A translation of _La Princesse Camion_, much abridged and altered,
was published in the _Child's Fairy Library_ some twenty years
ago, under the title of _Princess Minikin._ The plot of this story
is intricate without being ingenious. The persecution of Camion
by Marmotte is purely capricious, and her contrivances are of the
clumsiest description. In the original, Zirphil is commanded to
"take off, one by one, the scales of the whale;" but a whale has no
scales that it could feel the deprivation of. It is skinning the fish
alive that would be a cruel operation, and I have therefore rendered
"_écorcher_" in that sense, and not to scale, as it had been previously
translated, in accordance with the specific direction quoted above.
The transformation of the unfortunate Princess into a crayfish, and
her being shelled instead of pounded as Marmotte had decreed, is all
of the same character. The long story told by her in that state to the
other crayfish in the plantation is a lame way of enlightening either
Zirphil or the reader, and has to be continued in as lame a manner by
Citronette. The pounding the crayfish for the King's soup, and the
disappearance of them in flames when they are put into the mortar,
seems to point to an Eastern origin. The latter portion reminds us of
the black man flinging the fish into the fire, in the story of "The
Fisherman and the Genius," in the _Arabian Nights_, where there is also
a city changed into a lake, and all its inhabitants into fishes, and
re-transformed in the end and restored to the rightful monarch, the
young King of the Black Island. The crayfish broth may be an allusion
to the well-known _Bisque d'Ecrévisse_, but it is also an Oriental
dish; for while this book was passing through the press, a morning
journal announced that "the eldest royal son of his Majesty the First
King of Siam," on his arrival at Claridge's Hotel, "after satisfying
himself that due provision had been made for the comfort of his staff,
retired to rest, having first partaken of a frugal repast, prepared
by his own _chef-de-cuisine_, consisting of _crabfish pounded_ with
various Eastern condiments."--_Morning Post_, October 31st, 1857.
The eagerness with which the nobles of the Court sought for the servile
office of filling the King of the Whiting's bowl with sea-water, is
the only stroke of satire in the story, and evidently levelled at
the candle-holding and similar ceremonies of "le grand et le petit
coucher." To stand and hold a "bougeoir allumé," while Louis XIV.
undressed himself, was, says St. Simon, "une distinction et une faveur
qui se comptait, tant le Roi avait l'art de donner l'être à des riens."
In a note to the expression, "shrieks like Melusine's," page 398, I
have suggested that some portion of _Princess Camion_ might have been
founded on the romance of _Melusine_. This romance was composed towards
the end of the fourteenth century, by Jean d'Arras, at the desire of
the Duke de Berri, son of John, King of France, and was founded on an
incident recorded in the archives of the family of Lusignan, which were
in possession of the Duke. It is briefly as follows:--