502 NURSERY RHYMES.

 

dressing in the morning, his man asked him what the strange
singing and moaning that had been heard in his room for two
nights meant. “I heard nothing,” said the Duke; “it could only
have been your fancy.” “Take no sleeping-draught to-night, and
be sure to lay aside your pillow of heaviness,” said the man; “and
you also will hear what for two nights has kept me awake.”

The Duke did so, and the Princess coming in, sat down sighing
at his bedside, thinking this the last time she might ever see him.
The Duke started up when he heard the voice of his dearly-loved
Princess, and, with many endearing expressions of surprise and
joy, explained to her that he had long been in the power of an
enchantress, whose spells over him were now happily ended by
their again meeting. The Princess, happy to be the instrument
of his second deliverance, consented to marry him, and the en-
chantress, who fled that country, afraid of the Duke’s anger, has
never since been heard of. All was hurry and preparation in the
castle, and the marriage which now took place at once ended the
adventures of the Red Bull o Norroway and the wanderings of
the King’s daughter.

DCCXCIX.
PUSS IN BOOTS.*

THERE was a miller, who left no more estate to his three sons
than his mill, his ass, and his cat. The partition was soon made,

* One of the tales of M. Perrault, 1697. The plot was taken from the first novel
of the eleventh night of Straparola. Its moral is that talents are equivalent to fortune.
We have inserted this in our collection, although generally remembered, as a specimen
of the simple tales founded by Perrault on oider stories, and which soon became popu-
lar in this country. The others, as Blue Beard and Little Riding Hood, are vanishing
fon the nursery, ’ 1t are so universally ‘> >wn that reprints of them would be super-

uous,