THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN '
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET
 
 if<7\* .* 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 / ronttsficce.
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 H Bioorapbical anb Critical 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD 
 
 LONDON 
 
 EDWARD ARNOLD 
 
 37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 ^publisher ta the Eubi.i (Office 
 
 1894 
 
 [All rights reserved}
 
 7 5 $54
 
 A MA MERE
 
 FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM ALPHONSE 
 DAUDET TO MR. SHERARD. 
 
 /v. 
 
 X && a' ^/ ^-^3 4f ?^5fc
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I BY no means agree with those who hold that it is 
 a good rule that a biography should not be written 
 in the hero's lifetime, and often in reading the life- 
 stories of notable men, of whom I have been a 
 contemporary, who have died, I have found myself 
 regretting that I did not know such and such things 
 about them whilst they lived. It seemed to me 
 that had I known such and such things concerning 
 them whilst we were fellow-beings, my interest in 
 their works would have been a keener one ; and, 
 a more important matter, my understanding of my 
 own times would have been clearer and more com- 
 prehensive. 
 
 One likes to hear the great men of the day dis- 
 cussed and described in conversation ; why should 
 one, then, object to read of them ? 
 
 In the matter of authors, as in the case of the
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 subject of this biography, it seems to me that a 
 presentation of them in their lifetime is all the more 
 interesting in that, knowing their histories, their 
 methods of work, their manners of thinking, and 
 their ways of life, one is better able to appreciate 
 each of their new works as it appears. One is 
 always more interested in those one knows than in 
 entire strangers. 
 
 ' And did you once see Shelley plain ? . . .' 
 
 There is the ring of regret in these lines, and 
 I fancy that Browning's regret would have been 
 less keen if, during the years when he was Shelley's 
 fellow-being I am imagining him the precocious 
 lad that no doubt he was he could have known 
 all things concerning the poet whom he was to 
 reverence after his death. 
 
 And for the biographer also the task of describing 
 a living man is as much more grateful a task than 
 that of presenting from documents, hearsay, and the 
 reports of friends and relations, a man who is no more, 
 as it is for a painter to paint a portrait from a living 
 model rather than from material supplied, or as it 
 is for the photographer to work in full sunlight 
 rather than when the sun has gone down. 
 
 If, as to-day is generally admitted, the human 
 document is of interest, then is that human docu-
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 ment which is a precise portrayal of a living fellow- 
 being emphatically of interest. 
 
 And, then, shall not the subject of the biography 
 be considered ? Once a man is dead, the other 
 man who writes of him has an easy task, for the 
 person of whom he has written will never rise to 
 say that in this or that respect his biographer has 
 misrepresented him, that such or such was never a 
 motive of his, that neither this nor that ambition ever 
 prompted him, and that many stories concerning 
 him are but idle gossip. How much of Boswell's 
 Life would Samuel Johnson have passed for the 
 press, how much of the Memoirs of a Bourrienne, 
 a Remusat, a Talleyrand, or a Barras would have 
 stood solid fact under Bonaparte's fiery eyes ? 
 
 These considerations must stand as my apology 
 for again having taken pen in hand to write of a 
 fellow-being whom I believe to be one in whom 
 many take an interest. 
 
 I have to express my gratitude for assistance in 
 my task to Madame Daudet, to her son Leon, 
 to M. Edmond de Goncourt, and to M. Ernest 
 Daudet, whose little book entitled ' Mon Frere et 
 Moi ' I have drawn upon for my description of 
 his brother's early days. 
 
 Something more than gratitude is due to Alphonse 
 Daudet himself. Since he has honoured me with
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 his friendship, I may say, without exaggeration, that 
 my life of exile has been transformed. It is perhaps 
 also on account of my admiration and my affection 
 for this great-hearted man of letters that I have 
 wished to make others know him as I do. 
 
 ROBERT Hi SHERARD. 
 Capbreton, Paris, 
 1894. 
 
 NOTE. It is with great happiness that the writer can add that 
 on the last occasion on which he saw Alphonse Daudet, after a 
 separation of some months, during which the chapters as to his 
 ill-health and suffering were written, ' la larme a 1'ceil,' he found 
 the master in greatly improved strength, projecting work and 
 pleasure including a journey to England a man altogether 
 transformed, with bright eyes, a placid face, and a good ring in 
 the voice.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NlMES - 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS - - 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS - 57 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 79 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FACING THE WORLD 103 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL - 128 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 154 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET AS A POKT 183
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 FACE 
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND - 208 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 232 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 253 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 ' LE PETIT CHOSE' 283 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 302 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 330 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET'S SHORT STORIES 351 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ' FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER A^NE ' 372 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS - 391 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE FATE OF POLYCRATES - 407 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE DAUDET OF TO-DAY - - 421
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET, FROM A DRAWING BY P. RENOUARD frontispiece 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET IN HIS PAVILION to filCC page 48 
 
 ERNEST DAUDET ,, ., 212 
 
 EXTERIOR OF THE PAVILION ,, ,, 286 
 
 DAUDET'S HOUSE AT CHAMPROSAY ., 394
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY. 
 
 ONE day when Alphonse Daudet was with Gustave 
 Flaubert and other men of letters, the conversation 
 turned on the respective ages of those present, 
 and yielding- to one of those inexplicable promptings 
 of perversity, Daudet deliberately lied, reducing the 
 number of his years by two. He has often since 
 spoken of this incident, and in the amusing style 
 which is one of his gifts has endeavoured to analyze 
 the reason of his untruthfulness on this occasion, 
 whether it proceeded from vanity, coquettishness or 
 perversity, adding that, no sooner were the words 
 out of his mouth than he felt heartily ashamed of 
 himself, and was tormented by conscience all the 
 following night, and found no peace of mind again 
 until on the next morning he had written notes to
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 all who had been present, to confess his sin and 
 to establish the truth. 
 
 In a letter in which he writes of this he adds, 
 4 The lie has always been my preoccupation ; my 
 books are full of liars,' and goes on to contrast the 
 two districts in France where the lie best flourishes, 
 Gascony and Provence in the South, with Normandy 
 in the North. The Normans, he says, have a 
 special manner of untruthfulness, and he describes 
 them as the ' Gascons of the North.' He has often 
 declared that he himself is the prototype of his crea- 
 tion, Numa Roumestan, of Meridional insincerity, 
 whose tongue was always in advance of his brain. 
 
 It would be difficult for Daudet to yield to such 
 a temptation again to-day, for since then, as De 
 Goncourt somewhere writes, ' our little Daudet has 
 grown, has grown, has grown." Standing now in 
 the very forefront of French literature ' the author,' 
 as a former director of fine arts in France recently 
 wrote in the principal Parisian review, ' of some 
 of the finest books of the century ' the salient 
 particulars of his biography are matters of common 
 knowledge. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet was born on May 13, 1840, at 
 Nimes, on the frontier of Provence, in the land 
 which he himself has styled ' Le Midi petre,' the 
 stony South.
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY 
 
 ' I was born ' it is with these words that he 
 opens his story ' Le Petit Chose' 'on May 13, 
 1 8 , in a town in Languedoc, where, as in all the 
 towns in the South, one finds much sunshine, not a 
 little dust, a Carmelite convent, and two or three 
 Roman monuments.' 
 
 Lower down he writes : 
 
 ' I must say, to begin with, that my birth did not 
 bring happiness to the Eysette household. . . . 
 
 ' In truth, I was my parents' evil star. From the 
 day of my birth unheard-of disasters assailed them 
 from twenty sides.' 
 
 In speaking thus of Daniel Eysette, better known 
 as Le Petit Chose, Daudet is speaking of himself. 
 Exceedingly superstitious, the date of his birth, or 
 rather the dates of his birth (for i, 8, 4, o added to- 
 gether form a total of 1 3 also), have always appeared 
 to him of evil omen, and he has come to look upon 
 himself as predestined to sorrow, as exemplified first 
 by a most unhappy childhood and youth, and, after 
 a period of radiant happiness, by a tormented and 
 pain-racked maturity. In spite of this fact, except 
 when acutely suffering from the rheumatic pains 
 with which he is constantly tortured, Daudet is, and 
 has always been, gay, bright, cheerful, and of a 
 radiating warmth of geniality and happiness. In 
 this respect he differs widely from his illustrious
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 contemporary, Emile Zola, who, in good health and 
 in the flush and tide of fame and fortune, is always 
 morose, querulous, dissatisfied, and unhappy. 
 
 It may be wondered at that a man of Daudet's 
 brilliant intellect should be superstitious, should 
 4 have a horror of the number thirteen,' and ' would 
 not walk under a ladder or travel on a Friday for 
 any consideration,' as he himself has confessed. 
 But it must be remembered that Daudet is a 
 Meridional, with all the qualities and defects of the 
 Meridional carried to their extremest degree. It is 
 as a Meridional that he is superstitious ; it is to his 
 race that his occasional harmless want of veracity 
 must be attributed. Napoleon was a Meridional also, 
 and also superstitious and wanting in truthfulness. 
 It is one of Daudet's dearest wishes to say his say 
 about Napoleon, and to explain and excuse his 
 character and his actions by his Meridionalism. 
 Napoleon's utter untruthfulness, too often baneful, 
 could, however, hardly be excused on this ground. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet was the son of Vincent Daudet 
 and his wife Adeline, whose maiden name was 
 Reynaud, which in Proven9al patois means a little 
 bird, or wren. Daudet is very fond of seeking the 
 significations of family names, and attaches im- 
 portance to these significations. As to his own 
 patronymic, he is doubtful whether to derive it from
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY 
 
 ' Deodat,' a very common name in Provence, and 
 which, abbreviated from Deo dahis, means ' given by 
 God,' or, and this is the derivation which he would 
 prefer, from a Moorish word signifying David. It 
 is probable that this latter version is the correct 
 one, for most undoubtedly the Daudet family is of 
 Moorish extraction. One has but to look at 
 Alphonse Daudet's eldest son, Leon, to be con- 
 vinced of that. He has all the appearance of a 
 handsome Oriental in a Parisian drawing-room. 
 The name of Daudet, or, as it is more commonly 
 written, Daude, is frequently met with in Languedoc. 
 An art - critic, an engineer, and two Protestant 
 theologians gave it repute in the eighteenth 
 century, and there flourished also in 1720 and the 
 following decade a certain Chevalier Daudet, who 
 accompanied Louis XV. to Strasburg and wrote, 
 besides other works, a poetical description of the 
 King's journey. Alphonse Daudet smiles at his 
 brother Ernest's endeavour to connect this gentle- 
 man with their family and to trace their genealogy 
 from other noble sources. He has no feeling at 
 all with reference to the conventional superiorities 
 of birth and fortune. In this respect he again 
 differs from Emile Zola, and from his intimate 
 friend, Edmond de Goncourt. The latter, to judge 
 from his journal, attaches considerable importance
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 to questions of gentility, whilst Zola cannot dis- 
 guise his satisfaction at the immense receipts which 
 he derives from his literary productions. This 
 is not written in any spirit of personal criticism, 
 and the trait is comprehensible enough when one 
 remembers through what stress of poverty the 
 author of the Rougon-Macquart series passed. He 
 is surely entitled to the joy of conquest, the conquest 
 of the bank-note. Daudet, on the other hand, 
 neither esteems nor contemns gentility of birth or 
 greatness of fortune, acquired or inherited. He is 
 the same man when entertaining an ambassador as 
 when extending his lavish hospitality to the most 
 ragged Bohemian of letters. If he is pleased to 
 hear that such an one of his friends is deriving large 
 profits from the sales of his books, his interest is 
 certainly keener in the case of an unsuccessful 
 writer, because he feels that over such his quasi- 
 paternity and kindest hospitality can be more 
 effectually exercised. Of his own large gains he 
 never speaks, though he will frequently relate the 
 story of his days of penury. 
 
 Jacques Daudet, the father of Vincent Daudet 
 and grandfather of Alphonse and Ernest, was a 
 simple CeVenol peasant, who at the beginning of the 
 Revolution settled in Nimes and began to exercise 
 the craft of silk-weaver. During the Revolution,
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY 
 
 when the scaffold remained standing permanently 
 on the esplanade of Nlmes, as a terror to the 
 Royalists of that most anti- Jacobin district, Jacques 
 Daudet very nearly lost his life for expressing 
 sympathy ' Ah, li paouri gent ! (Oh, the poor 
 fellows) ' were his words whilst thirty victims from 
 Beaucaire, accused of complicity with the Vivarais 
 Royalists, were being marched, singing the Miserere, 
 to the guillotine. He was seized on by the guards, 
 and would have shared the fate of those whom he 
 had pitied, but for the kindness of one of the attend- 
 ants, who helped him to make good his escape. He 
 was careful in future not to manifest his sentiments 
 in public, having learned a good lesson from his own 
 experience and the sad fate of his brother Claude, 
 who was massacred by the Republicans in 1 790. 
 
 His business appears to have prospered, and under 
 the Consulate Jacques Daudet is found, no longer a 
 workman, at the head of a flourishing shop where 
 are retailed the products of the Nimes silk industry, 
 at that time a formidable rival to Lyons. In the 
 meanwhile he had married, and was the father of 
 two sons and three daughters. Vincent Daudet 
 was his fourth child. 
 
 Speaking of his father, Ernest Daudet says that 
 at the age of twenty he was a handsome man, 
 with his Bourbon head, his black hair, his high
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 complexion and full eyes. The progress of the 
 family towards burgherdom was marked in his dress, 
 and he always wore a tight-fitting frock-coat and a 
 white tie, that emblem of respectability in France. 
 With Alphonse and Ernest another step was taken 
 away from Jacques Daudet's workman's blouse, and 
 as to the fourth generation, Alphonse Daudet's sons, 
 Leon and Lucien, are the best-dressed young men 
 in Paris. 
 
