The Princess Bride by William Goldman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: William Goldman
- ISBN: 978-0156035156
- Language: English
- Genre: Humorous Fantasy, Action & Adventure Romance, Classic Action & Adventure
- Format: PDF/ EPUB
- Size: 3.5 MB
- Page: 464
- Price: Free
The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman
in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.
Annette worked in Paris for the Duke and Duchess de Guiche,
and it did not escape the Duke’s notice that someone
extraordinary was polishing the pewter. The Duke’s notice did
not escape the notice of the Duchess either, who was not very
beautiful and not very rich, but plenty smart. The Duchess set
about studying Annette and shortly found her adversary’s
tragic flaw.
Chocolate.
Armed now, the Duchess set to work. The Palace de Guiche
turned into a candy castle. Everywhere you looked, bonbons.
There were piles of chocolate-covered mints in the drawing
rooms, baskets of chocolate-covered nougats in the parlors.
Annette never had a chance. Inside a season, she went from
delicate to whopping, and the Duke never glanced in her
direction without sad bewilderment clouding his eyes.
(Annette, it might be noted, seemed only cheerier throughout
her enlargement. She eventually married the pastry chef and
they both ate a lot until old age claimed them. Things, it might
also be noted, did not fare so cheerily for the Duchess. The
Duke, for reasons passing understanding, next became smitten
with his very own mother-in-law, which caused the Duchess
ulcers, only they didn’t have ulcers yet. More precisely, ulcers
existed, people had them, but they weren’t called “ulcers.” The
medical profession at that time called them “stomach pains”
and felt the best cure was coffee dolloped with brandy twice a
day until the pains subsided. The Duchess took her mixture
faithfully, watching through the years as her husband and her
mother blew kisses at each other behind her back. Not
surprisingly, the Duchess’s grumpiness became legendary, as
Voltaire has so ably chronicled. Except this was before
Voltaire.)
The year Buttercup turned ten, the most beautiful woman
lived in Bengal, the daughter of a successful tea merchant.
This girl’s name was Aluthra, and her skin was of a dusky
perfection unseen in India for eighty years. (There have only
been eleven perfect complexions in all of India since accurate
accounting began.) Aluthra was nineteen the year the pox
plague hit Bengal. The girl survived, even if her skin did not.
When Buttercup was fifteen, Adela Terrell, of Sussex on
the Thames, was easily the most beautiful creature. Adela was
twenty, and so far did she outdistance the world that it seemed
certain she would be the most beautiful for many, many years.
But then one day, one of her suitors (she had 104 of them)
exclaimed that without question Adela must be the most ideal
item yet spawned. Adela, flattered, began to ponder on the
truth of the statement. That night, alone in her room, she
examined herself pore by pore in her mirror. (This was after
mirrors.) It took her until close to dawn to finish her
inspection, but by that time it was clear to her that the young
man had been quite correct in his assessment: she was, through
no real faults of her own, perfect.
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