He was as large as the largest man and small as the smallest dwarf, he had an ugly face and a deformed body and mean spirit, but the queen was insane and thought Furibon was the most beautiful child in the world.
Léandre was very well liked in court, the ladies loved him, thought him very handsome and called him the "beautiful indifferent one" (translated).
In the countryside, Léandre was free to hunt, fish, walk, paint, read and play musical instruments.
He found an injured grass snake one evening and brought it home to feed and care for it, hoping it would bring him some joy.
Before leaving, Léandre visited the room of the grass snake and found out that it had turned into a beautiful jewel-studded fairy named Gentille.
Gentille described the benefits of being a Lutin (imp): "You are invisible when you like it; you cross in one moment the vast space of the universe; you rise without having wings; you go through the ground without dying; you penetrate the abysses of the sea without drowning; you enter everywhere, though the windows and the doors are closed; and, when you decide to, you can let yourself be seen in your natural form."
Then she gave him a small red hat, trimmed with two parrot feathers, that would make him invisible when he wore it.
In three separate adventures, Léandre came to the invisible aid of young maidens by cursing and battling with people that were going to harm them: He saved the first maiden from being married to an old man, another from being sacrificed in a temple by her family, and the third a young girl named Abricotine (which translates to "Apricot-plum"), who he found enslaved in the forest by four robbers.
An old fairy mother had created this island and retreated from the world because she had been hurt in a love affair and so drove out all the male guards and the officers and replaced them with women from the Amazon race instead.
So he went invisibly by himself and saw a palace made of pure gold; crystal figures and precious stones, and “all the wonders of nature, sciences and arts, the elements, the sea and fish, the ground and the animals, hunting of Diane with her nymphs, (and) the noble exercises of the Amazons."
The fairy princess had lived here in seclusion for 600 years but looked like a young girl of incomparable beauty to him.
Léandre finally wrote her a love note: At the same time, Furibon wanted the same princess, and planned to attack the Island of Quiet Pleasures with an army of 1400 men in order to break in and take her.
Much tired, Léandre went back into the palace and fell asleep as if dead, not wearing his invisibility hat.
The storyteller would have known of legends of the Amazons as an ancient nation of female warriors, in this story protecting an all-female society.
The tale was one of many from d'Aulnoy's pen to be adapted to the stage by James Planché, as part of his Fairy Extravaganza.