 Vincent did not enjoy much education, and never 
 got beyond the rudiments of Latin. His father 
 took him into the business at the age of sixteen, 
 sending him to all parts of France in charge of 
 a large van stocked with silk goods, for sale where- 
 ever buyers could be found. There was education 
 of a practical sort in this life, and a good training 
 in courage and manliness. Travelling, often at 
 night, with a valuable load was a risky thing in 
 those unsettled days when the chauffeurs and 
 other bands of brigands were abroad, and Vincent 
 Daudet did well to carry with him two well-primed 
 pistols in a little green case. 
 
 It may be that it was during these hazardous 
 expeditions across France that the spirit of romance 
 and adventure was infused into the mental organism 
 of the Cevenol peasant's son, and that his faculty 
 of imagination was awakened, qualities afterwards
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY 
 
 transmitted by him to his son. In 1830 Vincent 
 Daudet married Adeline Reynaud, ' a woman slight 
 and frail, with an olive complexion and large and 
 mournful eyes, whose physical development had 
 been delayed by a sickly childhood ; a dreamy, 
 romantic nature, passionately fond of reading, and 
 preferring to live with the heroes of the books on 
 which she fed her imagination, rather than with 
 the realities of life ; in spite of this, the soul of a 
 saint, and of infinite gentleness.' 
 
 Adeline Reynaud was descended from an excellent 
 family, and Ernest Daudet, who, as his brother 
 Alphonse once said, ' used to be ambitious,' has 
 given a long account of the history of this family 
 in his book ' Mon Frere et Moi.' The family seat, 
 La Vignasse, was bought in 1645 by Jean Reynaud, 
 son of Sebastien Reynaud, of Boisseron, and one 
 of his descendants, William Reynaud, emigrating 
 to England under the Revolution, founded an im- 
 portant business in articles de Paris Paris fancy 
 goods. He afterwards went to Russia, and was 
 mixed up in the first conspiracy against Paul I., and 
 in consequence was exiled to Siberia, his fortune 
 being confiscated. He was afterwards pardoned by 
 Alexander I. and reinstated in his property. He is 
 known in the Daudet family as ' the Russian uncle.' 
 
 One of his brothers, known in the family as ' the
 
 io ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 uncle Abbe,' Francis Reynaud, entered holy orders 
 and emigrated to England when in danger of his 
 life under the Convention. Mastering the English 
 language, he was able to earn his living in London 
 by teaching English to his fellow-exiles. A beauti- 
 ful English girl, ' rich and distinguished,' fell 
 violently in love with him, and there was every 
 inducement held out to him to forget his vow and 
 condition, which for reasons of policy he had dis- 
 guised in England. He, however, remained firm. 
 Under the Consulate he was allowed to return to 
 France, and applied himself to teaching, being 
 eventually appointed principal of the Alais College, 
 where, thanks to this circumstance, his grand- 
 nephew was afterwards to be admitted as an usher, 
 and to eat his hard-earned bread with bitter and 
 despairing tears. 
 
 It was Antoine, a younger brother of ' the 
 Russian uncle ' and of Abbe Reynaud, who was 
 the father of Adeline. He lived in Nimes, where 
 he had founded a business for the purchase of silk 
 yarns from the peasants and small spinners of the 
 neighbouring district, and for their sale to the 
 principal weavers of Nimes, Avignon, and Lyons. 
 His business was a very prosperous one ; he 
 acquired a handsome fortune, and the Reynauds of 
 Nimes were looked up to as amongst the aristocracy
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY 
 
 of the Provencal frontier town. Adeline, the eldest 
 of Antoine Reynaud's six children, was considered 
 an excellent parti, and all the young men of Nimes 
 envied Vincent Daudet when he carried her off. 
 After his marriage, Vincent Daudet went into 
 partnership with his elder brother, to carry on the 
 business founded by their father. 
 
 The union of Vincent and Adeline, though in 
 itself a happy one, was saddened almost from the 
 outset by a series of troubles and disasters. The 
 children born to the marriage died off one after 
 the other, with the exception of Henri, their eldest 
 son, a sickly child, whose constant ill-health caused 
 great anxiety to his parents. Adeline's mother 
 ' Grandmamma Reynaud,' who was a great favourite 
 with the Daudets died suddenly of inflammation 
 of the lungs. One of Adeline's brothers, engaging 
 in imprudent speculations in Lyons, brought the 
 fortune of the Reynauds into jeopardy, and constant 
 dissensions troubled the partnership of the Daudet 
 Brothers. So impossible did it become for them 
 to agree, that a dissolution was decided upon and 
 effected. The two brothers, no longer partners, 
 became commercial rivals. The elder, continuing 
 as his father had begun, prospered and amassed a 
 fortune, which is still enjoyed by his descendants ; 
 Vincent, less fortunate or less skilful, did not meet
 
 12 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 with such success. The spirit of adventure infused 
 into his mental organism in the course of his 
 hazardous expeditions across France led him astray 
 in his commercial operations. Casting aside the 
 prudence of the Cevenol peasant his father, just as 
 he had cast aside the Cevenol peasant's blouse, he 
 embarked in industrial experiments which were 
 doomed to failure, and which eventually led to his 
 ruin. 
 
 It was into this family that Alphonse Daudet was 
 born on May 13, 1840 the son of a man whose 
 life so far had been unsuccessful and embittered, 
 who had not within him the elements of success ; 
 and of a woman of a dreamy and melancholy nature, 
 whose large and mournful eyes had wept and wept 
 as child after child of hers had died, for of a 
 numerous family there remained to her only two 
 sons, Henri, the firstborn, a sickly child, and Ernest, 
 who was three years old at the time of the birth of 
 Alphonse. 
 
 The Daudets were living at that time in a house, 
 still standing in Nimes, known as the Maison 
 Sabran, situated on the Petit Cours, nearly opposite 
 the church of Saint Charles, behind which is the 
 faubourg called Enclos de Rey. inhabited at that 
 time by silk-spinners and labourers, a revolutionary 
 and excitable population, which for a century past
 
 THE DAUDET FAMILY 13 
 
 had taken part in all the risings of the old city. 
 The Petit Cours was the centre of the life* of Nimes, 
 'a fit place,' writes Ernest Daudet, 'for tumultuous 
 assemblings.' From the Place des Carmes to the 
 Place Ballore it was planted with four rows of 
 plane-trees, which in the summer were powdered 
 with white dust and all alive with shrill cicades. 
 It was on the Petit Cours that all the bloody scenes 
 of the Revolution in Nimes were enacted, notably 
 the massacre which the Nimois still speak of with a 
 shudder as ' La Bagarre,' in the course of which a 
 Daudet lost his life. It was down the Petit Cours 
 that, on the morrow of Waterloo, General Gilly, at 
 the head of his chasseurs^ galloped, a pistol in one 
 hand, a sword in the other, holding the bridle of 
 his horse between his teeth, to take refuge in the 
 Cevennes, abandoning the Bonapartists of the town 
 to the fury of the Royalists. 
 
 The Daudet manage occupied the second story 
 of the Maison Sabran, and it was in one of the 
 rooms of this ttage that Alphonse was born. The 
 first-floor was divided between Vincent Daudet and 
 a cousin, who both had their workshops here. 
 
 In writing of himself in ' Le Petit Chose ' that he 
 was his parents' evil star, and that from the day of 
 his birth the most unheard-of disasters assailed 
 them on every side, Daudet was only exercising the
 
 i 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 novelist's right to adapt his personal experiences to 
 the requirements of his work. As a matter of fact, 
 at the time of his birth his parents' troubles had to 
 some extent been appeased, business was promising 
 in the future, and it was not until six years later 
 that the ruin of the Daudet-Reynaud family definitely 
 began, to be consummated in 1848. 
 
 ' At first,' writes Ernest Daudet, ' we knew 
 nothing but comfort, and grew up in an atmosphere 
 of affection side by side in an hourly intimacy 
 which created between us that indestructible friend- 
 ship which has ever remained alive, unbroken for 
 even a single day.'
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NlMES. 
 
 ' AMONGST contemporary story-tellers and novelists 
 there is an author who at his birth received all the 
 gifts with which the mind can be endowed. I am 
 speaking of M. Alphonse Daudet. I will apply to 
 him, trite as it may be, the old fable of our fairy- 
 tales. I fancy that all the fairies came together 
 round his cradle, each of them to give him a rare 
 quality with a touch of the wand ; one gave him 
 grace, another charm, a third the smile that wins 
 love, a fourth the tender emotion which leads to 
 success. And what is most wonderful is that the 
 wicked fairy, whose custom it is to arrive last of 
 all in order to destroy all these precious gifts -by 
 some evil present, was so late on that occasion that 
 she was not even able to enter ; yes, the wicked 
 fairy remained at the door, and blessings only were 
 showered on the head of the future author of " Les 
 Contes du Lundi " and of " Fromont jeune et Risler
 
 16 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 aine." I wish therefore to study in M. Alphonse 
 Daudet a happy nature, one of the most charming 
 and most interesting cases in our contemporary 
 literature.' 
 
 It was thus that more than fifteen years ago 
 Emile Zola wrote of his fellow-writer in naturalism, 
 his co-heir to Balzac, in the Russian journal Le 
 Messager de r Europe. At that time, indeed, 
 Daudet appeared to be one of those few fortunate 
 men for whom Fortune has nought but smiles. 
 Yet indeed the wicked fairy of the fable stood also 
 by Daudet's cradle, and her vow was to the effect 
 that after a most unhappy youth the child, grown 
 man, should taste of all the raptures of realized 
 ambition fame, fortune, friendship and that then 
 suddenly, when the draught was sweetest, the cup 
 should be struck from his lips, and an almost un- 
 ceasing torment come upon him to plague his body, 
 to vex his mind, to strike his hand with ague, to 
 render work which was his delight a bitter task, and 
 to poison the pleasures to which he was accustomed, 
 and of which, by custom, he had grown fond. 
 
 When one sees him, as those who have the privilege 
 of frequenting his beautiful Paris home may see him 
 a man in the age of the full force of maturity, 
 haggard of face, with pain-drawn lips, and eyes in 
 which the old and splendid fire flashes only when
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 17 
 
 revived with a lethal drug, dragging his wrecked 
 body laboriously step by step on unwilling limbs, 
 forced to avail himself of a friendly arm in order 
 to traverse a space over which little Charles, his 
 grandson, could toddle briskly, and for even the 
 shortest distance obliged to support himself with 
 one hand on a stick and the other on a chair ; 
 when one sees the once ready pen rebelling in his 
 nerveless fingers, so painfully, indeed, that in 
 despair at this revolt he has been heard to ask for 
 information as to that Jacquard of the pen, the 
 typewriter ; when one hears him speak, not without 
 melancholy, of plans formed in days of stress for 
 the heyday, which, now that the heyday has arrived, 
 never can be realized, then indeed can one. imagine 
 the wicked fairy, and hear her cruel pronouncement 
 and the spiteful rap of her wand. 
 
 In speaking of his life on a recent occasion, 
 Alphonse Daudet, referring to his childhood, said 
 to the writer : ' I have often tried to collect the 
 memories of my childhood, so as to write them out 
 in Provencal, the language of my native land ; but 
 my youth was such a sad one that these are all 
 summed up in the title of a book of my souvenirs 
 de jeuncsse, "Mi Poou," which in Provencal means 
 " My Fears." Yes, fears and tears, that is of what 
 my youth consisted. My childhood at home was a 
 
 2
 
 ,8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 lamentable one. I have no recollection of home 
 which is not a sorrowful one a recollection of tears. 
 The baker who refuses bread ; the servant whose 
 wages cannot be paid, who declares that she will 
 stay on without wages, and becomes familiar in 
 consequence, and says " thou " to her master ; the 
 father always scolding ; the mother always in tears.' 
 
 In his case time does not seem to have effaced 
 what was bitter and hard to bear, leaving, as with 
 most men it does, on the tablets of memory only 
 such things as are pleasant to remember. Yet, 
 according to his brother Ernest, his early childhood 
 was surrounded with comfort and warmed with 
 tender affection, and, according to his account also, 
 in ' Le Petit Chose,' there was much in his early life 
 to charm an imaginative child. 
 
 'At that time,' says Ernest Daudet, 'we filled the 
 old Maison Sabran with our games.' Although the 
 boys' father, soured by ill-fortune, no doubt, would 
 not allow his children the run of his workshops on 
 the first-floor of the old house, there adjoined his 
 offices the premises of a cousin, who was very 
 friendly to Ernest and Alphonse. This cousin had 
 an old clerk who adored children, and used to 
 fit the two lads out with cocked hats of paper and 
 epaulettes made out of the fragments of silk stuffs 
 with which the workshops were littered ; and then,
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 19 
 
 arming them with swords, and corking ferocious 
 moustachios on their baby faces, he would send them 
 in this brave array up to their mother, whom they 
 would almost invariably find seeking oblivion from 
 the hard realities of life in her favourite books. 
 
 ' This passionate taste for books, which we have 
 inherited from her,' writes Ernest Daudet, ' was one 
 of the consolations of her life. When quite a little 
 girl she used to take refuge in the remotest corners of 
 her father's store-rooms, and, nestling down between 
 two bales of silk, would give herself up in all quiet 
 to the pleasure of reading. Later on it was still to 
 reading that she consecrated all her leisure time. It 
 is incontestable that it is from her that we derive 
 the vocation which later threw us into a literary 
 life.' 
 
 At the age of three Alphonse Daudet was 
 described as a pretty little boy, with large brown 
 eyes, chestnut hair, a pallid complexion, and features 
 of exquisite delicacy. He was a very passionate 
 child, and used to rebel in the most violent manner 
 against any repression of his outbursts of anger. 
 
