mis_.'

Charles Perrault was a good man, a good father, a good Christian, and a
good fellow. He was astonishingly clever and versatile in little things,
honest, courteous, and witty, and an undaunted amateur. The little thing
in which he excelled most was telling fairy tales. Every generation
listens in its turn to this old family friend of all the world. No
nation owes him so much as we of England, who, south of the Scottish,
and east of the Welsh marches, have scarce any popular tales of our own
save Jack the Giant Killer, and who have given the full fairy
citizenship to Perrault's _Petit Poucet_ and _La Barbe Bleue_.

[Footnote 1: _Registre de La Grange_, p. 11.]

[Footnote 2: 'Exquis' is good.]

[Footnote 3: _L'Oublieux_ was written in 1691. It was printed from the
MS. by M. Hippolyte Lucas. _Academie des Bibliophiles_, Paris, 1868.]

PERRAULT'S POPULAR TALES.

'Madame Coulanges, who is with me till to-morrow, was good enough to
tell us some of the stories that they amuse the ladies with at
Versailles. They call this _mitonner_, so she _mitonned_ us, and spoke
to us about a Green Island, where a Princess was brought up, as bright
as the day! The Fairies were her companions, and the Prince of Pleasure
was her lover, and they both came to the King's court, one day, in a
ball of glass. The story lasted a good hour, and I spare you much of it,
the rather as this Green Isle is in the midst of Ocean, not in the
Mediterranean, where M. de Grignan might be pleased to hear of its
discovery.'

So Madame de Sevigne writes to her daughter, on the 6th of August, 1676.

The letter proves that fairy tales or _contes_ had come to Court, and
were in fashion, twenty years before Charles Perrault published his
_Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, our 'Mother Goose's Tales.' The apparition of
the simple traditional stories at Versailles must have resembled the
arrival of the Goose Girl, in her shabby raiment, at the King's
Palace[4]. The stories came in their rustic weeds, they wandered out of
the cabins of the charcoal burners, out of the farmers' cottages, and,
after many adventures, reached that enchanted castle of Versailles.
There the courtiers welcomed them gladly, recognised the truant girls
and boys of the Fairy world as princes and princesses, and arrayed them
in the splendour of Cinderella's sisters, 'mon habit de velours rouge,
et ma garniture d'Angleterre; mon manteau a fleurs d'or et ma barriere
de diamans qui n'est