Tom Thumb

Once upon a time there was a woodcutter and his wife. They had seven children, all boys. The eldest was ten and the youngest seven. You may be surprised that they had so many children in such a short time; but his wife always had twins. They were very poor, and their seven children were a great burden to them, for none of them could yet earn his own living. What troubled them most was that the youngest was very delicate and never spoke a word; they took for stupidity what was really a sign of good sense.

He was very small; when he was born he was no bigger than a thumb. So they called him Tom Thumb. This poor child was the household drudge and was always blamed for everything. Yet he was the cleverest and wisest of all the brothers; if he said little, he listened a great deal.

A very bad year came, with such a great famine that these poor people decided to get rid of their children. One evening, when the children had gone to bed, the woodcutter sat by the fire with his wife and, with his heart heavy with grief, said: "You can see that we can't feed our children any more. I can't bear to watch them starve before my eyes. I've decided to lose them in the forest tomorrow. It will be easy; while they're busy gathering sticks, we'll slip away without their seeing us." "Ah," cried his wife, "could you really bring yourself to lose your own children?" Her husband reminded her how poor they were, but she would not agree; she was poor, but she was their mother. But when she thought how dreadful it would be to watch them die of hunger, she gave in at last and went to bed weeping.

Tom Thumb had heard all of this. When he noticed from his bed that his parents were talking about something, he had got up quietly and slipped under his father's stool to listen without being seen. He went back to bed, but he did not sleep a wink all night, thinking about what he should do. Early in the morning he got up, went to the bank of a stream, filled his pockets with little white pebbles and came back home. They set off, and Tom Thumb told his brothers nothing of what he knew.

They went into a very thick forest, where they could not see each other ten paces away. The woodcutter began to chop wood, and the children began to gather sticks. When their parents saw that they were busy, they gradually moved away and then suddenly slipped off down a narrow path. When the children found they were alone, they began to scream and cry with all their might. Tom Thumb let them cry, for he knew very well how to get home. As they had walked along, he had dropped the white pebbles from his pockets all along the path. He said to them: "Don't be afraid, brothers. Our father and mother have left us here, but I'll take you home. Just follow me." They followed him, and he led them home by the same path they had taken into the forest. At first they did not dare go in, but stood at the door listening to what their parents were saying.

The moment the woodcutter and his wife arrived home, the lord of the village sent them ten gold coins he had owed them for a long time, money they had given up hope of ever seeing. It gave them new life, for the poor people were dying of hunger. The woodcutter sent his wife to the butcher's at once. Since they had not eaten for a long time, she bought three times as much meat as two people needed for supper. When they had eaten their fill, the woman said: "Oh, where are our poor children now? They'd make a fine feast of what's left over. But you, Guillaume, you were the one who wanted to lose them. I told you we'd regret it. What are they doing in the forest now? Perhaps the wolves have already eaten them!" And in tears she cried: "Oh, where are my poor children?"

The children at the door heard this and all cried out together: "Here we are! Here we are!" She ran to open the door and hugged them: "How glad I am to see you again, my dear children!" They sat them down at the table, and the children ate with an appetite that delighted their father and mother; one after another they told how frightened they had been in the forest. The good people were overjoyed to have their children back, and their joy lasted as long as the ten gold coins.

When the money was spent, they fell back into their old misery and decided to lose the children again. This time they meant to take them much further away than before. However quietly they talked, Tom Thumb heard them. He thought he would get out of trouble the same way as before, but when he got up early in the morning to gather pebbles, he found the door was double-locked. While he was wondering what to do, their mother gave each of them a piece of bread for breakfast. He thought he could use his bread instead of pebbles and crumbled it along the paths as they went; he kept his bread tucked tightly in his pocket.

Their parents led them into the thickest and darkest part of the forest, and when they got there, they slipped off by a side path and left the children. Tom Thumb was not much worried, for he believed he would easily find the way back by the breadcrumbs he had dropped. But he was very surprised when he could not find a single crumb: the birds had come and eaten them all. They were in great trouble, for the more they walked, the more lost they became in the forest. Night came, and a great wind blew up, which frightened them terribly. They thought they heard wolves howling all around them, coming to eat them. They hardly dared speak or turn their heads. A heavy rain fell and soaked them to the skin.

Tom Thumb climbed to the top of a tree to see if he could see anything. Looking all around, he saw far away, beyond the forest, a little light like a candle. He climbed down, but from the ground he could no longer see the light. This made him sad. But after walking with his brothers for a while in the direction of the light, he saw it again as they came out of the forest. At last they reached the house where the candle was.

They knocked at the door, and a good woman opened it. She asked them what they wanted. Tom Thumb said they were poor children who had lost their way in the forest and begged her kindly to give them shelter for the night. Seeing how sweet they were, she began to cry: "Oh, you poor children, where have you come to! Don't you know this is the house of an ogre who eats little children?" "Oh, madam," said Tom Thumb, trembling like his brothers, "what are we to do? If you don't take us in, the wolves in the forest will surely eat us. Since that's so, we'd rather the master ate us. Perhaps he'll take pity on us if you beg him." The ogre's wife thought she might be able to hide them from her husband until morning, and she let them in. She took them to warm themselves by the fire, over which a whole sheep was roasting for the ogre's supper.