 It is related that one day he was locked up alone 
 in a room, as a punishment for some childish fault, 
 but acted with such violence that his parents were 
 forced to release him. They found him covered 
 with bruises which he had inflicted upon himself by
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 dashing himself in his fury against the walls of his 
 prison. 
 
 This violence of character, which since his man- 
 hood he has had the strength to control, was doubt- 
 less inherited by him from his grandmothers, and 
 especially from his father. ' As a child it was the 
 dominant trait of his character ; and for this reason 
 his education was a difficult task. There was in 
 him the strangest mixture of docility and indisci- 
 pline, of goodness and obstinacy ; and with this an 
 unquenchable thirst for adventures and the un- 
 known, the danger of which his shortsightedness, 
 which age has developed, greatly aggravated. 
 
 ' This shortsightedness has played my brother 
 more than one scurvy trick. Thanks to it, he has 
 more than once been half drowned, burned, poisoned, 
 and run over; and even to-day (in 1880) he is 
 obliged to take a friend's arm to cross the boule- 
 vard when traffic is heavy. It has often made 
 people think, when he passed them by without see- 
 ing them, that he affected, from indifference or con- 
 tempt, not to recognise them. But at the same time 
 it has rendered him a single service ; it has forced 
 him to live within ; it has endowed him with the 
 strangest and most precious faculty a faculty which 
 I have met with in him alone, a kind of inner sight, 
 or, if you prefer the expression, an intuition of ex-
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 21 
 
 traordinary force, thanks to which, if he happens not 
 to see with his eyes the face of the person who is 
 speaking to him, he is able to guess what it is like, 
 and at the same time to fathom what is in that 
 person's mind. For my part, I cannot explain this 
 intensity of insight in a shortsighted man. Passing 
 through life like a blind man, in each of his books 
 he gives proof of a minute and attentive power of 
 observation, of almost microscopic acuteness. 
 
 ' These qualities, which were dormant in the 
 child, awoke into being in the young man. In the 
 child they were dominated by a vivacity, a turbu- 
 lence, and a temerity which caused our mother to 
 tremble when he was not hanging on to her skirts 
 or under the careful eyes of our servant. But at the 
 same time his nature was the most straightforward, 
 his heart the most cjenerous, and his mind the most 
 
 o 
 
 open. Oh, what a good little chum I had in him !' 
 
 Thus his brother. As to these violent outbursts 
 of passion, either self-control or physical depression 
 have entirely dominated them ; so that to-day, ex- 
 cept in point of vivacity of expression on any subject 
 which lies near his heart in love or hatred, Daudet 
 may be described as a most placid man, of equable 
 temper and perfect self-restraint. In the days of 
 full manhood, it is true, his patience had its limits, 
 and he was always prompt to challenge any attack
 
 22 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 on his reputation or on his character. It was in 
 consequence of the publication of an article which 
 offended him, in an English boulevard newspaper of 
 Paris, of which the late Theodore Child was editor, 
 that he first entered into relations with the brilliant 
 and unfortunate correspondent of The World. He 
 wrote to Child to say that he was not patient under 
 aspersions of that nature, and, indeed, began to 
 make preparations for a reparation of his wounded 
 honour by arms. The duel was averted, however, 
 thanks to a letter from Child, who explained that 
 the article had appeared, in his absence, without his 
 consent, and added that for no consideration would 
 he offend a gentleman for whom he had such an 
 admiration as he had for Alphonse Daudet. The 
 letter was so well turned, for. Child had a perfect 
 knowledge of French, that whilst appeasing 
 Daudet's wrath, it made him desire to know the 
 author. It was thus that ' Theoc ' made Daudet's 
 acquaintance, an acquaintance which was of the 
 greatest advantage to him during his too brief 
 career in Paris. Daudet, on his side, appears to 
 have equally appreciated the journalist. 
 
 It was in an outburst of temper, also, that one 
 day in 1884 he sent his seconds to Delpit, the 
 novelist, who had offended him in an article on the 
 Academy, in which he had spoken of Daudet as a
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES . 23 
 
 man of Punic perfidy. The duel took place three 
 days later at Vesinet. De Goncourt relates that he 
 was asked, in case anything happened, to take a 
 letter to Madame Daudet, 'for you are the person 
 whom she loves best after her husband, her children, 
 papa, and mamma.' Fortunately De Goncourt's 
 services were not needed in this respect ; a telegram 
 arriving in the course of the morning, in which 
 Daudet announced the issue of the duel in the 
 following terms : ' Je rentre du Vesinet, j'ai fiche un 
 coup d'epee a Delpit,' in which Daudet's fondness 
 for expressive slang is manifested. 
 
 Considering Daudet's shortsightedness, which, as 
 his brother wrote, is intense, it is easy to under- 
 stand how nervous his friends always felt when he 
 was out on the field of honour, and his duels have 
 been numerous. To-day he is no longer able to 
 handle a sword, and has been heard to regret it, 
 especially because this incapacity prevents him from 
 expressing his opinions in the press on current 
 French politicians and politics, for whom and which 
 he has the greatest contempt. He agrees almost 
 entirely with what Drumont writes day by day in 
 La Libre Parole, and would be glad to say his say 
 also on the abominations of the third Republic ; 
 'but,' as he adds with a sigh, 'there must be a 
 rapier behind the pen.'
 
 24 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 In the days before he was stricken with rheu- 
 matism, his shortsightedness does not appear to 
 have interfered with his activity on the terrain, for 
 his duels were for the most part in his favour. To- 
 day his sight has improved, though he still wears a 
 very powerful single eyeglass, and he easily recog- 
 nises anyone across the room. This infirmity and 
 the occasional gestures of helplessness which proceed 
 from it, add in his case, as in that of all shortsighted 
 people, to the sympathy which he inspires, 'as any 
 invalid does, in even the least generous. When 
 at his writing-table and at work, he bends so low 
 over his paper that his long hair often sweeps the 
 page as he writes. One would fancy one's self be- 
 holding a scientist at work on some minute research 
 with the microscope ; it is typical and emblematic. 
 
 According to the French custom, shortly after his 
 birth little Alphonse was put out to nurse at Fons, 
 a village near Nimes. Fons must have been so 
 called on the lucus a non lucendo principle, for, like 
 most Provencal villages, it possessed neither fountain 
 nor well, and its inhabitants were forced to go eight 
 miles to procure water. It was the most arid of 
 places, and it is to this privation of water in his 
 childhood that Alphonse Daudet attributes the 
 immense desire for the sea and a sailor's life which 
 haunted his boyish brain in the parched champaign,
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 
 
 a desire which, after he had read his ' Robinson 
 Crusoe,' became at times a mania. It was with 
 intense pride that one day on a Rhone steamer, 
 when thirteen years of age, he passed himself off 
 untruthfully, in conversation with some passengers, 
 as a midshipman, his lycee or school uniform 
 giving verisimilitude to his tale. It appears that his 
 imposture was detected and exposed by some more 
 knowing bystander, but not before he had thrilled 
 his audience with a story of the most moving 
 escapes. He sometimes relates this anecdote when 
 speaking of his Meridional tendency to untruthful- 
 ness. 
 
 So scarce was water in the district that the 
 washerwomen of the village were obliged to carry 
 their linen by train to the Rhone, bringing back the 
 moist packets of clothes in the evenings. It was 
 usual for the villagers to go and meet the train by 
 which they arrived, so as to get on their passage 
 a whiff of cool air and the scent of the water. One 
 of Daudet's earliest remembrances is of the delight 
 with which the smell of the wet clothes used to fill 
 him, thrilling his fevered brain with a vision of a 
 boundless ocean of cool and sparkling water. 
 
 The husband of Daudet's foster-mother was an 
 innkeeper whose name was Garrimon, which is 
 Provencal for Mountain Rat. Daudet considers
 
 26 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 this a splendid name, and often regrets that he has 
 always forgotten to use it in one of his stories. 
 The drinking-rooms of Garrimon's inn were on the 
 first floor of the house, whilst the room where the 
 foster - child slept was a story higher. Daudet 
 remembers how he used to hear the brigand-like, 
 black -bearded, dark-eyed and long-haired men 
 stamping up the wooden stairs that led to the tap- 
 room as he lay in bed of nights, and how gradually 
 their voices would swell into a tumult such an 
 excitable race is the Provencal stimulated by each 
 other's talk and by draughts of harmless lemonade. 
 Sometimes, hearing the clash of steel, he would rise 
 from his bed and peep out of the window, to see 
 that all these wild-looking, though most harmless, 
 villagers were armed to the teeth one with a 
 scythe, another with an old-fashioned flint-lock, a 
 third with a rusty cutlass, and some with flails or 
 bludgeons. He would then know that a mad dog 
 was out and about, and, hurrying back to bed all 
 trembling with fear, would draw the clothes over 
 his head, and yet strain his ears to hear what was 
 being said below, starting with affright each time 
 the words Kin foil arose above the tumult of voices, 
 the clinking of glasses and bottles, and the clatter 
 of arms. Thus trembling, he would think of the 
 Kin foil, the mad dog, and of the terrible weapons
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 
 
 that the men carried because they, strong, black- 
 bearded men, were as frightened of him as the little 
 quaking wretch who shivered at every sound that 
 the wind made in the eaves of the old house. At 
 times his imagination would be so worked upon, 
 and his fear become so strong, that he would jump 
 from his bed, and running to Neno, his foster- 
 mother, would cling to her skirts for protection. 
 
 On one occasion the little boy actually met the 
 Kin foil a rencontre which brought his horror to 
 a climax, and left an ineffaceable impression on his 
 mind. It was on a summer evening, and he was 
 walking home, carrying a little basket, along a path 
 white with dust, which led through thickly-foliagecl 
 vines. Suddenly he heard a violent outburst of 
 wild cries : ' Aou kin foti ! Aou kin foil !' followed 
 by a discharge of firearms. Mad with terror, he 
 jumped into the vines, rolling head over heels in 
 the dust, and as he lay there, unable to stir a finger, 
 he heard the rush of the mad dog as it went by, 
 as though a hurricane was passing, stones flying to 
 the right and to the left, and a great cloud of white 
 dust in the air heard his furious panting, and saw 
 the gleam of his devouring eyes. His heart 
 stopped beating in a paroxysm of terror, and he 
 has never forgotten the violence of the alarm that 
 overwhelmed him.
 
 2 8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Since that time Daudet has had an absolute 
 horror of dogs, and has extended it, indeed, to all 
 animals. He admits that such a dislike for any of 
 Nature's works is strange in a poet, but he is unable 
 to master it, and is uncompromising in his hatred. 
 He considers animals the most ugly and vilest part 
 of creation, the caricatures of what is basest and 
 most loathsome in man. His children have all 
 inherited his horror of dogs. 
 
 So deeply was the impression of this adventure 
 engraved on his mind that at the age of nineteen, 
 when spending a summer holiday in the Chevreuse 
 Valley, not far from Madame Juliette Adam's place 
 at Gif, the recollection of that terrible afternoon 
 came upon him so violently that, borrowing Victor 
 Hugo's title, he wrote ' The Forty Days of a Con- 
 demned Man,' in which he essayed to depict, day 
 by day, the sensations of a man who has been 
 bitten by a mad dog. The work actually made 
 him ill of a nervous malady, and before he had 
 finished writing it he had grown to believe that he 
 had indeed been bitten, and the result was that his 
 horror was confirmed and strengthened. To this 
 day the sight of a dog is enough to distress him 
 exceedingly. 
 
 Speaking on this subject to the writer, Daudet 
 on one occasion remarked : ' This phenomenon
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 29 
 
 reminds me of what I have often noticed before, 
 that man may be compared to a book, of which the 
 contents are stereotyped at the outset of its career, 
 and only fresh editions printed afterwards ; by which 
 I mean that a man's character and habits are 
 crystallized whilst he is still a very young man, 
 and in after-life he only goes through the same 
 phases of emotion over and over again.' Which 
 is what Wordsworth and Milton before him had 
 also noticed and enunciated in memorable words. 
 
 Little Alphonse was a weakly child, and for this 
 reason he was not sent to school to learn his 
 alphabet. It was his mother who taught him to 
 read and write, and at the age of six, besides these 
 accomplishments, he knew a few words of Spanish, 
 and could play one or two airs on the guitar. He 
 was considered a precocious child. During the 
 last years of his life in Nimes he was placed under 
 the care of the Reverend Fathers of the Christian 
 Doctrine, who maintained discipline and attention 
 in the class-room with a rod that was kept in 
 pickle in a bucket of brine which stood beside the 
 master's desk. The rebellious and passionate little 
 Alphonse often tasted of this rod, and was in a 
 position to testify to the efficacy with which salt 
 water enhances the sting of an instrument of 
 chastisement.
 
 30 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' He remembered, with a shudder' so he writes 
 of Numa Roumestan, that is to say, of Alphonse 
 Daudet 'the bucket full of brine under the 
 master's desk, in which the rods were soaked to 
 render the leather thongs more stinging the 
 immense tiled class-room in which the boys had 
 to repeat their lessons on their knees, where as the 
 lightest punishment the culprit had to drag himself 
 along, now extending, now withdrawing his hand, 
 until he reached the straight and rigid monk in 
 his well-creased black robe, which gathered itself 
 up under his arms with the effort of striking .... 
 the han of the worthy brother, and the burning 
 sting on the ends of the little inky fingers. . . . And 
 when Hortense expressed her indignation at the 
 brutality of these punishments, Roumestan told her 
 of others still more ferocious, as, for example, when 
 the boys were forced to lick the tiles with their 
 tongues just after the floor had been watered and 
 the dust had turned to mud, until the tender palates 
 of the culprits became sore.' 
 
