Excerpt of The Princess Bride by William Goldman

ONE

The Bride

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.

As she strolled through the family rose gardens watching the
sun rise, she felt happier than she had ever been. “Not only
am I perfect,” she said to herself, “I am probably the first
perfect person in the whole long history of the universe.
Not a part of me could stand improving, how lucky I am to be
perfect and rich and sought after and sensitive and young
and . . .”

Young?

The mist was rising around her as Adela began to think. Well of course I’ll always be sensitive, she thought, and I’ll always be rich, but I don’t quite see how I’m going to manage to always be young. And when I’m not young, how am I going to stay perfect? And if I’m not perfect, well, what else is there? What indeed? Adela furrowed her brow in desperate thought. It was the first time in her life her brow had ever had to furrow, and Adela gasped when she realized what she had done, horrified that she had somehow damaged it, perhaps permanently. She rushed back to her mirror and spent the morning, and although she managed to convince herself that she was still quite as perfect as ever, there was no question that she was not quite as happy as she had been.

She had begun to fret.

The first worry lines appeared within a fortnight; the first
wrinkles within a month, and before the year was out,
creases abounded. She married soon thereafter, the selfsame
man who accused her of sublimity, and gave him merry hell
for many years.

Buttercup, of course, at fifteen, knew none of this. And if
she had, would have found it totally unfathomable. How could
someone care if she were the most beautiful woman in the
world or not. What difference could it have made if you were
only the third most beautiful. Or the sixth. (Buttercup at
this time was nowhere near that high, being barely in the
top twenty, and that primarily on potential, certainly not
on any particular care she took of herself. She hated to
wash her face, she loathed the area behind her ears, she was
sick of combing her hair and did so as little as possible.)
What she liked to do, preferred above all else really, was
to ride her horse and taunt the farm boy.

The horse’s name was “Horse” (Buttercup was never long on
imagination) and it came when she called it, went where she
steered it, did what she told it. The farm boy did what she
told him too. Actually, he was more a young man now, but he
had been a farm boy when, orphaned, he had come to work for
her father, and Buttercup referred to him that way still.
“Farm Boy, fetch me this”; “Get me that, Farm Boy—quickly,
lazy thing, trot now or I’ll tell Father.”

“As you wish.”

That was all he ever answered. “As you wish.” Fetch that,
Farm Boy. “As you wish.” Dry this, Farm Boy. “As you wish.”
He lived in a hovel out near the animals and, according to
Buttercup’s mother, he kept it clean. He even read when he
had candles.
“I’ll leave the lad an acre in my will,” Buttercup’s father
was fond of saying. (They had acres then.)

“You’ll spoil him,” Buttercup’s mother always answered.

“He’s slaved for many years; hard work should be rewarded.”
Then, rather than continue the argument (they had arguments
then too), they would both turn on their daughter.

“You didn’t bathe,” her father said.

“I did, I did” from Buttercup.

“Not with water,” her father continued. “You reek like a
stallion.”

“I’ve been riding all day,” Buttercup explained.

“You must bathe, Buttercup,” her mother joined in. “The boys
don’t like their girls to smell of stables.”

“Oh, the boys!” Buttercup fairly exploded. “I do not care
about ‘the boys.’ Horse loves me and that is quite
sufficient, thank you.”

She said that speech loud, and she said it often.

But, like it or not, things were beginning to happen.

Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, Buttercup realized that it had now been more than a month since any girl in the village had spoken to her. She had never much been close to girls, so the change was nothing sharp, but at least before there were head nods exchanged when she rode through the village or along the cart tracks. But now, for no reason, there was nothing. A quick glance away as she approached, that was all. Buttercup cornered Cornelia one morning at the blacksmith’s and asked about the silence. “I should think, after what you’ve done, you’d have the courtesy not to pretend to ask” came from Cornelia. “And what have I done?” “What? What? . . . You’ve stolen them.” With that, Cornelia fled, but Buttercup understood; she knew who “them” was.

The boys.

The village boys.

The beef-witted featherbrained rattlesk...