an occasion. The Queen then, casting her eyes on her nephew, received him very graciously, and repeated to him the promise she had made to the necromancer. She would have said more, but the noise that she heard in the court-yard of the palace induced her to look out of the window, and she had the agreeable surprise of beholding the arrival of the Queen her sister. The Prince and the Infanta, who were looking out also, perceived in the royal suite the venerable Biroquoi, and even good Criquetin was one of the party. All at the sight of each other uttered shouts of joy; they ran to meet each other with transports which cannot be described, and the magnificent nuptials of the Prince and the Infanta were celebrated upon the spot in spite of the Fairy Fanferluche, whose power and malignity were equally confounded.
The friendship of the wicked we should fear,
Their fairest offers prudently declining;
E'en while protesting that they hold us dear,
In secret oft our peace they're undermining.
The Princess, whose adventures I've related,
Of happiness might ne'er have been bereaved,
If, from the fairy who her mother hated,
The fatal hawthorn had not been received.
Her transformation to an ugly ape
Could not exempt her from the tender passion;
Regardless of her features and her shape,
She dared to love a Prince—"the glass of fashion."
I know some well, in this our present day,
Ugly as any monkeys in creation,
Who, notwithstanding, venture siege to lay
To the most noble hearts in all the nation.[1]
But I suspect, ere they secure a lover,
They must to some enchanter pay their duty,
Who can inform them where they may discover
The oil which gave to Babiole her beauty.
- ↑ We have no clue to the exact dates at which these stories were written, but about this period Mdlle Choin, whom St. Simon describes as "a fat, squat, swarthy, ugly, flat-nosed girl," contrived to acquire an ascendency over the heart of Monseigneur the Dauphin, son of Louis XIV., and father of Philip V. king of Spain. The allusion may have been more general, but the notoriety of this intrigue, which became the theme of the ballad-mongers of the day, renders the supposition not improbable, that this celebrated intrigante was at least included in the category
