# Bluebeard _Charles Perrault_ · 10 min read · ages 8-12 A wealthy nobleman with a blue beard marries the younger of two sisters, then leaves on business and forbids her to open one small door in the house. When he learns she opened it, he raises his sword to kill her, but her brothers come riding through the gate, cut him down, and everything he owned becomes hers. --- Once upon a time there was a man who owned fine houses in town and in the country, gold and silver dishes, carved furniture, and coaches gilded from wheel to roof. He had everything a man could want but one thing. His beard was blue, and it made him so strange to look at, and so frightening, that women and girls turned and hurried away whenever he came near. A lady of good family lived nearby, and she had two daughters, both of them beautiful. Bluebeard asked her for one of them in marriage and left it to her to say which. Neither of them wanted him. They passed the question back and forth between them, because neither could bring herself to marry a man with a blue beard. And there was something else that turned them against him. He had been married several times already, and nobody could say what had become of his wives. To make himself better known, Bluebeard invited the two sisters, their mother, three or four of their closest friends and some young people of the neighborhood to one of his country houses, where they stayed a whole week. There was nothing all week but pleasure: walks and hunting, fishing and dancing, long tables and laughter. Hardly anyone went to bed, and the nights were spent playing tricks on one another. Everything went so well that the younger daughter began to think the master of the house was a very pleasant gentleman, and that his beard was not so very blue after all. As soon as they were home again, the wedding was arranged. About a month later Bluebeard told his wife that business would take him to another part of the country for six weeks at least. He asked her to enjoy herself while he was away, to send for her friends, to take them out to the country if she liked, and to keep a good table wherever she was. “Here,” he said, “are the keys of the two great storerooms, where the best furniture is kept. These open the room with the gold and silver dishes that we do not use every day. These are for my strongboxes, where the money is, and these for the caskets of jewels. And this one is the master key, which opens every room in the house. But this little key is the key of the small room at the end of the long gallery downstairs. Open everything else. Go everywhere else. As for that little room, I forbid you to set foot in it, and I tell you plainly: if you open that door, there is nothing my anger will not do to you.” She promised to do exactly as he said. He kissed her, climbed into his coach, and drove away. Her neighbors and her friends did not wait to be sent for. They were far too eager to see the riches of the house, which they had never dared visit while its master was at home, because his blue beard frightened them. They ran through the rooms and the closets and the wardrobes, and each was finer than the last. They climbed to the storerooms and could not stop admiring the tapestries, the beds, the couches, the cabinets and the little tables, and the mirrors in which a person could see herself from head to foot, some framed in glass and some in silver and gold, the most magnificent things they had ever seen. They said over and over how lucky their friend was. But their friend was taking no pleasure at all in her riches, because she could think of nothing except the little room at the end of the gallery downstairs. At last her curiosity grew so strong that she left her guests without a word of apology and went down by a narrow back staircase, in such a hurry that two or three times she nearly fell. At the door she stood still. She thought of what her husband had told her, and of what might happen to her if she disobeyed him. But the temptation was stronger than she was. She took the little key and, trembling, opened the door. At first she could see nothing, because the shutters were closed. Then her eyes grew used to the dark, and she understood what the little room was. Here was the answer that nobody in the country had been able to give her: what had become of the wives Bluebeard had married before her. He had killed them, one after another, and this room had kept his secret. They were all there, and she was standing in the doorway. She thought she would die of fear. The key slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor. When she could breathe again she picked it up, locked the door and went upstairs to her own room to steady herself. There was no steadying her. She was shaking still. Then she saw that there was a stain on the little key. She wiped it two or three times, and the stain stayed. She washed it, she scrubbed it with soap and sand, and still the stain stayed, for the key was enchanted