Страшные сказки / Scary stories

And he saw her hands, and said,

“My wife had silver hands”.

She answered,

“The good God gave me new hands”.

The angel went into the room, and brought the silver hands, and showed them to him. Hereupon he knew for a certainty that it was his dear wife and his dear child, and he kissed them.

Then the angel of God gave them one meal with her, and after that they went home to the

King’s old mother. The King and Queen were married again, and lived contentedly to their happy end.

Bluebeard

Charles Perrault

There was once a man who had fine houses, both in town and country, silver and gold plates, nice furniture, and coaches gilded all over with gold.

But this man was very unlucky because he had a blue beard, which made him so frightfully ugly that all the women and girls ran away from him.

One of his neighbors, a lady of quality[14 - a lady of quality – знатная дама], had two daughters who were very beautiful. He desired to marry one of them.

Neither of them wanted to marry him, and they sent him backwards and forwards from one to the other. They did want to have a husband with a blue beard. Furthermore, he was already married to several wives, and nobody knew what became of them.

Blue Beard invited these girls, with their mother and three or four other ladies, with other young people of the neighborhood, to one of his country houses, where they stayed a whole week.

The time was filled with parties, hunting, fishing, dancing, mirth, and feasting.

Everything succeeded so well that the youngest daughter began to think that the man’s beard was not so very blue after all, and that he was a gentleman.

As soon as they returned home, the marriage was concluded. About a month afterwards, Blue Beard told his wife that he was obliged to take a country journey for six weeks at least. He desired her to divert herself in his absence, to send for her friends and acquaintances, to take them into the country, if she pleased, and to do whatever she wanted.

“Here”, said he, “are the keys to the two great wardrobes, wherein I have my best furniture. These are to my silver and gold plates. These open my strongboxes, which hold my money, both gold and silver; these my caskets of jewels. And this is the master key to all my apartments. But look at this little key. It is the key to the closet at the end of the great hall on the ground floor.