Part 48

This countryman was a large farmer, who had a great number of servants who robbed him very often, and his wife and children robbed him also. When they saw Fatal, they were very well contented. "He is a child," said they; "he will do all we wish." One day the wife said to him, "My little friend, my husband is a miser who never gives me any money; let me take a sheep, and you can say the wolf has carried it off." "Madam," replied Fatal, "I would render you a service with all my heart, but I would much rather die than tell a story or be a thief." "You are a little fool," said the woman; "no one will know what you have done." "God will know it, Madam," replied Fatal; "He knows all that we do, and He will punish liars and those who steal." When the farmer's wife heard these words, she threw herself on him, beat him, and tore out a handful of his hair. Fatal cried, and the farmer hearing him, asked his wife why she beat the child? "Because," said she, "he is a glutton; I saw him this morning eat a pot of cream which I was going to take to market." "Fie! how horrid it is to be greedy," said the farmer; and immediately called a servant, and bade him whip Fatal.

It was of no use the poor child saying he had not eaten the cream; they believed the mistress rather than him. After this, he went into the fields with his sheep, and the farmer's wife said to him, "Well! will you now give me a sheep?" "I should be very sorry to do so," said Fatal; "you can do what you will with me, but you cannot oblige me to tell a lie." To revenge herself, the wicked creature then set all the other servants to treat Fatal ill. He remained in the fields night and day; and instead of giving the same food to him as to the other servants, she sent him nothing but bread and water, and when he returned she accused him of all the harm that was done in the house.

He passed a year with this farmer, and although he lay on the bare ground and was so ill-fed, he became so strong that he appeared to be fifteen when he was only thirteen; besides, he was become so patient, that he did not mind even when they scolded him unjustly. One day that he was at the farm, he heard say that a neighbouring King was engaged in a great war. He asked his master to discharge him, and went on foot into the kingdom of this Prince to become a soldier. He engaged himself to a Captain who was a great lord, but behaved himself more like a common porter, he was so brutal; he swore, he beat his soldiers, he robbed them of half the money which the King gave for their food and clothing; and under this wicked Captain, Fatal was even more unhappy than with the farmer. He had engaged himself for ten years, and although he saw the greater number of his comrades desert, he would never follow their example, for he said, "I have received the money to serve ten years; I should rob the King if I failed in my word." Although the Captain was a wicked man, and ill-treated Fatal like the others, he could not help esteeming him because he saw that he always did his duty. He gave him money to do his commissions, and Fatal had the key of his chamber when he went to the country, where he dined with his friends.

This Captain was not fond of reading; but he had a large library, to make believe to those who came to his house that he was a clever man, for in that country they thought that an officer who did not read history could never be anything but a fool and an ignoramus. When Fatal had finished his duties as a soldier, instead of going to drink and gamble with his comrades, he shut himself up in the Captain's chamber and tried to learn his profession by reading the lives of great Generals, and by these means he became capable of commanding an army.

He had already been seven years a soldier when he went to the war. His Captain took six soldiers with him, to make a search in a little wood; and when in this little wood, the soldiers said quite low, "We must kill this wicked man, who beats us and steals our bread." Fatal told them they must not do such a wicked action; but, instead of listening to him, they said they would kill him with the Captain, and all five drew their swords. Fatal placed himself by the side of the Captain, and fought with so much valour that he alone killed four of the soldiers. His Captain, seeing that he owed his life to him, begged his pardon for all the ill he had done him; and having reported his conduct to the King, Fatal was made a Captain, and the King granted him a large pension.

Oh, you may be sure the soldiers did not wish to kill Fatal, for he loved them like his children; and far from robbing them of what belonged to them, he gave them his own money when they were wounded, and never took it away again when in an ill humour. Meanwhile a great battle was fought, and the General commanding the army having been killed, all the officers and soldiers were retreating in disorder, but Fatal cried aloud that he would rather die sword in hand than fly like a coward. His own men answered that they would not abandon him, and their good example having shamed the others, they rallied round Fatal and fought so well that they routed the enemy, and took the hostile King's son prisoner. The other King was very pleased when he heard that he had gained the battle, and said to Fatal that he would make him General of all the army. He presented him to the Queen and the Princess his daughter, who gave him their hands to kiss.

