Stranica 19 [19]
INTRODUCTION
delectable tale; but with Brittany, Bohemia, Italy, Dal¬
matia, Hungary, and Spain for his storehouses, one has only
to taste to know how finely flavored are the dishes he
sets forth.
In his preface to the first American edition Laboulaye
writes a letter to Mlle. Gabrielle Laboulaye, aged two! In
it he says: “When you throw away this book with your
doll, do not be too severe with your old grandfather for
wasting his time on such trifles as fairy stories. Experience
will teach you that the truest and sweetest things in life
are not those which we see, but of which we dream." Happy
the children who have this philosophy set before them
early in life.
Like the fairy tales Robert Louis Stevenson remembered,
these of Laboulaye’s have “the golden smell of broom and
the shade of pine,” and they will come back to the child
whenever the Wind of Memory blows.
In common with the stories of Charles Perrault, literary
parent of the fairy tale, Laboulaye’s charming narratives
have a certain unique quality due to the fact that they
were intended and collected for the author’s own children,
were told to them round the fireside in the evening, and so
received at first hand the comment and suggestion of a
bevy of competent, if somewhat youthful, critics.
It is said that there is a great scarcity of fairy folk in
modern France; and that, terrified by the thunders of the
XI