If indeed noteworthy progress toward maturation in Giraudoux studies has been registered over the past ten or fifteen years, the deeper significance of much of his work remains to be fully appreciated. All too often, critics call Giraudoux précieux without having understood the special meaning he associated with this term; we are still influenced by the opinions of two generations who treated Giraudoux variously as a “chevalier de l'illusion,” or a “magicien optimiste,” while others spoke of the “jardins de Giraudoux” and his “éternel printemps.”Not until 1950 or thereabouts, when Antoine Adam wrote of the “Dureté de Giraudoux,” was criticism beginning noticeably to orient itself toward Giraudoux's pessimism and to find that therein lay one of the deepest currents of his life and art.