Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard

by Anatole France

Overview

Sylvestre Bonnard, membre de l'Institut, est un historien et un philologue, doté d'une érudition non dénuée d'ironie. Savoir n'est rien - dit-il un jour - imaginer est tout. Il mène une vie austère au milieu de ses livres. Mais il consacre également tous ses efforts à trouver un manuscrit du XIVe siècle, la Légende dorée de Jacques de Voragine, dont il rêve comme un enfant peut convoiter quelque jouet extraordinaire. Au cours d'un voyage en Sicile, il fait la connaissance du prince et de la princesse Trépof, mais ne parvient pas à mettre la main sur l'ouvrage. À son retour à Paris, il a la douleur de voir le précieux livre lui échapper encore, lors d'une vente aux enchères. Mais il obtiendra finalement l'objet convoité, d'une manière que le soin au lecteur de découvrir...Le hasard lui fait rencontrer la petite fille d'une femme qu'il a jadis aimée et, pour protéger l'enfant d'un tuteur abusif, il l'enlève...Ce roman, spirituel, généreux et tendre, fit connaître Anatole France.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781987497502
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.34(d)
Language:	French

About the Author

Anatole France (1844 - 1924), pour l'état civil François Anatole Thibault, est un écrivain français, considéré comme l'un des plus grands de l'époque de la Troisième République.

Read an Excerpt

PART II THE DAUGHTER OF CLÈMENTINE THE FAIRY I left the train at the Melun station, night had already spread its peace over the silent country. The soil, heated through all the long day by a strong sun—by a " gros soleil" as the harvesters of the Val de Vire say —still exhaled a warm heavy smell. Lush dense odours of grass passed over the level of the fields. I brushed away the dust of the railway carriage, and joyfully inhaled the pure air. My travelling-bag—filled by my housekeeper with linen and various small toilet articles, munditiis, seemed so light in my hand that I swung it about just as a schoolboy swings his strapped package of rudimentary books when the class is let out. Would to Heaven that I were again a little urchin at school! But it is fully fifty years since my good dead mother made me some tartines of bread and preserves, and placed them in a basket of which she slipped the handle over my arm, and then led me, thus prepared, to the school kept by Monsieur Douloir, at a corner of the Passage du Commerce well known to the sparrows, between a court and a garden. The enormous Monsieur Douloir smiled upon us genially, and patted my cheek to show, no doubt, the affectionate interest which my first appearance had inspired. But when my mother had passed out of the court, startling the sparrows as she went, Monsieur Douloir ceased to smile—he showed no more affectionate interest; he appeared, on the contrary, to consider me as a very troublesome little fellow. I discovered, later on, that he entertained the same feelings towards all his pupils. He distributed whacks of his ferule with an agility no one could have expected on the part of socorpulent a person. But his first aspect of tender interest invariably reappeared when he spoke to any of our moth...