Those other Frenchmen were all born in the provinces--Daudet and Zola in Provence, Maupassant in Normandy, Renan in Brittany, Hervieu at Neuilly, Bourget at Amiens; Huysmans is of Flemish descent. France, who is cast in softer mould, and from the very beginning showed himself to be less sturdy than the Provençals and Normans, is a Parisian born, and bears the genuine Parisian stamp. His master, Renan, did not become a Parisian until towards the close of his life, until he had lost the Breton stamp, and ceased to be a pupil of the Germans. France was a Parisian from the beginning. The light and air of Paris were his native atmosphere, the Luxembourg Gardens were to him French nature, and the street was his school. As a child he watched the dairy-girls carrying milk and the coal-heavers coals into all the houses of the Quartier Latin. He knows the Parisian artisan and small shopkeeper well. The windows of the stationers' shops riveted his attention with their pictures, and his first instruction was received in turning over the leaves of the books in the boxes of the poor salesmen on the Seine quays. He himself was the son of a poor bookseller, or rather bookseller's assistant. He was born in a book-shop, and brought up amongst old, wise books, mysterious reminders of a life which was no more. From them he learned how ephemeral existence is, how little of the work of any generation survives; and this has inspired him with a fund of sadness, gentleness, and compassion. It is extraordinary how many small book-shops he has described, in Paris and elsewhere--their books, their frequenters, the conversations held in them. Again and ever again does he occupy himself with these worthy booksellers on the banks of the Seine (who now look upon him as their guardian spirit), with their wretched life, as they stand there in the cold and rain, seldom selling anything. We, to whom not one of the Frenchmen of to-day seems so French as Anatole France--for he embodies in himself the whole national tradition, descending from the romance-writers of the Middle Ages through Montaigne to Voltaire--we are not surprised that he should have boldly assumed the name of his country in place of his own. France, however, was also the Christian name of his unassuming father--he was France Thibaut. But to the humble people of the street in which he lives, the little Allée Villa Said, the author is not France; they call him Monsieur Anatole. The streets by the Seine are always in his mind. He says somewhere: "I was brought up on this Quai, amongst books, by humble, simple people, whom I alone remember. When I am no more it will be as if they had never existed." Elsewhere he calls these river-side streets the adopted country of all men of intellect and taste.