 But there were pleasures also in the lives of the 
 two brothers, and Ernest Daudet relates with what 
 joy they used, on Sundays, to accompany their 
 parents, together with half a dozen uncles and aunts 
 and male and female cousins of their own a"e, in an 
 
 o ' 
 
 old caleche on excursions into the surrounding country.
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 31 
 
 Now the drive would be to Fons to visit Garrimon, 
 the Mountain Rat, and Neno, his wife, in their old 
 tavern ; now to Marguerites, or Manduel, or 
 Monfrin, where the other foster - parents of the 
 Daudet children lived. After a long day spent on 
 the white roads, which led through vineyards and 
 olive-groves, and after succulent repasts with their 
 hosts, the children would drive back home, drowsy, 
 and lulled by the Provencal songs which the elder 
 people sang. 
 
 Then when the Beaucaire fair took place, Vincent 
 Daudet and his wife, leaving the two children at 
 home, with the full run of the house, would drive 
 away with a van full of goods to do business. 
 It is in the following picturesque terms that 
 Alphonse Daudet describes this fair in ' Numa 
 Roumestan ' : 
 
 ' In our Southern provinces it was the holiday of 
 the year the one diversion of all those shrivelled 
 existences. Preparation was made for it long in 
 advance ; people spoke of it long after it had passed 
 by. Men would promise it to their wives, to their 
 children, as a reward, bringing back home to them, 
 where it was not possible to take them to the fair, 
 some piece of Spanish lace, some toy, stored at the 
 bottom of the portmanteau. The Beaucaire fair 
 was, moreover, under the name of business, the
 
 32 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 pretext for a fortnight, a month, of free, exuberant 
 life, full of unforeseen events the life of a Bohemian 
 camp. Beds were made at this or that citizen's 
 house, visitors slept on the counters in the shops, 
 or in the streets under the outstretched canvas of 
 the vans, in the bright light of the stars of a July 
 firmament. Oh, the business done away from the 
 weary shops ; the trafficking as one dined in shirt- 
 sleeves on the thresholds of the houses ; the booths 
 in a long line in the meadow on the bank of the 
 Rhone, which itself was but a moving fair, cradling 
 its boats of every kind of build ; its lahuts with their 
 lateen-sails, which had come from Aries, from 
 Marseilles, from Barcelona, or the Balearic Islands, 
 laden with wines, with anchovies, with cork, with 
 oranges, decked with oriflammes and streamers 
 which fluttered noisily in the cool air and were 
 mirrored in the rapid waters. And the shouts, the 
 motley crowd of Spaniards, Sardinians, Greeks in 
 long tunics and embroidered slippers, Armenians 
 in furred caps, Turks with their vests trimmed with 
 gold lace, their fans, and their ample pantaloons of 
 gray linen, hustling each other in the open-air 
 restaurants, or at the booths where were sold 
 children's toys, walking-sticks, parasols, silver-ware, 
 pastilles du serai/, men's caps.' 
 
 During their father's absence the boys reigned as
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 33 
 
 sovereigns over the old house, and filled it with the 
 noise of their games ; but much as they enjoyed this 
 liberty their father's return was always eagerly looked 
 forward to, for he never came back from Beaucaire 
 without bringing some toys or books from the fair 
 for his sons. 
 
 Few children have as many toys as had the little 
 Daudets, for besides those they had inherited from 
 Henri, their eldest brother, they were constantly 
 receiving presents of playthings from their numerous 
 relations. Alphonse, however, was very destructive, 
 always wanting to know what was inside the various 
 toys and what it was that made them act, as after- 
 wards he wanted to know about the human heart. 
 
 One of the boys' favourite playthings was a 
 miniature theatre, and it was Alphonse who im- 
 provised the dialogues and scenes for its puppets, 
 as he was afterwards to do for the first actors 
 and actresses in France. But the plaything of 
 which the children were most fond was a set of 
 furniture and dresses which enabled them to play at 
 Mass an altar, with altar-cloth, chandeliers, taber- 
 nacle, pyx, monstrance, and cup. The altar-cloth 
 had been cut by Madame Daudet out of an old 
 embroidered dress, and it was she also who had 
 sewn the surplices and albs. An uncle in Lyons 
 had sent a chasuble, a crosier, and a mitre. It was 
 
 3
 
 34 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 with these things that the lads used to play at Mass 
 in the large attics at the top of the house, where the 
 warpers used to work. These girls, five or six in 
 number, took real pleasure in these mimic services, 
 in which the boys' little cousins (Emma, Marie, and 
 Leonce) used to take part. 
 
 It may be remarked in this connection that his 
 early religious training and the infusion of religion 
 even into his childish games seem to have had 
 little after-effect on Alphonse Daudet either as a 
 man or as an author. With the exception of ' L'Evan- 
 geliste,' the religious question is rarely treated of 
 in his books, and in -his conversation, with all its 
 extensive range, is carefully, not to say systematic- 
 ally, avoided. Zola is pleased to speak of his 
 doubts, and to write of them. Daudet, from rever- 
 ence, it may be, or from consideration of others, or 
 perhaps, indeed, from indifference, is silent both 
 with tongue and pen. It is true that after the pub- 
 lication of 'L'Evangeliste ' he received a sharp lesson 
 as to the danger that there lies in touching what is 
 the intensest interest of most men. Showers of 
 insulting, and even menacing, letters poured in on 
 him from all quarters ; the book raised up around 
 him, who till then had but friends and admirers in 
 the public, numerous and bitter enemies. ' After its 
 publication,' he told the writer, ' I was flooded with
 
 CHILDHOOD AT NIMES 35 
 
 anonymous letters, some of the most offensive 
 character.' 
 
 One night, just as he was leaving his house to go 
 and dine with Pailleron, a parcel was handed to him 
 by his porter. Its contents were of a nature often 
 addressed to Zola with ampler justification. A 
 letter was enclosed written by twelve readers of the 
 book who had taken umbrage at the author's 
 opinions. It was a filthy sheet and filthily worded, 
 but by its production at the right moment in Pail- 
 leron's smoking-room Daudet was able to illustrate 
 in a practical and convincing manner to what excesses 
 men can be provoked by adverse criticism of their 
 religious principles, a subject on which he had 
 designedly turned the conversation. The letter was 
 handed round amongst the authors present, and all 
 said that it was the worst thing of the kind they 
 had ever seen. 
 
 These mock Masses gave rise on one occasion to 
 a violent scene, which is still remembered in the 
 Daudet family as the ' histoire de la Sainte Vierge ' 
 It led to the suppression of this game. Little 
 Emma, clad in a white alb and crowned with roses, 
 was being carried in procession all over the house 
 seated in a basket, which the girls in the warping- 
 room had lent the children. One wore the mitre, 
 another the chasuble, a third carried the crosier.
 
 3 6 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 All were singing psalms, and at the head of the 
 procession walked Alphonse Daudet disguised as a 
 choir-boy, ringing a bell. Suddenly Vincent Daudet, 
 the father, who just at that moment was discussing 
 some important business with one of his principal 
 customers from Lyons, rushed out of his office in a 
 frenzy of irritation, and dispersing the procession to 
 the right and to the left, fell upon little Emma, tore 
 the alb into shreds, and sent the rose-wreath flying 
 down the stairs. In the evening he gave orders 
 that there were to be no more processions and no 
 more mock Masses. 
 
 Vincent Daudet was beginning to become soured 
 by his unceasing ill-fortune.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 AMONGST the presents which Vincent Daudet used 
 to bring home to his sons from the fair at Beaucaire 
 were, what both Ernest and Alphonse liked best of 
 any, magazines and books. Thus they acquired 
 'Robinson Crusoe' (in two illustrated volumes), 
 'The Swiss Family Robinson,' and a whole col- 
 lection in ten large volumes of the Journal des 
 En/ants, containing, under such attractive titles as 
 4 The Mysteries of Pierrefitte Castle ; or, The Ad- 
 ventures of Jean-Paul Chopart,' exciting stories by 
 men like Jules Janin, Frederick Soulie, or Edouard 
 Ourliac. The story, however, which pleased little 
 Alphonse the most a story which, like most romance 
 and adventure loving boys, he used to read and .re- 
 read until he nearly knew that whole wonderful 
 Odyssey by heart was ' Robinson Crusoe.' 
 
 4 In the evening,' he relates, 'after supper, I used 
 to read my " Robinson " over again ; I used to learn
 
 3 8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 it by heart. In the daytime I used to play it; I 
 used to play it with a sort of frenzy, and everything 
 that surrounded me was made to take part in the 
 game. The factory was no longer a factory, it was 
 my desert island oh, very deserted ! The fountain 
 basins represented the ocean. The garden stood 
 for the untrodden forest. In the plane-trees were 
 swarms of cicadas who had parts in the piece and 
 did not know it.' 
 
 A red-haired youth, who had never heard of 
 Robinson Crusoe, used to help out the game by 
 imitating the yells of infuriated savages. So ter- 
 rible were the screams of this red-haired youth, who 
 entered zealously into his part, that at times Alphonse 
 as Crusoe would get quite frightened, and implore 
 him to stop. The same lad frequently took the 
 part of the faithful Friday ; at other times, alone as 
 he was, he would enact a crew of mutineers in a 
 life-like and impressive manner. Unfortunately he 
 was a common, ill-bred boy, who used very bad 
 language and taught Alphonse to swear, so that 
 one day at dinner Vincent Daudet was shocked to 
 hear a fearful oath from his little son. Having 
 learned how Alphonse had got to know such 
 language, he at once forbade him to play with 
 the red-haired little boy. 
 
 Besides ' Robinson Crusoe,' the two books which
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 39 
 
 Alphonse Daudet liked best at that time were 
 Marryat's ' Midshipman Easy ' and Cooper's ' The 
 Pilot.' His reading filled him with an intense long- 
 ing for the sea ; he used to dream of all that water 
 and of the cold winds blowing across the brine. 
 This early impression comes back to him even at 
 the present day, nor has his admiration for these 
 first novels ever diminished. 
 
 It was thanks to these day-dreams which his 
 imagination, stimulated by such reading, raised up 
 around him during his early years, that he escaped 
 much of the unhappiness which as a sensitive child 
 would have been felt by him, as things grew worse 
 at home under the persistent ill-fortune which perse- 
 cuted his father. 
 
 Apart, however, from increasing financial embar- 
 rassments, the Daudet family had within it all the 
 elements of happiness. One has but to listen to 
 Ernest Daudet's account of certain family gather- 
 ings at the house of Monsieur Reynaud, the father 
 of Madame Daudet. The other grandfather, by the 
 way, appears to have been less generous. ' Rigor- 
 ously economical all through life, his generosity 
 towards his grandsons never exceeded a box of 
 peppermint lozenges, which he used to stuff into 
 our pockets on New Year's Day, after we had 
 wished him the compliments of the season.'
 
 4 o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 But very different was the other grandfather, old 
 M. Reynaud, whose only pleasure in life consisted 
 in making his grandsons happy, so as to enjoy their 
 surprise and their emotion. Christmas Eve, New- 
 Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were so many 
 pretexts for feasts and presents. 
 
 ' Oh, what a memory,' cries Ernest Daudet, ' the 
 New Year's Days of our childhood ! The family 
 gatherings at grandfather's house at noon for dinner ; 
 the fable, learned with so much difficulty, stammered 
 forth by our impatient lips, whilst our eyes kept 
 wandering in the direction of a large buffet laden 
 with dainties and toys, dancing puppets, accordions, 
 rocking-horses, sheep, dolls, and everything else 
 that one can think of ; the distribution of these 
 presents amid the tumult of our violently excited 
 desires ; the repast, composed of exquisite delicacies 
 croustades made by old Sophia, brandade from 
 Cadet's, estevenon cakes from Villaret's, nougats from 
 Barthelemy's, sugar dolls, Christmas crackers ; and 
 then our dances in the large blue drawing-room, 
 which was only opened on such occasions, whilst 
 our relations continued to talk amongst themselves.' 
 
 In the year 1848, that is to say, when Alphonse 
 Daudet was about eight years old, Vincent Daudet's 
 fortune, which during the two previous years had 
 been badly shaken, was gravely compromised, first
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 41 
 
 by the successive failures of several important 
 debtors, and next by the commercial crisis and 
 cessation of all business which were the natural and 
 inevitable result of the Revolution of that year. 
 
 In ' Le Petit Chose' Daudet thus describes the 
 effect that these disasters produced upon his father : 
 4 Suddenly M. Eysette became terrible ; as a rule, his 
 was a violent, an inflammatory, an exaggerated nature, 
 fond of shouting, of smashing, and of thunderous 
 outbursts ; at the bottom, he was a very excellent 
 man, only quick with his hands in correcting faults, 
 loud in his speech, and actuated by an imperative 
 desire to throw all around him into a tremble. 
 Evil fortune, instead of cowing him, exasperated 
 him. From morning till night his was a formidable 
 anger, which, not knowing on whom to pour itself 
 out, attacked everybody and everything the sun, 
 the mistral, James, old Annou, the Revolution oh, 
 above all, the Revolution ! Listening to my father, 
 you would have sworn that this 18- Revolution, 
 which had ruined us, had been specially directed 
 against us. Accordingly, I need hardly tell you 
 the revolutionaries were not in the odour of sanctity 
 in the Eysette family. God knows all we said about 
 them at that time.' 
 
