there would have been no need for the trial with the
slipper (_op. cit._ i. 161). M. de Gubernatis, in this passage, makes
the overtaking of Cinderella serve his purpose as proof; on p. 31 he
derives part of his proof from the statement (correct this time) that
Cinderella is _not_ overtaken, 'because a chariot bears her away.'
Another argument is that the dusky Cinderella is only brilliantly clad
'in the Prince's ball-room, or in church, in candle-light, and near the
Prince,--the aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.' Is the sun
the candle-light, and is the Prince also the sun? If a lady is only
_belle a la chandelle_, what has the Dawn to do with that?

M. Andre Lefevre calls M. de Gubernatis's theory _quelque peu
aventureuse_ (_Les Contes de Charles Perrault_, p. lxxiv), and this
cannot be thought a severe criticism. If we supposed the story to have
arisen out of an epithet of Dawn, in Sanskrit, the other incidents of
the tale, and their combination into a fairly definite plot, and the
wide diffusion of that plot among peoples whose ancestors assuredly
never spoke Sanskrit, would all need explanation.

In Perrault's _Cinderella_, we have not the adventure of the False or
Substituted Bride, which usually swells out this and many other
_contes_, and which, indeed, is apparently brought in by popular
_conteurs_, whenever the tale is a little short. Thus it frequently
winds up the story which Perrault gives so briefly as _Les Fees_. Among
the Zulus[89], the Birds of the Thorn country warn the bridegroom that
he has the wrong girl,--she is a beast (_mbulu_) in Zululand. The birds
give the warning in _Rashin Coatie_[90], and birds take the same part in
Swedish, Russian, German, but a dog plays the _role_ in Breton (Reinhold
Koehler, _op. cit._ p. 373). In a song of Fauriel's _Chansons Romaiques_
the birds warn the girl that she is riding with a corpse. Birds give the
warning in Gaelic (Campbell, No. 14).

Perrault did more than suppress the formula of the False Bride. By an
artistic use of his Fairy Godmother he gave Cinderella her excellent
reason for leaving the ball, not because _cupit ipsa videri_, but in
obedience to the fairy dame. He made Cinderella forgive her stepsisters,
and get them good marriages, in place of punishing them, as even Psyche
does so treacherously in Apuleius, and as the wild justice of folk tales
usually determines their doom. An Italian Cinderella breaks her
stepmother's neck with the