To MADAME LA MARQUISE DE L

There are people whose uptight mind,

Underneath a face that never cheers,

Suffer, approve and esteem

Only the pompous and the sublime;

For me, I dare to pose in fact

That at certain times the most perfect spirit

Can love, without blushing, even puppets;

And that there are times and places

Where the grave and serious

Are not worth so much as pleasant nonsense.

Why should we marvel

That the most sensible reason,

Often weary of being too vigilant,

Through tales of ogre and fairy

Ingeniously cradled,

Take pleasure in sleeping!

Without fearing that I will be condemned

To misuse my leisure time,

I will, to satisfy your just desire,

Tell you the entire story of Donkey Skin.

DONKEY SKIN

Once upon a time there was a king,

The greatest that ever was on earth,

Kind in peace, terrible in war,

Only finally comparable to himself:

His neighbors feared him, his states were calm,

And from all sides were seen

Flowering in the shade of its palms

And virtues and fine arts.

His loving half, his faithful companion,

Was so charming and so beautiful,

Had a mind so practical and so gentle,

That he was yet with her

Less happy king than happy husband.

Of their tender and chaste marriage,

Full of softness and pleasure,

With so many virtues a girl was born,

That they consoled themselves easily

Not having any further lineage.

In his vast and rich palace,

Was nothing but magnificence;

Everywhere there swarmed a great abundance...

Of courtiers and valets;

He had in his stable

Big and small horses of all kinds,

Covered with beautiful trappings,

Stiff with gold and embroidery;

But what surprised all the world on entering,

Is that at the most conspicuous spot,

A donkey master was flaunting his two big ears.

This injustice startles you;

But, when you learn of its unparalleled virtues..,

You won't find the honor to be too great.

Such and so neatly formed his nature,

That he never made filth,

But very beautiful wealth under the sun,

And gold coins of all manner,

Which they would collect from the blonde litter box,

Every morning when he wakes up.

Yet, the sky, which sometimes grows weary

Of making men happy,

Who always in his goods mixes some disgrace,

Likewise rain in fine weather,

Allowed a bitter illness

All of a sudden, on the queen attacked the sunny days.

And they looked for help everywhere...

But neither the faculty in which the Greek studied,

Or the charlatans having classes,

Had power at all to stop the blaze

Which the fever flared up ever higher.

Arrived at her last hour,

She said to the king her husband:

"Finding it good that before I die,

I demand one thing from you;

That is, if you were to get the desire

To marry again when I'm gone..."

"Ah," said the king, "these cares are unnecessary,

I won't dream of it in my life,

You can rest easy on that."

"- I believe so," said the queen,

"If I bear witness to your vehement love...

But, to make me more certain..,

I want to have your oath,

Softened, nevertheless, by this temperament,

That, if you meet a more beautiful woman,

Better made and wiser than me,

You can honestly give her your faith

And you marry her."

His confidence in his attractions

Made him look at such a promise

Like an oath, overwhelmed with ease,

To never get married.

So the prince swore, his eyes bathed in tears,

All the queen wanted.

The queen died in his arms,

And never has a husband made so much noise.

To hear him sobbing both night and day,

It was felt that his grief would not last long,

And that he was mourning his deceased love...

Like a man in a hurry who wants to move on.

They weren't wrong. After a few months,

He wanted to make a new choice;

But it wasn't that easy;

He had to keep his oath,

And that the new bride

Would be more attractive and enjoyable

Than the one one they just placed at the monument.

Not the courtyard, in fertile beauty,

Not the country, not the city,

Nor the surrounding kingdoms,

Which they went looking around,

Could provide such a one;

The child alone was more beautiful,

And possessed certain tender charms.

Which the deceased didn't have.

The king himself noticed it

And, burning with extreme love,

Going insane he thought

That for this reason he had to marry her.

He even found a cleric

Who judged that the case could be proposed.

But the sad young princess

To hear of such love,

Lamented and cried night and day.

