"So what happened, Gaston?" The perfectly shaped wheat eyebrows of His Highness, Prince Adam, lifted slightly upward, and he stared at Gaston with his sky-blue eyes. At least he was nice to look at after those two freaks.

Gaston collapsed into his chair.

"What happened? There's no easy way to tell..."

After he left the house, where Paul and Jeannette were, Gaston, after a little thought, ran home, pushed Belle, pretending to be cheerful because "Prince Adam has prepared a wonderful surprise for you, let's go, yes, yes, right now". Belle didn't believe it, but Gaston put her on Noir, took Bruno under his arm, and started the horse at a walk, as he couldn't ride because of Belle's health.

Gaston was terribly nervous that these two people, together with the military marshals, would come after him right away, without waiting for morning, but there was no pursuit, apparently the marshals, with or without the Marquis, had decided to sleep, or perhaps they were in a neighboring village, which was not so few hours away. In any case, they reached the castle through the forest at night - quite an adventure - and stopped in front of the doors with the guards. Gaston told the guards the same thing he had told Belle, that the prince wanted to surprise her and yes, exactly at night, so they needed to get to the castle. As Gaston had suspected, the prince was simply given the magical name "Belle" and he, without getting into the reasons, simply ordered the door to be opened and the best room prepared.

Belle went to sleep, and Gaston went into the next room, where the prince was already waiting. And now he wanted to know what had happened.

"Have you ever dealt with a disgusting old woman?" Gaston asked, almost theatrically splaying his hands. Now that both he and Belle were almost safe, he wanted to take it out on someone nearby, without hesitation. Usually that ear was Lefou, but Lefou wasn't around right now. The prince seemed to be a normal man, even though he was an aristocrat, but so far the whole experience with him had left only positive impressions.

"With a disgusting old woman?" The prince asked quietly, getting nervous and looking around as if there were disgusting old women around. "I... I wouldn't speak of old women that way."

"Ha!" Gaston sat up straighter and leaned closer to the prince. "Did they molest you, too?" The prince didn't answer, so Gaston stood up. "Listen, I need a drink. I really do. What have you got? It's been a nasty day." he strode across the room, opening the doors of elegant cupboards.

"What's this?" Gaston took out a bottle of cognac.

"It's cognac, it's just standing there, I don't drink," Prince Adam replied, coming closer.

Gaston lifted the bottle even higher, examining the amount of liquor in the light.

"And rightly so, you're not a drunkard to drink alone. But someone had clearly been drinking from this bottle. Okay, look for mugs or glasses or whatever..."

The prince obediently began to open the lockers, and then said softly:

"It was one such old woman who bewitched me."

"Wow! Why don't you tell me about your disgusting old woman first, and then I'll tell you about mine," Gaston suggested, shifting imperceptibly to a simple "you" with the prince.

"Shh!" Adam put his finger to his lips and was so amused that Gaston couldn't help but call out in a low voice, so as not to wake Belle:

"Hey, you disgusting old women! Where are you? You see, there's no one here, there's nothing to be afraid of."

The prince laughed nervously.

"What if fairies could hear at a distance?"

"Then they would have heard everything by now, but you see - no one punishes us! Did you find the glasses?"

"Yes."

The prince placed two oddly shaped glasses on a small table made of very expensive wood - that's why Belle had forbidden to put his feet on it during her last visit to the castle - they were round on a low stem. Adam sat down in a chair by the table.

"Lumiere says these are special glasses for cognac. You warm them in your hands with the drink before you drink it," he said with a look of connoisseurship."

- I will cod... cods... condescend," Gaston chuckled, sitting down in another chair at the table and then pouring the cognac into the glasses with a steady hand. "I don't know if it's a lot or a little, is this stuff strong?" The glasses were about half full.

"I think so."

"Good. After today, I need to be drunk as shit."

The prince raised his eyebrows.

