French literature summaries - 2021

Short summary - Sleeping Beauty
Charles Perrault

Micro-narration: An evil sorceress predicts death from a spindle prick to a newborn princess, but a kind sorceress makes the princess fall asleep for a hundred years. A hundred years later, the princess is awakened by the prince and marries her.

The king and queen did not have children for a long time, "and this upset them so, so upset that it is impossible to tell." When they had already lost all hope, their daughter was born. On this occasion, a great celebration was arranged, many guests were invited to the palace, including seven good sorceresses. For them, the king ordered seven cutlery made of pure gold.

When all the guests were seated at the festive table, an old witch, whom they had forgotten to invite, suddenly entered the hall. She had not left her tower for many years, and everyone thought that she had died long ago.

Cutlery was immediately brought for the old witch, but they were not as luxurious as those of other sorceresses, and she felt that she was not received respectfully enough. Pushing the goblet and plate away from her, she muttered a threat.

Fortunately, one of the sorceresses heard this. She imperceptibly made her way into the nursery and hid behind the cradle in order to express her wishes to the baby last.

When the time came to present the princess, the sorceresses generously rewarded her with beauty, a kind heart, intelligence, a beautiful voice, the ability to dance and play various musical instruments. When it was the turn of the old witch, she said that "the princess will pierce her hand with a spindle and die from it."

Everyone cried bitterly when they heard the wish of the evil sorceress, but then a good fairy appeared from her hiding place. She promised that the princess would not die, but “would only fall asleep in a deep sleep that would last a hundred years. Then the young prince will come and wake her up. "

The king immediately ordered to destroy all the spindles in the castle, but this did not save the princess - at the age of sixteen, she accidentally found an old spinning wheel, pricked her finger and fell unconscious.

Like an angel the princess was lying, she was so beautiful, because the faint did not spoil the color of her face: her cheeks were scarlet, the lips were like corals, only her eyes were closed ... Even breathing proved that she was alive.

Upon learning of the misfortune, the kind sorceress consoled the king and queen and made everyone in the castle fall asleep in a sound sleep for exactly one hundred years. After kissing their daughter goodbye, the king and queen left the castle, and soon an impenetrable thicket of trees and thorny bushes grew around it, "so that idle onlookers would not disturb the princess's sleep."

A hundred years later, "who then ruled the kingdom," went hunting. Seeing from afar the towers of an abandoned castle, he became interested in it. No one knew who this castle belonged to, and only an old peasant told the king's son the story of the sleeping princess.

The young man hurried to the enchanted castle, inside which he saw many sleeping people. In one of the rooms, he noticed a sleeping princess "either fifteen or sixteen years old, and a dazzling, heavenly charm."

In admiration, the prince admired the princess, and at that moment she and her faithful servants awoke from a hundred-year sleep. In honor of the bride and groom, a sumptuous feast was immediately arranged, at which the musicians played early music.