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And there, on a bed the curtains of which were drawnwide, he beheld the loveliest vision he had ever seen.
The Sleeping Beautyand other fairy tales
From the Old French
New York
HODDER and STOUGHTON
CONTENT
PREFACE
Once upon a time I found myself haltingbetween two projects, both magnificent.For the first, indeed—which was to discover, digestand edit all the fairy tales in the world—I wasequipped neither with learning, nor with commandof languages, nor with leisure, nor with length ofyears. It is a task for many men, clubbing theirlifetimes together. But the second would have costme quite a respectable amount of toil; for it wasto translate and annotate the whole collection ofstories in the Cabinet des Fées.
Now the Cabinet des Fées, in the copy on myshelves, extends to forty-one volumes, printed, astheir title-pages tell, at Geneva between the years1785 and 1789, and published in Paris by M.Cuchet, Rue et Hôtel Serpente. The dates mayset us moralising. While the Rue Serpente unfolded,as though
its playful voluminous coils, the throne of Francewith the Ancien Régime rocked closer and closerto catastrophe. In 1789 (July), just as M. Cuchet(good man and leisurable to the end) wound uphis series with a last volume of the Suite des Milleet Un Nuits, they toppled over with the fall ofthe Bastille.
Even so in England—we may remind ourselves—in1653, when the gods m