whole heart to see her family, she had only to look into it, and the silver would cloud like breath on a window, and clear again, and there they would be, small and bright and far away, moving about their days in the farmhouse, her father at his accounts, her brothers in the field, her sisters at the window.

It could not carry her voice to them, nor theirs to her. It was a window only, not a door. But she looked into it often, in the quiet of the morning, the way one rereads a dear old letter, and it comforted her, mostly, to see them safe and well. And the months of her new life turned green and golden and gray and white beyond the palace walls, and within them, always, the roses. one morning in the first soft days of spring, Beauty wished her wish and looked into the glass, and what she saw there made her hands go cold on the silver frame, and it is to that morning that our path now gently bends. For now let this be enough of the golden months, For the glass had clouded and cleared, and there in its small bright circle lay her father, in his bed at the farmhouse.

And he was ill. She saw it at one look, as loving eyes do, the thin face, the closed eyes, her sisters moving anxiously about the room. He had been failing quietly for want of her, so the old tellers say, grieving for his youngest in the way old hearts grieve, silently and steadily downhill. And Beauty stood with the glass in her two hands and felt her whole heart turn over. All that day she was pale and quiet, and the house dimmed its lamps in sympathy and could not comfort her, and at supper the beast saw at once as he saw everything about her, and asked her gently what her trouble was. And she told him. And then she gathered her courage in both hands, as she had gathered it once before at another fireside, and asked him, Let me go to my father only for a little while, only to see him well again.

I will come back to you, I promise it." The beast was silent so long that the fire had time to shift and settle twice, and when he spoke at last, his deep voice was very low. If I refuse you this, he said, you will stand at my table with your heart a hundred leagues away, and that I cannot bear, and if I grant it, perhaps you will not come back, and that, beauty, I think will be the end of me. For I shall die of sorrow, quietly, among the roses, if you do not come back." But he raised his great head and looked at her and said, Go then, go to your father, I would rather bear the fear than see you grieve.

And he told her the way of it. She should take from her table the ring that lay there, and when she wished to go home, she had only to turn it upon her finger as she lay down to sleep, and she would wake in her father's house, and when she wished to return, the same. "'One week,' said Beauty, holding the ring to her heart, "'give me one week, and I will come back to you faithfully.' And the beast bowed his great head and said only, "'I will count the days, Beauty, sleep now.' And she went up to her rooms with the ring on her finger and her heart both light and heavy at once.

And she lay down and turned the little circle of gold upon her finger and closed her eyes in the enchanted palace. And where she opened them, and what she found there, is the turning toward which we now go softly on. She woke to low beams and morning light and the smell of wood smoke in her own narrow bed in the farmhouse. And the first sound she heard was her sister's voice in the passage saying, in a tone of pure astonishment, that beauty was home. Then the little house was all uproar and joy, and none of it more than her father's, who, when she came to his bedside, rose up on his pillows with the color coming back into his face, as though her step on the stair had been medicine itself.

And indeed, from that hour, he mended. Oh, it was sweet to be home. It was sweet to hold her father's hands and tell him truly that she was safe and and well and even happy, sweet to hear her brother's laughter, to sit at the old scrubbed table, to sleep under the familiar low roof with the wind in the orchard outside. The week she had asked for filled itself to the brim with small, dear things. And yet, and And yet, under the sweetness, from the very first day, there ran a thin, quiet thread of missing something, and she knew quite well what it was, though she was slow to say so even in her own heart.

At the blue hour of the evening, the supper hour, she would fall silent in the middle of the room, listening without meaning to, for a heavy, gentle step that did not come. And she thought of the lamps lighting themselves along the garden walls, and the roses breathing in the dusk, and a deep voice asking after her day. And she wondered, with a small ache, whether he sat alone now at the little table, watching the fire, saying nothing at all. But her sisters, seeing how fine she looked and hearing how gently she had been kept, were eaten with envy behind their smiles, so the old tellers say, and they put their heads together and resolved, out of pure smallness of heart, To keep her past her promised day, thinking that if she broke her word, whatever fine thing awaited her, there might be spoiled, and she be brought down again to their own level.

They did not hate her, not truly. Envy is mostly weakness wearing a bitter face, and so the tale forgives them in the end. And so shall we. But they clung to her and coaxed her. They wept, prettily, at the mere mention of her going. They declared the week too short, the visit barely begun, their hearts half broken at the thought of losing her so soon. And Beauty, whose one fault, if fault it was, had always been a heart too soft to wound anyone. Let the promised day come, and waver, and slip by.

