André Theuriet was evidently in sympathy with the doctrine that those lands and their dwellers are most happy which have the least history. Singular as the statement may seem when made of a contemporary French man of letters who had defeated Zola in a contest for election to the Academy, it is nevertheless true that the tone of Theuriet’s work is repose. “The short and simple annals of the poor” he penned with simplicity and charm, and rarely did the hurly-burly tempt him to fare among scenes either boisterous or sordid. Yet, he was never squeamish, but wrote of a real life in a real world. What Alphonse Daudet became when he occasionally left fevered Paris to lie on the turf at Montauban and feel in fancy the gentle fanning of the old windmill, that André Theuriet was by temperament. The bucolic, the gentle, the peaceful—all met response in his nature and were mirrored in the placid pool of his fiction.

Theuriet was born at Marly-le-Roi, September, 1833, and spent his childhood in that lovely province. He got his education at Bar-le-duc, and at Paris, where he took up the study of law, receiving the degree of Licencée en Droit at the age of twenty-four. Instead of practising, however, he entered the Ministry of Finance the same year, and began the routine of public life—as the intensely private career of the bureaucrat is called.

At once he began to publish verse, winning a place, the very year of his appointment to the Ministry of Finance, in the pages of that distinguished exponent of letters, the Revue des Deux Mondes. In Memoriam was the title of his first success—a romance in verse, quickly appraised by critics at a value which it still maintains, and displaying the qualities for which the author’s writings are appreciated to-day.

We never tire of debating as to whether distinguished men are more the product of their times, than their era is moulded by its men. Doubtless something of both views is the ultimate truth. Theuriet, however, left no profound influence upon his age. During the ten years which succeeded the publication of In Memoriam—1857 to 1867—his work continued, unaffected by the French revolt, if that is not too strong a term, against romanticism. This is shown in his first volume of poems, The Forest Path (Le Chemin du Bois), published in 1867, and awarded the Vitel prize by the Academy. Another ten years, and he received the coveted place among the Immortals, but the tone of his writings never changed—his was always a quiet romanticism clothed upon with the beauty of idealism.

Theuriet’s selection of themes is a happy index to his nature. The one and the other are clean, uncomplicated by intrigue, and in the main agreeable. Are there many to-day who will be attracted to this man when his fiction is called restful and gentle? I do not know, since we are all so busy and turbulent and—disillusioned. But we ought to be, if we are not, drawn by thoughts of a melodious rhythm of words portraying honest emotions, of country life that exhales the “perfume of new hay and of ripe wheat,” of woodsy ways and forest folk—in a word, thoughts of a world where, as in La Bretonne, the lowliest respond to human need, and even crime cannot stamp out the image of the beautiful, a world full of goodness rising out of the ooze of evil.

And so it was country-life—country-life in Lorraine, enriched and made beautiful by the Loire—that inspired not only his early poems, but also the numerous novels, plays, sketches, and short-stories which stand to his credit—and I use the word designedly.

After a notable if not brilliant career as author and journalist, Theuriet died in Paris, 1897.

Relatively little of Theuriet’s work is known to readers who know not French, but of this little probably the long short-story, “The Abbé Daniel,” is the most familiar. It is in the style of Ludovic Halévy’s “Abbé Constantin,” and of about the same length—a little classic of “polite rusticity,” of pastoral love, sorrow, loss, and happiness, limpid in style and artistically balanced in structure.

The plot is simple: Young Daniel loves his beautiful cousin Denise, but she marries Beauvais, the rough, hearty, typical bourgeois landed proprietor. A daughter is born—a second Denise—but the mother does not long survive. Young Daniel has entered the church and become “The Abbé Daniel.” His simple goodness leads him to adopt an orphaned lad, whom he cherishes as he would his own. One day the Abbé finds little Daniel, as he is called, feeding a threshing machine. In terror for the child’s danger, the Abbé shows his friends what the lad was doing, and the loss of his own arm is the penalty. He now resigns his parish and goes to live with the widowed father of the little Denise and assumes charge of her education, lavishing upon the child the affection he was forbidden to give to her mother. The children learn to love each other, but young Daniel goes away to the Crimean War and seems to forget. Meanwhile, Beauvais plans to marry his daughter Denise to a worthy young nobody of means, but the loving Abbé sends for his protégé, who promptly returns on leave, and the end is not difficult to surmise.

All this brief narration is but sketching the frame and omitting the picture, for who can feel the charm of the simple but never insipid story when it is bereft of the witchery of Theuriet’s style! It is worth while knowing at first hand a real French home, with the farmer-father, the daughter, the young soldier, and the Abbé Daniel.

That there are not many “intense thrills for jaded readers” in Theuriet’s straightforward work will be further illustrated by a reading of his novels—Mademoiselle Guignon, Aunt Aurelia, Claudette, The Maugars, Angela’s Fortune, and others—with which we have not here to deal; but it will also be quite evident in the simplicity of his shorter fiction, which must now be considered.

“An Easter Story” tells of Juanito, an orphan boy of fifteen. Like a weed on the pavement of Triana, he had grown up. Gipsy blood flowed in his veins and, like the gipsies, he loved his independence, vagrancy, and bull-fights. He earned a poor enough living by selling programmes at the doors of the theatres, but during Holy Week the theatres were closed, and now Good Friday finds him unhappy—for he has no money to go to the bull-fight on Easter Sunday! However, he follows the crowd until, tired and hungry, he lies down in a corner and sleeps. Two lovers pass. They put into the hand of the pretty youth a piece of silver, and so when he awakes his problem is solved. But as he starts down the street he sees a girl crying. He goes to her. It is Chata, whom he has known since childhood. Her mother is sick, she says, and the apothecary will not give her medicine because she has no money. Juanito looks into the girl’s eyes, hesitates a moment, then quickly puts into her hand the piece of silver. So Juanito did not see the bull-fight.

On Sunday Chata goes out to find her friend, and they go for a walk. Coming to a secluded corner, the girl looks into the young man’s eyes to thank him. But suddenly, moved by the sweetness of his deed, she throws her arms about his neck and cries, “I love you!”

Human interest—tenderness rather than strength—marks all Theuriet’s short fictions. “Little Gab” is quite without plot, which means that its delicacy defies condensed narration. It is a sympathetic sketch of a small hunchback whose parents are too hard-pressed in their struggle with poverty to look after the boy. The physician tells Little Gab’s sister that only the sea air and the baths at Berck can save her brother’s life. Through the unceasing labors and savings of the sister, this is at last accomplished, and both are on the heights of joy. The change is magical, and the lad returns with some prospect of recovery; but the dense air of the city is too much for Little Gab, and he dies still thinking of the beautiful sea.

Less tragic, but quite as simple in scheme, is “The Peaches,” which narrates how Herbelot is teased out of the service of the Ministry of Finance by being detected carrying home for his wife two peaches concealed in his hat.

Though its tone is not entirely typical of Theuriet, La Bretonne—which follows, in translation—is probably his most dramatic story, revealing, as it does, the good that lives in the worst of us.