With a thousand sorrows filling the soul,

She went to find her godmother,

Far away, in a remote cave,

Of mother-of-pearl and coral richly endowed;

She was an admirable fairy,

Who never had an equal in her art.

There's no need to be told

What a fairy was in those blessed days,

Because I'm sure as your crumb

You'll have it from the time you were young.

"I know," she said, "on seeing the Princess,

That which brings you here;

I know from your heart the deep sadness,

But with me you have not to worry anymore.

It is nothing that can harm you,

Provided that on my advice you let yourself be driven

Your father, it's true, would like to marry you:

Listening to his crazy request

Would be a big mistake;

But, without contradicting him, we can refuse him.

Tell him that he must give to you,

To make your wishes come true,

Before you surrender your heart to his love,

A dress that is the color of the seasons.

For all his power and wealth,

Though heaven in all things favors his wishes,

He'll never be able to keep his promise."

Immediately the young princess

She went trembling to tell her father in love,

Who in the instant let it be heard

To the most important tailors

That, if they didn't make, without making him wait too long,

A dress that was the color of the seasons,

They can be assured that he'll hang them all.

The second day not yet shining,

That the desired dress was brought in:

The most beautiful blue of the Empyrean Heaven...

When it is encircled by big clouds of gold, is not,

Of a more azure color.

The child penetrated by joy and by pain.

Knows not what to say, or how

Steals away from her engagement

"Princess, ask for one,"

Her godmother said hushed,

"Which, brighter and less common

Be the color of the moon;

He won't give it to you."

Scarcely had the princess asked for it,

That the king said to his embroiderer:

"Let the star of the night have no more splendor.

And that in four days, without fail, render it to me.

The rich garment was made on the marked day,

Such as the King had specified.

In the heavens where the night has spread its sails,

The moon is less pompous in her silver dress,

when 'even in the midst of her diligent course

Her brightest clarity makes the stars fade.

The princess, admiring this wonderful garment..,

Was to consent almost deliberately;

But, by her inspired godmother,

To the prince in love she says:

"I will not know happiness,

Not having still a dress more brilliant

And the color of the sun."

The prince, who loved her with a love without equal,

Made come at once a rich lapidary,

And commanded him to the making

A beautiful fabric of gold and diamonds,

Saying that, if he failed to satisfy him well,

He would make him die in the midst of torment.

The prince was exempt from giving that penalty;

For the industrious workman,

By the end of the week,

Made to offer the precious work,

So beautiful, so bright, so radiant,

That Clymene's blond-haired lover,

When on the vault of heaven

In his chariot of gold he himself promenading

By a more brilliant radiance blinds not the eyes.

The child, whom these gifts finally confound,

To her father, to her king knowing not what to respond.

Her godmother promptly taking her by the hand:

"You mustn't," says she in her ear,

"Remain on so beautiful a path.

Is it such a great wonder

How all these gifts you're receiving,

So long as he has the donkey which you know,

Who's gold coins are constantly filling his purse!

Ask him for the skin of this rare animal;

As it is all his resource,

You won't obtain it, or I reason badly."

That fairy was very clever,

And nevertheless she again overlooked

That violent love, provided that one content him,

Silver and gold count for nothing.

The skin was at once gallantly granted

As the child had wanted.

That skin, when they brought it in,

Terribly frightened her,

And made her bitterly complain about her fate.

Her godmother came and showed her

That when we do good, we must never fear;

That one must let the king think

That she's quite willing

To bear with him the conjugal law;

But that at the same time, alone and well disguised,

She has to go away to some distant State,

To avoid an evil so close and so certain.

"Here," she continued, "is a grand chest

Where we'll put all your clothes,

Your mirror, your toilet,

Your diamonds and rubies.

I give you my wand too;

Holding it in your hand,

The chest will go your same way,

Always under the hidden earth; -

And, when you want to open it,

No sooner my stick will have touched the ground

That immediately before your eyes she will come to offer herself.

