"When it became known that the Queen had given birth to a frog, there was consternation at court; the ladies of the palace remained mute, and only sewn mouths and heartbroken looks were exchanged in the high halls... If the tale does not give much for our frog, the queen will not be able to mourn him, which will lead her to imagine and then live terrible experiences.

The only disciple of Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote Rémy de Gourmont by Jean Lorrain (1855-1906). A decadent dandy, an ardent erotomaniac and a corrosive pen, the author of Monsieur de Phocas wrote perhaps his most accomplished tale with La Mandragore, in which fatality and indiscipline never cease to compete. To the point of reviving Nurse With Wound, which devotes a new, unpublished play to this figure of our fin-de-siècle literature.