"I beseech you, sir," he replied, "say no more! It may be I deemed you
at first a visitor perchance even more welcome--if it be possible,...
yet I know not that either. My name is Ennui,"--he smiled
again--"Prince Ennui. You have, perchance, heard somewhere our sad
story. This is the perpetual silence wherein lies that once-happy
princess, my dear sister, Sleeping Beauty."
His voice seemed but an echo amongst the walls and arches of this old
house, and he spoke with a suave enunciation as if in an unfamiliar
tongue.
I replied that I had read the ever-lovely story of Sleeping Beauty,
indeed knew it by heart, and assured him modestly that I had not the
least doubt of a happy ending--"that is, if the author be the least
authority."
He narrowed his lids. "It is a tradition," he replied; "meanwhile, the
thickets broaden."
Whereupon I begged him to explain how it chanced that among that
festive and animated company I had read of, he alone had resisted the
wicked godmother's spell.
He smiled distantly, and bowed me into the garden.
"That is a simple thing," he said.
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