Jules Lemaître loved children. He had himself, when he was a professor at Grenoble, a daughter, Madeleine, who died after a month and he never consoled.
Later he became a multiple and delicious godfather. Everyone knows the charming stories written for his godchildren.
In Paris, in his large studio in the Rue d'Artois, lined with pale gold of precious bindings, Jules Lemaître was pleased to receive children, gobble them with cakes and sweets and opened for them a mysterious chest of his library, which then spread on the carpet the most unexpected toys, collected with almost as much love as books.
Thus he was led to write an Alphabet
