example, not of a real
fairy tale nor of a satire on fairy tales (for which it is much too much
"out of the rules" and much too stupid), but of something which may save
an ordinary reader, or even student, from attacking, as I fear we shall
have to do, the _Cabinet des Fees_ at large, and discovering, by painful
experience, how excessively silly and tedious the corruption of this
wise and delightful kind may be.

One might, of course, draw lessons from others of the original batches,
but this may suffice for the specimen batch under immediate review.
_Peau d'Ane_, one of the most interesting to "folklorists" and
origin-hunters, is, of course, also in itself interesting to students of
literature. Its combination of the old theme of the incestuous passion
of a father for his daughter, with the special but not invariable shadow
of excuse in the selfish vanity of the mother's dying request, is quite
out of the usual way of these things. So is the curious series of fairy
failures--things apparently against the whole set of the game--beginning
with the unimaginative conception of dresses, weather-, or sky-, moon-,
and sun-colour, rendered futile by the success of the artists, and
ending in the somewhat banal device of making yourself ugly and running
away, with the odd conclusion-contrast of Peau d'Ane's squalid
appearance in public and her private splendour in the fairy garments.

[Sidenote: The danger of the "moral."]

Still, the lessons of correction, warning, and instruction to be drawn
from these gracious little things, for the benefit of their younger and
more elaborate successors, are not easily exhausted. They are, on the
whole, very moral, and it is well that morality, rightly understood,
should animate fiction. But they are occasionally much _too_ moral, and
then they warn off instead of cheering on. Take, for instance, two other
neighbours in the collection just quoted, _Le Prince Cheri_ and the
ever-delightful _La Belle et La Bete_. Both of these are moral; but the
latter is just moral enough, while _Cheri_, with one or two alleviations
(of which, perhaps, more presently), is hardly anything if _not_ moral,
and therefore disgusts, or at any rate bores. On the other hand,
"Beauty" is as _bonne_ as she is _belle_; her only fault, that of
overstaying her time, is the result of family affection, and her reward
and the punishment of the wicked sisters are quite copy-book. But it is
not for this part that we love wha