One day more, she told herself, surely one day can matter very little, in a palace where it is always summer, and a second day slipped after the first, and a third after that, as days do. And each evening her unease grew heavier, like a sky filling slowly with warm rain, Until on the tenth night, worn out with her own divided heart, she fell into a restless sleep and there came to her the last and most important dream of this whole tale, toward which everything has been quietly flowing.

She dreamed she was in the palace garden at evening, with the dusk coming down blue and the lamps unlit. The roses were all about her, but their sweetness had gone heavy, like air before a storm that never comes. And the fountains had fallen still, and the whole great garden was listening. And down the long rose walk, by the old fountain at its end, something lay upon the grass, Light and dark and very still, and her dreaming feet carried her toward it, slow as feet in dreams are slow, though her heart ran on ahead.

It was the beast. He lay stretched on his side on the darkening lawn like a felled tree. His great head sunk among the rose petals. His eyes closed, and he was not sleeping. He was fading, quietly, without one word of complaint, the way a fire goes out when no hand tends it, dying of sorrow, exactly as he had told her, gently, that he might. And in the dream he did not reproach her. That was the unbearable thing her dreaming heart found. He reproached her with nothing at all, only lay there in his patience, having counted his days past counting, still waiting, at the end of his strength for a step on the path.

Beauty woke in the farmhouse dark, with tears already running back into her hair, and her heart, in the same instant, woke too, all the way, at last. She knew, she knew now what the soreness had been, all those evenings by the sinking fire, knew why the blue hour had ached, knew, with her whole self, in the plain sudden way that we know the great things, that she loved him, not despite the strange great shape of him that had long since stopped mattering. She simply loved him, the patience, the courtesy, the deep, sad kindness, the way he listened, the low voice saying good night, sleep sweetly, down all those months of gentle evenings.

And she had left him to fade among the roses while she wavered over one more day. She did not wake the house. She did not wait for mourning. She sat up in the dark and turned the ring upon her finger with a trembling hand, and lay back down with her wet eyes shut and her whole heart one single wish. And the farmhouse dissolved around her softly, like a reflection when the water moves. And it is in the enchanted palace, in the last blue of that same evening, that she opens her eyes. She woke in her own soft bed in Beauty's apartment, and the room was dim and the house was too quiet, and she was up in an instant and running, down the great stair, through the long halls where the lamps burned low as though they hardly had the heart.

through the doors into the garden and the deep blue dusk. Down the rose walk she ran, calling him, and her voice came back to her, off the hedges small and frightened, past the arbors, past the still fountains, the way the dream had shown her, the rose petals scattering under her flying feet. And there, at the end of the walk, by the old fountain, on the darkening grass, she found him, great and dark and very still, just as she had dreamed him. His eyes closed, his breath so faint it hardly stirred the petals by his face.

Beauty fell on her knees beside him in the grass. She took his great head into her lap and stroked it and called to him, and he did not stir, and she caught water from the fountain in her two cupped hands and brought it to him and bathed his brow and called again, closer, her tears falling on his face along with the fountain water. Beast, dear Beast, do not go. It is beauty. I came back. I am here." And the great eyes opened slowly from very far away and found her. And the low voice, when it came, was hardly more than the wind through the roses.

You came back. I could not let go, quite, until I had seen you once more. And now, sleep will be easy. But Beauty gathered his head closer and shook her own head. No, and no, and no. And the words came out of her at last all in one warm breaking rush. The words that everything in this whole tale has been waiting for. From the first rose to this one, you shall not sleep, not so, not ever. You shall live, and I shall stay, and I will not be parted from you again. I thought it was only friendship, but it was not.

It was not. I love you, beast. I cannot live without you. Live and let me be your wife." And in the hush after those words, the whole garden drew one long breath, as it had done once before for a plucked rose, and every lamp along every wall of that vast garden lit at once, of itself soft gold, and somewhere above the roofs of the palace light began to rise. And what rose with it is the wonder we have carried all this way, and it is here. Come and sit by the fire, for the enchantment is breaking, and it breaks the way morning breaks, gently, and all at once, and everywhere.

