Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/14

Preface Englishman found time to read at large in the Cabinet des Fées, he would have discovered therein much to corroborate the evidence steadily and unconsciously borne by his own journals—that the urbanity of life among the French upper classes was genuine, reflecting a real and (for a whole society) a remarkable sunniness of disposition. Unconscious of their doom, the little victims played. But they did play; and they fell victims, not to their own passions, but to a form of government economically rotten.

Of all the volumes in the Cabinet, possibly the most famous are the first and second, containing the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy, and vols. 7-11, containing M. Galland's version (so much better than any translation) of The Arabian Nights. I hope that one of those days Mr. Dulac will lay the public under debt by illustrating all these, and the stories of Antony Hamilton to boot. Meanwhile, here are three of the most famous tales from Perrault's wallet, and one, the evergreen Beauty and the Beast by an almost forgotten authoress, Madame de Villeneuve.

The ghost of Charles Perrault, could it walk