What is That Smell?
- Roscuro screams when the knife cuts off his tail. As he's distracted, Despereaux pulls out his needle and places the tip on the rat's heart, threatening to kill him if he moves.
- All the other rats jostle around to see the show; this is definitely an exciting and unexpected turn of events.
- Then Despereaux's whiskers brush against Roscuro's nose, and the rat recognizes a familiar smell.
- He takes some time trying to locate the smell, and then he realizes what it is: the smell of the soup that Roscuro fell into on the day that the queen died.
- Roscuro starts crying, and says that he only did all of these awful things because he wanted to see some light. He even brought the princess to the dungeons so he could have some beauty down here in the darkness.
- The rats yell for Despereaux to kill Roscuro, but he lowers his needle. Then the princess looks at Roscuro and puts her hand on her heart.
- Instead of telling Despereaux or Mig to kill the rat who did this to her, Princess Pea forgives him and asks him if he'd like some soup. She tells him that if he leads them all out of the dungeons, she'll make sure that he gets soup.
- And she leans down and tells Despereaux that he's his knight in shining armor. They all go upstairs to eat some soup together.