other and minor writers that the _Cabinet_ has to
give, all these disappointments do not always occur, and the crop is
mixed. Mlle. de la Force[228] was one of those _dames_ or _demoiselles
de compagnie_ who figure so largely in the literary history of the
French eighteenth century, and whose group is illustrated by such names
as those of Mlle. Delaunay and Mlle. de Lespinasse. Her full name was
Charlotte Rose de Caumont de la Force, and she was, if not an
adventuress, a person of adventures, who also wrote many
quasi-historical romances in the _Princesse de Cleves_ manner. Her fairy
tales are thin, and marred by weak allegory of the "Carte de Tendre"
kind. A "Pays des Delices," very difficult to reach, and constantly
personated by a "Pays des Avances," promises little and performs less.

The eleven (it is an exact eleven) called _Les Illustres Fees_ is
scarcely so illustrious as the All England and the United were, in the
memory of some of us, in another and better played kind of cricket. The
stories are not very long; they run to a bare eighteen small pages
apiece; but few readers are likely to wish them longer. _Blanche-Belle_
introduces the _sylphes_--an adulteration[229] which generally produces
the effect that Thackeray deplored when his misguided friend would have
_puree_ mixed with _julienne_. _Le Roi Magicien_ is painfully destitute
of personality; we want names, and pretty names, for a fairy tale. _Le
Prince Roger_ is a descendant of Melusine, and one does not think she
would be proud of him. _Fortunio_ is better, and _Quiribirini_, one of
the numerous stories which turn on remembering or failing to remember an
odd name,[230] perhaps better still; but the rest deserve little praise,
and the last, _L'Ile Inaccessible_, appears to be, if it is anything but
pure dulness, a flat political allegory about England and France.

The style picks up a little in the miscellany called (not without a
touch of piquancy) _La Tyrannie des Fees Detruite_, by a Mme.
d'_Auneuil_, whom persons of a sceptical turn might imagine to be a sort
of factitious rival to Mme. d'Aulnoy.[231] It returns to the Greek or
pseudo-Greek names of the heroic romance, and to its questionable device
of _histoires_ stuck like plums in a pudding. Nor are the _Sans
Parangon_ and the _Fee des Fees_ of the Sieur de Preschac utterly bad.
But _Les Aventures d'Abdalla_, besides rashly incurring the danger (to
be exemplified and commented on more fully a litt