The Story of Beauty the Beast - The Complete Fairy Story #220270

This terrible misfortune was destined to be but the forerunner of others. The father, with whom everything had prospered hitherto, lost at one and the same time, either by shipwreck or through falling into the hands of pirates, all the ships that he had at sea. His agents, at home made him a bankrupt, and those who acted for him in foreign lands deceived him. In short, from a position of the greatest opulence.