L'Oiseau bleu

The Blue Bird

A rich king, mad with grief for his wife, marries a weeping widow with fine blue eyes. His daughter Florine, fifteen, is fresh and lovely; the new queen's daughter Truitonne, raised by her godmother the fairy Soussio, is freckled like a trout, greasy and ugly. The queen torments Florine. When King Charmant comes to court, the queen has all Florine's dresses stolen, but Charmant sees only Florine and talks with her for three hours; the queen has her carried by four masked men to the top of a tower. Charmant refuses Truitonne's rich gift, bribes a lady to let him speak to Florine at a little window, but the lady tells the queen, and in the dark night Truitonne takes Florine's place: he gives her his ring and carries her off in a flying chair drawn by winged frogs, lent by an enchanter friend, to Soussio's castle. There he sees his mistake and refuses to marry Truitonne; after twenty days Soussio turns him into a blue bird for seven years. The queen shows Florine Truitonne in a crown with Charmant's ring and says they are married; Florine faints and weeps at her tower window by night. The blue bird, perched on a cypress, hears her and tells her who he is; every night they talk, and he brings her jewels from his own palace: earrings, emerald bracelets, a watch in a pearl. Two years pass. The queen bursts in at midnight, finds the jewels, fails to hide papers to ruin her when the bird cries a warning, and sets a spy in her room. When the spy sleeps, Florine calls «Oiseau bleu, couleur du temps, vole à moi promptement», but the spy sees them, and the queen hangs swords and razors on the cypress: the bird is cut and, thinking Florine betrayed him, wants to die. His enchanter friend finds and heals him and keeps him in a cage. Florine's father dies; the people rise against the queen, who is killed, and crown Florine; Truitonne flees to Soussio. The enchanter bargains with Soussio: Charmant is a man again for a few months, to make up his mind to marry Truitonne. Florine sets out alone dressed as a peasant; an old woman at a spring, really a fairy, gives her four eggs. The first gives golden claws to climb an ivory mountain; the second a chariot drawn by two pigeons down the valley of mirror-glass and on to Charmant's city, where the king is to marry Truitonne. As Mie-Souillon she sells Truitonne the emerald bracelets, then a little coach drawn by green mice, then a pie of singing birds, each for a night in the cabinet of echoes, where every word reaches the king's bed; the first nights he sleeps on opium, but a valet she pays leaves it out. He hears her, comes down, knows her and falls at her feet. The enchanter and the fairy of the eggs make Soussio powerless; Truitonne is turned into a sow, and Charmant and Florine marry.

Retold from Contes des fées (Corbet aîné, Paris 1825): L'Oiseau bleu by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy (public domain).