ait of Charles Perrault, the medallion which holds the
good-natured face under the large _perruque_ is being wreathed with
flowers by children. Though they do not, for the most part, know the
name of their benefactor, it is children who keep green the memory of
Perrault, of the author of _Puss in Boots_ and _Bluebeard_. He flies for
ever _vivu' per ora virum_, borne on the wings of the fabulous Goose,
_notre Mere L'Oye_. He looked, no doubt, for no such immortality, and,
if he ever thought of posthumous fame, relied on his elaborate
_Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes_ (4 vols. Paris, 1688-96). But
fate decided differently, and he who kept open the Tuileries gardens in
the interests of children for ever, owes the best of his renown to a
book in the composition of which he was aided by a child.

Though a man of unimpeached respectability of conduct, Charles Perrault
was a born Irregular. He was a truant from school, a deserter of the
Bar, an architect without professional training, a man of letters by
inclination, a rebel against the tyranny of the classics, and immortal
by a kind of accident.

He did many things well, above all the things that he had not been
taught to do, and he did best of all the thing which nobody expected him
to have done. A vivid, genial and indomitable character and humour made
him one of the best-liked men of his age, and better remembered than
people with far higher contemporary reputation than his own.

Charles Perrault, as he tells us in his _Memoires_ (1769, Patte, Paris;
1 vol. in 12), was born at Paris, on January 12, 1628. At the age of
nine he was sent to the College de Beauvais, and was aided in his
studies by his father, at home. He was always at the head of his form,
after leaving the Sixth (the lowest) which he entered before he had
quite learned to read. He was not a prodigy of precocious instruction,
happily for himself. He preferred exercises in verse, and excelled in
these, though the gods had not made him poetical. In the class of
Philosophy he was deeply interested, wrangling with his teacher, and
maintaining, characteristically, that his arguments were better than the
stock themes, 'because they were new.' Thus the rebel against the
Ancients raised his banner at school, where one recruit flocked to it, a
boy called Beaurin. Young Perrault and his friend took a formal farewell
of their master, and solemnly seceded to the garden of the Luxembourg,
where they contrived a pla