In 1891 I wrote as follows apropos of the _Cahiers d'André Walter_, an anonymous work: "The diary is a form of good literature and perhaps the best for some extremely subjective minds. De Maupassant would make nothing of it. For him the world is like the cover of a billiard table; he notes the meetings of the balls and stops when the balls stop, for if there is no further material movement to be perceived, there is nothing more to be said, The subjective soul feeds on itself through the reserve of its stored sensations; and, by an occult chemistry, by unconscious combinations whose numbers approach infinity, those sensations, often of a faraway past time, become changed and are multiplied in ideas. Then are narrated, not anecdotes, but the very anecdotes of oneself, the only kind that can often be retold, if one has the talent and gift to vary their appearances. In this way has the author of these copy books worked and thus will he work again. His is a romantic and philosophic mind, of the lineage of Goethe. One of these years, when he will have recognized the helplessness of thought against the onward course of things, its social uselessness, the scorn it inspires in that mass of corpuscles named society, indignation will seize him, and since action, though illusive, is forever closed to him, he will wake armed with irony. This oddly enough, is a writer's finishing touch; it is the co-efficient of his soul's worth. The theory of the novel, stated in a note of page 120 is of more than mediocre interest; we must hope that the author upon occasion will recollect it. As for the present book, it is ingenuous and delicate, the revealer of a fine intelligence. It seems the condensation of a whole youth of study, dreams and sentiment, of a tortuous, timorous youth. This reflection (p. 142) rather well sums up André Walter's state of mind: 'O, the emotion when one is quite near to happiness, when one has but to touch it,--and passes on.'" There is a certain pleasure in not having been deceived in one's first judgment of the first book of an unknown person. Now that André Gide has, after several intelligent works, become one of the most luminous of the Church's Levites, with the flames of intelligence and grace quite visible around his brow and in his eyes, the time nears when bold discoverers will discuss his genius, and, since he fares forth and advances, sound the trumpets of the advancing column. He deserves the glory, if anyone merits it (glory is always unjust) since to the originality of talent the master of minds willed that in this singular being should be joined an originality of soul. It is a gift rare enough to justify speaking of it.