When Fatal saw the Princess, he remained motionless. She was so beautiful, that he felt madly in love with her, and then he was indeed miserable; for he felt that a man like himself was not fit to marry a great Princess. He resolved, therefore, carefully to conceal his love, and every day he suffered the greatest torment; but it was much worse when he found that Fortuné, having seen a picture of the Princess, who was named Gracieuse, had fallen in love with her, and that he had sent ambassadors to demand her hand in marriage.

Fatal thought he should die of grief; but the Princess Gracieuse, who knew that Fortuné was a wicked, cowardly Prince, begged the King, her father, so hard not to make her marry him, that he replied to the ambassador that the Princess did not wish to marry yet. Fortuné, who had never been contradicted, was in a fury when he heard the reply of the Princess; and his father, who could refuse him nothing, declared war with the father of Gracieuse, who did not distress himself much about it, for he said, "So long as I have Fatal at the head of my army, I do not fear being defeated."

He sent for his General, and ordered him to prepare for war; but Fatal, throwing himself at his feet, told him that he was born in the kingdom of the father of Fortuné, and that he could not fight against his native Sovereign. The father of Gracieuse was in a great rage, and told Fatal that he would put him to death if he refused to obey him; but that, on the contrary, he would give him his daughter in marriage if he gained the victory over Fortuné. Poor Fatal, who loved Gracieuse passionately, was sorely tempted, but in the end resolved to do his duty.

Without saying anything to the King, he quitted the Court, and abandoned all his wealth. Meanwhile, Fortuné put himself at the head of his troops, and marched to give the King battle; but at the end of four days he fell ill of fatigue, for he was very delicate, never having taken any exercise. The heat, the cold--everything made him ill. However, the ambassador, who wished to make his court to Fortuné, told him that he had seen at the Court of Gracieuse the little boy who had been banished from the Palace, and that they said the father of Gracieuse had promised him his daughter. Fortuné at this news put himself in a great passion, and as soon as he was better, set out again determined to dethrone the father of Gracieuse, and promised a large sum of money to any one who would bring Fatal to him dead or alive.

Fortuné won a great victory, although he did not fight himself, for he was afraid of being killed. At length he besieged the capital city of his enemy, and resolved to take it by assault. The eve of this day they brought Fatal to him, bound in chains, for a great number of people had been tempted by the reward to seek for him. Fortuné, charmed at being able to revenge himself, resolved, before commencing the assault, to have Fatal beheaded in sight of the enemy. That same day he gave a great feast to his officers to celebrate his birthday, being just twenty-five years old. The soldiers in the besieged city having learnt that Fatal was taken, and that in an hour he was to be beheaded, resolved to perish or save him, for they remembered the benefits he had conferred on them whilst he was their General. They asked permission of the King to make a sortie, and this time they were victorious.

The gift of Fortuné had ceased, and he was killed in endeavouring to escape. The victorious soldiers ran to take off the chains of Fatal, and at the same moment they saw two brilliant chariots appear in the air. The Fairy was in one of these chariots, and the father and mother of Fatal were in the other, but asleep. They only awoke as their chariot touched the ground, and they were very much astonished to find themselves in the midst of the army.

The Fairy then addressing the Queen, and presenting Fatal to her, said, "Madam, behold in this hero your eldest son; the misfortunes which he has undergone have corrected the defects of his character, which was violent and passionate. Fortuné, on the contrary, who was born with good inclinations, has been entirely spoilt by flattery, and God has not permitted him to live longer, because he would have become more wicked every day. He has just been killed; but to console you for his death, learn that he was on the point of dethroning his father, because he was tired of waiting to be King." The King and Queen were very much astonished, and embraced Fatal with all their heart, of whom they had heard speak honourably. The Princess Gracieuse and her father learnt with joy the adventures of Fatal, who married Gracieuse, with whom he lived a long time in perfect happiness, because it was founded in virtue.

