" A
detailed description of his person collected from the information
furnished by various people appears in the columns of a local newspaper.
Putois lives in his strength and malevolence. He lives after the manner
of legendary heroes, of the gods of Olympus. He is the creation of the
popular mind. There comes a time when even the innocent originator of
that mysterious and potent evil-doer is induced to believe for a moment
that he may have a real and tangible presence. All this is told with the
wit and the art and the philosophy which is familiar to M. Anatole
France's readers and admirers. For it is difficult to read M. Anatole
France without admiring him. He has the princely gift of arousing a
spontaneous loyalty, but with this difference, that the consent of our
reason has its place by the side of our enthusiasm. He is an artist. As
an artist he awakens emotion. The quality of his art remains, as an
inspiration, fascinating and inscrutable; but the proceedings of his
thought compel our intellectual admiration.
In this volume the trifle called "The Military Manoeuvres at Montil,"
apart from its far-reaching irony, embodies incidentally the very spirit
of automobilism.
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