with post-horses, and travelled a very, very
great distance, in order to hide himself in a
deep cave at the bottom of a mountain, where
she should not be able, to find him." Then,
what shall we say of the revenge of the fairy
Carabossa. on the king who, when he was a
little boy, played her the trick of putting
brimstone into her broth, and whose infant
daughter she came down the chimney to
blight? She was blighted with a threat that
forced her parents to shut her up in a tower,
where she had reason "to cry so much—so
much—that her eyes swelled as big as one's
fist." The wicked fairy Carabossa! whom
the king could not appease, nor even the
queen. "In vain," cried the queen, "have I
sent her fifty pounds of sweetmeats, as much
double-refined sugar, and two Mayence hams;
they have gone for nothing with her!" Alas,
poor princess! Is it not mournful to think
how she was misled into running away with
Fanfarinet to that desolate island, where
"they passed three days without eating anything
but some leaves and a few cockchafers."
And how indignant we must all feel at the
selfish Fanfarinet, who ate up all the honeycomb
that a good fairy showed his lady-love,
and then drank up the milk she sent, because
he was so thirsty, "after eating more than
fifteen pounds of honey." There was a glutton
for you!  Different, indeed, were his
notions of a feast from those of the Princess
Rosette, who, in her innocent joy at hearing
from her brother that the King of the Peacocks
was discovered, and desired to marry
her, gave to "every one who came to see her,
for three days, a slice of bread and butter
with some jam on it."

When the Countess d'Aulnoy does descend
into the region of every-day fact she manages
to do it, as in that last instance, with a delicious
absurdity that makes it more enchanting
than enchantment. This lady had heard
from her brothers, too, in an extremely
matter-of-fact way. They had travelled beyond
human ken, through the kingdom of Mayflies,
to the land of Peacocks, and in the capital of
that land they "wrote by the post to the
princess, requesting her to pack up her
clothes immediately and to come with all
speed, as the King of the Peacocks was
waiting for her." As for the wicked king,
who came in complete armour to the chamber
of poor Queen Joyeux, of course he carried
her off wickedly enough; twisting her beautiful
hair "three times round his hand, he
threw her over his shoulders like a sack of
corn, carried her thus down stairs, and
mounted with her upon his large black
horse." It is a comfort that when afterwards
"he dragged the poor queen into a wood,
climbed up a tree, and was going to hang her,
the fairy, having rendered herself invisible,
gave him a violent push, and he fell from the
top of the tree, knocking out four of his front
teeth." There is a pretty touch, let us remark,
too, when, in treating of the grief of the
mother of Prince Cheri, the countess suddenly
becomes cautious, and, by avoiding a superlative,
gets at a climax of exaggeration. Her
majesty, "who doted on her son, was nearly
dissolved in tears.'' Dissolved in tears would
have meant nothing at all, but nearly dissolved
- poor lady! It was lucky, as it happened,
that the ogre had not made a salad of
Finette Cendron and her sisters, and by so
doing, destroyed the prince's happiness for
ever.

One of our great objections to the Swiss
guard always has been that it would not
admit the royal ram to the king's palace when
he wanted to see Merveilleuse. Had that
not been so, never would Merveilleuse, as she
issued from the palace gates, have seen her
dear ram stretched breathless on the pavement.
And, now that we have come to talk
about the royal guard, we get back to his
Majesty King Louis the Fourteenth, and to
the Countess d'Aulnoy as a member of his
court. Utterly as the countess abandoned
herself to the free play of fancy, she could not
abandon her own nature. It is not necessary
to accept the traditions of despotism which
have filled all eastern tales with only royal
heroes; the fairy tales of other countries and
of freer men have spoken to the people of
themselves- the countess spoke of courts to
courtiers. Her heroines were all princes and
princesses. "The eldest," as she says of
Rosette's brothers, "was called the Great
Prince, and the younger the Little Prince."
Hers, too, is a courtly, Louis Fourteenthly,
notion of grandeur, which displays how "the
dukes and marquises of the kingdom seated
the Great Prince on a throne of gold and
diamonds, with a magnificent crown on his
head, and robes of violet velvet embroidered
all over with suns and moons. "And look
at Finette in her best clothes, when "her
gown was of blue satin, covered with stars in
diamonds. She had a sun of them in her hair,
and a full moon on her back; and all these
jewels shone so brightly, that one couldn't
look at her without winking." There is the
glitter of fancy in all this, but there is also
more than a little of the court lady's love of
dress. Fine dresses and rags define one of
the differences between good and evil, beauty
and ugliness another. Occasional precept
does, indeed, tend another way; and we are
shown how the Princess Trognon, who was
the most amiable creature in the world, was
hideous, and "always went about in a bowl;
her legs being out of joint; "Prince Torticoli
being as good, and no whit handsomer. But
this wrong state of things preys on the countess's
mind, and before she has done with
them, she turns them—Prince and Princess
—out in their true figures, models of beauty,
with their names changed into Sans-pair and
Brilliante. Again, though she does try them
with poverty, and make them shepherds, she
shrinks from the rags, and dresses them thus
playfully in true Louis-Quatorze style. "She