CONTE, literally a "story," is a word so frequently used in English literary criticisms that some definition of it seems to be demanded. A conte, in French, differs from a rgicit or a rapport in the element of style; it may be described as an anecdote told with deliberate art, and in this introduction of art lies its peculiar literary value. As early as the 13th century, the word is used in French literature to describe an anecdote thus briefly and artistically told, in prose or verse. The fairy-tales of Perrault and the apologues of La Fontaine were alike spoken of as contes, and stories of peculiar extravagance were known as contes bleus, because they were issued to the common public in coarse blue paper covers. The most famous contes in the i8th century were those of Voltaire, who has been described as having invented the conte philosophique. But those brilliant stories, Candide, Zadig, L'Ingenu, La Princesse de Babylone and Le Taurean blauc, are not, in the modern sense, contes at all. The same may be said of those of Marmontel, and of the insipid imitations of Oriental fancy which were so popular at the close of the i8th century. The most perfect modern writer of contes is Guy de Maupassant, and his celebrated anecdote called "Boule de suit" may be taken as an absolutely perfect example of this class of literature, the precise limitations of which it is difficult to define.