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 Nozière[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 achète qui donne de l'argent?'

'Je ne devais jamais connaître le prix de l'argent. Tel j'étais à
trois ans ou trois ans et demi dans le cabinet tapissé de boutons de
roses, tel je restai jusqu'à la vieillesse, qui m'est légère, comme
elle l'est à toutes les âmes 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 plutôt je le connais trop bien.'

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

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 mark of
interrogation after 'What is God,' in defiance of his mother, because he
knew, now has to restrain himself from putting one after everything he
writes or thinks. 'Ma pauvre mère, si elle vivait, me dirait peut-être
que maintenant j'en mets trop.' Yes, Anatole France is wise, and far
removed from childish follies. And, perhaps, it is precisely because of