_La Princesse Lionette et le Prince Coquerico_ is an infinitely better
story than _La Princesse Camion_: but, like that, its aim is no higher
than to excite the interest and awaken the wonder of its readers. As
a work of fancy, however, it is one of the best of its class, and I
believe is now for the first time translated into English.
I do not recollect any story on which it could be said to be founded;
but at the end of _La Tyranine des Fées détruite_, by the Countess
d'Anneuil, is a story, entitled _La Princesse Lionne_, in which a
princess is changed into a lioness, and persecuted by a fairy called La
Rancune; but there the similarity ends. Mademoiselle de Lubert edited
an edition of the _Nouveaux Contes des Fées_ of the Countess d'Anneuil,
and may have taken an idea from that particular incident.
The model of the globe in which Prince Coquerico saw and heard all
that passed in the universe, and witnessed the opera, the play, and
the orations at the _Académie Française_, reminds one of the room in
the Palace of the Beast, the various windows of which afforded Beauty
similar entertainment.
The Fairy Tigreline's employments of spinning and threading pearls,
is in strict accordance with the manners of the sixteenth century.
"Passons avec les dames," says Rabelais, "nostres vie et nostres temps
_à enfiler les perles ou à filer_, comme Sardanapalus."--Livre i. chap.
33. I have mentioned (p. 438) that the opera of _Armide_ was considered
the _chef-d'œuvre_ of Quinnault. The music was composed by Lulli,
and it is reported that he made Quinnault write the last act over again
five times, which so disgusted the poet that he ceased to write for the
stage from that period. The incident of the shield is that in which
Ubaldo holds before Rinaldo his adamant or diamond shield, in which the
latter sees himself reflected in his effeminate attire, is awakened to
a sense of his degraded situation, and abandons the enchanted gardens
of Armida.--Book xvi.