The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo Read Free Book Online Page A

rat’s eyes. Roscuro had never seen happy people. He had known only the miserable ones. Gregory the jailer and those who were consigned to his domain did not laugh or smile or clink glasses with the person sitting next to them.
    Roscuro was enchanted. Everything glittered. Everything. The gold spoons on the table and the jingle bells on the juggler’s cap, the strings on the minstrels’ guitars and the crowns on the king’s and the queen’s heads.
    And the little princess! How lovely she was! How much like light itself. Her gown was covered in sequins that winked and glimmered at the rat. And when she laughed, and she laughed often, everything around her seemed to glow brighter.
    “Oh, really,” said Roscuro, “this is too extraordinary. This is too wonderful. I must tell Botticelli that he was wrong. Suffering is not the answer. Light is the answer.”
    And he made his way into the banquet hall. He lifted his tail off the ground and held it at an angle and marched in time to the music the minstrels were playing on their guitars.
    The rat, reader, invited himself to the party.

THERE WAS, in the banquet hall, a most beautiful and ornate chandelier. The crystals that hung from it caught the light of the candles on the table and the light from the face of the laughing princess. They danced to the rhythm of the minstrels’ music, swaying back and forth, twinkling and beckoning. What better place to view all this glory, all this beauty?
    There was so much laughing and singing and juggling that no one noticed as Roscuro crawled up a table leg and onto the table, and from there flung himself onto the lowest branch of the chandelier.
    Hanging by one paw, he swung back and forth, admiring the spectacle below him: the smells of the food, the sound of the music, and the light, the light, the light. Amazing. Unbelievable. Roscuro smiled and shook his head.
    Unfortunately, a rat can hang from a chandelier for only so long before he is discovered. This would be true at even the loudest party.
    Reader, do you know who it was that spotted him?
    You’re right.
    The sharp-eyed Princess Pea.
    “A rat!” she shouted. “A rat is hanging from the chandelier!”
    The party, as I have noted, was loud. The minstrels were strumming and singing. The people were laughing and eating. The man with the jingle cap was juggling and jingling.
    No one, in the midst of all this merriment, heard the Pea. No one except for Roscuro.
    Rat.
    He had never before been aware of what an ugly word it was.

    Rat.
    In the middle of all that beauty, it immediately became clear that it was an extremely distasteful syllable.
    Rat.
    A curse, an insult, a word totally without light. And not until he heard it from the mouth of the princess did Roscuro realize that he did not like being a rat, that he did not want to be a rat. This revelation hit Roscuro with such force, that it made him lose his grip on the chandelier.
    The rat, reader, fell.
    And, alas, he fell right, directly, into the queen’s bowl of soup.

THE QUEEN LOVED SOUP. She loved soup more than anything in the world except for the Princess Pea and the king. And because the queen loved it, soup was served in the castle for every banquet, every lunch, and every dinner.
    And what soup it was! Cook’s love and admiration for the queen and her palate moved the broth that she concocted from the level of mere food to a high art.
    On this particular day, for this particular banquet, Cook had outdone herself. The soup was a masterwork, a delicate mingling of chicken, watercress, and garlic. Roscuro, as he surfaced from the bottom of the queen’s capacious bowl, could not help taking a few appreciative sips.
    “Lovely,” he said, distracted for a moment from the misery of his existence, “delightful.”
    “See?” shouted the Pea. “See!” She stood. She pointed her finger right at Roscuro. “It is a rat. I told you that it was a rat. He was hanging from the chandelier, and now he is in Mama’s