 To make matters worse, it was in this year that 
 M. Reynaud, Vincent Daudet's father-in-law, died,
 
 42 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 leaving none of the fortune on which Vincent and 
 his wife had counted to stem the tide of bankruptcy 
 which was beginning to invade their house. Madame 
 Daudet's brothers, it then transpired, had embarked 
 the whole of their father's assets in speculations of 
 the wildest kind. Not a franc of the estate could 
 be realized, and Madame Vincent Daudet received 
 nothing. This great disappointment greatly em- 
 bittered her husband, and brought dissension into 
 the family. He at first determined to sue his 
 brothers - in - law, and though he abandoned this 
 project, he always refused to be reconciled to any 
 one of them. When Madame Daudet tried to bring- 
 about a better understanding between him and her 
 family, he used to fly into a violent passion and, like 
 M. Eysette, 'throw all around him into a tremble.' 
 Even the optimist Ernest cannot but paint the 
 situation at home in black colours, and here he is 
 in accordance with Alphonse when he says that his 
 childhood was a most unhappy one. He says that 
 the death of M. Reynaud was the starting-point of 
 long and deep family dissensions. ' A black sorrow 
 floated over our house. Our dear mother's eyes 
 were never dry. Under the influence of his cares, 
 my father had become sensitive, irritable.' 
 
 The immediate result of this loss of fortune was 
 that expenses had to be reduced all round. Ernest
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 43 
 
 was taken away from the school at which he was 
 studying and put to a less expensive establishment. 
 Alphonse was kept on at a small preparatory school, 
 known as the Canivet Institution, where he was 
 beginning to learn Latin a study in which he took 
 great delight, and to which he always, in conse- 
 quence, applied himself with great industry. He 
 became a good Latin scholar, and retained his 
 knowledge of the language, so that when he became 
 a father and his son Leon was at school, he was 
 able to help him in his studies, going over all his 
 Latin books with him. His favourite Latin author 
 was Tacitus, who, he considers, has had a great 
 influence on French literature since Chateaubriand. 
 He disliked Cicero, but that is probably because 
 Cicero was a politician, and Daudet all his life has 
 disliked and despised both politics and politicians. 
 
 Both Ernest and Alphonse Daudet acknowledge 
 a debt of deep gratitude to their father for con- 
 tinuing their education in spite of his reverses and 
 his necessity of practising the strictest economy. A 
 cousin of his, a man of sound common-sense, as he 
 considered himself, with that habit of giving advice 
 to poor relations which is a characteristic of people 
 who have prospered in the world, was constantly 
 urging him to put his boys to a trade. Nothing, he 
 opined, was better for a lad than to know some
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 kind of manual labour, and he qualified Vincent 
 Daudet's firm resolution to give his sons, since he 
 could give them no fortune, at least a sound educa- 
 tion, as foolish pride. It was all the more courageous 
 on Vincent's part to refuse to listen to this advice 
 that he was deeply indebted to this rich cousin, and 
 ran great risks in offending him. Fortunately for 
 French literature, neither Ernest nor Alphonse 
 was put to a trade, and it was in other respects 
 only that the expenses of the Daudets' household 
 were reduced. To begin with, the pleasant apart- 
 ment in the Maison Vallongue was given up and 
 the family removed to the father's factory on the 
 Avignon road so elaborately described in the first 
 chapter of ' Le Petit Chose ' a factory which, with 
 its empty workrooms, smokeless chimneys, and 
 motionless machinery, was a very emblem of what 
 had lived and was dead. Apart from this, it was a 
 comfortable home, with large rooms, spacious and 
 airy, the very place for boys to play in, with its 
 large, deserted courtyards and untenanted work- 
 shops, its curious and attractive steam-engine, and 
 the vast garden running wild under the lilacs and the 
 fig-trees. Into this desolation, then, was suddenly 
 let loose a band of merry children, the Daudets and 
 their cousins, breaking the silence of the vacant and 
 lifeless factory with their peals of laughter, their
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 45 
 
 Provencal songs, and the sound of their hurrying 
 and restless feet. 
 
 It was in this house that the family was increased 
 by the birth of a little girl, to-day Madame Allard, 
 and by the arrival of one of the uncles from Lyons, 
 who came to live with the Daudets. His intention 
 was to direct the factory, and the dyeing-rooms in 
 particular, as soon as work was resumed. In the 
 meanwhile he spent his time in amusing himself 
 with his paint-box, colouring the engravings in a 
 collection of volumes which he had brought with 
 him. When all these books were coloured he 
 exercised his taste and his paint-box on anything 
 that fell into his hands. There was long shown in 
 the Daudet family a Spanish grammar which had 
 been illustrated in colours by this old gentleman. 
 He was particularly fond of his nephew Alphonse, 
 whose games he often shared, whose peccadilloes he 
 hid from the paternal anger. Alphonse has pour- 
 trayed him in ' Le Nabab ' in the person of the cashier 
 of La Caisse Territoriale. His artistic instincts 
 have been transmitted through his nephew, Alphonse, 
 to his grand-nephew, Lucien Daudet, who shows a 
 decided taste for the paint-box and all its works, 
 and is to be the painter of the family. 
 
 The Daudets were not to remain long in this 
 house, for after the elections of 1848 the factory,
 
 46 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 doomed to eternal inactivity, was sold to the 
 Carmelites. Alphonse Daudet has related his feel- 
 ings as a child on losing so magnificent a play- 
 ground in ' Le Petit Chose ' : 'It was a terrible 
 
 o 
 
 blow. It seemed to me as if the heavens were 
 falling in. The factory sold ! Yes, and what about 
 my desert island, my caves and huts ? Alas ! island, 
 caves, and huts, all had been sold, all had to be 
 quitted. My God, how I cried ! I had no more 
 any heart in my play, as well you may think ; oh, 
 none at all ! ... I used to go and sit down in every 
 corner, and looking at the objects around me, used 
 to speak to them as though they were living persons ; 
 I used to say to the plane-trees : " Farewell, my 
 dear friends!" and to the fountain-basins: "All is 
 over we shall never meet again." 
 
 On leaving the factory, Vincent Daudet installed 
 his family in a small apartment in the Rue Seguier, 
 and went off to Lyons to take a place as employe in 
 a commercial house. There was a garden attached 
 to the house in the Rue Seguier, with trees and 
 flowers and a deserted conservatory ; but in spite of 
 this, and of the fact that the landlady's little girl was 
 only too ready to play the part of the faithful Friday, 
 or of a crew of mutineers, or of a tribe of infuriated 
 savages, Alphonse had lost his taste for games, in 
 which he was forced to draw upon his imagination,
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 47 
 
 and seemed to prefer the noisy sports of his com- 
 rades at the Canivet school. Doubtless his imagina- 
 tion needed to lie fallow for awhile, whilst the active 
 little body, tingling with health, cried out for its 
 share of amusement. He became fond of playing 
 off practical jokes on others, and he and his comrades 
 on one famous occasion very nearly caused the death 
 of one of their victims, a solitary old man who lived 
 in a mysterious manner in a house which was always 
 shut up. Alphonse and his friends used to ring the 
 old man's bell every evening as they returned from 
 school, and then run away, as boys have done since 
 there were boys, and bells to ring. But the victim 
 in this case was a man of limited patience, and one 
 night ambushed himself, falling upon them in fury 
 in the very act of annoyance. They were able to 
 make good their escape in great terror, though hotly 
 pursued, and took refuge in Alphonse Daudet's 
 home. Their pursuer, mistaking his way in the 
 dark, fell down a flight of stairs into a coal-cellar and 
 nearly broke his neck. 
 
 It was shortly after this incident, in the spring of 
 1849, that the Daudets left Nimes for Lyons to 
 rejoin their father. Madame Daudet separated from 
 her family and birthplace in tears ; the boys, on the 
 other hand, were pleased at the prospect of a change. 
 Alphonse, in particular, was delighted at the thought
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 of the voyage on a steamer from Valence to Lyons, 
 the realization in part of his long-cherished desire 
 for a life on the water. ' I dare say,' he said to the 
 writer in speaking of his youth, ' that it was from my 
 love of the water that I felt quite happy when I left 
 Nimes for Lyons, because I there saw water and 
 boats, and it was in some ways a realization of my 
 longings.' Yet at heart he dearly loved his native 
 Provence, and has retained his affection for it all his 
 life, in spite of nearly forty years of Paris. It is 
 interesting to hear him talk of Nimes, that country 
 of monuments, where he played at marbles in the 
 ruins of the temple of Diana, and raced with his 
 little comrades in the devastated Roman arena ; of 
 Provence, the beautiful country of which he says 
 that he is proud of his relation to it, with its patois 
 gros en escompette ; of the Nimois in particular, and 
 the Provencals in general, who may be divided into 
 two classes the Huguenots and the Catholics, the 
 former typified in Guizot, laughing, when they 
 laugh, en long, that is to say, from nose to chin ; the 
 latter represented by Thiers, the Catholic South, 
 which laughs en large, from ear to ear ; living side 
 by side, but distinct and different always, their 
 smouldering resentments often breaking out, so that 
 even the children will fight amongst themselves irr 
 Homeric battles with stones, as described in ' Les
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 49 
 
 Rois en Exil.'* There is to this day to be seen on 
 Alphonse Daudet's forehead a cicatrice, which he 
 received in one of these fights from a Huguenot 
 stone. He is a great admirer of his own people, 
 the Provencaux, whom he considers as largely of 
 Moorish extraction, a circumstance from which he 
 has drawn much of the humour of his books, and 
 notably of his Tartarin series. It is funny, he con- 
 siders, to hear of men with bushy black hair and 
 flaring eyes, having all the appearance of bandits or 
 wild warriors, men of exuberant natures and the 
 most excited verbosity, who are, the one a peaceful 
 baker, the other the least offensive and mildest of 
 apothecaries. 
 
 * The reminiscences of Elysee Meraut in ' Les Rois en Exil ' are 
 those of Alphonse Daudet, for Elyse"e Meraut is Alphonse 
 Daudet. Describing his childhood in this book, he writes : 
 ' . . . He was allowed a little of that good liberty which is so neces- 
 sary to childhood, a liberty which he employed in running about 
 the enclos all day long, and in battling on the mound on which the 
 windmills stood, whites against reds, Catholics against Huguenots. 
 For these hatreds still survive in this part of Languedoc. The 
 children used to divide themselves into two camps, each choosing 
 a windmill, the crumbling masonry of which served them for 
 ammunition ; then a crossfire of invectives broke out, the slings 
 began to hiss, and for hours together Homeric fights were fought, 
 invariably ending in a tragic manner with some bleeding cut on 
 the forehead of some lad of ten years old, or in the tangle of 
 some head of silken hair, one of those wounds received in child- 
 hood which leave a lifelong mark on the tender skin, a wound 
 like those which Elysee, arrived at man's estate, still showed on 
 his temple and at the corner of his mouth.' 
 
 4
 
 5 o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' Oh, my childhood !' exclaims Alphonse Daudet, 
 writing about this journey to Lyons, ' what an im- 
 pression you have left upon me. It seems to me 
 that it was only yesterday that this voyage on the 
 Rhone took place. I can still see the steamship, its 
 passengers, its crew, and hear the sound of the 
 wheels and the whistle of the engine.' 
 
 The voyage lasted three days. Alphonse spent 
 the whole of his time on deck in the bows, feasting 
 his eyes on the expanse of water, which between 
 Valence and Lyons is in places so great that the 
 banks of the Rhone can barely be descried, though 
 not great enough for the lad's immense desire. ' I, 
 for my part, would have liked the expanse to be 
 larger still, to be that which has the name of " Sea." 
 When some little island in the river was passed by, 
 the lad's heart would beat with excitement. Here 
 was the desert island of his dreams. How delight- 
 ful it would be to live there, a Robinson Crusoe of 
 the Rhone, with no company but a parrot, till in due 
 time a Friday should come upon the scene, and a 
 tribe of savages should not be wanting. It may 
 almost be believed that for such a life he would at 
 that time have left his brother and sister and the 
 pale and fragile little woman in black, who was 
 sitting in the cabin with tearful eyes, and a heart 
 which throbbed as each turn of the paddle-wheels
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 51 
 
 removed her still further away from her beloved 
 home. Yet Alphonse was very fond of his mother, 
 and it is a pleasant thing to-day to hear him speak 
 with infinite pity of the dolorous mother that she 
 was. ' I shall never agree with those who deny the 
 comfort of religion,' he said in conversation with the 
 writer, ' for I can never forget of what solace it was 
 to my poor mother when I was a child. At home 
 she was often in tears, and always in distress and 
 sorrow, and anxiety used to distort her beautiful 
 face. But when she went to church, and took me 
 with her, holding her hand, even on the threshold 
 an expression of peace would spread itself over her 
 face. I always used to look up into her countenance 
 as we passed through the swinging doors, for the 
 change was so marked and so miraculous. All the 
 lines of pain seemed to efface themselves, the drawn 
 lips relaxed, her step became lighter, a joyousness 
 invaded her whole frail person, her eyes unveiled 
 themselves and became bright, and the two hours 
 which she used to spend in the church were two 
 hours of happiness, the only happiness she knew.' 
 
 The removal to Lyons was not to bring any 
 change for the better to the Daudet family. On the 
 contrary, it was the commencement of a fresh series 
 of misfortunes. Apart from this, these Provencaux 
 suffered greatly under this transplantation from the
 
 5 2 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 glaring sun and intense white light of the vivid 
 South, with all its colour and exuberant vitality. 
 Alphonse describes his impressions of Lyons in the 
 following terms : ' I remember a low-hanging, soot- 
 coloured sky, an unceasing mist rising from the two 
 rivers. It does not rain, it drizzles ; and cloyed by 
 the mugginess of the atmosphere, the walls weep, 
 damp oozes from the pavement, the balusters of the 
 staircases cling to the fingers. The appearance of 
 the inhabitants, their gait, their way of speaking, all 
 manifest the dampness of the air.' 
 
