【英音】21日晚安21：Sleeping Beauty (3)

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21日晚安021 

It happened that, on the very day she was fifteen years old, the king and queen were not at home and she was left alone in the palace. So she roved about by herself, and looked at all the rooms and chambers, until at last she came to an old tower, to which there was a narrow staircase ending with a little door. In the door there was a golden key, and when she turned it the door sprang open, and there sat an old lady spinning away very busily.

“Why how now, good mother,” said the princess, “what are you doing there?”
“Spinning,” said the old lady, nodding her head and humming a tune, while the wheel buzzed.
“How prettily that little thing turns round!” said the princess, who took the spindle and began to try and spin. But scarcely had she touched it before the fairy’s prophecy was fulfilled. The spindle wounded her and she fell down lifeless on the ground.

However, she was not dead, but had only fallen into a deep sleep. The king and the queen, who had just come home, and all their court, fell asleep too. The horses slept in the stables, the dogs in the court, the pigeons on the house-top and the very flies slept upon the walls. Even the fire on the hearth left off blazing and went to sleep and the spit that was turning about with a goose upon it for the king’s dinner stood still. The cook, who was at that moment pulling the kitchen-boy by the hair to give him a box on the ear for something he had done amiss, let him go, and both fell asleep. The butler, who was slyly tasting the ale, fell asleep with the jug at his lips. And thus everything stood still, and slept soundly.

A large hedge of thorns soon grew round the palace and every year it became higher and thicker. At last, the old palace was surrounded and hidden, so that not even the roof or the chimneys could be seen. But there went a report through all the land of the beautiful sleeping princess, so that, from time to time, several kings’ sons came and tried to break through the thicket into the palace. This, however, none of them could ever do, for the thorns and bushes laid hold of them, as it were with hands and there they got stuck and could not escape.

After many, many years there came a king’s son into that land and an old man told him the story of the thicket of thorns, how a beautiful palace stood behind it and how a wonderful princess lay in it asleep, with all her court. He told, too, how he had heard from his grandfather that many, many princes had come and had tried to break through the thicket, but that they had all stuck fast in it. Then the young prince said, “All this shall not frighten me; I will go and see this sleeping princess.” The old man tried to hinder him, but his mind was made up to go.