and was as much enchanted as her sisters at the sight of the château. "We must certainly go to this palace," they said; "perhaps we shall find in it some handsome princes, who will be only too happy to marry us." They talked the whole evening long on this subject, and lay down to sleep on the grass; but when Finette appeared to them in a sound slumber, Fleur d'Amour said to Belle-de-Nuit, "I'll tell you what we should do, sister; let us get up and dress ourselves in the fine clothes Finette has brought hither." "You are in the right," said Belle-de-Nuit; so they got up, curled their hair, powdered it, put patches on their cheeks,[1] and dressed themselves in the beautiful gold and silver gowns all covered with diamonds. Never was anything so magnificent. Finette, ignorant of the theft her wicked sisters had committed, took up her bag with the intention of dressing herself, but was vastly distressed to find nothing in it but flints. At the same moment she perceived her sisters shining like suns. She wept, and complained of the treachery they had been guilty of towards her, but they only laughed and made a joke of it. "Is it possible," said she to them, "that you will have the effrontery to take me to the château, without dressing and making me as fine as you are?" "We have barely enough for ourselves," replied Fleur d'Amour. "Thou shalt have nothing but blows, an' thou importunest us." "But," continued she, "the clothes you have on are mine; my godmother gave them to me. You have no claim to them." "If thou sayest more about it," said they, "we will knock thee on the head, and bury thee without any one being the wiser!" Poor Finette did not dare provoke them; she followed them slowly, walking some short distance behind them, as if she were only their servant.
The nearer they approached to the mansion the more wonderful it appeared to them. "Oh!" said Fleur d'Amour and Belle-de-Nuit, "how we shall amuse ourselves!—what capital dinners we shall get! We shall dine at the King's table; but Finette will have to wash the dishes in the kitchen, for she looks like a scullion; and if anybody asks who she is, we must take care not to call her our sister; we must say she is
- ↑ The fashion of patching the face with small pieces of court-plaister, cut sometimes into the most fantastic shapes, was carried to the greatest extreme at the close of the seventeenth and commencement of the eighteenth centuries.
