WILL you permit me to speak in my dual capacity as a Doctor of your University and as a mere teller of stories? I cannot maintain arguments for the space of six weeks against all the learned Regents of the Sorbonne, as did the illustrious Pantagruel; but I venture to submit for your consideration this thèse Sorbonnique: That the nations of the world betray their essential characteristics and ideals more intimately and more precisely in the folk-tales which they tell to their children, than through any other medium. In public assemblies, man makes use of the lie proper to the occasion; but beside his own hearth, among his own family, he reveals unconsciously the absolute truth concerning all that he desires or fears. The folk-tales of a race never lie.

Now the ancient and immemorial fairy-tales of France and of England are of a charming simplicity. There is always a young man who goes out into the world to seek his fortune. On the road he is kind to a beggar, an old woman, or, perhaps a cat. This, though he knows it not, is a good investment. Very soon, he falls into the hands of giants or sorcerers. He is cast into prison, or compelled to perform impossible tasks. At that moment, the beggar, the old woman, or the cat whom he had befriended, comes to his rescue, tells him the magic word, that opens the prison door and achieves the impossible task; or gives him the magic sword which destroys the giants at one blow. In consequence, the youth possesses himself of all their treasure and, equally, he marries a Princess — that Princess which exists always in the dreams of youth. He becomes the Head of a Kingdom, and, in due course, the head of a family.

You perceive, do you not, that our national fairy-tales reflect the inmost desires of the Briton and the Gaul? Thus:—

There was a young man, who through lucky investments, became a wealthy rentier, consolidated his social position by a desirable alliance, and founded a family. You may say that the ideal is bourgeois, but on the pursuit of that ideal, as our youth has pursued it eternally, is based an enormous proportion of the progress and the continuity of our civilisation. Therefore, in France and in England, which together compose the twin fortresses of European civilisation of to-day, our folk-tales prefigure our racial temperaments.

Every race betrays itself thus in the tales it tells to its own children. Let us examine elsewhere. From the earliest ages comes down to us from out of the North, inhabited by the tribes of the Teuton and the Tartar, a mass of legend and story, almost a literature in itself, which deals with the Wehr-Wolf — the beast that can at pleasure or for profit change itself into the likeness of a man and for pleasure or profit become again the Wolf. In these tales, a villager meets a traveller who asks him the way; a family sitting round their hearth by night hear at the door a woman seeking shelter from the storm. The traveller is guided, the woman is admitted into the house. Confidence is established. The traveller rests and works in the village; the woman, perhaps, marries there and bears children; but in time — in due time — these creatures out of the darkness and the night of the North, practise, furtively or openly, the rituals and sabbats of the pack to which they belong. There are mysterious attacks on men, women, and little children in the village. For a while no suspicion is aroused. Men do not suspect men of the outrages of beasts. Then arrives, by chance, the sudden discovery of the Wehr-Wolf in its proper shape, its fangs in the victim’s throat. It runs off through the forest and the snow, wounded, howling, but looking over its shoulder. The village resumes its life. In due time the cycle of treachery and terror is repeated in that village. The traveller reappears more abject, and the woman more in need of help than before. They are received by human beings as human beings. They wait their time; they kill and again depart. You in France have reason to know these stories.

I confess that when I first read them I was fascinated by the cold tenacity and the ruthlessness of the Wehr-Wolves, as much as I despised the stupidity of their victims. For in those days I believed, with the rest of the world, that such tales came out of the twilight of primitive savagery. I did not know then, as you and I know now, that they were the dawn and............