Imagine if simple acts of kindness were rewarded with boundless riches! In the French fairy tale “Les fées” (“The Fairies”), a young woman provides refreshment to an older woman in need. The latter proves to be a fairy in disguise, who announces “that with every word you speak, a flower or a precious stone shall fall from your mouth.” Like Cinderella, another heroine with a patron fairy, the young woman (now spewing jewels with every utterance) soon finds herself a royal husband. This, the earliest known written text of “Les fées,” is part of a splendid presentation manuscript of the tales of Mother Goose created as a gift for Élisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans, niece of France’s King Louis XIV.
Charles Perrault (1628–1703), Contes de ma mère l'Oye, scribal manuscript with gouache headpieces, 1695. MA 1505. Purchased as the gift of the Fellows, 1953.