INTRODUCTORY NOTE

L'ABBÉ DANIEL is a beautiful prose idyll, in which are faithfully and lovingly described such charming pictures of the vintage, the rural fair, and French home-life as may still be observed in remote parts of provincial France, Enamoured of the simple delights of country life, our author untolds his tale with great delicacy of language, and heightens the charm of his dainty sketch, while preserving the rustic atmosphere, by introducing here and there quaint words and little snatches of dialect. To understand a foreign language we must endeavour to realize the foreign point of view. ‘The French, above all nations, are lovers of military renown, consequently the career of arms is the national ideal. If that is true to-day, how much more so when the fame of France was untarnished. ‘The hero, though poor, is invested with the military halo, and overcomes even the greatest obstacle to matrimony—namely poverty. In France, as in most continental countries, marriage is considered such a serious step in life that all preliminary negotiations are conducted by the parents and relatives, who arrange matters concerning dowry and jointure not from sordid but prudential motives. In the present narrative Farmer Beauvais, though rude of speech and of uncultivated manner, lives on easy terms with comfort, and therefore hesitates to give his daughter in marriage to one who has not a halfpenny to call his own. But love overcomes all barriers, and the

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curtain rings down amid paternal benedictions on a scene of perfect domestic bliss.

M. André Theuriet was born at Marly-le-Roi near Versailles in the year 1833. His early studies were made at Bar-le-Duc (in French Lorraine, where his boyhood was spent), but ambition drew the young provincial to /a ville lumière on the Seine, where he completed his law studies, taking his degree in 1857. For a short time he held a subordinate position under the Minister of Finance, but finally abandoning law and the political career he gave himself up to the pursuit of letters. He wrote numerous poems ard novels dealing with the rural life of his own beloved Lorraine. His best known novel, Z’Oncle Scipion, is perhaps one of the finest examples of modern prose in the language. At his death in 1907 he was both a Member of the French Academy and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

All his work is marked by close and accurate observation of wild Nature—/a Nature sauvage. Most of his fellow-countrymen prefer the gay parterres, the splashing fountains, the marble busts, and the neatly trimmed gardens of Italian classicism, but M. Theuriet has a passion for Nature in her neglected and uncultivated moods—a passion which binds him all the more closely to the fellow-countrymen of Wordsworth and Tennyson. His prose is the prose of a poet, who writes with an ear delicately attuned to the rhythmic swing and perfect cadence of a well-balanced clause. Indeed, we are of opinion that the pupils for whom this little work has been prepared would do well to learn by heart the most beautiful descriptive passages as models of elegant prose by a modern master.

This edition of Z’444é Daniel is produced by permission of M. Alphonse Lemerre, Editeur, Paris.