A King departing for the Crusades commits to a Fairy the charge of
his three daughters--Nonchalante, Babillarde, and Finette, names
descriptive of their characters. They are shut up in a tower without a
door, and furnished with three enchanted distaffs of glass, which they
are told will break on the commission of any indiscretion. They were
to be provided with everything they might properly require by means of
a basket let up and down by a crane and pulley fixed on the top of the
tower. The two eldest Princesses soon become weary of solitude, and
one day pull up in the basket an old beggar woman, Nonchalante hoping
she will be her servant, and Babillarde being anxious to have somebody
else to talk to. The beggar woman proves to be a Prince disguised, the
son of a neighbouring King who is a bitter enemy of the father of the
three Princesses, and who has had recourse to this expedient in order
to revenge himself for some insult or injury he has sustained. By
flattering the foibles of the two Princesses who introduced him into
the tower, he succeeds in causing them to break both their distaffs,
but all his artifices are foiled by Finette (L'Adroite Princesse), who
gets rid of him by making him fall through a trap door into the ditch
under the tower. Enraged at his defeat, he has recourse to another
scheme, and succeeds in inducing Finette to descend in the basket
to procure assistance for her sisters, who are suffering from the
consequences of their indiscretions. He seizes Finette, and is about to
have her rolled down a precipice in a tub filled with spikes, when she
adroitly flings him into it, and he suffers the fate he had projected
for the Princess. Mortally hurt, he bequeaths his vengeance to his
brother, who swears to him that he will marry Finette, and murder
her on the night of his nuptials. She, however, places a figure of
straw in the bed, which the Prince unwillingly stabs, and is only too
delighted to find he is not guilty of murdering a woman he loves, and
who becomes his happy Queen.
This story was not published till 1742, when it was printed as
Perrault's, although it was well known that Mademoiselle Lheritier,
who had read Perrault's _Histoires du Temps Passé_ in manuscript, had
conceived from them the idea of trying her hand at the same sort of
composition, and had actually published, in 1695-6, this very story,
under the title of _Les Aventures de Finette_ in her _Œuvres
Meslées_, with a letter to the daughter of Perrault.
Speaking of that very story she says--"vous savez que dans le _Conte
de Finette_, les deux sœurs sont très eloignées d'être aussi
vertueuses que je les fais, on ne parle point de mariage: ce sont deux
indignés personnes de qui on raconte des faiblesses odieuses avec les
circonstances choquantes;" and she also observes, "j'ai pour moi la
tradition qui met ce Conte de _Finette_; au Temps des Croisades."
There cannot surely be more evidence required to refute the assertion
of Mr. Dunlop, that _L'Adroite Princesse_ (be it written by Perrault or
Mademoiselle Lheritier) is taken from the _Pentamerone_, with little
variation of machinery or incident. The story he alludes to is the
fourth of the third day, and is entitled _Sapia Liccarda_. There is
no such name as Finette in it, and it is well known, independently of
Mademoiselle Lheritier's declaration, that _Le Conte de Finette_ was
one of the oldest of the French nursery tales.
Nor can we desire clearer evidence of the way in which these stories
were written than that which is afforded to us by the repeated
acknowledgments of Mademoiselle Lheritier:--
"Ce que je viens de vous dire
Est toujours au fond bien naïvement
Tel qu'on ma conté quand j'etais enfant."