but life as a whole is too vast and too remote to excite in most of us
more than a somewhat languid curiosity. France confines himself to
themes of the keenest personal interest, the life of the world we live
in. It is herein that he excels! His knowledge is wide, his sympathies
are many-sided, his power of exposition is unsurpassed. No one has set
before us the mind of our time, with its half-lights, its shadowy vistas,
its indefiniteness, its haze on the horizon, so vividly as he.

In Octave Mirbeau's notorious novel, a novel which it would be
complimentary to describe as naturalistic, the heroine is warned by her
director against the works of Anatole France, "Ne lisez jamais du
Voltaire. . . C'est un peche mortel . . . ni de Renan . . . ni
de l'Anatole France. Voila qui est dangereux." The names are
appropriately united; a real, if not precisely an apostolic, succession
exists between the three writers.

JULES LEMAITRE
de l'Academie Francais





BOOK 1.


CHAPTER I

"I NEED LOVE"