Cinderella

There was once a rich man whose wife fell ill, and when she felt her end was near, she called her only little daughter to her bedside and said, "Dear child, stay good and true, and God will always help you. I will look down on you from heaven and be near you." Then she closed her eyes and was gone. Every day the girl went out to her mother's grave and wept, and she stayed good and true. When winter came, snow laid a white cloth over the grave, and when spring drew it away again, the man married another wife.

This new wife brought two daughters into the house with her, fair and lovely to look at, but hard and unkind in their hearts. Now a difficult time began for the poor stepdaughter. "Is the little goose to sit in the parlor with us?" they said. "Whoever wants to eat bread must earn it — out to the kitchen with her!" They took away her pretty clothes, dressed her in an old gray smock, and gave her wooden shoes. "Look at the fine princess, all dressed up!" they laughed, and led her to the kitchen. There she worked hard from before dawn until night — carrying water, laying fires, cooking, scrubbing. And the sisters thought up every little unkindness they could. They tipped her peas and lentils into the ashes so she had to kneel and pick them all out again. At night, tired through, she had no bed, but had to lie down by the hearth among the cinders. And because she always looked dusty from it, they called her Cinderella.

One day her father was setting off for the fair, and he asked his stepdaughters what he should bring them. "Beautiful dresses," said one. "Pearls and jewels," said the other. "And you, Cinderella, what would you like?" he asked. "Father, break off for me the first branch that brushes your hat on the way home." So he bought the dresses and the jewels for the two sisters, and riding home through a green thicket, a hazel twig knocked his hat off. He broke it from the tree and brought it home with him, and gave it to Cinderella. She thanked him, and went and planted it on her mother's grave, weeping so long that her tears watered it well. It grew into a fine little tree, and three times a day Cinderella sat beneath it and wept and prayed, and each time a small white bird came and settled in its branches. And whenever she wished for something, the bird would drop it down to her.

Now the King announced a festival that would last three days, and every beautiful young woman in the land was invited, so that his son might choose himself a bride. When the two stepsisters heard they too would go, they were overjoyed, and called Cinderella to comb their hair, polish their shoes, and fasten their buckles. Cinderella did as she was told, though she wept, for she longed to go to the dance too, and she begged her stepmother to let her come. "You, Cinderella? Covered in dust and cinders, wanting to go to a festival? You have no dress, no shoes, and yet you would dance?" But Cinderella kept asking, until at last the stepmother said, "I have poured a dish of lentils into the ashes. If you can pick them all out again in two hours, you may come." The girl went out to the garden and called:

"Gentle doves, and turtledoves, and all the birds up in the sky, come and help me, by and by — the good ones in the pot to keep, the bad ones you may eat."

Two white pigeons flew in at the window, then the turtledoves, and soon every bird under heaven came fluttering down among the ashes. Peck, peck, peck, peck — their little heads nodded busily, and within the hour the good grains lay sorted in the dish. Cinderella carried it to her stepmother, joyful, sure now she would be allowed to go. But the stepmother said, "No, Cinderella — you have no clothes, and you cannot dance. You would only be laughed at." When Cinderella wept, she said, "If you can pick two dishes of lentils clean in one hour, then you shall come" — thinking to herself that it could never be done. But the birds came again as before, and in half an hour the work was finished. Yet still the stepmother said, "It is no use. You are not coming — you have no clothes, and we should be ashamed of you." And she hurried off with her two proud daughters, leaving Cinderella behind.

When the house stood empty, Cinderella went to her mother's grave beneath the hazel tree and said:

"Little tree, shiver and shake, Send silver and gold for my sake."

Then the bird tossed down a dress of gold and silver, and slippers embroidered in silk. She dressed quickly and went to the festival. Her stepmother and sisters looked right at her and did not know her — they took her for some foreign princess, so lovely did she look, and never once thought of the girl left home in the ashes. The prince came and took her hand and danced with no one else all evening, and whenever anyone tried to claim her for a turn, he said, "She is my partner."

When evening fell she wished to go home, and the prince said he would walk with her, wanting to know whose daughter she was. But she slipped away and ran into the pigeon house. The prince waited until her father came home and told him a strange girl had run in there, and the father wondered, "Could it be Cinderella?" They broke into the pigeon house with an axe, but found no one inside — for Cinderella had already climbed down the back, run to the little hazel tree, laid her fine clothes upon the grave for the bird to carry off, and slipped back into her gray smock among the cinders.

The next evening it happened again — a still more splendid dress from the bird, more wonder at the festival, the prince dancing with no one else — and again she slipped away from him at nightfall, this time climbing into a pear tree in the garden. Her father, called again, had the tree chopped down, and again no one was found in it, for she had already come down the far side, returned the dress to the bird, and lain down once more among the ashes.

On the third evening, the bird gave her the loveliest dress of all, shining and golden, with slippers made entirely of gold. No one at the festival could look at her without wondering, and the prince danced with no one but her the whole night through. But this time, before she fled, the prince had done something clever: he had had the palace stairs coated in pitch. As Cinderella ran down them in the dark, her left slipper stuck fast, and she left it behind as she escaped. The prince picked it up — small, dainty, and gold. In the morning he went to her father and declared, "No one shall be my bride but the one whose foot fits this shoe."

The two sisters were delighted, for they had pretty feet. The eldest took the shoe to her room to try it, with her mother close by, but her big toe would not fit. Her mother said, "Push your foot in anyway. Once you are queen, you will never need to walk far again." So, though it pinched terribly, the girl forced her foot into the shoe and went out to the prince, who lifted her onto his horse as his bride and rode away with her. But their path passed the little hazel tree, and on it sat the two doves, and they called:

"Look back, look back, the shoe's too small; this is not the true bride at all."

The prince looked down and saw it was so. He turned his horse around and brought her home again, saying she was not the right one, and asked for the other sister to try. She got her toes in well enough, but her heel was too large, so her mother urged her on just the same, and she too squeezed her foot in past the ache and rode off with the prince as his bride. But again, passing the hazel tree, the doves called down the same warning, and the prince saw the truth of it and brought her home too.

"This is not the right one either," he said. "Have you no other daughter?" "None," said the father, "only my late wife's little Cinderella — but she could never be the bride." The prince asked that she be sent for anyway, though the stepmother protested she was much too dirty to be seen. But he insisted, and Cinderella was called. She washed her hands and face, then came and curtsied before the prince, and sat down and slipped her foot from her heavy wooden shoe into the golden slipper — and it fit her perfectly. When she stood, and the prince looked into her face, he knew her at once as the girl he had danced with, and cried, "This is the true bride!"

The stepmother and her daughters went pale with shock and anger, but the prince lifted Cinderella onto his horse and rode away with her. As they passed the hazel tree, the two white doves called out once more:

"Look back, look back, the shoe sits true; the real bride rides along with you!"

And with that, both doves flew down and settled on Cinderella's shoulders, one on the right and one on the left, and stayed there.

When the wedding day came, the two stepsisters arrived, hoping still to win favor and share in Cinderella's good fortune. But the doves that loved Cinderella had not forgotten how unkind and false the sisters had been, and this time all their flattery won them nothing at all. For all their scheming, the two who had been so cruel to a good and gentle heart were left without the smallest share of the happiness they had hoped to claim — while Cinderella lived on, good and true, as she had always been, and happy at last.