APPENDIX.

CHARLES PERRAULT.

Member of the Académie Française, and _premier commis des batimens du Roi_, was born, as he himself tells us in the _Mémoires_ he left to his children, in Paris, on the 12th of January, 1628; and at eight and a half years of age was sent to the College of Beauvais, where he gave early proof of his literary abilities. He died in 1703. Although the author of many creditable compositions, both in prose and verse, he is indebted for his celebrity to that collection of Fairy tales which, under the title of _Histoires, ou Contes du Tems passé_, were first published in 1697, and speedily obtained a world-wide popularity as _Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye_, known in England as _Mother Goose's Fairy Tales_.

They were published by Perrault, under the name of his son, Perrault D'Armancour, at that time a child only ten years old, whose name is appended to the dedication of the first edition to "Mademoiselle," _i.e_., Elizabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, sister of Philippe, Duke of Chartres, and, after the death of Louis XIV., Regent of France. Mademoiselle was born 13th September, 1676. The title, _Contes de ma Mère l'Oye_, has given rise to much controversy, and a great deal of paper, not to say learning, has been wasted in the attempt to discover the original source of the stories, and the reason of their being called those of "Ma Mère l'Oye." The former question I shall reserve for discussion in my notices of the tales themselves. The latter we will dispose of at once. Monsieur Colin de Plancy, in his valuable edition of the _Œuvres Choisis de Charles Perrault_, 8vo, Paris, 1826; and Baron Walkenaër in his _Lettres sur les Contes des Fées attribués à Perrault, &c_., Paris, 12mo, same date, have pretty well exhausted the subject. The three principal derivations that have been insisted upon, are:--

Firstly. That in an ancient _fabliau_, "a goose is represented telling stories to her goslings, worthy of them and of her."

Secondly. That in the frontispiece to the first edition of Perrault's _Fairy Tales_, an old woman is represented spinning, and beside her are three children, one boy and two girls, whom she is apparently amusing by her stories; and that as underneath this are the words _Contes de ma Mère l'Oye_,[47] this old woman is no less a personage than Ma Mère l'Oye _in propria persona_.

Thirdly. That Ma Mère l'Oye is one and the same individual with La Reine Pédauque, the goose or bird-footed Queen, a soubriquet applied by some to a Bertha, Queen of France; and by others to St. Clotilde and the Queen of Saba.

The first is an assertion without proof. The second a mere opinion, which is instantly met by another--namely, that the old woman is repeating to her hearers the stories of Ma Mère l'Oye. The third is a tangible proposition, and has been dealt with accordingly.

At St. Marie de Nesle, in the diocese of Troyes, at St. Bénigne de Dijon, at St. Pierre de Nevers, St. Pourcain in Auvergne, and in divers other churches in France, the statue is to be seen of a queen with a web-foot, and therefore called La Reine Pied-d'oie, or Pédauque.[48] This statue is said by Mabillon, but without giving any authority for his assertion, to represent St. Clotilde.

The Abbé Lebœuf believes that the origin of this name is to be found at Toulouse. He quotes a passage in Rabelais, who, speaking of certain large-footed persons, says, "they were splay-footed, like geese, or Queen Pédauque in her portrait formerly at Toulouse;" "and the Abbé concludes," says Monsieur de Plancy, "curiously enough, that the Queen Pédauque is the Queen of Saba;" supporting his opinion by the following tale in the _Targum of Jerusalem_:--

"The Queen of Saba was so fond of bathing, that she plunged every day in the sea. When she went to visit Solomon, he received her in an apartment of crystal. The Queen of Saba on entering it, imagined that the Monarch was in the water, and in order to pass through it to him, she lifted her robe. The King then seeing her feet, which were hideous, said to her: 'Your face unites all the charms of the most beautiful women, but your legs and feet correspond but little to it.'"

