that thinkest to find eternity in the intensity of thy sufferings, in their permanence, in the impossibility of thy loves, and the greatness of thy charms; oh, little creature on this blind world, I, old man, old God, who have seen so many worlds like this one busily spinning, let me beg thee be not so urgent, so hot, so young. For I am old, old as truth, and I know the shortness of thy pains.” Who is Sylvestre Bonnard? Sylvestre Bonnard is Bergeret, is Coignard, is Brotteaux, he is the first of all those nice old gentlemen who pass through the pages of Anatole France. He has never changed; he was born like a young rat in a book-case, and so he remained. Those old gentlemen believe in service, resignation; they are tolerant and indulgent, and are always ready to say when the time comes, to any God you prefer, for they don’t mind: “_Et nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine_.” The philosophical humanitarian who was to defend Dreyfus existed, then, in 1881; the subsidiary motives existed too in those years. For instance, in _My Friend’s Book_ (1885) the small boy says: “I saw my father, my mother and the maid as very gentle giants who had witnessed the birth of the world, immutable, everlasting, unique of their kind.” That is exactly what the little dog, Riquet, thinks of man in general and what Anatole France perfidiously allows us to conclude man has always thought of God. Already he is cynical, and yet smiling, for he says: “I have faith no longer in my old friend, life: yet I still love it.” But there is in this book a more important indication of the man to come; it is not only the alleged Socialist of 1898 that already exists, but the passionate pagan of 1914. In _My Friend’s Book_ he takes a little girl to a Punch and Judy show. Punch kills the devil, and Pierre Nozière (Anatole France) remarks: “The devil dead, good-bye sin. Maybe beauty, this ally of the devil, will vanish with him. Maybe we shall not again see the flowers that intoxicate and the eyes that slay.” Any student of Anatole France will realise that in 1885 the author was already expressing what he would state more fully in 1914 in _The Revolt of the Angels_--namely, his fear and hatred of ascetic, beauty-hating, death-desirous Christianity.