When the Emperor heard this he was wild with terror, and tottered to the
couch on which the Sleeping Beauty lay. "Oh, awake!" he cried, "awake and
save me ere it is too late!" And, oh wonder! the sleeper stirred, and
opened her eyes.

If she had been so beautiful while sleeping, what was she when awake! But
the love of life had overcome the love of beauty in the Emperor's bosom,
and he saw not the eyes like stars, and the bloom as of peaches and lilies,
or the aspect grand and smiling as daybreak. He could only cry, "Give me
the potion, lest I die, give me the potion!"

"That cannot I," she said. "The secret was known only to my daughter."

"Who is thy daughter?"

"The hoary woman, she who slept with me in the cavern."

"That aged crone thy daughter, daughter to thee so youthful and so fresh?

"Even so," she said, "I bore her at sixteen, and slumbered for seventy
years. When I awoke she was withered and decrepit: I youthful as when I
closed my eyes. But she had learned the secret, which I never knew."

"The Bonze shall be crucified!" yelled the Emperor.

"It is too late," said she; "he is torn in pieces already."

"By whom?"