 This dampness seems to have entered the very 
 organism of the once cheerful Ernest, who, from the 
 optimist lad that he was, gradually changed into the 
 tearful boy whom Alphonse has described with such 
 tender humour in his ' Le Petit Chose.' ' There 
 was developed in me,' writes Ernest, ' a morbid 
 sensitiveness, the germ of which I had inherited 
 from my mother. I used to cry for any and every 
 thing, for the slightest reproach, for a question 
 which it puzzled me to answer. Nobody could 
 understand this characteristic of mine. I did not 
 understand it myself, and I should have been sorely 
 perplexed to explain the reason of my tears.' 
 
 4 A strange child, my brother Jacques,' writes 
 Alphonse about Ernest. ' There was one who had 
 the gift of tears. As far back as my memory goes,
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 53 
 
 I see him with red eyes and streaming cheeks. In 
 the evening, in the morning, by day, by night, in 
 the class-room, at home, when out walking, he used 
 to weep unceasingly ; he used to weep in every 
 place. If one asked him, "What is the matter with 
 you ?" he would answer through his sobs, "There's 
 nothing the matter with me." And the strangest 
 thing about it was, that there really was nothing the 
 matter with him. He used to weep as people use 
 their handkerchiefs, only oftener, that is all. Some- 
 times M. Eysette, exasperated, would say to my 
 mother : " That child is ridiculous ! Look at him ! 
 . . . He is a real torrent." To which Madame Eysette 
 used to answer in her soft voice : " Never mind, my 
 dear ; he will grow out of it. I was like him at his 
 age." In the meanwhile Jacques grew, grew greatly, 
 in fact, but did not grow out of it. On the contrary, 
 this strange boy's singular faculty for shedding 
 torrents of tears without any provocation or reason 
 increased every day.' 
 
 On landing at Lyons the children were met by 
 their father. Of what necessity the strictest economy 
 had become is shown by the fact that, tired as they 
 all were by the long journey, they had to walk from 
 the quay to their new home. This was a damp and 
 sombre apartment on the fourth floor of an old 
 house in the Rue Lafont, with a sticky staircase and
 
 54 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 a courtyard which resembled a well. The house- 
 porter was a cobbler, and had his workshop in a 
 kind of black hole behind the pump. The kitchen 
 was full of blackbeetles, which swarmed out of the 
 sink, and the first evening was spent by the lads and 
 the old servant who had followed them in their 
 exile from the land of the sun in a Homeric battle 
 against these nauseous insects. Alphonse says that 
 this circumstance alone sufficed to disgust him 
 utterly with Lyons. There were, however, many 
 other reasons in the life in Lyons why, by contrast, 
 the Daudets were constantly regretting their native 
 Provence. Everything was different and unusual. 
 Instead of the large, long loaves on which at table it 
 was so easy to make with the point of the knife that 
 sign of the cross without which few Southerners 
 care to break their bread, they found at Lyons 
 nothing but round touronnes, or wreaths of bread, 
 of a form so unfamiliar as to divest the loaf of that 
 interest, almost rising to affection, with which 
 children regard one of the first things which they 
 know as good. 
 
 Again, at all the shops their Proven9al accent, the 
 Southern names they gave to things, made the 
 shopkeepers laugh at them. Alphonse describes 
 the contempt with which a Lyons butcher asked 
 their old cook what she meant by a carbonade the
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 55 
 
 meat for a hash or stew a term unknown in Lyons, 
 yet familiar in the South, and also in Flanders, 
 where a carbonade de bceuf is a favourite dish. 
 
 But it was home-sickness that afflicted them most 
 of all, an intense longing for the South, with its 
 colour, its brightness, and its sun. It is said that 
 of all people the Swiss most suffer, when away from 
 their country, from the ' woe for home ' ; and it is 
 related that certain Swiss prisoners, reminded of the 
 Alps by a familiar tune, once risked their lives in a 
 wild dash for liberty. But it is certain that the 
 Southern Frenchman finds it very difficult to accli- 
 matize himself in any district, even in France, which 
 is not his own flaring, scorching land, with its maize- 
 fields and vineyards, its pine-forests and cork-trees, 
 and the long, white, dusty roads. No more clannish 
 people are to be found in Paris than the ' people of 
 the South ' ; no patois is anywhere more religiously 
 preserved than theirs ; and into the capital of the 
 most refined gastronomy they have introduced, and 
 on its kitchens they have imposed, their barbarous 
 dishes, greasy with oil, pestiferous with garlic. 
 
 The Daudets suffered bitterly in the dank and 
 foggy air of the great Rhone-side manufacturing 
 city. On Sundays the children used to walk out 
 with their mother and the old servant on the quays, 
 and always, as by instinct, turned in a southerly
 
 56 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 direction, because,, as their mother used to say, that 
 seemed to bring them nearer home. 
 
 'These family walks were doleful,' says Alphonse. 
 4 Father scolded, Ernest cried all the time. As for 
 me, I always lagged behind for what reason I do 
 not know ; I was ashamed to be out-of-doors, no 
 doubt because we were poor.' 
 
 The first to give in to .this feeling of home-sick- 
 ness was Annette, the old servant, whose health 
 suffered so seriously from the fogs of Lyons that she 
 had to be sent home, though greatly against her will, 
 for she was devoted to Madame Daudet. ' We had 
 to put her into the train by force,' says Alphonse.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS. 
 
 AFTER the enforced loss of their old and faithful 
 servant, the Daudets for sake of economy dispensed 
 with any domestic assistance, a retrenchment which 
 seemed to Alphonse the climax of poverty and 
 wretchedness. The rough work was done by the 
 wife of the cobbler-porter, and as to the rest of the 
 household drudgery, it was valiantly performed by 
 Madame Daudet, who at the call of duty, like the 
 noble, leal-hearted woman that she was, shook off 
 the imaginary dreamland which had enshrouded her, 
 and with tucked-up sleeves and apron-covered form 
 courageously faced the most sordid tasks of life. 
 The kitchen fire spoiled her olive complexion ; the 
 sink waters roughened her delicate white hands ; and, 
 taken up with keen scrutiny of butchers' and bakers' 
 bills, she had no leisure for other reading. Her 
 romances had to be laid aside, the realities of life 
 had to be faced.
 
 S 8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Ernest used to help her in the housekeeping. It 
 was he who used to go to market and purchase the 
 provisions, which he would bring home in a little 
 basket. In the meantime Alphonse was following 
 the bent of his imagination, and so it has been 
 with these two brothers throughout life. Ernest, 
 the laborious, has worked hard all his life, but in a 
 market - going, provision - home - bringing fashion ; 
 whilst Alphonse, less laborious, following the bent 
 of his imagination, untrammelled by any Martha- 
 like sense of activity, has won the better prize. 
 
 Some months after the arrival of the family in 
 Lyons, Ernest and Alphonse, on the representations 
 of their elder brother Henry, were placed as pupils 
 at the monastic school of St. Pierre. Alphonse was 
 at that time about ten years old. Their father 
 being unable to pay any fees for their instruction, 
 they were admitted as sizars, and it was part of their 
 duty to assist in chapel as choir-boys, a duty which, 
 no doubt, in remembrance of their games in Nimes, 
 they enjoyed to a certain extent. In exchange for 
 these services they were admitted without charge to 
 the Latin and Greek classes. Apparently, however, 
 the instruction gained was of the most superficial 
 kind, all their time being taken up with their 
 religious exercises. Ernest relates that during this 
 period he was most unhappy, and, tearful as he was
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 59 
 
 and had been, never, in his opinion, cried so much 
 as then. 
 
 ' I was so clumsy,' he says, ' I never could learn 
 how to serve at Mass, and one day when I was all 
 alone I got so muddled that I rang the Sane f us at 
 the Gospel, throwing all the faithful into the greatest 
 confusion.' 
 
 Here, again, the contrast between the two brothers 
 forces itself on the attention. Whilst Ernest never 
 cried so much as during his period of service at the 
 mandcanterie, Alphonse found the life there ' very 
 amusing.' 
 
 ' Instead of cramming our heads with Greek and 
 Latin, as in other schools, we were taught to assist 
 the priest at Mass in the central and side aisles, to 
 chant the anthems, to bend the knee, to swing the 
 censers with elegance, which is a matter of great 
 difficulty. It is true that now and again in the 
 course of the day some time was given to declen- 
 sions and the Epitome, but these were only acces- 
 sories. Before anything else we were there for the 
 service of the church. At least once a week the 
 Abbe would say to us, between two pinches of 
 snuff, and in a solemn voice : " To-morrow, gentle- 
 men, there will be no school in the morning. We 
 have to attend a funeral." 
 
 Ernest, it may be presumed, used to weep
 
 60 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 copiously at this dismal announcement. As to 
 Alphonse : ' We had to attend a funeral. What 
 happiness ! Then there were christenings, mar- 
 riages, a visit from my lord the Bishop, the Viaticum 
 to be carried to a sick person. Oh, the Viaticum, 
 how proud one was to be able to accompany it ! ... 
 Under a little canopy of red velvet walked the 
 priest, carrying the Host and the sacred oils. Two 
 choir-boys carried the canopy, two others escorted 
 it with large gilt lanterns. A fifth preceded it, 
 ringing a little bell ; this usually was my function. 
 As the Viaticum passed by, the men uncovered 
 themselves, the women made the sign of the cross. 
 When we passed before a military post, the sentry 
 used to cry out : " To arms !" and the soldiers would 
 run out and form themselves in line. " Present 
 arms !" the officer used to cry. The rifles clattered, 
 the drummer beat a salute. I rang my little bell 
 thrice, as at the Sanctus, and on we went. 
 
 1 Each of us had a complete ecclesiastical outfit in 
 a little cupboard a black cassock with a long train, 
 an alb, a surplice with wide sleeves stiffened with 
 starch, black silk stockings, two calottes (one of 
 cloth and the other of velvet), neckbands trimmed 
 with little white beads, all that was necessary. It 
 appears that this costume suited me very well. 
 " One could eat him like that," my mother used to
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 61 
 
 say. Unfortunately, I was very small, and that 
 filled me with despair. Imagine that, even when 
 standing on tiptoe, I did not reach higher than the 
 white stockings of our beadle ; and then I was so 
 weak. One day at Mass, whilst changing the 
 Gospels, the big book was so heavy that it dragged 
 me down with it. I fell full length on the steps of 
 the altar. The reading-desk was broken and the 
 service was interrupted. It was a Pentecost day. 
 What a scandal ! Apart from these small draw- 
 backs occasioned by my small stature, I was very 
 satisfied with my lot, and often in the evening when 
 going to bed my brother and I would say to each 
 other : " After all, life at the mandcanterie is very 
 'amusing." 
 
 Alphonse, it must be recorded, used to contribute 
 to the excitements to be found in this theatrical 
 life, so apt to please an imaginative colour-loving 
 Meridional, and here also followed the bent of his 
 will and of his fancy. He was an undisciplined 
 child, fond of the wildest pranks. One clay he dug 
 out a mine under the cupboards in which the choir- 
 boys kept their vestments, charged it with gun- 
 powder, and set fire to it. There was a terrific 
 explosion, but no harm was done. 
 
 When not engaged at school the boys used to 
 make long excursions in the neighbourhood of Lyons,
 
 62 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 which at that time still had a certain charm of 
 natural beauty. There were the Charpennes, the 
 Tete d'Or, the woods of La Pape, which to-day 
 have long since vanished before the all-pervading 
 railway. These rustic and sylvan sites were most 
 delightful to the little Southerners, who knew Nature 
 only in her parched and arid aspects, and, indeed, 
 they revelled in the tender green of the woods and 
 meadows with all the freshness of their running 
 waters. There was here the wherewithal to slake 
 the thirst of their fevered imaginations ; it was here 
 that there germinated in the mind of Alphonse 
 Daudet that love for the country which to-day makes 
 him find the winter spent in his Paris apartment all 
 too long, and pine for the first fine days which shall 
 allow him to return with all his family to his 
 beautiful country home on the banks of the Seine 
 at Champrosay. 
 
 Finding that his sons were not making any pro- 
 gress at the monastic school, and firm in his deter- 
 mination to endow them at least with a good 
 education, Vincent Daudet at last removed them 
 from the mandcanterie and placed them at the 
 Lyons Lycee, where, after a preliminary examina- 
 tion, they were admitted, Ernest to the fifth and 
 Alphonse to the sixth class. Neither was destined 
 to finish his studies there, and this is perhaps a
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 63 
 
 fortunate thing for French literature, for, indeed, it 
 is difficult to imagine an educational system more 
 calculated to crush out all individuality, to mould 
 in one mould, to impose prejudices in the matter 
 of taste, and mere uniformity in the matter of 
 style, to rob of all audacity in conception and 
 originality in realization of conceptions, than that 
 of the French Lycee. Manliness, initiative, inde- 
 pendence are by this system treated as so many 
 pernicious weeds, to be weeded out with a firm and 
 unrelenting hand, and the fact remains that by far 
 the larger number of contemporary Frenchmen who 
 have distinguished themselves in after-life are men 
 who, from a Lycee point of view, were failures 
 in their youth. Take one example only, that of 
 Emile Zola. Was not this most successful man of 
 letters considered by his masters as hopeless, and 
 did he not fail to secure even the bachelorship 
 which is the young Frenchman's indispensable pass- 
 port to a position of any kind ? 
 
 The Daudets began their life at the Lyons Lycee 
 under very unfavourable circumstances. Being poor 
 children, they were dressed in blouses, a costume 
 worn by children of all degrees in Nimes, but in 
 Lyons only by the 'gones,' as the Lyons schoolboys 
 called them ' the cads,' as the generous English 
 schoolboy would style them. Ernest describes the
 
 feeling of shame with which he and his brother first 
 entered the vast playground of their new school, 
 and how the other lads crowded round them jibing 
 and mocking at their strange attire, as only children 
 can. ' We were at once classified amongst the poor 
 devils whose parents bleed themselves at every vein 
 in order to pay the expenses of their education. 
 The most elegant of our comrades disdained to 
 associate with the newcomers, and affected towards 
 us haughty or patronizing manners. A little later 
 we were fitted with less humiliating costumes, but 
 the effect had been produced and the impression 
 remained.' 
 
