A Princess, in order to escape the persecution of the King, her father,
on a point of conscience, consults a fairy, who is her godmother,
and by her advice successively requests her father to give her three
dresses--the first of the colour of the sky, the second of the colour
of the moon, and the third of the colour of the sun, believing he will
be unable to fulfil his promises. He succeeds, however, in procuring
for her the three dresses; and she is then instructed to ask him for
the skin of a marvellous ass in the royal stables, which supplies the
King daily with an ample quantity of gold coin, under the impression
that his Majesty will never consent to such a sacrifice. The infatuated
Monarch, however, does cause the ass to be killed and flayed, and the
Princess, on the receipt of the skin she has requested, is reduced to
flight. The Fairy tells her to put the three fine dresses and all her
jewellery, &c. in a large trunk, which by magical power is to follow
her underground, and appear whenever she needs it; and begriming
her face and hands, and wrapping herself up in the ass's skin, the
Princess escapes from the palace, and travels into the dominions of
a neighbouring monarch. She there obtains employment in a farm as
a scullion and keeper of the pigs and poultry, her only pleasure
consisting in occasionally locking herself up in her miserable room,
and putting on her fine dresses and jewellery, which appear at her
wish, as the Fairy promised her.
The son of the King of this country happens to visit this farm
occasionally as he returns from hunting, and one day peeps through the
keyhole of the door, and sees Peau d'Ane (as the Princess is called,
from the only dress she wears in public) arrayed in one of her richest
robes. He is dazzled with her beauty, and believing her to be some
divinity, he is afraid to burst open the door, and returns to the
palace, where he falls perfectly love-sick, refusing to eat, drink,
or take any amusement. He inquires who lives in that wretched room
at the farm, and is told an ugly, dirty, kitchen wench, called Peau
d'Ane, for the reason aforesaid. He declares that nothing can cure him
but a cake made by her hands. After all sorts of expostulations, they
yield to his wishes, and Peau d'Ane is ordered to make a cake for the
Prince. She has seen him on his visits to the farm, and is equally in
love with him. She makes the cake, and drops, by accident or design,
a magnificent emerald ring into it. The Prince devours the cake, and
finds the ring. He immediately declares that he will marry no one but
the woman who owns that ring. On this determination being made public,
all the unmarried ladies in the Court and kingdom endeavour to fit on
the ring, but it is too small for any one to pretend to the ownership.
At length Peau d'Ane is sent for at the Prince's wish, and dropping
her hideous ass's skin, appears in magnificent attire, and places the
ring easily on her finger. Everybody is astonished, the Prince and his
parents delighted, and the nuptials take place, being honoured by the
presence of Kings and Fairies from all quarters, and specially by the
father of the Princess, who has recovered from his infatuation.
This story, founded originally on the legend of St. Dipne, was a
favourite in France from an exceedingly early period, and was versified
by Perrault, and published with _Les Souhaits Ridicules_, as I have
already stated, in 1694. He alludes to the original nursery tale in his
_Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes_, 1689, in which he makes the
partisan of the ancients say, "Les fables Milesiennes sont si puériles,
que c'est leur faire assez d'honneur que de leur opposer nos Contes de
_Peau d'Ane_ et de _la Mère l'Oye_." The prose version of this tale was
not published until many years after his death, and is supposed by
Baron Walkenäer not to have been his composition; and I think there is
a point unnoticed by the Baron which supports that opinion. The story
is dedicated to Mademoiselle Eleanore de Lubert.[62] Now, if this be
Mademoiselle de Lubert, author of _La Princesse Camion_, &c., she was
not born till some years after the death of Perrault; and as in the
dedication we find the lines
"Quoique vous soyez à l'aurore,
Du printemps de vos jeunes ans,"
the dedication itself could not have been written much before 1720,
Mademoiselle de Lubert having been born about 1710.
There is another story in the _Contes ou Joyeux Devises de Bonaventure
Desperiers_, Novel 130, of a young girl named "Peau d'Ane," and "how
she got married by the means furnished her by the Ants." A gentleman
fell in love with a merchant's daughter, named Pernette. The father
and mother, not daring flatly to refuse their consent, attached to it
what they considered an impossible condition--namely, that for a given
period previous to her marriage the girl should wear no other apparel
than the skin of an ass. Pernette, returning the gentleman's affection,
was not to be discouraged by this obstacle, and cheerfully wore the
skin of an ass for the appointed time. Foiled in this matter, they
set their wits to work to invent something more impracticable. They
insisted that she should lick up, grain by grain, a bushel of barley,
which they spilt for that purpose on the ground. Nothing daunted, she
applied herself to this task; but the ants repaired to the same spot,
and took away all the barley by degrees, without being noticed, so that
it appeared as if Pernette had done it; and her parents considering
further opposition useless, the girl obtained her husband. The story
concludes with the assertion that "Vray est que tant quelle vesquit le
sobriquet de Peau d'Ane lui demeura."
There is nothing whatever in this story to remind one of the last,
beyond the simple circumstance of the skin; nor have we any clue as to
which may be the oldest: but both were called _Peau d'Ane_, and it may
be just possible that one furnished a hint for the other, or, indeed,
that there was a collection of stories so entitled; for La Porte,
the valet of Louis XIV., tells us, in his _Mémoires_, that when that
monarch was still a child, but had passed from the hands of females
into those of men, he could not go to sleep "parcequ'on ne lui contait
plus _les contes_ de Peau d'Ane ainsi que les femmes qui le gardaient
avaient coutume de le faire."