VI PREFACE

If the notes appear too fréquent or too helpful, a somewhat lengthy expérience in teaching language has convinced me that it is better to err in this direction than in the opposite, if a teacher wishes to interest his pupils in an author's literary work and style.

The sketch entitled " André Gill " was written especially for this volume, and illustrâtes a différent mood of the Author from that which appears in the other sélections.

Grateful acknowledgments are due to M. Daudet, Prof. A. N. van Daell, and Mr. Geo. W. Rollins, for valuable suggestions and help in reading proofs.

Alphonse Daudet was born May 13, 1840, at Nimes, "une ville de Languedoc où Ton trouve, comme dans toutes les villes du Midi, beaucoup de soleil, pas mal de poussière, un couvent de Carmélites et deux ou trois monuments romains," and hère he passed the first nine years of his life. At the end of that time his father, a silk manufacturer, was obliged by the décline of his business to change his résidence to Lyons. The removal proved of little advantage to stay his falling fortunes, and in seven years more came the financial end. The family was broken up ; the father vainly sought lucrative employment elsewhere, the mother returned to her native Languedoc, an older brother Ernest went to Paris to seek his fortune in its literary world, and Alphonse, who had just finished his course of study at the lycée in Lyons but was too poor to take his degree, became usher at the collège of Alais, where his great-uncle had once been principal. Timid, puny, near-sighted, a mère boy of sixteen years, he found his life hère one long martyrdom at the hands of his cruel pupils, and he was glad after a few months service to join his brother Ernest in Paris, to share his poverty and toil, his hopes and trials. In Le Petit Chose, the first half of which is fairly autobiographical, he paints most vividly the scènes and impressions of his life up

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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 wanner 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 varions joumals. He was fortunate enough to gain the favorable attention of the Duc de Momy, président of the Corps Législatifs and a lucrative appointment in 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 Pautre.*' During his absence in Algeria, in the winter of 1861-62, his first play was successfully brought out at the Odèon, He has since written other pièces for the stage, . most of them dramatizations of his romances. His stories early found place in Parisian joumals, but it was not until 1868 that he published any prose volume. Le Petit Chose^ which then appeared, was followed 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

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shades 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^ Numa 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 jeune et Risler aîné, L ^Evangéliste, Rose et Ninette^ Jack^ Les Rois en Exil, and Sapho^ portray the social life of Paris, both aristocratie and bourgeois. Robert Helmont and many short sketches from Contes du Lundi show us his personal expériences and impressions of the war. L^ Immortel and Femmes d^ Artistes deal chiefly with Parisian 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, environ ment, 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 intellectual store. I think it was especially during his stay in