437 



AUNOY, COMTESSE D'. 



AURELIANUS, 



of high treason by the parliament of Paris, and sentenced to be broken 

 on the wheel, which sentence was executed in effigy the 24th of July 

 1595. From this period D'Aumale resided abroad, chiefly in Flanders, 

 enjoying the favour of the Spanish government ; and he died at 

 Brussels in 1631. (Lacretelle, Histoire de France pendant les Guerres de 

 Religion.) 



AUNOY, or AULNOY, MARIE CATHERINE, C9MTESSE D', 

 was the daughter of M. le Jumel de Berneville, and allied to many of 

 the first families of Normandy. She was born about 1650. After the 

 death of her father, her mother married the Marquis de Qadaigne, 

 and resided at the court of Madrid. Mademoiselle de Burneville 

 became the wife of Fran9ois de la Mothe, count d'Aunoy. The 

 countess was a distinguished ornament of the French court, as her 

 aunt, Madame Desloges, had been before her. She possessed great 

 facility in composition, and formed one of a coterie of court ladies, 

 who contributed very considerably to the light literature of their day. 

 The Countess d'Aunoy died at Paris in January 1 705, leaving behind 

 her four daughters, one of whom, Madame de Here, sustained the 

 family reputation by her wit and talents. 



The literary fame of Madame d'Aunoy has been preserved to our 

 own day almost entirely by her ' Fairy Tales.' They are of the class 

 of composition introduced into France at the close of the 17th 

 century by Charles Perrault. The wit and vivacity of the Countess 

 D'Aunoy have secured for many of her tales a degree of popularity in 

 hey are surpassed only by those of Perrault himself. Among 

 H productions of the countess we meet with one, at least, 

 ' The White Cat,' which rivals in estimation the best works of her 

 master; and several more, such as 'The Yellow Dwarf,' ' Cherry and 

 Fair Star,' and ' The Fair One with the Golden Locks,' which stand 

 first in the second rank. For the groundwork of her stories, Madame 

 d'Aunoy did not rely on her own invention; like Perrault, she resorted 

 for her plots to Italian sources, principally the ' Pentamerone ' of 

 Basile, and the ' Piacevoli Notti ' of Straparola, both of which had not 

 long before been translated into French. The germ of one of her 

 stories, ' Uracieuse et Percinet," may be found in the Cupid and 

 Psyche of Apuleius, and other fairy legends have been traced even to 

 a remoter origin. From whatever source the material was derived, 

 the French writers seem to have formed the mould which has given 

 shape to the fairy fiction of Europe. The writings of Madame 

 d'Aunoy have been much turned to account by writers for the stage, 

 especially in our own country, where they have formed the groundwork 

 of many of the most successful pantomimes, spectacles, and extrava- 

 ganzas which have been produced. 



The first series of Madame d'Aunoy's ' Fairy Tales ' was published 

 at Paris, in 4 vols., 12mo, in 1698, the year after the appearance of 

 Perrault's volume. The 'Nouveaux Contes des Fees,' and 'Les Fees 

 ;i la .Mode, ou le Nouveau Gentilhomme Bourgeois,' rapidly followed, 

 completing her writings of this kind. The whole are reprinted in 

 vols. Ui., iv., and v. of the collection called the 'Cabinet des Fees.' The 

 principal talcs have run through numberless editions, and it would be 

 an impossible task to give a list of the translations of them into 

 various languages, or even into our own. The translation however by 

 J. R. Planch^ into English deserves a special exception for its excel- 

 lence. Mr. Planchd has also the merit of being the best adapter of 

 them to the purposes of the modern stage. 



Madame d'Aunoy was a voluminous writer in another line of fiction 

 the sentimental novel. Her principal work of this class, ' Hippolyte, 

 Comte de Duglas,' originally published in 1696, is still sometimes read, 

 and a new edition appeared at Paris in 1810. It is a miserable pro- 

 duction in every respect. Madame d'Aunoy's two other novels, 

 ' L'Histoire de Jean de Bourbon, Prince de Carency," and ' L'Histoire 

 du Comte de Warwick,' are of similar character. In the 'Mdmoires de 

 la Cour d'Angleterre," the countess carried the system of mixing truth 

 and falsehood to a still greater extent than even in her novels. The 

 book opens with an apparently serious sketch of the court of 

 Charles II., in which th writer boasts of her intimacy with " Le Due 

 de Bonquinkam," " my Lady Heyde," and other real personages of 

 the time, and declares her intention to detail some of the most 

 remarkable incidents of their lives. The work is then almost imme- 

 diately transformed into a commonplace amatory romance, in which 

 half the characters are decorated with the real names which the 

 authoress has chosen to pitch upon, while the other half, with much 

 greater propriety, are distinguished by the merely fanciful names 

 usually bestowed on the heroes and heroines of romance. The 

 ' Mcmoires de la Cour d'Espagne,' and the ' Voyage d'Espagne,' are 

 both so written that it is impossible to tell where truth ends and 

 fiction commences. The same objection extends even to the countess's 

 works of a more decidedly serious complexion, especially to her 

 'Mdmoires Historiques de ci qui s'est passmen Europe, depuis 1672 

 jusqu'en 1679, tant aux guerrea contre lea Hollandois, qu'a la paix de 

 Nimegue,' 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1692, a work not at all to be depended 

 upon. 



(Abridged from the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 

 Diffution of Vnful Knowledge.) 



