votte, lend me the yellow dress you wear every day, that I may go
to the ball and have a peep at this wonderful princess." "A likely
story, indeed!" cried Javotte, tossing her head disdainfully, "that I
should lend my clothes to a dirty Cinderella like you!" Cinderella
expected to be refused, and was not sorry for it, as she would have been
puzzled what to do, had her sister really lent her the dress she begged
to have.

On the following evening, the sisters again went to the court ball, and
so did Cinderella, drest even more magnificently than before. The king's
son never left her side, and kept paying her the most flattering
attentions. The young lady was nothing loth to listen to him; so it came
to pass that she forgot her godmother's injunctions, and, indeed, lost
her reckoning so completely, that, before she deemed it could be eleven
o'clock, she was startled at hearing the first stroke of midnight. She
rose hastily, and flew away like a startled fawn. The prince attempted
to follow her, but she was too swift for him; only, as she flew she
dropped one of her glass slippers, which he picked up very eagerly.
Cinderella reached home quite out of breath, without either coach or
footmen, and with only her shabby clothes on her back; nothing, in
short, remained of her recent magnificence, save a little glass slipper,
the fellow to the one she had lost. The sentinels at the palace gate
were closely questioned as to whether they had not seen a princess
coming out; but they answered they had seen no one except a shabbily
drest girl, who appeared to be a peasant rather than a young lady.

[Illustration]

When the two sisters returned from the ball, Cinderella asked them
whether they had been well entertained; and whether the beautiful lady
was there? They replied, that she was; but that she had run away as soon
as midnight had struck, and so quickly as to drop one of her dainty
glass slippers, which the king's son had picked up, and was looking at
most fondly during the remainder of the ball; indeed, it seemed beyond a
doubt that he was deeply enamoured of the beautiful creature to whom it
belonged.

They spoke truly enough; for, a few days afterwards, the king's son
caused a proclamation to be made, by sound of trumpet, all over the
kingdom, to the effect that he would marry her whose foot should be
found to fit the slipper exactly. So the slipper was first tried on by
all the princesses; then by all the duchesses; and