Once Upon a Time

In the final section of the story, the mother reads the son a fairy tale from a book the wise old witch gave the boy. The next day, inspired, the boy decides to play the Prince who breaks through the thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss Sleeping Beauty. He takes a ladder and climbs into the thicket of thorns. He immediately starts screaming and struggles deeper into “its tangle,” and the housemaid and gardener rush to his aid. The gardener cuts up his hand trying to get the boy out, but he cannot. The man and wife burst outside. The cat sets off the alarm, which screams as the husband hacks the boy out of the security coil with saws and wire cutters. They carry the “bleeding mass of the little boy” into the house.