 As to Alphonse, he describes his first impressions 
 of school-life at Lyons Lycee as follows : ' What 
 struck me first of all on my arrival at the school was 
 that I was the only boy who wore a blouse. At 
 Lyons the sons of rich people do not wear blouses ; 
 these are only worn by the street-children, the 
 "gones" as they were called. I had a blouse, a 
 little chequered blouse, which dated from the fac- 
 tory. I wore a blouse, and looked like a "gone." 
 When I entered the class-room the boys laughed, 
 and said: "I say, he's got a blouse!" The pro- 
 fessor made a grimace, and at once took a dislike 
 to me. After that, whenever he spoke to me, it 
 was with the tip of his lips and with a contemptuous
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 65 
 
 air. He never used to call me by my name. He 
 would always say : " Hullo, you there, little What's- 
 your-name." 
 
 Little What's-your-name, however, very soon dis- 
 tinguished himself above his better-dressed comrades. 
 He was a good lad, and seeing what was the state 
 of things at home, set to work with energy to do his 
 best towards remedying the present in the future. 
 He worked very hard -indeed, but then, as now, 
 intermittently. And as to-day Alphonse Daudet 
 will keep aloof for months together from his work- 
 table, whilst others, like Zola, are working steadily 
 day by day, so at that time also, after the first few 
 weeks at the school, the little Daudet used to 
 truant. For years together he used to absent him- 
 self sometimes as often as three or four times a 
 week from the class-room, but never from the com- 
 position class. In spite of this habit he was always 
 at the head of his form, and was considered by all 
 his masters as a lad of the highest promise. 
 
 By the time he had reached the third form he 
 had developed a very pretty style of versification, in 
 which he was so apt that when the subject of an 
 essay was set he would write it, not in prose, but in 
 verse. One of these poetical compositions was 
 highly praised in the class by his professor. The 
 subject was 'The Praise of Homer,' which Alphonse 
 
 5
 
 66 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 treated in the form of an ode, of which only the last 
 few lines have survived. As a specimen of Daudet's 
 poetic quality at that early age they may be repro- 
 duced here : 
 
 ' . . . Et dans quatre mille ans 
 Au milieu des tombeaux et des peuples croulants 
 Comme un sphinx endormi, colosse fait de pierre, 
 Tu pourras soulever lentement ta paupiere, 
 Regarder le chaos et dire avec orgeuil : 
 Au vieil Homere il faut un monde pour cercueil.' 
 
 Good verses these for a lad of thirteen years of 
 age. 
 
 Ernest gives another specimen of his brother's 
 poetical production at this early period of his life. 
 It is a fragment of a romantic piece of verse, which 
 was written during the lesson in a kind of crypto- 
 gram to avoid its being read by the schoolmaster. 
 It may be quoted : 
 
 ' Rito, beau capitaine au service du doge, 
 Etait un gai luron, 1'oeil bleu, le poil blondin 
 Qui lorgnait gentiment une belle dans sa loge, 
 Et qui portait toujours des gants en peau de daim 
 Mainte fois, il avait tire" 1'epee, et meme 
 II avait fait, dit-on, gras pendant le careme. 
 Dieu sait si les maris le redoutaient. Rito 
 Leur rendait fort souvent visile incognito.' 
 
 The composition of these verses is fair ; the subject, 
 considering that it is treated by a lad of thirteen, is 
 deplorable. It is, however, a very good example of
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 67 
 
 what is the constant preoccupation of most lads at a 
 French Lycee, who, at an age when most English 
 boys thanks to the English system of education 
 are in pure ignorance of what is evil, are well aware 
 of things which for every reason they should ignore. 
 In Daudet's case this precocious knowledge of the 
 evil of life has produced no bad effects ; but what 
 about the hundreds of unchildlike elves whom one 
 sees on Sunday afternoons in the streets of Paris or 
 in the brasseries of the Latin Quarter, leering like 
 dissolute old men, with the last tinge of freshness 
 faded from their faces as it has from their souls ? 
 
 While playing truant Alphonse was protected by 
 his brother Ernest, who, when the headmaster sent in 
 reports of his brother's absence to M. Daudet, used 
 to intercept them, and answer them in his father's 
 name in such a way that the younger boy escaped 
 scathless. Each time that he had committed one 
 of these innocent forgeries on his brother's behalf, 
 Ernest would give Alphonse a lecture, and Alphonse 
 would promise never to do it again. But, as Ernest 
 says, he was always doing it again. He had got 
 into the habit of a life of vagabondage, and could 
 not break himself of it. 
 
 What did he do during these frequent absences ? 
 Ernest has told us this in part ; Alphonse has supple- 
 mented his story. Alphonse's account of the way
 
 68 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 in which he employed the time when he was away 
 from school is interesting as throwing a light on his 
 character as a child. It was told at a dinner at 
 Flaubert's house, when Daudet spoke of his child- 
 hood, ' a feverish and troubled childhood, passed in 
 a home where there was no money, with a father 
 who changed his business or profession every day, 
 in the eternal fog of the city of Lyons, already 
 abominated by this young soul enamoured of the 
 sun. Then prolonged reading he was not twelve 
 years old at the time the reading of poets, of 
 works of imagination which excited his brain, 
 readings stimulated by the intoxication produced 
 by liquors stolen at home, readings abroad during 
 whole days whilst rowing about in boats which he 
 used to break from their moorings on the quays." 
 
 ' And,' adds De Goncourt, who reports this con- 
 versation, ' in the burning reverberation of the two 
 streams, intoxicated with reading and with sweetened 
 alcohol and short - sighted as he was the child 
 came as in a dream to live through a hallucination, 
 or, in other words, he passed untouched through 
 the reality of things.' 
 
 At Lyons, at least, Alphonse was able to indulge 
 in his passion for the water. The boatmen did not 
 profit much by this passion, for, as he himself told 
 Flaubert, he used to take the boats without leave,
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 69 
 
 as his fancy prompted him to do. And once 
 embarked, there was no thought of home or school 
 left to him, and away he would row, down the 
 Saone or the Rhone, in quest of strange adventures, 
 or trifling incidents which his vivid imagination 
 could transform into adventures worthy to be 
 chronicled by a Defoe. 
 
 His brother is of opinion that these excursions, 
 with all the exercise of imagination which they 
 entailed, contributed largely to the development of 
 his extraordinary precocity. ' Unconsciously, he 
 gathered there ineffaceable impressions, thanks to 
 which later on he was able to write stories so 
 penetratingly full of life. He used to come back 
 home pale, exhausted, with haggard face, drunk 
 with the fatigue, with the fresh air, his eyes full of 
 visions of eddying waters.' 
 
 Ernest used to wait for him so as to let him in 
 without attracting the attention of their parents, and 
 in a whisper would prime him what to say, and 
 whether his absence had been noticed or not. One 
 day, he relates, Alphonse came home in a sad 
 state. Some vicious comrades had intoxicated him 
 with absinthe, and he could barely stagger along. 
 Ernest was, however, able to put him on his guard, 
 telling him that his father was there, and Alphonse, 
 succeeding in pulling himself together, explained
 
 70 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 that he had been detained at school by a visit from 
 the University inspector, and that his appearance 
 was due to the fact that he was dying of hunger. 
 
 It is curious, as Ernest points out, that, having 
 run after such pleasures in his youth, having so 
 indulged himself, and having so given way to the 
 numerous temptations with which he was beset, his 
 brother should have lost none of the fineness of his 
 nature, none of his fine intellectual and moral 
 qualities, none of the vivacity of his intelligence, the 
 delicacy of his wit, the freshness of his mind, the 
 flower of his honesty. Almost anyone else, says 
 Ernest, would have been ruined. In his case the 
 test has given results directly contrary to those 
 which one might have been justified in fearing. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet's salvation, no doubt, was in his 
 early marriage, and he himself is the first to acknow- 
 ledge his debt in this respect also to his admirable 
 partner. For as the child had been, so was the 
 young man ; but before the ruinous habits had been 
 definitely acquired, and that fatal border-line which 
 separates a curiosity about vice from constitutional 
 viciousness had been crossed, he had the supreme 
 fortune to meet the lady who is now his wife, who, 
 like the Agnes of David Copperfield, has been his 
 guardian angel, protecting him against himself. 
 * Even after my marriage,' he has told the writer,
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 71 
 
 ' my wildness troubled me still, just as after a storm 
 big waves keep rolling in, although the tempest has 
 ceased. I used to come home at all hours of the 
 night, and from all sorts of places, often in the 
 saddest states, stained with liquor, bleeding from 
 fights in the sorriest stews ; and my wife, who knew 
 that at heart I was not bad, just waited and waited, 
 allowing me to feel my conduct without reproaching 
 me, and in the end succeeded in buckling me down.' 
 
 How many of the frowzy, middle-aged Bohemians 
 who are constantly to be seen behind piled-up saucers 
 of pots of beer in the tap-rooms of the Latin Quarter 
 drinking - places in Paris, with greasy frock-coats 
 buttoned tightly over indescribable under garments, 
 and shiny, flat-brimmed hats tilted back on heads 
 too early denuded of their hair men who never 
 have, never will, never can accomplish anything, 
 who spend their lives in drinking and talking, whc 
 know no society but that of fellow-tipplers and the for- 
 lornest of womankind might not have been saved, 
 if not for equal glory and fortune, at least to lives of 
 decency and usefulness, if at some time in their lives, 
 ere it was too late and the border-line was crossed, 
 they had met a oentle woman guardian angel, who, be- 
 coming wife and friend, had also buckled them down ! 
 
 In spite of his many escapades and the irregular 
 conduct which has been described, Alphonse appears
 
 72 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 never to have been treated with severity by his 
 father, whose temper, soured as it was by unceasing 
 misfortune, seems rather to have vented itself on 
 the scapegoat Ernest. It was Ernest who was 
 always being scolded. It was Ernest whom his 
 father always called ' a donkey/ a circumstance 
 recorded by his brother in the story of his child- 
 hood. Indeed, Vincent Daudet seems to have 
 taken pleasure in baiting his second son, as is 
 exemplified by the famous jug scene in ' Le Petit 
 Chose,' one of the few incidents concerning Ernest, 
 depicted as Jacques Eysette, which is taken from 
 actual fact. 
 
 ' Poor Jacques ! he was not happy, he no more 
 than the others. M. Eysette, from constantly seeing 
 him with tears in his eyes, had ended by taking a 
 dislike to him, and used to shower raps down on 
 his head. All day long, one heard, "Jacques, you 
 are a duffer ! Jacques, you are a donkey !" The fact 
 of the matter is that when his father was present, 
 Jacques used to lose all his self-control. The efforts 
 which he used to make to restrain his tears ren- 
 dered him ugly. M. Eysette brought him bad luck. 
 Listen to the jug scene : 
 
 'One evening as we were sitting down to table, 
 it was noticed that there was not a drop of water 
 left in the house.
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 73 
 
 ' " If you like, I will go and fetch some," said 
 Jacques, like a good fellow. 
 
 'And so saying he takes up the jug, a large 
 stoneware jug. 
 
 ' M. Eysette shrugs his shoulders. 
 
 ' " If it's Jacques who is going to fetch it," he 
 said, " the jug is broken. That's quite sure." 
 
 1 " Do you hear, Jacques?" says Madame Eysette 
 in her quiet voice "do you hear? Don't break 
 it ; be very careful." 
 
 ' " Oh, it's no use your telling him not to break 
 it ; he will break it all the same." 
 
 ' Here Jacques in his tearful voice : 
 
 ' " But, come, why do you insist on my break- 
 ing it ?" 
 
 ' " I don't insist on your breaking it. I tell you 
 that you will break it," replies M. Eysette, in a 
 tone which admits of no answer. 
 
 ' Jacques makes no reply. He snatches up the 
 jug with a feverish hand and rushes out, as though 
 to imply, "Oh, I shall break it, shall I ? Well, 
 we shall see." 
 
 ' Five minutes, ten minutes elapse. Jacques does 
 not return. Madame Eysette begins to become 
 anxious. 
 
 ' " I only hope nothing has happened to him !" 
 
 ' " What do you suppose can have happened to
 
 74 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 him ?" says M. Eysette in a gruff voice. "He has 
 broken the jug, and does not dare come back." 
 
 ' But whilst so speaking for, with all his gruff- 
 ness, he is the best man in the world he rises and 
 goes to open the door to see what has become of 
 Jacques. He has not far to go. Jacques is stand- 
 ing on the landing, behind the door, empty-handed, 
 stricken dumb, petrified ! On seeing M. Eysette 
 he turns pale, and, in a heart-rending and feeble 
 voice oh, what a feeble voice ! he says : 
 
 ' " I have broken it." 
 
 ' He had broken it. 
 
 ' " In the archives of the Eysette family, we call 
 that " the jug scene." 
 
