PREFACE. VU
to this time. Paris has been his home since then, though délicate health compelled him to spend three successive winters from 1861 to 1864 in the warmer climate of Algeria, Corsica, and Provence. He was not long in gaining récognition by his poems and still more by his short prose sketches published in various journals. He was fortunate enough to gain the favorable attention of the Duc de Morny, président of the Corps Législatifs and a lucrative appointment în his office enabled him to live in comfort until his literary work became remunerative.
His first book, a volume of poems, entitled Les Amoureuses, appeared in 1858. In a critique on this work Edouard Thierry says : " Alfred de Musset, en mourant, a laissé deux plumes au service de qui pourra les prendre : la plume de la prose et la plume des vers. Octave Feuillet avait hérité de Tune, Alphonse Daudet vient d'hériter de l'autre." During his absence in Algeria, in the winter of 1861-62, his first play was successfully brought out at the Odéon, He has since written o.ther pièces for the stage, most of them dramatizations of his romances. His stories early found place in Parisian journals, but it was not until 1868 that he published any prose volume. Le Petit Chose, which then appeared, was foUowed in 1869 by Lettres de mon Moulin, The war, during which Daudet remained in Paris, interrupted the publication of his works. But from the close of the war until the présent time his pen has always been busy and his famé assured.
No modem writer of fiction can claim a wider popularity than Alphonse Daudet ; and for consummate literary art, for the distinctness and picturesqueness of his characters, for grâce and force of diction, and for delicacy of humor no one more fully deserves it. The extrême copiousness of his vocabulary makes it somewhat difficult at times for a beginner in French to appreciate at their full value his finer
VUl PREFACE.
<%hades of expression. For such a one to tum from his pages to those of some of his predecessors, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, or Dumas, is like walking along a plateau after climbing a steep mountain-side. But when one has read him carefully for a time, his perfect mastery of his language is an added charm that draws one again and again to his companionship. His analysis of character and motive is profound, but never tedious. His humor is most délicate and pervasive and always kindly, and this it is, more than anything else, that makes his Tartarin one of the most happy literary créations of any âge or country.
His Works reflect his life and surroundings at home and abroad. Lettres de Mon Moulin^ Le Nabab, Nutna Routnistan, and, above ail, the Tartarin trilogy, Tartarin de Tarascon, Tartarin sur les Alpes, and Port-Tarascon, give most vivid pictures of his native Midi. The second and third of thèse Works, together with Fromont jaine et Risler aîné, L ^Evangêliste, Rose et Ninette, Jack, J^s Rois en Exil, and Sapho, portray the social life of Paris, both aristocratie and bourgeois. Robert Ifelmont and many short sketches from Contes du Lundi show us his personal expériences and impressions of the wan IJ Immortel and Femmes d^ Artistes deal chiefly with Pari»ian literary and artistic characters. In Trente Ans de Paris and Souvenirs he reviews his own expériences in the literary world of which he came to form so conspicuous a part.
The faithfulness of his scènes and characters to life is due to his method, of which his brother Ernest says in Mon Frire et Moi : "With his habit of describing nothing which he had not seen, of telling nothing which had not happened, of borrowing every détail from real life, characters, environment, conversations, every mental and moral characteristic which came to his notice seemed as a precious vein of métal which should sooner or later enlarge his intel-
ctual store. I think it was especially during his stay in
