s for this little key, it is
that of the Cabinet, at the end of the Gallery, on the ground floor;
open everything, and go where you will."

Charles Perrault claims that Monsieur de Montragoux added:

"But as for the little Cabinet, I forbid you to enter that; and I forbid
you so expressly that if you do enter it, I cannot say to what lengths
my anger will not go."

The historian of Bluebeard in placing these words on record, has fallen
into the error of adopting, without, verification, the version concocted
after the event by the ladies Lespoisse. Monsieur de Montragoux
expressed himself very differently. When he handed to his wife the key
of the little Cabinet, which was none other than the Cabinet of the
Unfortunate Princesses, to which we have already frequently alluded, he
expressed the desire that his beloved Jeanne should not enter that part
of the house which he regarded as fatal to his domestic happiness. It
was through this room, indeed, that his first wife, and the best of
all of them, had fled, when she ran away with her bear; here Blanche
de Gibeaumex had repeatedly betrayed him with various gentlemen; and
lastly, the porphyry pavement was stained by the blood of a beloved
criminal. Was not this enough to make Monsieur de Montragoux connect the
idea of this room with cruel memories and fateful forebodings?

The words which he addressed to Jeanne de Lespoisse convey the desires
and impressions which were troubling his mind. They were actually as
follows:

"For you, madame, nothing of mine is hidden, and I should feel that I
was doing you an injury did I fail to hand over to you all the keys of
a dwelling which belongs to you. You may therefore enter this little
cabinet, as you may enter all the other rooms of the house; but if you
will take my advice you will do nothing of the kind, to oblige me, and
in consideration of the painful ideas which, for me, are connected
with this room, and the forebodings of evil which these ideas, despite
myself, call up into my mind. I should be inconsolable were any
mischance to befall you, or were I to bring misfortune upon you. You
will, madame, forgive these fears, which are happily unfounded, as being
only the outcome of my anxious affection and my watchful love."

With these words the good _seigneur_ embraced his wife and posted off to
Le Perche.

"The friends and neighbours," says Charles Perrault, "did not wait to be
asked to visit the young bride; so full were