In rendering you unrecognizable,

The donkey's carcass is an admirable mask:

Hide yourself well in that skin.

People will never believe, so frightful it is,

That it contains anything beautiful."

The Princess, thus disguised,

From company of the wise fairy sorrowfully made exit

During the freshness of the morning,

Which the prince, who for the party

Of its happy ceremony is getting ready,

Learns, in fear, his fate.

There is not a home, path, or avenue,

That they don't scrutinize promptly;

But in vain they are agitated,

It is impossible to guess what became of her.

Everywhere there spread a sad and dark sorrow;

No more wedding, no more feasting,

No more pie, no more sugared almonds.

The ladies of the court, all discouraged,

Most of them did not dine,

But for the priest, especially, the sadness was great,

For he had a very late lunch

And, worst of all, had no item of offering

The child however, pursued her course,

Her face covered in a nasty grime;

To all passers-by she reached out her hand,

And tried to find a place to serve;

But the least delicate and the most unhappy,

Seeing her so sullen and full of filth,

Didn't want to listen or retire with her

Such a dirty creature.

So she went far, far, far away, even farther;

At last she came to a farmhouse

Where the farm girl needed

Of a drudge whose industry

Goes just to knowing how to wash cloths properly.

And to clean the pig beds.

They put her in a corner, in the back of the kitchen,

Where the servants, insolent vermin,

Did nothing but tug at her,

To contradict and mock her:

They knew not what kind of fun to make of her,

Harassing her about everything;

She was the common mound

Of all their nonsense and of all their good words.

She had a little more rest on Sundays;

For, having in the morning done her little business,

She'd go into her room, and, holding her door closed

She'd clean herself up, then open her chest,

Properly apply her toilet,

Arrange on top her little pots.

In front of her big mirror, happy and contented,

Of the moon sometimes the dress she wore,

Sometimes the one where the sun's fire burst,

Sometimes the beautiful blue dress

That all the blue of the heavens cannot equal;

With that grief alone that their dragging train

On the floor too short they could not spread out.

She liked to see herself young, ruddy and small.

And braver a hundred times than anyone else was.

This sweet pleasure sustained her

And led her to the next Sunday.

I forgot to say in passing...

That in this great farmhouse,

Of a king magnificent and powerful

Himself was tending the menagerie;

That there, Barbary hens,

Rails, guinea fowl, cormorants,

Musk goslings, goslings,

And a thousand other weird manner of Birds,

Between them almost all different,

Filling up amply ten classes in their entirety.

The king's son in this charming residence

Came often, on returning from the hunt,

Resting himself, to drink at the window

With the lords of his court

Such was like not the beautiful Cephalus:

His air was regal, his face martial..,

Suitable to make the proudest battalions tremble.

Donkey Skin, from far away, experiences him with tenderness,

And recognized, by this boldness,

That underneath her class and her rags,

She still had the heart of a princess.

"How tall he looks, though he's neglected it.

How kind he is," she said,

"And how blessed is the lady

To whom his heart is committed!

In a dress of anything if he had honored me,

I'd be more adorable

Than of all those I have."

One day, the young prince, wandering on an adventure...

Barnyard to barnyard,

Passed through a dark alley

Where Donkey Skin was in her humble lodgings.

By chance he put his eye to the keyhole.

How festive it was that day,

She had taken a rich ornament

And her beautiful clothes,

That, fine gold cloth and big diamonds,

Equaled the sun's clarity in the purest form.

The prince, according to his desire,

Contemplates it and can only barely,

On seeing her, catch his breath,

So full of pleasure he is.

Whether it be the clothes, the beauty of the face,

Her beautiful turn, her bright whiteness,

Her fine features, her youthful freshness

They affect him a hundred times more;

But a certain air of grandeur,

Even more a wise and modest decency,

Which the beauties of her soul assured testimony,

Grabbed his whole heart.

Three times, in the heat of the fire that carried him,

He wanted to break the door down;

But, believing he saw a deity..,

Three times out of respect his arm was arrested.

