smilingly and pensively among the olive-trees of
the Academia, plucking a rose here and an oleander there; but for
the rest, the solemn wizardries of Nature are regarded with an
urbane contempt.

His style is a thing over which the fastidious lovers of human
language may ponder long and deep. The art of it is so restrained, so
aristocratic, so exclusive, that even the smallest, simplest, most
unimportant words take to themselves an emphatic significance.

Anatole France is able to tell us that Monsieur Bergeret made some
naive remark, or the Abbe Jerome Coignard uttered some unctuous
sally, in so large and deliberate and courtly a way that the mere "he
said" or "he began" falls upon us like a papal benediction or like the
gesture of a benignant monarch.

There is no style in the world so deeply penetrated with the odour
and savour of its author's philosophy. And this philosophy, this
atmosphere of mind, is so entirely French that every least idiomatic
peculiarity in his native tongue seems willing to lend itself, to the
last generous drop of the wine of its essential soul, to the tone and
manner of his speech. All the refinements of the most consummate
civilisation in the world, all its airy cynicism, all its laughing
urbanity, all its whimsical friendliness, seem to concentrate
themselves and reach their climax on every page of his books.

A delicate odour of incense and mockery, an odour of consecrated
wine and a savour of heathen wit, rise up together from every
sentence and disarm us with the insidiousness of their pleasant
contrast. His style is so beautiful and characteristic that one cannot
read the simplest passage of easy narration from his pen without
becoming penetrated with his spirit, without feeling saner, wiser,
kindlier, and more disenchanted and more humane.

I cannot resist quoting from the prologue to "Le Puits de Sainte
Claire," a certain passage which seems to me peculiarly adapted to
the illustration of what I have just said. The writer is, or imagines
himself to be, in the city of Siena.

"Sur la voie blanche, dans ces nuits transparentes, la seule recontre
que je faisais etait celle du R. P. Adone Doni, qui alors travaillait
comme moi tout le jour dans l'ancienne academie _degli Intronati._
J'avais tout de suite aime ce cordelier qui, blanchi dans l'etude,
gardait l'humeur riante et facile d'un ignorant.

"Il causait volontiers. Je goutais son parler suave, son beau langage,
sa pensee do