The Princess Bride by William Goldman Page A

packaged, as supremely dressed as the Countess should be hung up on teeth that way. Buttercup shrugged. People were surprisingly complicated. But now she had it all diagnosed, deduced, clear. She closed her eyes and snuggled down and got all nice and comfortable, and people don’t look at other people the way the Countess looked at the farm boy because of their teeth .
    “Oh,” Buttercup gasped. “Oh, oh dear.”
    Now the farm boy was staring back at the Countess . He was feeding the cows and his muscles were rippling the way they always did under his tanned skin and Buttercup was standing there watching as the farm boy looked, for the first time, deep into the Countess’s eyes.
    Buttercup jumped out of bed and began to pace her room. How could he? Oh, it was all right if he looked at her, but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at her .
    “She’s so old,” Buttercup muttered, starting to storm a bit now. The Countess would never see thirty again and that was fact. And her dress looked ridiculous out in the cowshed and that was fact too.
    Buttercup fell onto her bed and clutched her pillow across her breasts. The dress was ridiculous before it ever got to the cowshed. The Countess looked rotten the minute she left the carriage, with her too big painted mouth and her little piggy painted eyes and her powdered skin and . . . and . . . and . . .
    Flailing and thrashing, Buttercup wept and tossed and paced and wept some more, and there have been three great cases of jealousy since David of Galilee was first afflicted with the emotion when he could no longer stand the fact that his neighbor Saul’s cactus outshone his own. (Originally, jealousy pertained solely to plants, other people’s cactus or ginkgoes, or, later, when there was grass, grass, which is why, even to this day, we say that someone is green with jealousy.) Buttercup’s case rated a close fourth on the all-time list.
    It was a very long and very green night.
    She was outside his hovel before dawn. Inside, she could hear him already awake. She knocked. He appeared, stood in the doorway. Behind him she could see a tiny candle, open books. He waited. She looked at him. Then she looked away.
    He was too beautiful.
    “I love you,” Buttercup said. “I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I’ve ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn’t matter.” Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. “I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love you so much more now than when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing will quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, I will learn to do. I know I cannot compete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I