separation in several, would save the situation by annihilating her. [Sidenote: _Prince Muguet et Princesse Zaza._] Caylus, however, makes up in the third tale, _Le Prince Muguet et la Princesse Zaza_, where, though the principal fairy, she of the _Hetre_, is rather silly for one of the kind, Muguet is a not quite intolerable coxcomb, and Zaza is positively charming. Her sufferings with a wicked old woman are common; but her distress when the fairy makes her seem ugly to the Prince, who has actually fallen in love with her true portrait, and the scenes where the two meet under this spell, are among the best in the whole _Cabinet_--which is a bold word. The others, though naturally unequal, never or very seldom lack charm, for the reason that Caylus knew what one has ventured to call the secret of Fairyland--that it is the land of the attained Wish--and that he has the art of scattering rememberable and generative phrases and fancies. _Tourlou et Rirette_, one of the lightest of all, may not impossibly--indeed probably--have suggested Jean Ingelow's great single-speech poem of _Divided_; the Princesses Pimprenelle and Lumineuse are the right sort of Princesses; _Nonchalante et Papillon_, _Bleuette et Coquelicot_ come and take their places unpretentiously but certainly; Mignonette and Minutieuse are not "out." Caylus is not Hamilton by a long way; but he has something that Hamilton has not. He is still less Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy, but he has a sufficient difference from either. With these predecessors he makes the select quartette of the fairy-tale tellers of France. After him one expects--and meets--a drop. No reasonable person would look for a really great fairy tale from Jean Jacques, because you must forget yourself to write one; and _La Reine Fantasque_, though not bad, is not good. Madame de Villeneuve may, for ought I know, have been an excellent person in other ways, but she deserves one of the worst bolgias in the Inferno of literature for lengthening, muddling, and altogether spoiling the ever-beloved "Beauty and the Beast." Mlle. de Lussan, they say,[241] was too fond of eating, and died of indigestion. A more indigestible thing than her own _Les Veillees de Thessalie_, which figure here (she wrote a great deal more), the present writer has never come across. And as for _Prince Titi_, which fills a volume and a half, it might have been passed without any remark at all if it had not become famous in connection with the Battle of Croker and Macaulay over the body of Boswell's _Johnson_.[242]