Fairy Tales for Young Readers (6 page)

Perhaps all the giants were dead, or perhaps Jack's wife thought he had killed enough giants for one man, or perhaps he was tired. At any rate, it is certain that after his marriage he killed no more giants.

T
HERE WAS ONCE a miller who had three sons, and all day they all worked in the mill, and were powdered white with the flour, that makes a sort of dun-coloured fog in mills, and at night they slept soundly because they had been working all day, and there is nothing like that to make you sleep like any old top. They used to get up very early in the morning, to get to work again. But the old miller was up earlier than any one. The four of them had saved enough money to keep the old man in comfort in the days when he should be too old for work, and they knew that by working as they had always done they could save enough to keep the three lads from the workhouse, or from having to beg, when they too should grow old. And they were all happy and contented. And then suddenly a dreadful thing happened. The miller lent all his money to a farmer friend, who promised to pay it back after harvest; but there was a flood, and the harvest was ruined. The farmer hanged himself to his own barn-beam, and the shock of losing at once his money and his friend was too much for the old miller, and he died. On his deathbed he said: “My dear sons, I leave the mill to Bertrand, who is the eldest, the donkey to Alain, my second son, and the mill cat to Yvo, my youngest, with my last blessing to you all.”

So he died and was buried, and the two eldest brothers, with their mill and donkey, set to work to keep the trade
going. But Yvo's cat was of no use in the mill except for mouse-catching, so Alain and Bertrand told him that he must look out for a home elsewhere.

Then they went off to cut sedge to mend the thatch-roof with, and Yvo was left alone with his cat, who sat looking at him with big round, yellow eyes.

“Much good you are to
me,
old fellow,” he said to the cat. “You can catch mice and do pretty well for yourself—and that's a good thing. But the most you could do for me would be to die, and then I could make a cap out of your soft skin. And I'd rather you didn't die, so keep your life and enjoy it, old Michau, for I'm off to the wars for a soldier.”

“Don't you be in such a hurry,” said the cat. “Who told you I was only good for catching mice?”

“Eh?” said Yvo, who was as much astonished as you would be if your cat said anything more to you than “Miaow!” or “Purr.”

“You're a good boy all the same,” said the cat, licking his long white whiskers. “You don't wish me dead so as to have my skin, so I'll show you what I am good for. You go up into the back attic, where the beans and peas and roots are stored, and in the chink between the third and fourth boards close by the old cradle you'll find a ten-penny piece that has lain there this last hundred years. You take that to the shoemaker, and tell him to make me a pair of boots. Then you make me a bag—cut the tails of your shirt off if you haven't any other cloth—and run strings in the bag. Let me have them by Sunday, and then you shall see what you shall see.”

Yvo did exactly as he was told, which was very sensible of him, and by Sunday the cat had his boots and his bag. The boots were beautiful boots—topboots with yellow heels—and the bag was made of the tails of Yvo's best blue shirt.

Very early on Monday morning Puss got up and went over the hill to a rabbit warren. The rabbits were out
already nibbling the dewy grass; but the grass, though dewy, was short, and the rabbits were very hungry.

Michau laid out his bag, with parsley and bran in it, fixed the mouth of the bag open by a strong frond of bracken, and then hid himself behind a stone, holding the strings of the bag in his paws.

The silly bunnies saw and sniffed, and sniffed and longed, and longed and tasted, and two, bolder than the others, went head first into the bag, and plunged their greedy, nibbling noses right into the heap of bran.

That was what Puss had been waiting for. He pulled the strings, the strings drew up the mouth of the bag, and there were two fine fat rabbits kicking and struggling inside.

Michau killed each with a quick bite at the back of the neck, and then set out for the King's palace. When he got there he went to the side door, and asked to see the King, and all the handmaids and footmen and scullions and turn-spits laughed aloud at the very idea.

“
You
see the King?” said the cook; “you're much more likely to see the bottom of the moat, my fine fellow.”

