英语故事阅读.docxVIP

英语故事阅读 英语故事阅读:蛇的三片叶子 Once upon a time there was a poor man who could no longer afford to keep his only son. So his son said: They now lived happily and contentedly for a time, and then it happened that the young queen fell seriously ill and no doctor could help her. And when she lay there dead, the young king remembered what he had had to promise, and he was filled with horror at the thought of being buried alive, but there was no help for it: the king had ordered all the gates to be watched, and there was no way of escaping his fate. When the day came for the queens dead body to be laid to rest in the royal vault, he was taken down into it with her, and then the door was locked and bolted. Beside the coffin stood a table on which there were four candles, four loaves of bread and four bottles of wine. As soon as these prons gave out he would have to die of hunger. So there he sat full of grief and sorrow, eating only a morsel of bread each day and drinking only a mouthful of wine, and yet he realized that his death was coming closer and clo ser. Now as he sat there staring in front of him, he saw a snake crawl out of one corner of the vault and approach the coffin. Thinking it was going to gnaw at the dead body, he drew his sword and exclaimed: The unfortunate prince had watched all this, and he now began to wonder whether the miraculous power of the leaves which had restored the snake to life might also help a human being. So he picked up the leaves and laid one of them on the dead womans mouth and the other two on her eyes. and scarcely had he done so when her blood stirred in her veins, rose into her pallid countenance and gave it the flush of life again. She drew breath, opened her eyes and said: But since being brought back to life his wife had undergone a change: it was as if all her love for husband had been drained out of her heart. Some time later he decided to make a voyage across the sea to visit his old father, and after they