Light moved through that garden, like the first of sunrise, moving over a field. The fountains leapt alive and threw up gold. Music woke in the air itself, sweet and clear and glad. The roses opened wider, every rose at once, breathing out all their sweetness in one warm tide. And the great palace behind them kindled window by window by window until it stood robed in soft light from its doors to its highest roofs, blazing gently like a house at festival, like a heart unlocked. And Beauty, kneeling dazzled in the middle of all that glory, felt the great head lift out of her lap, and the weight of it was gone.

And when she looked, the beast was not there. On the grass before her, rising to his feet in the new light, stood a young man, tall and finely made, with dark eyes that she knew. For she had walked beside them, night after night, along a dream-stream in a green place. It was the stranger of her dreams, and he was looking at her with those same eyes, sad no longer, and smiling, as though the smiling itself were new to him. And he had her two hands in his, and his voice, when he spoke, was young and warm, and yet, underneath. And this made her laugh and cry at once. It was the same dear voice she had said good night to all those months.

Beauty, he said, it was always me. Then, sitting together on the rim of the old fountain, in the light and the music, he told her the tale of it, plainly, as he told all things. He was a prince, and this palace and these lands were his. And years ago, an unkind fairy, powerful and cold, had laid an enchantment on him, shutting him into the shape of a beast, and binding his tongue besides, so that he might not tell his trouble to any living soul, nor show his wit, nor plead his own cause in any way. And the spell was to hold until a maiden of true heart, knowing nothing of what he had been, should of her own free will consent to marry him for the sake of what he was. Why the unkind fairy chose him, and what old grievance drove her, is a long tangled telling of its own. But that is a tale for another night, and it has no power in this one.

What matters is this, that year upon year travelers had come and gone through his lamplit halls and none had stayed until an honest lost merchant picked one rose and a girl with a true and quiet heart came riding up the avenue of her own free will and learned, supper by supper, evening by evening, to see him. "'You broke it, beauty,' he said, not with your eyes, but with your heart.' And as he spoke, there came a warmth into the air, like a summer evening arriving, and a stately lady stood before them on the grass, grand and kind, with a face beauty knew from her dreams, the good and gracious fairy who had watched over the whole long tale from its edges, and sent the dreams and kept the road gentle, and she was smiling.

Beauty, said the kind fairy, and her voice was like the lady of the dreams, near and far at once. You chose goodness before fair looks and before cleverness, and such a choosing is rare. And it is right that you should be rewarded with a love in which all those things are joined." And she stretched out her hand, and, so the old tellers say, the world obeyed her gladly, as it obeys all truly kind intentions in the old stories. In the great hall of the palace, in that same hour, lights kindled and tables were laid, and Beauty's whole family was brought gently there, sleeping and waking through the change, as though carried in warm hands, her father, hail now and weeping for plain joy, her brothers, her sisters too. And to the sisters, the kind fairy spoke softly, not in punishment, for this telling keeps no statues and no penances. But in mercy, she laid her hand upon them, and the old envy melted out of their hearts like frost out of a mourning field, and they They wept a little and were lighter for the rest of their days and embraced their sister honestly for the first time in years.

And then there was a wedding, as there must be, beauty in white with roses in her hair, and the prince beside her with his dark, glad eyes, and the father giving her hand, and music in the bright halls, and the whole palace warm and full at last, every room of it after all its silent years. And they lived, so the old tellers say, long and happily and kindly, which is the greater thing. And in the gardens of that palace, it is summer among the roses to this day. For now, let this be enough of the feast and let the music soften behind us.

For it is time, in the quiet after the wedding, to lift up the question we laid, like a warm coal under the ash, at the very beginning of the night. Beauty asked her father for nothing in all the world but a rose. Was it the smallest gift ever asked for, or the greatest ever given. And now, in the hush, we may say it softly, it was the greatest, and it was the greatest precisely because it was the smallest. The gowns and jewels her sisters asked for were large asks and small ones, all at once.

anyone with gold may have gowns, but the rose asked only for love and remembrance. It said, bring me a sign that you thought of me on the road and it will be enough. And a wish like that, so light to carry, proved strong enough to draw a lost man to an enchanted door and a true heart into a waiting house and an entire long sorrow up into joy. The smallest wishes, asked in love, are the hinges on which the great doors turn. That is the first soft truth of this tale, and it is a good one to keep under your pillow.

