M. René Boylesve was the first: _L’Enfant à la Balustrade_ appeared, if I remember right, in 1903. We have considered in another chapter the provincial studies of this exquisite author; here I will only draw attention to his childish hero. Riquet Nadaud, the narrator of _La Becquée_ and _L’Enfant à la Balustrade_,[3] is a little boy who has been sent, on the death of his mother, to live with his maternal grandparents in their old-fashioned house in the country near La Haye-Descartes. How charming his descriptions of the child’s walks in the fields with brusque and capable Tante Félicie I have had occasion to declare elsewhere. For the moment my concern is with little Nadaud when, after his father’s re-marriage, he goes back to live with his parents at Loches. The stepmother is a gentle, languid, gracious creature, born in America though French by race, a beautiful Creole from Louisiana. Needless to say, she is bored to death at Loches--not quite at first, when her young loveliness, her position as bride, her gift for music, ensure her a certain social importance and consideration. But her husband, the notary, cribbed and confined in his narrow house--mindful, too, that his first wife’s death had been in some degree attributed to that house’s sunlessness--secures the reversion of the handsomest building in the town, after the actual owner’s death. Unfortunately, M. Nadaud was not the only man who had set his heart on that comely residence! Soon the town is up in arms against the lawyer for stealing his march on others, and poor Tantine, the foreign wife, is left alone in her dull parlour with Riquet for her sole society. Riquet--and young Dr Troufleau, faithful to his friends. Excellent Troufleau, awkwardest, honestest of men! Charming Tantine, without an evil thought in her feather-head! Alas, opportunity, thy guilt is great! Out of sheer boredom on her part and simple pity on his, they are drawn quite close to the edge of the abyss--close enough to feel its attraction, its dizzy, strange, reluctant fascination--under the sensitive eyes of the child who knows nothing of passion or of sin. Doubtless that innocent presence it is that saves them; they recoil in time. M. Nadaud at last realises that his wife is being enervated by solitude, demoralised by idleness, deprived of energy to resist the simplest temptations. She needs social intercourse. A few visitors, a little appreciation of her music and her beauty, and Troufleau would soon occupy his proper place in her regard--that of a kind, friendly young man, smothered in an absurd frock-coat and honestly in love with another woman. So the husband puts his pride in his pocket, and reconciles himself with his neighbours; and things soon right themselves. Only a child has apprehended that which does not belong to the world of a child, only a boy’s lofty pure-minded ideal has been injured by contact with the hard realities of life.