and could never be made clean. When she rubbed the mark away on one side, it came back on the other. That very evening Bluebeard came home. Letters had reached him on the road, he said, with the news that his business was settled in his favor. His wife did everything she could to show him how glad she was to have him back so soon. In the morning he asked her for the keys. She gave them to him, but her hand shook so badly that he guessed at once what had happened. “How is it,” he said, “that the key of the little room is not here with the others?” “I must have left it upstairs on my table,” she said. “Then bring it to me,” said Bluebeard. “Do not forget.” She put it off as long as she could, and in the end she had to bring it. Bluebeard turned it over in his fingers. “How does this stain come to be on the key?” he said. “I do not know,” said the poor woman, whiter than paper. “You do not know,” said Bluebeard. “I know very well. You wanted to go into that room. Very well, madam. You shall go into it, and you shall stay there with the ladies you found.” She threw herself down at his feet in tears and begged him to forgive her, and she was so beautiful and so sorrowful that she would have melted a rock. But Bluebeard’s heart was harder than any rock. “You must die, madam,” he said, “and at once.” “If I must die,” she answered, looking up at him with her eyes full of tears, “give me a little time to say my prayers.” “A few minutes,” said Bluebeard, “and not one moment more.” As soon as she was alone she went up to her own room and called her sister, whose name was Anne. “Sister Anne, go up to the top of the tower, I beg you, and see whether my brothers are coming. They promised they would come today. If you see them, wave to them to hurry.” Sister Anne climbed to the top of the tower, and from her own room the poor wife called up to her: “Anne, sister Anne, do you see anything coming?” And sister Anne answered: “I see nothing but the dust shining in the sun, and the grass growing green.” Downstairs Bluebeard had taken a great sword in his hand, and he shouted with all his strength: “Come down this minute, or I will come up to you.” “One moment more, if you please,” his wife called back. And then, very softly, she called up the stair: “Anne, sister Anne, do you see anything coming?” And sister Anne answered: “I see nothing but the dust shining in the sun, and the grass growing green.” “Come down at once,” roared Bluebeard, “or I will come up to you.” “I am coming,” said his wife. And then she called: “Anne, sister Anne, do you see anything coming?” “I see a great cloud of dust,” sister Anne answered, “coming this way.” “Is it my brothers?” “No, sister. It is a flock of sheep.” “Come down, or I am coming up for you,” shouted Bluebeard. “One moment more,” said his wife. And then she called: “Anne, sister Anne, do you see anything coming?” “I see two horsemen,” said sister Anne, “but they are still a long way off.” A breath later she cried out from the tower: “Thank heaven, they are my brothers! I am waving with all my might for them to hurry.” Then Bluebeard bellowed so loudly that the whole house shook. His wife came down and threw herself at his feet, weeping, her hair loose about her shoulders. “None of this will help you,” said Bluebeard. “You must die.” He took hold of her hair with one hand and lifted the sword with the other. She turned her face up to him and asked for one small moment to collect herself. “No,” he said. “Say your last prayer.” And he raised his arm. At that very moment there came such a hammering at the gate that Bluebeard stopped where he stood. The gate was flung open, and two horsemen rode into the courtyard with their swords already drawn. They were his wife’s brothers, one a dragoon and the other a musketeer. They were down from their saddles before Bluebeard could think. He let go of her hair and ran, but they were quicker than he was and caught him before he reached the door, and that was the end of Bluebeard. His wife was so weak with fright that she had not the strength to stand up and welcome her brothers. Bluebeard had left no heirs, and so everything he owned became hers. With one part of it she married sister Anne to a young gentleman who had loved her for a long time. With another she bought her brothers their captains’ commissions. With the rest she married again, a kind and honest man, and he was so good to her that in time she forgot the dreadful days she had spent with Bluebeard. --- - Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/bluebeard - Source: The Tales of Mother Goose, trans. Charles Welsh (Project Gutenberg #17208) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17208) - Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: The Tales of Mother Goose, trans. Charles Welsh (Project Gutenberg #17208) — translation: author died 1703 (+70 passed); translator Charles Welsh died 1914 (+70 passed) - License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)