The Story of the Duchess of Cicogne and of Monsieur de Boulingrin 1920 — Text and Context

The Narrator’s Mock-Scholarly Pose

The narrator claims to have discovered “several memoirs of the time which have remained unpublished,” a framing device that allows France to treat the fairy tale as historical record. He cites a “formulary dating from the Emperor Honorius” that is “so mildewed and so nibbled by rats that it was impossible to decipher any of it.” This absurd detail mocks the pretensions of archival research while establishing the story’s playful unreliability. The narrator also footnotes Perrault’s original text, drawing attention to his own departures. By presenting the tale as a scholarly recovery, France creates a distance that lets him critique the conventions of fairy tales without abandoning their charm.

Courtly Bickering as Narrative Engine

The Duchess of Cicogne and Monsieur de Boulingrin drive the plot through their petty arguments. When the princess falls asleep, Cicogne whispers that she suspects “an intrigue on the part of the King’s brothers,” while Boulingrin dismisses the fairies as “cock-and-bull stories.” Their dialogue reveals a court obsessed with reputation and conspiracy. The Duchess scolds Boulingrin: “There is nothing so hateful as a sceptic. He is an impertinent person who laughs at our simplicity.” France uses their exchanges to satirize both blind faith and cynical disbelief. Even as the fairy Vivien puts everyone to sleep, the two are still bickering on a bench, their personal squabbles frozen for a century.

The Fairy Alcuine and the Etiquette of Enchantment

The uninvited fairy Alcuine is a study in social slight. The King tells her she was thought “either dead or enchanted,” but the narrator clarifies that her absence was “regarded as contrary to etiquette.” France lists the fairies’ possible fates—imprisoned in a tree, changed into a footstool—with deadpan precision. This catalogue of transformations, drawn from folklore, is delivered as though it were a matter of legal precedent. Alcuine’s curse is thus a response to a breach of protocol, not a random act of malice. France reframes the fairy’s power as a form of social retaliation, making the enchanted sleep a consequence of courtly rudeness.

Time, Substance, and the Hundred-Year Sleep

In Chapter V, France interrupts the narrative with a philosophical paragraph on the nature of time: “Whether one regard Time as a mode of the unique substance, whether it be defined as one of the forms of the conscious ego…” This sudden shift into abstract speculation contrasts sharply with the earlier gossip and satire. The passage is deliberately overblown, a parody of metaphysical discourse that serves to highlight the absurdity of taking a fairy tale literally. After this digression, France returns to the story with a shrug: “every one knows the end of the enchantment.” The prince is reduced to “a little German princeling, with a pretty moustache, and rounded hips,” and the princess follows him “in such a hurry that she never said a word.” The anticlimax is the final joke.

Readers familiar with Perrault will notice where France inserts his own material: the bickering courtiers, the philosophical aside, the deflation of the romantic ending. The story rewards attention to its narrative voice, which oscillates between pedantic and flippant. France’s fairy tale is less about magic than about the human tendency to turn wonder into bureaucracy.

There’s something about France’s duchess, her quiet, knowing weariness with all the fairy-tale fuss, that reminds me of how those old Arabian nights feel—less about magic than about the long, patient pauses between tales. That same unhurried sense of human folly, unspooling itself. I sometimes revisit The Arabian Nights Entertainments — Volume 03 — Inside the Classic for that exact feeling, though I can’t quite say why.