Quote of the Day: the original unhappy ending

[timelets]

"What a big mouth you have" ("The better to eat you with!", responds the wolf), at which point the wolf jumps out of bed and eats her up too. Then he falls asleep. In Charles Perrault's version of the story (the first version to be published), the tale ends here.

Charles Perrault explained the 'moral' at the end of the tale:[26] so that no doubt is left to his intended meaning:

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Riding_Hood