“Do you think so,” said the cat. “I shouldn't be lonely there, anyhow—for you'd all be thrown after me as soon as the King knew that that was how you treated the messenger of my Lord the Marquis of Carabas.”

“Oh, if you come from a marquis,” said the cook, “that's quite a different pair of shoes. Raoul, show the gentleman up.”

So one of the footmen who had been loudest in jeering at Michau had to lead him to the King's presence.

“A gift, your Majesty,” said the cat, bowing low before the throne, “from your faithful servant my Lord the Marquis of Carabas.”

“Why, I never heard of him,” said the King. “But then it's true that I have not long moved into my present palace.”

“Oh,” said the cat carelessly, “my Lord Marquis owns a good deal of land not so very far away.”

“Indeed,” said the King.

“Thank your master, my fine cat, and be sure you don't leave the palace without a good meal.”

Next day the cat caught a brace of partridges, and took them to the palace; next day it was pheasants. He always had a good meal before leaving, and the folks in the kitchen got to look for his coming, for Michau was the best of company, and could tell more stories, and more amusing ones, than any cat I ever heard of.

But Yvo said, “This is all very well for you—you are getting as fat as butter with all these free meals at the palace; but I get nothing but my brothers' leavings, and even those I shan't get much longer. They are growing tired of waiting for you to make my fortune.”

“Don't you be so tiresome,” said the cat. “All the time I'm eating I'm picking up bits of news from the servants, and presently I shall hear something that I can use to advance your fortunes. But if you worry I won't do anything at all—so there.”

“Very well,” said Yvo, “then I won't worry.”

And the very next day, as the cat sat in the King's kitchen, happy in the good company of a venison pasty and a wooden bowl of cider, he heard news that made him swallow down the cider at one gulp, leave the best of the pasty, and run all the way home.

“Come along, master,” the cat cried to Yvo, who was half asleep in the mill-house, “the King and the Princess Dulcibella are driving out in their coach today, and they are to go along by the river-side. So come quickly.”

“It won't do me much good to see kings and princesses,” said Yvo; but he followed the cat all the same.

And when they got to the river, that runs smooth and shallow between two rows of pollarded grey willows, the cat said:

“Now undress, and go into the water up to your neck. You're a pretty fellow enough; it's your clothes that spoil you, especially since you cut up your best blue shirt to make my game-bag.”

The water was cold, and Yvo could not swim, but he did as Michau told him, and the cat put his clothes in the mouth of an otter's den, and kicked a turf in after them to hide them completely.

And in the water Yvo stayed, getting colder and colder and more and more uncomfortable, till the King's carriage came by. Then the cat stood up in his boots with the yellow heels, and put his paws to his mouth and shouted:

“Help, help! for my Lord Marquis of Carabas.”

The King's carriage stopped, and the King put his head out to see what was the matter.

“My master was bathing,” said the cat, “and some robbers came and carried off his clothes and his horse; and his castle is miles away, and he is in despair because he cannot come out of the water to greet your Majesty.”

“Oh, is that all?” said the King; and he told his under-chamberlain to send a running footman back to the palace for a silver-laced suit, with hat, ruff, boots, and rapier, all complete. Then the carriage waited while Yvo came out of the water and dressed; and when he had on the fine suit he looked as fine a gentleman as anybody there. So he presented himself to the King, and the King presented him to the Princess, and he and she each thought they had never seen any one they liked so well.

“Let me give you a lift,” said the King heartily, “and thank you for all the fine game you've been sending me lately. We're only going for a drive. I can drop you anywhere you like.”

So Yvo, who had never before ridden in anything grander than a wheelbarrow, got into the coach with the King and the Princess. And Yvo and the Princess sat face to face; and, truth to tell, they found it hard to keep their eyes off each other.

The cat ran on ahead, till he came to a field where reapers were at work getting in a very fine harvest of corn.

“My men,” he said, “if you do as I tell you you shall each have a pocketful of money. But if you don't my master will
hang you. If the King asks you whose field this is you must say it belongs to the Lord Marquis of Carabas.”

So when the King, who took an interest in farming, came to the field he admired the rich grain, and stopped his carriage to ask whose it was.

