His knowledge of children alone might have carried him through, but his choice of a collaborator was an act of genius. When in 1697, the _Contes_ were collected and published,[24] it was not to M. Perrault of the Academy that the “_privelège du roy_” was granted, but to his ten-years-old son, Perrault Darmancour. The device of anonymity was common among the early writers of children’s books, and some critics have suggested that it was beneath the dignity of an Academician to acknowledge the authorship of fairy-tales; but Mlle. L’Héritier, Perrault’s niece, who contributed one tale to the book, declared, before it was published, that little Darmancour could write fairy-tales “with much charm”; and Mr. Andrew Lang, following M. Lacroix, believed that the boy had a real share in the book. He detected the actual note of a child’s voice in the dialogue: