After the Franco-Prussian War, Lemerre published the small book of verse to which Anatole France had devoted his leisure and zest, _Poèmes après_. In spite of some stanzas of lyrical beauty they attracted little attention. Better known is _The Bride of Corinth_ that appeared three years later and revealed the author’s keen analysis of paganism and early Christianity. It is translated with other plays and poems by Wilfrid Jackson and Emilia Jackson, 1920. For a time he was assistant to Leconte de Lisle in the Senate Library.[138] As a witty conversationalist and brilliant companion, he was a favorite in the salons of Catulle Mendes and Mme. Nina de Callias, the would-be poet. At the home of M. de Bonnières, where gathered actors, writers, and musicians, Anatole France was always welcomed. In 1881 appeared the book which registered the beginning of his popular acclaim, _The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_; one may say that it is _the book_ by which, during the last forty years, the author has been familiar to international readers, old and young. It is a simple tale, sentimental, without much plot but with two marked qualities of lasting appeal--sincerity and charm. Ten years later he laughed at its continued popularity, especially the claim that it was “a masterpiece,” saying “it was a masterpiece of platitudinousness,” adding that he wrote it for a prize and won it.[139] Predictions of future fame were expressed in reviews of this book and, four years later, the public responded to _My Friend’s Book_, the first of the cycle of youthful memories, vignettes of life which reveal the author’s poetic reveries and friendly humanity. They differ from _The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_ as the author gives here photographic pictures of his boyhood, adolescence, and young manhood while in Sylvestre Bonnard, the aged, lovable book-collector and Academician, he gives an imaginative picture of what the author _may be_. He is lonely and dominated by his cat, Hamilcar, and his housekeeper, cherishing the romantic memories of Clementine, and is urged by these sentiments to his sacrifice for her daughter. A few of his boyhood memories, however, are incorporated into the early chapters of this book--the craving for a doll, the silhouette of the uncle, Captain Victor, and other pages of wistfulness and humor. Lafcadio Hearn, in his Introduction to the translation of this classic _roman_, says words that may be applied to the cycle of memories (for they all have hall-marks of the author’s superb paradoxical genius). “If by Realism we mean Truth, which alone gives value to any study of human nature, we have in Anatole France a very dainty realist;--if by Romanticism we understand that unconscious tendency of the artist to elevate truth itself beyond the range of the familiar, and into the emotional realm of aspiration, then Anatole France is at times a romantic.... It is because of his far rarer power to deal with what is older than any art,