“It belongs to my Lord the Marquis of Carabas,” said the reapers all together.

“Very fine indeed, my lord,” said the King.

“It's the first good crop I've ever had from that field,” said Yvo.

The cat hurried on to another field, where men were at work binding corn in sheaves, and spoke to them as he had done to the others. And when the King came along, and questioned them, they said with one voice:

“It all belongs to my Lord the Marquis of Carabas.”

“Your estates are very large, my lord,” said the King, “and very prosperous; I never saw a finer crop.”

“It's almost a miracle,” said Yvo, “for I never took any trouble with that field.”

So the carriage drove on, and still the King looked at the corn-fields—and the Princess and Yvo looked at each other. And now the road left the river, and wound like a twisted white ribbon over the green velvet of smooth meadows to where, far off, at the foot of a hill, stood a large and beautiful castle.

“I wonder now whose that is?” said the King. “Let us go and see.”

The cat took a very short cut across country, and got to the castle long before the King did. He had a little chat with the sentry at the keep, told him some funny tales, picked up a little gossip, and then went on to the castle itself, where he told the porter he had to deliver a message from his master the Marquis of Carabas.

Now this castle belonged to an ogre, and so did all the land for miles round. But if you think the cat was afraid of ogres you do not do him justice.

He went up to the great gate, pulled the great bell, and asked to see the master of the house; and his manners
were so good and his language so fine that the porter led him into a great hall hung with beast-skins and furnished with old black oak. And there sat the ogre, as big as he was ugly, and as ugly as he was wicked.

“What do
you
want?” he asked the cat fiercely; and his mind was quite made up that, whatever the cat
wanted,
what the cat should get would be the end of a rope.

“Only to see
you,
”
said the cat humbly; “and now I have seen you I can die contented.”

“I'm not much to look at,” said the ogre, but he was pleased all the same.

“Looks are not everything,” said the cat, “though even in looks you are the finest ogre in all Brittany. I have travelled all over the world, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Island of Sark, and everywhere I have heard of nothing but your beauty, your wit, your wealth, and your accomplishments.”

“Well,” said the ogre, scratching his head, “you've got a tongue. Wet it with a cup of wine, and sit down and have a turnover or a girdle-cake.”

“I'll sit down with pleasure,” said Michau, “but I won't eat, thank you, because I've just had breakfast with the King, who owns the next-door kingdom to yours, and his lovely daughter, Princess Dulcibella.”

“Oh,” said the ogre, “and did
they
talk about me too?”

“I should think they did,” said the cat. “They told me all I have told you, and more. Why, they said you had the power of changing yourself into any animal you chose; but of course, I'm not so mouse-minded as to believe
that.
”

“Oh, aren't you,” said the ogre. “Well, then, look here.” He stood up, took off his cloak, and said:

“I shall now change myself into a lion. No deception, ladies and gentlemen. You shall see for yourselves how it's done!”

He uttered a roar so loud that the other lions might almost have heard it in their distant deserts, and then and there became a lion. Michau was off through the window
before the echo of the roar had died away. He landed on the sloping kitchen roof, but his boots made it very difficult to hold on to it, so he slid off, clattering on to the roof of the washhouse, and from that to the roof of the oven, and from that to the stones of the yard. And from the yard he ran in and upstairs, and peeped into the ogre's hall. The lion was gone, and only the ogre sat there, laughing all by himself at the fright he had given his visitor.

“Excuse my having left you for a moment,” said the cat, walking in as though nothing had happened. “I thought I heard my master, the Marquis of Carabas, calling me. But it was only the well-handle creaking.”

“You know well enough,” said the ogre, “that you were frightened because I turned into a lion.”

Michau smiled with polite amusement.

“Oh, not at all, I assure you,” he said. “Why, that's such a common trick, if you'll pardon my saying so. Almost every one I know can do
that.
What the King was saying was that you could turn yourself into quite little things—a fly, or a beetle, or a mouse; and of course I'm not so bat-witted as to believe that.”