Full of malicious interest as he is in all the outward events of nations
and societies, it is always evident that what Anatole France really
regards as worthy of tender consideration is the conversation of
quaint minds and the "Humeur riante et facile" of wayward and
fantastic souls.

His sense of the fundamental futility of the whole scheme of things
is so absolute that what most modern writers would regard as the
illogical dreams of superannuated eccentrics he is inclined to treat
with smiling reverence and infinite sympathy. Where the whole
terrestrial business is only a meaningless blur upon the face of
nothingness, why should we not linger by the way, under elm trees,
or upon broken fragments of old temples, or on sunny benches in
cloistered gardens, and listen to the arbitrary fancies of unpractical
and incompetent persons whose countenances express an "audace
craintive" and a "grace moqueuse," and who look with mild wonder
and peaceful astonishment at "les choses de la nuit"?

After perusing many volumes of Anatole France, one after another,
we come to feel as though nothing in the world were important
except the reading of unusual books, the conversation of unusual
people, and the enjoyment of such philosophical pleasures as may be
permitted by the gods and encouraged by the approbation of a
friendly and tolerant conscience.

One always rises from the savouring of his excellent genius with a
conviction that it is only the conversation of one's friends, varied by
such innocent pleasures of the senses as may be in harmony with the
custom of one's country, which renders in the last resort the madness
of the world endurable.

He alone, of all modern writers, creates that leisurely atmosphere of
noble and humorous dignity--familiar enough to lovers of the old
masters--according to which every gesture and word of the most
simple human being comes to be endowed with a kind of royal
distinction. By the very presence in his thought of the essential
meaninglessness of the world, he is enabled to throw into stronger
relief the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" of our pathetic
humanity.

Human words--the words of the most crack-brained among us--take
to themselves a weight and dignity from the presence behind them
of this cosmic purposelessness. The less the universe matters, the
more humanity matters. The less meaning there is in the macrocosm
the more tenderly and humorously must every microcosm be treated.