Perhaps it was well for Berquin that by this time fairies were discredited in France, and Perrault was gone from his old shelf, so that no child could choose between them. As it was, children of all sizes and conditions, with and without tutors, but all equally ignorant of magic, read Berquin’s stories and read them again. Something of his own sweetness and humour got into his book; they felt that he loved and understood them, and those who lived near him used to crowd round him, eager for a word or a handshake, whenever he came out of his house.
Berquin’s book owes something to Weisse’s Der Kinderfreund, from which he took some of the stories, as well as to the writings of Campe and Salzmann; but no German ever pointed a moral with such playful grace.
There is hardly a point in Rousseau’s argument that Berquin does not illustrate; but he does it in a perfectly natural way, drawing the events out of simple situations, and showing delightful glimpses of childish character.
Marmontel’s “Bad Mother”, with her blind and cruel preference for one of her two children, is easily recognised in the story of “Philippine et Maximin”. His device of moral contrast appears in every variation of Rousseau’s theme.
These are mostly little studies in black and white: Industry opposed to Idleness in “The Two Apple Trees”; a rational education preferred to riches in the story of Narcisse and Hippolyte; the character-contrast grafted on fable in a similar study of two dogs.
Emile’s gentle consciousness of his dependence on others (one of his more amiable traits) is shown in the docility of Prosper, who, by accepting the gardener’s advice, finds in due season ripe strawberries of an exquisite flavour hanging from his plants. “Ah, had I only planted some in my garden,” cries the brother who jeered at him. Whereupon the generous one replies: “You can eat them as if they were your own.”
M. Sage, who might be Emile’s tutor, believes that if he can make his boy Philippe content with what he has, instead of longing for things which he cannot get, he will do more for his happiness than by leaving him untold wealth.
When the boy envies a rich man’s garden, his father says that he himself possesses a finer one. Taking Philippe by the hand, he leads him to the top of a hill that overlooks the open country. “Shall we soon come to our garden, papa?” the boy asks eagerly. “We are already there!” answers M. Sage.
Rousseau himself was not a greater lover of gardens than Berquin. Gardening is the theme of half his stories: “Le rosier à cent feuilles et le genêt d’Espagne”; “Les cerises”; “Les tulipes”; “Les fraises et les grosseilles”; “Les deux pommiers”; the greater number deal with country life and have their setting in the family.