Anatole France, a member of the French Academy and a Nobel laureate, was one of the first to introduce the game of thought into the novel. It is the thought that is most appreciated by the hero of the novel, Abbot Jerome Coignard, a librarian and scientist, as if he had stepped out of the paintings of Flemish masters: a worn cassock with traces of frequent darning, glasses broken in a tavern brawl, a torn hat. The plot in the novel is not the main thing, the narrative is built as a series of dialogues, in which the influence of Voltaire's philosophical novels is noticeable. Having undertaken to teach Jacques Tournebroche, the son of a meat seller, Latin and Greek, Abbot Coignard talks to him about the surrounding life, about ancient mythology and history — and brings the art of dialogue to the element of the grotesque.