la
donc bien loin, bien loin, encore plus loin'; _there_ the child is
listening to the old and broken voice of tradition, mumbling her ancient
burden while the cradle rocks, and the spinning-wheel turns and hums.

It is to this union of old age and childhood, then, of peasant memories,
and memories of Versailles, to this kindly handling of venerable
legends, that Perrault's _Contes_ owe their perennial charm. The nursery
tale is apt to lose itself in its wanderings, like the children in the
haunted forest; Perrault supplies it with the clue that guides it home.
A little grain of French common sense ballasts these light minions of
the Moon, the elves; with a little toss of Court powder on the locks,
_pulveris exigui jactu_, he tames the wild _fee_ into the Fairy
Godmother, a grande dame de par le monde, with an agate crutch-handle on
her magic wand. 'His young Princesses, so gentle and so maidenly, have
just left the convent of Saint Cyr. The King's sons have the proud
courtesy of Dauphins of France: the Maids of Honour, the Gentlemen of
the Bed-chamber, the red-nosed Swiss guards, sleep through the slumber
of the _Belle au Bois Dormant_[21].'

They are all departed now, Dukes and Vicomtes and Princes, the Swiss
Guards have gone, that made the best end of any, the hunting horn is
still, and silent is the spinning wheel. The great golden coaches have
turned into pumpkins again, the coachman has jumped down from his box,
and hidden in his rat-hole, the Dragoon and the Hussar have clattered
off for ever, the Duchesses dance no more in the minuet, nor the fairies
on the haunted green. But in Perrault's enchanted book they are all with
us, figures out of every age, the cannibal ogre that little Zulu and
Ojibbeway children fear not unreasonably; the starving wood-cutter in
the famines Racine deplored; the Princess, so like Mademoiselle; the
Fairy Godmother you might mistake for Madame d'Epernon; the talking
animals escaped from the fables of days when man and beast were all on
one level with gods, and winds, and stars. In Perrault's fairy-land is
room for all of them, and room for children too, who wander hither out
of their own world of fancy, and half hope that the Sleeping Beauty
dwells behind the hedge of yew, or think to find the dangerous distaff
in some dismantled chamber.

The _Histoires et Contes du Tems Passe_ must clearly have been
successful, though scant trace of their success remains in the criticism
of the ti