The Beast’s footsteps echoed as he walked on the marble floors of the chateau. The portraits of his ancestors stared down at him. They accused, judged, and mocked him from their golden frames. The Most Christian Kings of France probably would have laughed at the thought that one of their descendants would end up looking like the lynx whose fur was so prized. With his pointy ears and clawed hands and feet, The Beast was a mockery of everything a prince should be. Even though he knew Du Bellay by and had the collected essays of Montaigne sitting in his library, none of that meant anything anymore. He was just an animal now.
As he walked, he watched as the monkeys scurried around him in different directions. One was bringing out the tea services, while another was carrying something to the dining room. Delicious no doubt, but he wouldn’t be able to touch it. He had to hunt for his food instead. Mice, rats, deer, and wolves made up his diet now. When he stared at his bloodied claws, he wept with shame at what he had become.
He regretted not letting that woman in when she begged him to. Even now, he could see her toothless smile and her hideous stringy hair that hung around her bald scalp. Thunder and lightning had echoed from the skies as she stood at his gate. She had begged him to let her inside and yet he had refused. “Be cursed then,” the crone had said as she turned into a fairy. “Until someone loves for who you are and not what you are, you will assume the form of a beast.”
And so he had. The weeks and months and years had passed monotonously since then. The servants had been turned into monkeys, the horses were all eaten now, and the hounds had run away. At the court of Louis Bien Amie, they probably whispered about Prince de Conti and speculated about whether he was dead. The Most Christian King certainly didn’t care and neither did Versailles. The Beast was as good as dead.
He sat down in his darkened dining room at a table laden with food across from a young woman, a princess that had come not a while before. He smiled as he poured the wine for her from a silver decanter, a smile on his face, “A lovely evening, Your Grace,” he said quietly. “Don’t you think so?”
