92 THE STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE 



turn into six beautiful dappled-gray horses. A 

 boarded rat becomes a big coachman with a com- 

 manding mustache. Six lizards sleeping behind tin; 

 watering pot become green bedizened footmen, who 

 immediately jump up behind the carriage. Finally 

 the poor girPs shabby clothes are changed to gold 

 and silver ones sprinkled with precious stones. 

 Cinderella starts for the ball, in glass slippers. 

 You, apparently, know the rest of it better than I. 

 " These powerful godmothers for whom it is play 

 to change mice into horses, lizards into footmen, 

 ugly clothes into sumptuous ones, these gracious 

 fairies who astonish you with their fabulous prodi- 

 gies, what are they, my dear children, in comparison 

 with reality, the great fairy of the good God, who, 

 out of a dirty worm, object of disgust, knows how 

 to make a creature of ravishing beauty ! He touches 

 with his divine wand a miserable hairy caterpillar, 

 an abject worm that slobbers in rotten wood, and 

 the miracle is accomplished: the disgusting larva 

 has turned into a beetle all shining with gold, a but- 

 terfly whose azure wings would have outshone Cin- 

 derella's fine toilette. " 



