André Theuriet was evidently in sympathy with the doctrine that those lands and their dwellers are most happy which have the least history. Singular as the statement may seem when made of a contemporary French man of letters who had defeated Zola in a contest for election to the Academy, it is nevertheless true that the tone of Theuriet’s work is repose. “The short and simple annals of the poor” he penned with simplicity and charm, and rarely did the hurly-burly tempt him to fare among scenes either boisterous or sordid. Yet, he was never squeamish, but wrote of a real life in a real world. What Alphonse Daudet became when he occasionally left fevered Paris to lie on the turf at Montauban and feel in fancy the gentle fanning of the old windmill, that André Theuriet was by temperament. The bucolic, the gentle, the peaceful--all met response in his nature and were mirrored in the placid pool of his fiction. Theuriet was born at Marly-le-Roi, September, 1833, and spent his childhood in that lovely province. He got his education at Bar-le-duc, and at Paris, where he took up the study of law, receiving the degree of _Licencée en Droit_ at the age of twenty-four. Instead of practising, however, he entered the Ministry of Finance the same year, and began the routine of public life--as the intensely private career of the bureaucrat is called. At once he began to publish verse, winning a place, the very year of his appointment to the Ministry of Finance, in the pages of that distinguished exponent of letters, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. _In Memoriam_ was the title of his first success--a romance in verse, quickly appraised by critics at a value which it still maintains, and displaying the qualities for which the author’s writings are appreciated to-day. We never tire of debating as to whether distinguished men are more the product of their times, than their era is moulded by its men. Doubtless something of both views is the ultimate truth. Theuriet, however, left no profound influence upon his age. During the ten years which succeeded the publication of _In Memoriam_--1857 to 1867--his work continued, unaffected by the French revolt, if that is not too strong a term, against romanticism. This is shown in his first volume of poems, _The Forest Path_ (_Le Chemin du Bois_), published in 1867, and awarded the Vitel prize by the Academy. Another ten years, and he received the coveted place among the Immortals, but the tone of his writings never changed--his was always a quiet romanticism clothed upon with the beauty of idealism.