And the second truth is the one the dreams kept whispering all along. Do not trust only to the eyes. It is the heart that sees truly. The enchantment, mark it well, was never broken by beauty. Beauty herself would tell you so, laughing. It was broken by seeing. By a heart that sat down at the same table, evening after evening, with something the eyes called fearful and listened instead of looking, and found their patience and courtesy and loneliness and a great buried gentleness, and slowly, at the pace of falling asleep, came to love what it had found.

The world is full of hidden princes, so the old tellers say, full of good hearts folded away inside plain shapes and strange shapes and shapes grown weary, and the eyes alone will walk past every one of them. But the quiet heart that listens, the heart that keeps its suppers and its promises, sees through to the gold of things, and what it sees truly, sets free. You need do nothing with this truth tonight, dear listener. Only let it lie down in you somewhere warm, like a cat by a stove. It will keep till morning and past it. And now there is nothing left of the whole long tail but the last soft telling over and then the candle, and then the dark, toward which we now go home.

Come and sit by the fire, one last quiet time, and let us go back over it all slowly, the way one turns over keepsakes in a drawer by lamplight, touching each and laying it gently back. ago and far away, there was a tall house in a trading city, and a good merchant, and six children, and the youngest was called Beauty, for the loveliness that went all the way through. There was a fortune lost at sea, and a small thatched house in the deep country, and a And a year of plain work that turned out to hold happiness folded inside it.

There was a letter, and a journey, and a father in a doorway asking what gifts to bring, and two long lists, and one small wish. Bring me a rose, father, only a rose. There was snow in a great forest, and an avenue of lamps where no snow fell, and a palace all lit and empty, with supper laid by unseen hands and a bed turned down. There was a garden where it was summer inside the winter, and one deep red rose plucked at morning, and a great sorrowful voice on the path, and a strange bargain, sworn on free will and nothing else. And there was a girl at a fireside who said, I choose it so quietly that no one could stand against her, and lamps lighting a whole palace for her coming, and a door with her name over it in gold, and a library to the ceiling, and a white book that said, Fear nothing here. There were the suppers, all those suppers, The heavy, gentle step, the talk by the fire, the low voice at the door each night, asking its one question, and the know that grew softer, month by month, without her marking it.

There were the dreams, the sad-eyed stranger by the stream, the kind lady with her counsel. It is the heart that sees truly. There was the silver glass, and the ailing father, and the ring turned on a finger, the sweet, crowded week that stretched to ten days, the dream of the darkened garden, and the waking, and the heart that woke with it. There was a run through blue dusk, and a great head lifted into a lap, and water carried in two cupped hands, and the words said through tears at last, and then the light rising through the garden and the house like sunrise, and the dark familiar eyes in a new face, and the same dear voice, and the kind fairy, and envy melted into gladness, and a wedding with roses, and after it, stretching away like a summer road, the long and gentle years.

Let all those pictures drift now, one across another, the lamps and the roses and the snow and the gold, and let them blur softly at their edges, like lights seen through closing lashes, for they have carried you as far as they need to, and the tale is done, and only the good night remains. The fire here has burned down to its softest glow now, and the story is folded and put away and there is nothing more for you to hold. Beauty is in her palace, loved and loving, with her books and her roses and her prince who listens.

Her father is content by a warm hearth. Even the sisters sleep easy, forgiven, their old envy gone like frost. The palace lamps are dimming one by one along the garden walls. The fountains have softened to a murmur, and in the rows, walks the petals are closing for the night, holding their sweetness till morning. All is well in that old corner of France. And it will stay well. The old tellers have kept this tale safe through hundreds of winters, and they will keep it safe through this one. And you may set the whole of it down now, entirely, the way you set down something precious into a lined box, knowing it cannot be harmed.

Nothing in this story needs you any longer tonight. No one in it is lost or cold or unloved. It asks only one thing more of you. The thing every bedtime tale has asked since the first fire was ringed with stones, that having heard it, you rest. So let us close it the old way. Imagine the enchanted palace far behind you now, its windows going dark and golden and dark again, its gardens breathing slowly under the stars, needing nothing. In your thoughts, reach back and close a soft door upon the whole of it, feeling it move on silent hinges, sealing the palace and the roses and all the sleeping happy folk inside into calm and quiet and order, safe until some other night.

Then see, before you in the darkness, a single candle, its small flame steady and warm, the last light of the story. With a slow, gentle breath, blow that candle out and let the last soft curl of light fade away into the peaceful night. Rest well, sleep deeply, and let the old tales carry you into the night.