qui, observant le desordre de la nature et la folie humaine,
ne s'obstine point a y voir de l'ordre et de la sagesse; j'appelle
raisonnable enfin celui qui ne s'efforce pas de l'etre.'

The chasm between living and being wise (which is to be _raisonnable_)
is manifest. The condition of living is to be perpetually surprised,
incessantly indignant or exultant, at what happens. To bridge the chasm
there is for the wise man only one way. He must cast back in his memory
to the time when he, too, was surprised and indignant. No man is, after
all, born wise, though he may be born with an instinct for wisdom. Thus
Anatole France touches us most nearly when he describes his childhood.
The innocent, wayward, positive, romantic little Pierre Noziere[4] is a
human being to a degree to which no other figures in the master's comedy
of unreason are. And it is evident that Anatole France himself finds him
by far the most attractive of them all. He can almost persuade himself,
at moments, that he still is the child he was, as in the exquisite story
of how, when he had been to a truly royal chocolate shop, he attempted
to reproduce its splendours in play. At one point his invention and his
memory failed him, and he turned to his mother to ask: 'Est-ce celui qui
vend ou celui qui achete qui donne de l'argent?'

'Je ne devais jamais connaitre le prix de l'argent. Tel j'etais a
trois ans ou trois ans et demi dans le cabinet tapisse de boutons de
roses, tel je restai jusqu'a la vieillesse, qui m'est legere, comme
elle l'est a toutes les ames exemptes d'avarice et d'orgueil. Non,
maman, je n'ai jamais connu le prix de l'argent. Je ne le connais
pas encore, ou plutot je le connais trop bien.'

[Footnote 4: _Le Petit Pierre_. Par Anatole France. (Paris:
Calmann-Levy.)]

To know a thing too well is by worlds removed from not to know it at
all, and Anatole France does not elsewhere similarly attempt to indulge
the illusion of unbroken innocence. He who refused to put a

Aspects of Literature

Notka biograficzna

Książki