"No, no, you tell me about your old woman first," Gaston drank half the contents of his glass at once. "Oh, that's good! Damn it!" Gaston cursed contentedly. "It hurts my throat!"The cognac was sweet, but pleasant to the taste, smelled of wood and fire ran through his veins. "So what was she angry about? And...I've always wanted to ask - what was the curse?"

Adam was silent for a while, twirling the glass in his hand, either warming it as he said it, or perhaps gathering his thoughts. It was obvious that he, too, was itching to talk about the disgusting old woman. Perhaps that curse, though over, still tormented him. Even though the prince's appearance was perfect, there were no mirrors in the castle for some reason, as if he was still afraid of seeing something terrible there. The joy of life did not lurk in his eyes, there was always some sadness in them. Of course, it was mostly because of Belle, but apart from that, the prince's excessive gentleness and kindness seemed unnatural. He acted like a saintly man and only now, with a glass of strong drink in his hand, did he seem real. Some new feeling, like anger or irritation, flashed through the sadness in his eyes, and his perfect face became alive as he spoke:

"I was eleven years old. Damn it, eleven!"

He swore. Gaston even thought he had misheard, but the prince also sipped half of his glass and swallowed without even a wince.

"There was a thunderstorm, lightning, rain," the prince said quickly, as if remembering for the hundredth time. "There was a knock at the castle door. It was..." he stopped, staring at the amber liquid in his glass.

"A disgusting old woman?" Gaston suggested.

There was silence for a while, and the prince pressed his head into his shoulders as if waiting for a verdict. But nothing happened. The lightning did not strike the hunter in the heart, he did not fall dead, nothing of the sort...

"Yes!" Adam suddenly shrieked and finished his glass in one fell swoop."Disgusting fucking old woman!"

Gaston jumped up from his seat and snapped his fingers:

"Warts?"

"There are! A huge, hairy one on her nose, about the size of a small potato!"

" A hump?"

- You laugh! Of course she is skewered like a witch when saintly writings are read!

The prince now poured cognac into the emptied glasses himself, and the two of them paced the room shouting out conjectures in various ways.

"Eyes?"

"Oh! You can't even imagine! One is bulging and the other squinting as if it were festering!"

"Grey locks?"

"Gray and disheveled, witch, I tell you!"

"God, my God, I'm already sick! Hands?"

"Yellow long curled claws, like a vulture's!"

Tired, they both sat down in their own chairs and emptied their glasses.

Gaston felt his head was already spinning and his mood had improved noticeably.

"I'm afraid to even ask what she wanted from you."

"She asked for a place to stay."

"I didn't see a sign saying it was an inn or something."

The prince was still trying to maintain his vestiges of sanctity.

"Well, I was hard-hearted. Unkind. I... There was a thunderstorm outside... I should have let her in."

Gaston set his glass down on the table with a clatter.

"Look, let's be logical, like Belle says. Look. You can't get into the castle without going through the village, no matter where she's coming from. Why wouldn't she stop in the village? She walked through the woods with the wolves and then the rain spooked her?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way," the prince frowned thoughtfully.

"Here! She did it on purpose! She came at you with an impossible demand! You'd have to be a fool to let a strange bogeyman into a castle full of gold cups! All right, then what?"

"She offered a rose as payment for the night's lodging."

Gaston stood up indignantly.

"Look, now that's an insult! A rose for you, what are you, a woman? I would kick down the stairs who would dare to give me flowers!"

The prince jumped up too.

"You're right, you're right, a thousand times right! I began laugh at her and her gift, and she told me "beauty is hidden inside, beauty is hidden inside"..."

Gaston laughed.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! All really beautiful people are beautiful inside and out. Like Belle, me, you... That's how ugly people justify their looks, but there's no way in hell they'd convince me of that."

" Well, that's it!" The prince poured more cognac. "That bitch turned into a young fairy, damn her! And she started to make fun of me, saying I'll turn you into such a monster that you'll be worse than a beast. I apologize, but she's already started."

"It's no use, she planned it from the start. She probably wanted to take her anger out on you, she made impossible conditions on purpose."

They drank half a glass each in silence. The prince looked at the toes of his boots.

"She turned me into a beast."