As they were beginning to warm up, there were three or four loud knocks at the door: the ogre had come home. At once his wife hid the children under the bed and went to open the door. The ogre first asked whether supper was ready and then sat down at the table. The sheep was still half raw, but that only made it more appetising to him. He sniffed to the right and to the left and said he could smell fresh meat. "It must be the calf I've just skinned," said his wife. "I smell fresh meat, I tell you again," said the ogre, looking at his wife suspiciously. "There's something here I don't understand." And with that he got up from the table and went straight to the bed.

"Ah," he said, "so this is how you try to deceive me, wretched woman! These would make a fine treat for three ogre friends of mine who are coming to visit this week." He pulled the children out from under the bed one by one. The poor children fell on their knees and begged for mercy; but they were dealing with one of the cruellest ogres in the world. His wife tried to calm the ogre: "What will you do at this hour? You'll have time tomorrow." "Be quiet," said the ogre, "they'll be all the tenderer." "But you have so much meat," said his wife, "a calf, two sheep and half a pig." "You're right," said the ogre. "Give them a good supper so they don't get thin, and put them to bed." The good woman was overjoyed and brought them a good supper; but the children were too frightened to eat.

The ogre had seven daughters, all still young. These little ogresses had very fine complexions, because they ate fresh meat like their father. But they had little grey round eyes, hooked noses and very wide mouths with gaps between their teeth. They were not yet very wicked, but they promised to become so, for they already bit little children. They had been put to bed early, and all seven were asleep in one big bed, each with a gold crown on her head. In the same room there was another bed of the same size. The ogre's wife put the seven boys in it and then went to bed beside her husband.

Tom Thumb had noticed that the ogre's daughters had gold crowns on their heads, and he was afraid the ogre might regret not having killed them that evening. At midnight he got up, took his brothers' caps and his own, crept over and gently put them on the heads of the ogre's seven daughters, and took their gold crowns and put them on his own head and his brothers'. In this way the ogre would take them for his daughters, and his daughters for the boys he wanted to kill.

Everything happened as he had thought. The ogre woke at midnight and was sorry he had put off until the next day what he could have done that evening. He leapt out of bed and seized his big knife: "Let's see how the little rascals are getting on. Let's not wait any longer." He groped his way up to his daughters' room and went over to the bed where the boys were lying. They were all asleep except Tom Thumb, who was terribly frightened when the ogre touched his head. When the ogre felt the gold crowns, he said, "Goodness, I nearly made a fine mistake. I must have drunk too much last night." Then he went to his daughters' bed and, feeling the boys' caps, said, "Ah, here they are." But at that very moment Tom Thumb was already shaking his brothers awake.

As soon as Tom Thumb heard the ogre snoring again, he woke his brothers and told them to dress quickly and follow him. They crept quietly down into the garden, jumped over the wall and ran almost all night, trembling all the time and not knowing where they were going.

When the ogre woke up, he said to his wife: "Go upstairs and see to those little rascals from last night." When his wife went upstairs, she found her seven daughters not asleep, but where her husband had mistakenly meant to harm the boys. When the ogre saw what had happened, he was wild with rage: "Ah, they'll pay for this, those wretches, and right away!" He threw some water on his wife to revive her and then called for his seven-league boots: "Give me my seven-league boots, quickly, so I can go and catch them."

He ran and ran, striding from mountain to mountain and crossing rivers as wide as streams in a single step. At last he saw the children on the road, only a hundred paces from their father's house. When Tom Thumb saw the ogre, he hid with his brothers in a hollow in a rock. The ogre was very tired, for seven-league boots are very tiring to wear. He wanted to rest, and by chance he sat down on the very rock where the boys were hiding. Overcome with weariness, he fell asleep and began to snore so dreadfully that the poor children were terrified.

Tom Thumb told his brothers to run home at once while the ogre was asleep and not to worry about him. They did as he said and ran home. Tom Thumb crept up to the ogre, gently pulled off his boots and put them on himself. The boots were very big and wide; but because they were magic, they had the power to grow or shrink to fit whoever wore them. So they fitted his feet as if they had been made for him.

Tom Thumb went straight to the ogre's house, where he found the ogre's wife weeping over her daughters. "Your husband is in great danger," he told her, "for he has been captured by a band of robbers. They've sworn to kill him if he doesn't give them all his gold and silver. Just as they had the knife at his throat, he saw me and begged me to come and tell you what had happened and ask you to give me everything valuable you have. Because there's no time to lose, he wanted me to wear his seven-league boots, so that you wouldn't think it was a trick of mine." The good woman, terribly frightened, gave him everything she had at once; for although the ogre ate little children, he was a good husband.

Tom Thumb came home to his father's house laden with all the ogre's riches and was welcomed with great joy. Some people say this is not true, that Tom Thumb never stole the ogre's treasure but only took the seven-league boots. According to them, Tom Thumb went to the king's court in the boots and offered to bring the king news of his army far away. The king said he would give him a great reward if he brought news before evening. Tom Thumb brought news that very evening, and after this first errand everyone gave him as much money as he wanted. After working for some time as a messenger in the king's service, he became very rich and went home to his father's house; he bought new posts for his family, made them comfortable, and won a fine place for himself at court.

At the end of this tale Perrault added this moral: when there are many children, parents love the handsome, tall ones and look down on the small, quiet ones. But very often it is the small, quiet one who makes the whole family happy.