AURELIA'NUS. This emperor is usually known as Lucius 

 Dmnitius Aurelianus, but on at least one coin he is named Claudius 

 Domitiui!, while in a letter addressed to him by the emperor Claudius 

 (whom he succeeded), he is called Valerius Aureliuuua. It is probable 



that he assumed the names of Claudius and Domitius after his accession 

 to the empire. He was born probably about A.D. 212, it is commonly 

 said, at Sirmium in Paunonia; but some say in the Lower Daeia 

 (Ripensis), and others in Mcesia. His father was a husbandman ; his 

 mother priestess of a temple of the sun. At an early age he enlisted 

 as a common soldier. Tall, handsome, and strong, skilful and diligent 

 in all athletic and military exercises, temperate in his habits, and of 

 acute intellect, he rose from his humble station to the highest military 

 offices during the reigns of Valerian and Claudian. In 256 he was 

 commissioned by Valerian to make a general visitation of the military 

 stations, and in 258 he was for his services named consul by the same 

 emperor. He was distinguished by the soldiers from another Aurelian, 

 also a tribune, by the characteristic epithet ' sword in hand ' (' inanu 

 ad ferrum '). As an officer his discipline was strict even to severity, 

 and he treated as a serious offence the least act of theft or extortion. 

 On the death of Claudius, honourably distinguished by the appellation 

 of Gothic, in 270, Quintillius, brother of Claudius, assumed the purple, 

 but resigned it by a voluntary death, at the end of seventeen days, on 

 hearing that the legions of the Danube had raised Aurelian to the 

 imperial dignity. The new emperor suppressed an inroad of the Suevi 

 and Sarmatae, and compelled them to retreat to the northern side of 

 the Danube ; but he withdrew the Roman troops from the province of 

 Dacia, and thus doubly strengthened the frontier of the empire by 

 rendering the Danube its boundary, and by abandoning a district too 

 distant to be easily defended, and too thinly peopled to defend itself. 

 While thus engaged, Aurelian was recalled to the north of Italy by an 

 invasion of a German tribe, the Alemanni or Marcomanni. After 

 various alternations of success, the force of the barbarians was entirely 

 destroyed in 271. Aurelian then visited Rome, punished with a 

 ferocious severity the authors of a sedition which had disturbed the 

 city, and repaired the walls, including an additional space within their 

 limits. The disturbance at Rome was owing to the Monetarii, or 

 coiners, who appear to have had the management of the public coinage, 

 which they had probably debased for the sake of their own profit. 

 Aurelian afterwards issued a new and improved coinage. 



Aurelian at this time was master only of the central portion of the 

 Roman world. Spain, Gaul, and Britain owned in name the authority 

 of Tetricus ; but he was little more than a pageant of a monarch, and 

 he himself invited Aurelian to relieve him from his splendid misery. 

 A battle was fought near Chalons in Champagne, at which Tetricus 

 betrayed his own army into a defeat, while he himself with a few friends 

 took refuge with his more powerful competitor. (Vopisous, cap. 32.) 

 The west being secured, Aurelian betook himself to that war by the 

 successful issue of which he is best known the reduction of the great, 

 flourishing, and short-lived city of Palmyra. [ZENOBIA.] Odenathus, 

 who had raised his native city to this height of power, was dead, and 

 had been succeeded by his widow, the celebrated Zenobia, a woman 

 of accomplished tastes and masculine talents. On his march Aurelian, 

 in passing through Illyria and Thrace, met and vanquished some of 

 the barbarian hordes who invested the frontier provinces of the Roman 

 empire. In Asia Minor and Syria many towns and districts submitted 

 to him, or were subdued by his arms. The hostile armies met at 

 Emesa in Syria, where Aureliau gained a decisive victory, and con- 

 tinued his march to Palmyra unopposed, except by the constant attacks 

 of the ' Syrian robbers.' The resistance of the city did credit to its 

 warlike fame. Vopiscus has preserved a letter from Aurelian himself, 

 in which he complains that the Romans talk of his waging war with a 

 woman, as if she fought with her own unassisted strength, and con- 

 tinues : " It cannot be told what preparation for war, what store of 

 arrows, spears, stones, is here. No part of the wall but is occupied by 

 two or three balisUe, and there are engines to cast fire. She does not 

 fight like a woman, nor like one who fears punishment ; but I trust 

 that the gods will asai.it the republic, who never have been wanting 

 to our undertakings." He offered favourable terms of capitulation, 

 but a haughty answer was returned in the Syrian language by the 

 queen, who threatened him with the promised help of the Persians, 

 Saraceni, and Armenians. But Zenobia was disappointed in her 

 expectations about these auxiliaries, and the skilful commissariat 

 arrangements of the emperor obviated the difficulties of procuring 

 subsistence for an army in the inhospitable deserts which surround 

 the oasis of Palmyra. When further resistance was seen to be hope- 

 less Zenobia tried to escape, but was taken on her way to Persia. The 

 Roman soldiers clamoured loudly for her death. Aureliau refused to 

 shed female blood ; but he took his revenge on those who had directed 

 her counsels, among whom perished the celebrated Longinus, who had 

 been Zenobia's instructor in Grecian literature. The city surrendered 

 soon after the capture of its mistress in 273, and was treated with 

 comparative clemency, being neither plundered nor destroyed. Aurelian 

 was already returned into Europe when ho heard that the Palmyre- 

 uians had revolted, and massacred the small garrison of 600 archers 

 whom he had left in charge of their city. He returned in wrath, and 

 exceeded even his usual ferocity in avenging this ill-judged insult. 

 Most of the inhabitants, men, women, and children, were put to the 

 sword. Aurelian was recalled a third time to the east by a rebellion 

 in Egypt, excited by Firmus, a merchant who had acquired immense 

 wealth by commerce in India. This was immediately quelled by the 

 emperor's presence ; and having now cleared the Roman empire of all 

 rivals and pretenders to indepeudeuce, and restored it to its ancient 