Into the palace, pensive, he withdrew;

And there, night and day, he sighs:

He no longer wants to go to the ball,

Nor whether onto the carnival;

He hates hunting, he hates comedy;

He has no appetite, everything makes his heart ache;

And the underlying cause of his illness...

Is a sad and deadly languor.

He inquired about that admirable nymph

Who lived in a farmyard,

At the end of a dreadful alley,

Where you can't see a spot in broad daylight.

"It is," they tell him, "Donkey-skin, in no way nymph or beautiful.

And that donkey skin is so called

Because of the skin she puts on her neck;

Of love it is the real cure,

Beastly, in a word, the ugliest

That we could see after the wolf."

One of good mind, he is unable to believe it;

The lines that love has drawn..,

Always present in his memory,

Will never be erased.

Yet the queen his mother,

Who has only him as a child, weeps and despairs;

To declare his affliction she presses him in vain;

He groans and weeps and sighs;

He says nothing, except that he desires

That Donkey Skin make him a cake with her own hand;

And the mother knows not what her son means.

"Heavens! Madam," they say to her,

This Donkey-skin is a black mole,

Even nastier and more vulgar

Than the dirtiest kitchen boy.

-It doesn't matter, says the queen, he must be satisfied,

And it is only this that we have to consider."

He could have it of gold, so much did that mother love him,

If he had wanted it to eat.

Donkey Skin thus takes her flour,

Which she had sifted deliberately

To make her dough thinner,

Her salt, her butter and her fresh eggs;

And, to make the cake right,

Locks herself in her little room.

To begin she cleaned herself up

Hands, arms and face,

And grabbed a collection of silver, which she quickly untied,

To do the work with dignity,

That soon she commenced.

They say that in working a little too hastily,

From her finger, by chance, it fell into the dough

One of her grand prize rings;

But those that hold knowledge of the end of that story

Maintain that by her deliberately it was put there;

And for me, frankly, I would venture to believe it,

Strongly sure that, when the prince approached at her door

And through the hole looked at her,

She had been discovered.

On that point the woman is so thick,

And her eye goes so quickly,

That one cannot see her for a moment

Which she knows not that you've seen her.

I am very sure again, and into an oath I make,

Which she doubted not that by her young lover...

The ring was not well received.

Never formed was so delicious a morsel;

And the prince found the cake so good,

That it was almost not anything that, from a gluttonous hunger,

He didn't swallow the ring as well.

When he saw the beautiful emerald,

And of the golden band the narrow circle,

That marked the form of the finger,

His heart was touched with incredible joy;

Under his bedside he put it immediately;

And, his pain ever increasing,

The doctors, wise men of experience,

Watching him lose weight day by day,

All judged, by their great science,

That he was lovesick.

Because the wedding, some evil as it may seem,

Is an exquisite cure for that disease,

They conclude to marry him.

He made himself for some time to pray;

Then he said, "I well wish to, as long as you give me

In marriage the person

For whom this ring will be fit."

At this bizarre demand,

The Queen and the King were very surprised;

But he was so sick that one didn't dare say no.

Here then that they set themselves on a quest

For the one that the ring, without regard of blood,

Must place in such a high rank.

It not being for one whom is not prepared

To come to present her finger,

Or whom wants to give up her right.

The rumor having run that, to claim the prince,

One has to have a very thin finger,

Any charlatan, to be welcome,

Saying that one has the secret of making it small.

The one, following her bizarre caprice,

Like a rave scours it;

The other cuts off a small piece of it;

Another, in squeezing it, thinks that she's decreased it;

And the other, with a certain liquid,

To make it less fat, in fact drops the skin.

There's no way of maneuvering it

That a lady doesn't try to implement

To make that her finger set well in the annulus.

The trial was started by the young princesses,

The marquises and the duchesses;

But their fingers, though delicate,

Were very big, and entered not.

The countesses and the baronesses,

And all the noble persons,

How they turn after turn presented their hands,

And presented them in vain.

Then came the working girls,

Whose lovely and dainty fingers,

Because there are some of very good making,

Seemed to fit the annulus sometimes;

But the ring, always too small or too round,

Of an almost equal disdain rejected the whole world.

It was forced to come finally

To the maids, to the cooks,

To the valets, to the turkey keepers,

In a word, to all the small fish,

Including the red and black feet,

No less than the delicate hands,

Hoping for a happy destiny.

Presenting themselves there many a girl

Of which her finger, big and plump,

In the ring of the prince should have equally little passed

Than a rope through a needle.

They finally believed it was done;

Since not remaining was, by the way,

That poor Donkey Skin in the back of the kitchen.

But how to believe, they said

That heavenly destiny prevail!

The prince said: "And why not?

That you would make her come! " --- Everyone laughed,

Shouting out loud, "What do you mean,

"To bring that filthy monkey in here!"

But when she pulled from underneath her dark skin

A little hand that looked like ivory.

Which a little crimson has colored,

And which by the fatal ring,

By a rightness without equal,

Her little finger was encircled,

The court was in a surprise

Which cannot be fathomed.

They took her to the king in their sudden transport;

But she asked that before she would appear

In front of her lord and her master,

They would give her the chance to get a different garment.

Of this garment, to tell the truth,

From all sides they were prepared to laugh;

But when she arrived in the apartments,

And that she having traversed the halls

With her pompous clothes

Whose rich beauties had never any equal;

That her lovely blond hair,

Mingled by diamonds of which the light's brightness

Was making so many rays;

That her blue eyes, big, soft and long,

Who, full of proud majesty,

Never look on without pleasing and without touching;

And that her size, at last, so small and so fine

That with which her two hands could have in embracing,

Showed their charms and their divine grace,

From the ladies of the court and their ornaments

All fell in agreement.

In the joy and noise of the whole assembly,

The good king didn't feel himself

To see his daughter-in-law possessing so many charms;

The queen was distraught,

And the prince, her dear lover,

Of a hundred pleasures his soul is filled,

Succumbed under the weight of his rapture.

For the wedding immediately each took measurements;

The monarch supplicated to all the surrounding kings,

Who, all shining in various fineries,

Left their states to be at this grand day.

They saw them arrive from the climes of the dawn,

Mounted on top of big elephants;

Coming in from the Moorish shore,

Who, more black and more ugly still,

Make frightened the little children;

At last, from all the corners of the world

They disembark, and the court abounds.

But no prince, no potentate

None appeared there with so much brilliance

Than the father of the bride,

Who, of her another time amourous,

Had, with time, purified the fires

Of which his soul was burning:

He had banished all criminal desire;

And, from that odious flame,

The little which remained in his soul

Only made his paternal love more intense.

As soon as he saw her: "Blessed be Heaven,

Who should want me to see again,

My dear child," he said, and, crying with joy,

Ran tenderly to embrace her.

Each as his happiness wanted interested himself;

And the future husband was delighted to learn

That of a king so powerful he became son-in-law.

In that moment, the godmother arrived,

Who told the whole story,

And from her story had achieved

To fill Donkey Skin with glory.

It's not hard to see

That the goal of this tale is for a child to learn

That it's better to expose yourself to the harshest pain

Than to fail at your duty;

That virtue can be unfortunate,

But that it is always crowned;

That, against a mad love and its fiery conveyance,

Of rationale, the strongest is a weak dam,

And that there are not such rich treasures

Where a lover is not prodigal;

That clean water and some brown bread

Be sufficient for the dying

Of every young creature,

Provided that she has nice clothes;

That under the sky there is no female...

Who doesn't imagine herself to be beautiful,

And who often still does not imagine

That, if one of the three beauties of the famous quarrel

Had a feud with her,

She'd have the golden apple.

The tale of Donkey Skin is hard to believe,

But, so long as people in the world will have children,

Mothers and Grandmothers,

Shall guard its memory.