Where the ingenuity and mental flexibility, not to say historical mimicry, of France are seen at their supreme, is in La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque. Jacques Tournebroche, or Turnspit, is an assistant in the cook-shop of his father, in old Paris. He is of a studious mind, and becomes the pupil of the Abbé Jérôme Coignard, "who despises men with tenderness," a figure that might have stepped out of Rabelais, though baked and tempered in the refining fires of M. France's imagination. Such a man! Such an ecclesiastic! He adores his maker and admires His manifold creations, especially wine, women, and song. He has more than his share of human weakness, and yet you wonder why he has not been canonised for his adorable traits. He is a glutton and a wine-bibber, a susceptible heart, a pious and deeply versed man. Nor must the rascally friar be forgotten, surely a memory of Rabelais's Friar Jhon. There are scenes in this chronicle that would have made envious the elder Dumas; scenes of swashbuckling, feasting, and bloodshed. There is an astrologer who has about him the atmosphere of the black art with its imps and salamanders, and an ancient Jew who is the Hebraic law personified. So lifelike is Jérôme Coignard that a book of his opinions was bound to follow. His whilom pupil Jacques is supposed to be its editor. Le Jardin d'Epicure and Sur la Pierre Blanche (1905) are an excuse for the opinions of M. France on many topics--religion, politics, science, and social life. Not-withstanding their loose construction, they are never inchoate. That the ideas put forth may astound by their perversity, their novelty, their nihilism, their note of cosmic pessimism, is not to be denied. Our earth, "a miserable small star," is a drop of mud swimming in space, its inhabitants mere specks, whose doings are not of importance in the larger curves of the universe's destiny. Every illustration, geological, astronomical, and mathematical, is brought to bear upon this thesis--the littleness of man and the uselessness of his existence. But France loves this harassed animal, man, and never fails to show his love. Interspersed with moralising are recitals of rare beauty, Gallion and Par la Porte de Corne ou par la Porte d'Ivoire. Here the classic scholar, that is the base of France's temperament, fairly shines.