BRITTANY
An old Breton couple had two sons. The elder son went off to Paris to make his fortune. The younger son. La Rose, was timid and stayed at home. His aging mother urged him to marry. At first he resisted, but his mother pressed him and eventually he gave in and took a wife. But he had been married no more than few weeks when the new bride fell sick and died. La Rose was distraught with grief He went every evening to his wife’s grave and wept.
One evening when he was about to go into the graveyard he saw a terrifying phantom, which asked him what he was doing there.
“I have come here to pray at the grave of my wife,” La Rose replied.
“And do you wish she was still alive?” the spirit asked.
“Oh yes!” La Rose replied. “I would do anything to have her restored to me again.”
“Listen, then,” the phantom said. “Come back to this place tomorrow evening at the same time. Bring a pick and you shall see what will come to pass.”
The following evening came and La Rose walked to the graveyard as instructed. The phantom appeared and said, “Go to your wife’s grave and strike at it with your pick. The earth will fall away and you will see her lying in her shroud. See this little silver box, which contains a rose. Take it, open it, and pass the box under her nose three times. Then she will wake as if from a deep sleep.”
La Rose hurried to his wife’s grave, where everything happened just as the phantom had foretold. He struck the ground with his pick and the earth fell away. He placed the box under his wife’s nose and she woke up with a sigh, as if from a deep sleep. La Rose had brought clothes with him for her to put on, and together they returned to the parents’ house. There was much rejoicing.
Some time afterward. La Rose’s father died of old age and his mother was not long following him. La Rose wrote a letter to his brother in Paris, telling him that he should return to receive his share of their inheritance, but he could not leave Paris just then, so La Rose was forced to travel to Paris instead. Before setting oftj he promised his wife he would write to her every day.
When he reached Paris, he found his brother very ill. Preoccupied with nursing him back to health, he forgot to write to his wife. So the weeks passed.
The wife became increasingly fearful that something terrible had happened to her husband. She sat every day at the window, watching for a courier bringing her a letter or message, but nothing came.
A regiment of dragoons was billeted on the town. The captain was lodged at the inn immediately opposite La Rose’s house and he was strongly attracted to La Rose’s wife. He made inquiries about who she was and why she was so sad. He wrote her a letter, pretending to be her brother-in-law in Paris and telling her that her husband had died. Then, after a tactfijl interval, he started paying court to the young widow. He proposed marriage and she accepted. They married and when the regiment left the town, they both went with it.
Meanwhile, La Rose’s brother recovered and La Rose remembered his wife and rushed back to Brittany. When he got home, he was startled to find the doors of his house closed and bolted. The neighbors told him what had happened.
For a time he was too numb to act. Then he decided to enlist in the same regiment of dragoons as his wife’s new husband. He had line handwriting and was taken on as secretary to one of the lieutenants. He tried to catch sight of his wife, but repeatedly failed to do so.
One day the wicked captain came into the lieutenants’ oflSce, saw La Rose’s fine handwriting, and asked the lieutenant if he could borrow him for a few days to help him with his correspondence. This was agreed.
While La Rose was helping the captain, he saw his wife, but she didn’t recognize him. The captain was very pleased with La Rose’s letter-writing and asked him to dinner. During the meal, a servant who had stolen a silver dish and feared discovery slipped it into La Rose’s pocket. When the loss of the silver dish was discovered, the real thief accused La Rose of stealing it. The evidence spoke loudly against La Rose and his judges sentenced him to be shot.
In prison, while he was awaiting execution. La Rose struck up conversation with Pere La Chique, the friendly old guard who brought him his food. “Pere La Chique,” said La Rose, “I have 2,000 francs. If you do as I ask, the money is yours.”
The old man agreed at once. The young man requested that after the execution La Chique go to the graveyard where he was buried and bring him back to life with the magic rose, which he always carried carefully wifh him.
When the fatefid day came. La Rose was shot, but Pere La Chique went olf to inn after inn with his money. As he was drinking more and more wine, occasionally the thought of La Rose crossed his mind, but he dismissed it: “Well, the poor fellow, he really is better olf dead. The world is a wearisome place and he is better out of it. Whyever should I bring him back?”
After several days of drinking with his friends, Pere La Chique had used up most of the money and began to regret that he had not done as the young man had asked. He took a pick to the graveyard and struck the ground with it. The earth fell away, exposing the corpse of La Rose. The old man was terrified and ran away. He needed a gulp or two of wine to give him the courage he needed to complete the task. But back he went and passed the rose in the silver box three times under the corpse’s nose.
La Rose sat up at once. “That was a good sleep, but where are my clothes?”
The old man gave him his clothes and when he was properly dressed they quickly left the graveyard.
Now La Rose needed to make a living. He followed the sound of a drum beating in the street and listened to a crier announcing a large reward for any who would act as a sentry to guard the chapel where the king’s daughter had been incarcerated; she had been magically turned into a monster.
La Rose volunteered, then discovered that every sentinel who watched the chapel between the hours of 11 and 12 had disappeared, never to be seen again. By chance, on his very first night he was given that perilous midnight watch. He was on the point of running away when he heard a voice: “La Rose, where are you? Listen, and no harm will come to you. A fearsome great beast will appear. When it does.
Leave your musket by the sentry box and climb onto its roof and the beast will not touch you.”
The hour of 11 stmck. La Rose hurried to get up on top of the sentry box. A hideous monster emerged from the chapel, belching flames and bellowing, “Sentinel of my father, where are you, that I may devour you?” It blundered into the musket, which it seized in its teeth and took back into the chapel to eat.
La Rose cautiously got down from his perch to find the musket crunched into a thousand pieces.
The king was pleased when he heard about La Rose’s success; he knew that if the same sentry kept guard on the midnight watch for three consecutive nights his daughter would be freed from her enchantment.
On the second night, the mysterious voice told La Rose to place his musket against the chapel door before climbing to safety and the same thing happened as on the first night.
On the third night, the voice told him to open the door of the chapel and when the monster came charging out he should run inside the building himself There he would find a leaden shrine that he should hide behind; he would also find a small bottle containing a liquid that he had to sprinkle on the monster’s head.
La Rose did as he was told, escaping from the monster just in time and reaching the leaden shrine. When he sprinkled the contents of the bottle on the monster’s head, it changed instantly into a beautifial princess.
The king was delighted to have his daughter restored to him and gave her to La Rose as his bride. Shortly afterward, the king gave up his throne in his son-in-law’s favor.
One day, the new king inspected the regiment of dragoons to which he had once belonged and pointed out that a man was missing. The colonel was startled, but said, “It is tme, sire. A useless old man called Pere La Chique. We left him back at the barracks playing the fiddle!”
“Well, I want to see him,” said the king.
La Chique was very frightened as he was dragged before the king, but the king tore the epaulettes off the captain who had deceitfially stolen his wife and placed them instead on the trembling shoulders of Pere La Chique. Then he gave the order for a great bonfire to be lit, and onto it were thrown the deceitfial captain and the faithless wife who had so quickly forgotten her husband.
Then the king and his queen lived happily ever after.
World History
