With this, one of his first prose works, he made himself known as a novelist; he had been primarily known as a poet affiliated with Parnassianism because of his Poèmes dorés,[1] which imitated that verse style.

In the first part, "La Buche", he seeks, in Sicily and Paris, a precious manuscript of the French version of the Golden Legend, which he eventually obtains.

[6] France portrays Bonnard as naïve and candid, a passive gentle watcher without competence in the real world.

[7] France, like his protagonist Bonnard, spent much of his time reading, with few friends and few encounters with reality.

[8] The novel, told as diary entries, has been claimed to be written in the style of O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant, romantic and realist writers respectively, whose stories often have ironic endings.

But the reader understands Bonnard's crime to be that he abducts the girl from her abusive guardian, thus rescuing her.