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Meet the woman who inspires the author of the world's most famous story: Lucinda, a penniless English orphan, is abused and exploited as a cinder-sweep by her aristocratic relatives. On receiving her sole inheritance - a pair of glass-beaded slippers - she runs away to France in pursuit of an officer on whom she has a big crush. She joins the baggage train of Louis XIV's army, survives a horrific massacre, and eventually finds her way to Paris. There she befriends the man who will some day write the world's best loved fairy tale, Charles Perrault. There is much more: a witch hunt, the sorry truth about daydreams, plus some truly astonishing revelations, such as the historical facts behind the story of the Emperor's new clothes, and a perfectly reasonable explanation for the compulsion some young women have to kiss frogs.