The Little Good Mouse

The Little Good Mouse is a French fairy tale by Madame d'Aulnoy, about a captive queen and the small gray mouse who turns out to be her secret protector.

The story was gathered into Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book in 1890, but it dates back two centuries earlier, to the French salon storytellers who invented the fairy tale as we know it. A cruel king has killed his neighbor in battle and taken the dead man's wife prisoner, locking her away in a bare stone tower. He wants her for his own queen, but she refuses him, and while she waits out her captivity she gives birth to a daughter. Alone and afraid, she is visited by a little gray mouse who is really a fairy in disguise. The mouse keeps her company, cares for the newborn princess, and quietly turns the tables on the king himself, creeping into his chamber at night to nibble his ears, tickle his nose, and steal his sleep, until his cruelty starts to cost him dearly.

It's a story about kindness answered with kindness, and about a small, easily overlooked helper who turns out to hold all the power in the room. Readers who enjoy Madame d'Aulnoy's other tales, or the salon fairy stories of seventeenth-century France, will find the same mix of court intrigue, magic, and quiet justice here that made her name; she's the writer credited with coining the term "fairy tale" itself. Fans of Andrew Lang's colored fairy books, or of Perrault's classic stories, will feel right at home.

The mouse's nighttime mischief gets a drowsy hush rather than anything sinister. It's a calm, old-fashioned story to close your eyes to, with just enough soft strangeness to hold you until sleep takes over.