Even if we could suppose Solomon to have been so ungallant, there does not appear much in this Hebrew story to bear upon the subject; for what possible reason was there for attributing these stories to the Queen of Saba? Bullet, _doyen_ of the University of Besançon, goes back to the eleventh century, in France, for the source of this epithet. The Good King Robert had married his relative, Bertha; Gregory V. compelled him to divorce her, and imposed on him a penance of seven years. The King, who loved Bertha, refused obedience, and the Pope excommunicated him. He was deserted by everybody except two servants. In the meanwhile, Bertha was said to have been brought to bed of a monster resembling an ill-formed duck, or, according to others, a goose. Abbon, Abbot of Fleury, brought the supposed offspring to the King, who, horrified at the sight of it, repudiated Bertha, leaving her, however, the title of Queen. The dreadful story was circulated that she had given birth to a goose, and that she had herself become goose-footed, as a punishment for her criminal marriage. Her name of Bertha gave more authority to this story in the eyes of the people. They remembered that Bertha or Bertrade, wife of Pepin-le-bref, was surnamed "Bertha with the Great Foot," because she had one foot larger than the other; and they called the repudiated wife of Robert, "Bertha au pied d'Oie." It is possible also, remarks Mons. de Plancy, that this fable was invented to flatter Queen Constance, who succeeded her, for it was the period of credulity and superstition. Constance went to Toulouse. She was lodged in front of an aqueduct so narrow that a man could not pass through it. To amuse the Princess, they told her it was the bridge of Queen Goose, or of the queen with the goose's foot. This story was afterwards amplified, and it became a saying that Queen Pédauque was of Toulouse.

In the _Contes d'Entrapel_, by Noël Dufail, published during the latter half of the sixteenth century, a man is made to swear by "the spindle of Queen Pédauque;" and therefore Bullet assumes that she must have been Queen Bertha, because there is an old French saying, "when Queen Bertha spun,"[49] which is applied to any marvellous story of bygone days, or to events that are said to have happened "once upon a time." This is very inconclusive. In the middle ages, spinning was a favourite occupation of queens and princesses, and Queen Bertha was by no means an exception.[50] There is another French saying, similarly applied to an incredible tale--"It is of the time when King Robert sang to the lute," the said King Robert being the husband of Queen Bertha. This is all tantamount only to our old English sayings, "When Adam was a little boy," and "When Adam delved and Eve span," &c. It is also more than probable that the Bertha of the proverb is identical with the Frau Berchta of German superstition. She is said to live in the imaginations of the upper German races in Austria, Bavaria, Swabia, Alsace, Switzerland, and some districts of Thuringia and Franconia. She appears in _The Twelve Nights_ as a woman with shaggy hair, to inspect the spinners, when fish and porridge are to be eaten in honour of her, and all the distaffs must be spun off. This superstition was also common in England:--

Partly work and partly play You must on St. Distaff's day.

That is, the day after Twelfth Day, and is evidently the relic of some pagan rite in honour, most probably, of Freya or Frega, the Venus of the Scandinavians. "Dame Bertha horned," is one of the characters in_ Les Evangiles des Conoilles_ (Quenouilles), the joint composition of Jean d'Arras and three other writers, in 1475. It was translated into English, and printed by Winkyn de Worde, with the title of _The Gospelles of Distaffs_.[51]

A writer who signs himself Philetymus, has acutely pointed out a more probable origin of the title of_ Contes de ma_ (or _de le_) _Mère l'Oye_, which it is clear, from passages in Boileau and Molière, was applied to a certain collection of old stories, long before Perrault published his _Histoires du Temps Passé_. This writer refers us to the customs of antiquity and the superstitions of the middle ages. He recals to us that the ancient Romans confided their dwellings to the care of their geese. He alludes to the two hundred thousand Crusaders who, in 1096, directed their march by the flight of a goose from Hungary to Jerusalem; to the guardian fairies of the Château de Piron in the Contentin, who, at the time of the invasion of the Normans, transformed themselves into wild geese; to the _benevolent_ and _protecting_ dwarfs of the Canton of Berne, who are said to have been all goose-footed; and above all, to Marguerite de Navarre, who, in her _Heptameron_, calls herself Oisille; and he concludes by saying, "C'est que la bonne dame Oisille, veuve de grand expérience y représente la Mère l'Oie; c'est que du conté le moins discret elle sait tirer toujours une conclusion favorable à la morale.... Contes de la Mère l'Oie c'est à dire contes de la vieille grand mère, jaseuse et criande comme l'Oie mais comme l'Oie, surtout gardienne vigilante de la maison.... J'allais dire de la Vertu."

