The work of Mlle. L'Héritière was thoroughly artificial, while the immortal stories of Perrault have but a few touches of conscious courtly wit, and closely adhere to the old nursery versions. Perrault, in fact, is rather the ancestor of the Grimms and the other scholarly collectors, than of the literary letters of fairy tales. The Fairy Godmothers of modern _contes_ play quite a small part in Perrault's works (though a larger part than in purely popular narrative) compared with their _rôle_ in Madame d'Aulnoy, and all her successors. Much more truly than la Comtesse de M---- (Murat), author of _Contes des Fées_(1698), Madame d'Aulnoy is the true mother of the modern fairy tale, and the true Queen of the _Cabinet des Fées_.[2] To this witty lady of all work, author of _Mémoires de la Cour d'Espagne_, and of many novels, a mere hint from tradition was enough. From such hints she developed her stories, such as _Le Mouton, Le Nain jaune, Finette Cendron, Le Bon petit Souris_, and very many others. She invented the modern Court of Fairyland, with its manners, its fairies--who, once a year, take the forms of animals, its Queens, its amorous, its cruel, its good, its evil, its odious and its friendly _fées_; illustrious beings, the counsellors of kings, who are now treated with religious respect, and now are propitiated with ribbons, scissors, and sweetmeats. The Fairies are as old as the Hathors of Egypt, the Moerae who came to the birth of Meleager, the Norns of Scandinavian myth. But Madame d'Aulnoy first developed them into our familiar _fées_ of fairy tale. Her _contes_ are brilliant little novels, gay, satirical, full of hits at courts and kings. Yet they have won a way into true popularity: translated and condensed, they circulate as penny scrap-books, and furnish themes for pantomime.[3] It is from Madame d'Aulnoy that the _Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray derives its illustrious lineage. The banter is only an exaggeration of her charming manner. It is a pity that Sainte-Beuve, in his long gallery of portraits, found no space for Madame d'Aulnoy. The grave Fénelon follows her in his _Rosimond et Braminte_, by no means the worst effort of the author of _Télémaque_.[4] From Madame d'Aulnoy, then, descend the many artificial stories of the _Cabinet des Fées_, and among these the very prolix novel out of which _Beauty and the Beast_ has been condensed takes a high place. The tales of the Comte de Caylus have also humour, wit, and a pleasant invention.[5]