André Maurois was born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog in Elbeuf, France, in 1885. His family, manufacturers originating from German-occupied Alsace, had taken refuge in the Seine Maritime area following the 1871 defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. The author of Bernard Quesnay often mentioned his father, Ernest Herzog, a very simple and rigorous man. About his mother, Alice Lévy-Rueff Herzog, it is known only that she had studied the classics in Paris and that she had initiated her son to poetry and the classics. This attentive mother personally managed the education of her son and two daughters and taught them reading and writing.

André Maurois's school was a simple private school. His teachers included, as professor of piano, the father of the musician Marcel Dupré and, as professor of German, Fraulein Bussmann, aunt of the future German chancellor Heinrich Brüning. After this...