There is, amidst all this suggestion, one fact to repose upon. It is, that Perrault was not the inventor of the stories he published; that he merely transmitted to writing, no doubt with some touches of his own, tales of the nursery which had descended orally from the earliest ages of the Celtic occupation of Armorica or Bretagne, to the peculiar superstitions of which we shall find, as we proceed, they all have more or less reference, and that the particular stories printed in the first edition of his _Histoires du Temps Passé_, had long been popularly known as _Contes de ma Mère l'Oye_. In 1678, at the age of fifty, Perrault retired from his public office to dedicate himself entirely to literature and the education of his children. Some ten years afterwards he composed a novel in verse, founded on a celebrated tale in the _Decamerone_ of Boccaccio, and well known to us as _Patient Grizzel_, his title being _La Marquise de Salusses; ou, la Patience de Griselidis_. It was published at Paris, by Jean Baptiste Coignard, in 1691. La Fontaine had, as early as 1678, said, in the fourth Fable of his eighth Book, _Le Pouvoir des Fables_--

----"Et moi même Au moment que je fais cette moralité Si Peau d'Ane m'etait conté J'y prendrais un plaisir extrême."

These lines it would seem induced Perrault to versify the old nursery story of _Peau d'Ane_, with which Louis XIV., when an infant, used to be rocked to sleep; and in 1694, on the publication of the second edition of his _Griselidis_, he added to it his metrical version of _Peau d'Ane_, and _Les Souhaits Ridicules_, known to us as _The Three Wishes_. The success of these stories led him to publish, in 1697, his collection of _Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye_, under the title of _Histoires du Temps Passé_, and in the name of his son, as before stated. This collection consisted of eight stories only, all in prose: _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, _Le Petit Chaperon Rouge_, _Barbe Bleue_, _Le Chat Botté_, _Les Fées_, _Cendrillon_, _Riquet à la Houpe_, and _Le Petit Poucet_--a proof that _Peau d'Ane_ was not one of the _Contes de ma Mère l'Oie_, any more than _Griselidis or Les Souhaits Ridicules_. The same eight stories alone appear in the second edition in 1707 (four years after the death of Perrault), and in the third edition by Nicolas Gosselin, in 1724. It is not until 1742, when an edition of the _Histoires du Temps Passé_ was published at the Hague,[52] that we find any addition to the first eight stories, and then we have for the first time the story of _L'Adroite Princesse; ou, Les Aventures de Finette_, presented to us, with a dedication to the Countess of Murat, as a story by Perrault, although a story with that title and on that subject was published by Madlle. Lheritier in 1696, in a work entitled, _Œuvres Mêlées, contenant Nouvelles et autres Ouvrages en Verse et en Prose_, in which also appears a letter from the author to the daughter of Perrault. But even in the Hague edition of 1742, there is no _Peau d'Ane_, and it is only in comparatively modern collections that a prose version of that story, as well as the one in verse actually written by Perrault, is, with _L'Adroite Princesse_, _Griselidis_, and _Les Souhaits Ridicules_, added to the eight original _Contes de ma Mère l'Oie_, or _Histoires du Temps Passé_.

From these eight stories I have selected six, omitting only _Le Petit Chaperon Rouge_, and _Les Fées_, so well known in the nursery as _Little Red Riding Hood_ (why "Riding?") and _Toads and Diamonds_, and for the atmosphere of which they are alone calculated. On the others I shall now offer a few observations in their order of publication, and in the same spirit as those appended to the Fairy Tales of the Countess d'Aulnoy.

BLUE BEARD.