So the sleeping child was brought and placed in her mother’s arms. How tenderly she clasped the baby to her breast, bending over it as though to shield it from all harm. So sweet a sight should have touched the hardest heart, and indeed there was only one ‘person in the room who remained unmoved, and that was the spiteful and jealous fairy, who looked up and bared her yellow teeth in a sneering grin.
“Queen,” said she, “your face is pale and your lips tremble. What is it that you fear on this day of the giving of gifts?”
But the Queen shuddered and was silent.
Then a fairy rose in her place and said—
“I will begin. My gift to the Princess Briar-Rose is the gift of Beauty. She shall have eyes like stars, and hair as bright as the sunshine of the spring day on which she was born, and cheeks as fresh and fair as the petals of the flower from which she takes her name. None shall surpass her in loveliness.”
Then the second fairy rose in her turn and said: “After Beauty, Wit, The Princess shall be cleverer than any ordinary mortal could ever hope to be.”
“I give her Virtue,” said the third. And the Queen nodded her head and smiled, for though she esteemed beauty and cleverness, she knew that neither was of any worth without goodness of heart.
So all the fairies in turn named the gift which they had brought for Briar-Rose. The fourth said that whatever the Princess put her hand to, she should do with the most exquisite grace; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; the sixth that she should dance as lightly as a