 His comrades, no doubt, found young Alphonse 
 Daudet too turbulent, too independent, and too 
 audacious. A certain prejudice may also have 
 existed against the lad, who at first had come to 
 the school in a blouse, but, instead of ordering him- 
 self lowly and reverently before his betters in cloth 
 jackets and gold-trimmed tunics, was winning all 
 the masters' praises and distinction far above the 
 heads of all his fellows. However it may be, 
 Alphonse made very few friends, and only one 
 whose friendship lasted into later life. This was 
 a lad called Garrison, whom Daudet has described 
 to the writer as a man of the most extraordinary
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 75 
 
 inconsequentiality, such a man, doubtless, as would 
 be known amongst us as 'a casual fellow ' in 
 our odd modern slang. Garrison often used to 
 accompany Daudet on his adventurous expeditions 
 on the Saone, and it was certainly fortunate that 
 he did so, for the young poet was much too short- 
 sighted to manage a boat properly, and when out 
 alone was more than once in imminent danger of 
 being capsized by the river steamers. With 
 Garrison at the helm this danger was averted, 
 and poor motherly Ernest, who was always quaking 
 at home in anxiety for his beloved little scapegrace 
 of a brother, expecting any hour to hear that he 
 had been drowned in the river, or had had his 
 brains beaten out by a paddle-wheel, could be at 
 rest, whilst Alphonse could undisturbedly row ahead 
 singing his sailor songs, or astounding the old 
 peasant-women washing on the banks of the Saone 
 with vigorous recitations from the poems with which 
 his head was filled. 
 
 After leaving the Lycee at Lyons Dauclet quite 
 lost sight of the ' casual ' Garrison, and it was only 
 quite recently that the latter called on him in Paris 
 under the stress of necessity. Daudet then learned 
 that Garrison had been living in Paris almost 
 as long as himself, but had never ventured to 
 come near his old school-mate, who had become
 
 76 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' a somebody.' He was silent at first about himself, 
 but, being pressed by Daudet, told him that he 
 was in business in a small street near La Roquette 
 prison, engaged in the manufacture of dolls' boots ; 
 that business was very bad, and that he had come 
 to see him in the hope that he would lend him the 
 money to start something else. He also informed 
 him that he was married, and had a son, who was 
 a comic actor at the Beaumarchais Theatre. It is 
 quite certain that Daudet, although he does not 
 say so, helped the manufacturer of dolls' boots to 
 do something else, and put in a word with one of 
 his numerous friends amongst the theatrical man- 
 agers of Paris on behalf of his son, the comic actor. 
 
 A curious psychological fact, which is connected 
 with Alphonse Daudet's schooldays, is that though 
 he has long since almost entirely forgotten the 
 faces, and even the names, of his schoolmates, he 
 to this day remembers the handwriting of each one 
 of them. Often, in his nights of fever, lying 
 awake, he sees, as in hieroglyphics upon a huge 
 wall, the writings of all those boys, and passes hours, 
 as it seems to him, in attributing each varied piece 
 of penmanship to its author. 
 
 The life of the Daudet family in Lyons, as has 
 been mentioned above, was a succession of dis- 
 asters. Step by step they went lower down in
 
 SCHOOLDAYS IN LYONS 77 
 
 poverty. The day came when they could no longer 
 afford even the gloomy apartment on the fourth- 
 floor of the house in the Rue Lafont, and were 
 forced to move once more this time to a second- 
 floor flat in an old house in the Rue Pas-Etroit, 
 near the Lycee, a badly-paved street which led out 
 on to the foggy quays of the Rhone. This apart- 
 ment was large and convenient, and let at a very 
 low rent on account of the miserable appearance 
 of the broken-down old house. The rooms were 
 sombre, for the towering walls of the Lycee kept 
 out the light ; the staircase was dark and damp. 
 Whenever the Rhone overflowed, the Rue Pas- 
 Etroit was inundated and there was more than 
 three feet of water in the Daudets' house, so that 
 its inhabitants could only travel abroad in boats. 
 This no doubt delighted the water-loving, adven- 
 turous Alphonse, who at that time, it must be said, 
 was in the full of his ' Flegel-Jahre,' as the Germans 
 call it ; a youth fond of practical jokes, as when 
 one day he sent a score of pastrycooks, bearing 
 vol-au-vents, one after another, to the house of a 
 respectable and dignified solicitor, who had ordered 
 no such pastry ; a youth frank withal, always ready 
 to take all the blame on his own shoulders, so as 
 to exculpate his mischief-loving comrades. 
 
 That every youth must sow his wild oats is of
 
 78 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 the wisdom of nations, and in every male life there 
 must be a period of the kind which the Germans 
 call ' Flegel-Jahre.' As indispensable for the proper 
 moral development of a man is this early outbreak 
 of moral maladies, as for his proper physical de- 
 velopment are certain indispensable and inevitable 
 sicknesses. It would seem that in the human being 
 the mind equally with the body must in youth cast 
 out in eruptions certain evil intrinsic humours, so 
 that, ridded of them, once and for all, they may 
 proceed untrammelled to their due expansion. And 
 just as the measles clear the blood, so do those 
 moral measles of indiscipline, revolt, republicanism, 
 concupiscence, egotism, gluttony, which affect most ' 
 young men, after their outbreak, eruption, and 
 discharge, purge the character and the morality, 
 and leave them sweet and clean. With Alphonse 
 Daudet this was certainly the case. The eruption 
 began early, was violent in its symptoms, and lasted 
 a long time, leaving him only all the more sweet 
 and clean, of a purity which has influenced him 
 in all his works, and in one of the corruptest periods 
 of French literature has always distinguished him 
 from the mass of his fellow-writers.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EARLY EFFORTS. 
 
 THE Daudets were living in their dank and sombre 
 apartment in the Rue Pas-Etroit when the coup 
 d'ttat took place an occurrence which dealt a final 
 blow to Vincent Daudet's hopes of any change for 
 the better in his lamentable affairs, for Vincent 
 Daudet was a strong Royalist, and had brought 
 up his children in the Royalist tradition. Even 
 when his affairs were at their worst, he used to look 
 forward to the return of the King to set all things 
 right, and even trivial expenses were put off until 
 the happy home - coming of the Frohsdorf exile 
 should have become a fact. ' When the King 
 returns,' he was wont to say, ' I shall buy myself 
 a new armchair.' If Madame Daudet pressed him 
 to change the paper in one of the rooms, he would 
 say: 'Wait till the King comes back.' Circulars 
 from the Royalist committees, headed with the con- 
 solatory words ' Fides, Spes,' were constantly being
 
 So ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 delivered at his house, and these circulars he would 
 read out aloud to his wife and children after the 
 day's work was done. 
 
 ' He lived,' writes Alphonse Daudet, speaking 
 about himself, ' in the midst of a Royalist legend, 
 the commemorative dates of which were the feast 
 of St. Henry and January 21 ; in an atmosphere 
 of veneration for the martyr princes who used to 
 bless the crowd with the hands of bishops, for the 
 intrepid princesses who, mounting on horseback 
 in the good cause, were persecuted, betrayed, and 
 taken by surprise under the black trap-door of some 
 fireplace in an old Brittany mansion. And to 
 render less sad this tale of mourning and exile, too, 
 sad for a child's mind, the story of " The Fowl in 
 the Pot " and the song about the " Vert-Galant " were 
 allowed to blend with it glorious souvenirs and all 
 the animation of ancient France. This song of 
 <( Le Vert - Galant " was the Marseillaise of the 
 Enclos de Rey. When on Sundays, after vespers, 
 the table having with great difficulty been made to 
 stand straight on the slope of the little garden, the 
 family was dining "in the good of the air," as they 
 say down there, in the stifling atmosphere which 
 follows upon a summer's day . . . when the old burgher 
 began to sing, in a voice which was famous amongst 
 his neighbours, the "Vive Henri Quatre, vive ce
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 81 
 
 roi vaillant," all was silent around him in the enclos. 
 . . . All joined in the chorus : 
 
 ' " A la sante de notre roi, 
 C'est un Henri de bon aloi 
 Qui fera le bien de toi, de moi." ' 
 
 One morning, however, Vincent Daudet, like all 
 his fellow-citizens, woke up to find Lyons in a state 
 of siege proclaimed by Marshal de Castellane, com- 
 manding the troops at Lyons, the walls covered 
 with Napoleon's famous proclamations, and numerous 
 Republicans, known for their detestation of the 
 policy of the Prince -President, being hurried off 
 under arrest to the various prisons of the town. 
 The unhappy silk-merchant was all the more dis- 
 tressed at the turn which affairs had taken that 
 only a few months previously, whilst on a visit to 
 Paris on business, he had been presented to the 
 leaders of the Royalist party, and that one of these 
 gentlemen, known to hold full powers from his 
 Majesty at Frohsdorf, had assured him that his 
 services to the cause and the traditional loyalty of 
 his family were not forgotten in a high place, going 
 so far as to note down his name and that of each 
 one of his children, with the promise that when the 
 good time, then within view, should come, the 
 Daudets should not be forgotten a promise and a 
 hope which no doubt had helped the unfortunate 
 
 6
 
 82 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 man to bear up courageously under the persecutions 
 of disaster in the miserable apartment in the Rue 
 Pas-Etroit. More than empty words, indeed, had 
 he received in proof that his interests would be 
 borne in mind when Frohsdorf should be exchanged 
 for the Tuileries, for had not one morning's post 
 brought a sheet of fair paper from the exiled 
 pretender, impressed with the royal seal of three 
 fleurs-de-lys, with the motto ' Fides, Spes,' and 
 bearing the words, ' Given to M. Daudet. HENRI ' ? 
 The next message that came from the Comte de 
 Chambord was of a much less reassuring character, 
 being an autographic proclamation to the nation, 
 beginning : ' Frenchmen, you are being deceived ' 
 the final confirmation of the fact that though the 
 detested Republic was over and done, it was not 
 the King that had come back. 
 
 The little Daudets were of course still too young 
 to appreciate the importance of what had occurred, 
 and both enjoyed the spectacle of the streets of 
 Lyons, with the whispering crowds before the white 
 proclamations, the hurrying policemen, and the 
 soldiers camping about the public places in open-air 
 bivouacs. Large watch - fires were burning at 
 intervals along the quays, the air rang with watch- 
 cries and pass-words and the clatter of weapons, 
 whilst all the bridges were defended with cannon.
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 83 
 
 The rumour was abroad that a Royalist invasion 
 from Switzerland was being expected, and that the 
 troops were holding themselves in readiness to repel 
 it. The excitable and imaginative Alphonse must 
 have revelled in all this commotion, and no doubt 
 amongst the many who blamed the Prince- President 
 for what he had done few were more severe in their 
 heart of hearts than this youth, who, brought up in 
 the strict Royalist tradition, has remained a Royalist 
 all his life. Alphonse would strain his ears to catch 
 the sound of the advancing troops marching under 
 the white banner, and would hope that they might 
 soon come, and, putting the soldiers of Marshal 
 Castellane to flight, bring with them all those good 
 things which he had been taught to hope for on the 
 King's return a new armchair for his father, a 
 prettier paper for his mother's room, and for him- 
 self and Ernest, no doubt, a great box full of 
 books. 
 
 At the same time, whether it was that Vincent 
 Daudet was glad to be rid of the Republic, which had 
 been so disastrous to him, at any price, or that he 
 looked on the coup d'ttat as the first step towards a 
 monarchical re-establishment, or that he deemed it 
 prudent to remain on good terms with the soldiers 
 and the authorities, it is a fact that he allowed his 
 children to carry comforts to the soldiers who were
 
 84 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 shivering in the icy fog of their Rhone-side bivouacs. 
 Just at the end of the Rue Pas-Etroit, hard by the 
 Lyc6e, a detachment of Vincennes chasseurs was 
 encamped, and to these one evening little Alphonse 
 issues forth proudly bearing a huge leg of mutton 
 trimmed with haricot beans, whilst Ernest follows 
 him bearing several bottles of wine, all of which 
 were received by the soldiers with effusive gratitude. 
 
 It was, by the way, on this leg of mutton day 
 that the autograph letter from Frohsdorf was 
 delivered in the house of the Rue Pas-Etroit, and 
 it was Ernest who read it out to his parents ' in a 
 trembling voice.' Vincent Daudet was in bed at 
 the time, doubtless entirely broken down with all 
 the adverse things that were happening. As for 
 Madame Daudet, on hearing the doleful prose of 
 the Comte de Chambord, she shed a few tears 
 4 sterile tears ' Ernest calls them. 
 
 It may be mentioned that Ernest had left school, 
 urged, no doubt, by a desire to be of immediate 
 usefulness to his unfortunate parents, and was at 
 this time already learning the rudiments of com- 
 merce. Alphonse refers to this in ' Le Petit Chose,' 
 but modifies the circumstances, for it was by his 
 free-will that 'brother Jacques' had placed himself 
 in apprenticeship with his father, writing commercial 
 letters from M. Daudet's dictation. Alphonse's
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 85 
 
 pleasantries about 'brother Jacques's' predestination 
 to a life of writing from dictation were founded on 
 fact. 
 
 And here it may be remarked that of the two 
 brothers it is the one that always played the 
 Martha role in youth to whom Fortune has been 
 less kind. An admirable litterateur, constantly 
 laborious, erudite, methodical, Trollope - like, the 
 Martha-like Ernest, author of numerous volumes 
 and of innumerable contributions to the periodical 
 press, has never got beyond a certain mediocrity of 
 success. The brighter fame of his brother Alphonse 
 has outshone his own, and a world chary of 
 admiration has, it would seem, not laurels enough 
 for two brothers of the same family. And here, 
 again, the proverbial philosophy of nations would 
 seem at fault, for certainly of two brothers, of whom 
 one rose early and worked late, was regular in his 
 conduct, filial and methodical, and the other was 
 fitful, irregular, fond of strong drink, and repeatedly 
 playing the truant, it is the former who, according 
 to all the ethics of copy-books, should have won 
 the greater prize. But this has not been so, and 
 when the name of Daudet is mentioned in the 
 world's forum it is of Alphonse, not of his laborious 
 brother Ernest, that one thinks, such is the eternal 
 injustice of things here below. That already at an
 
 86 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 early age for he wrote ' Le Petit Chose ' when he 
 was twenty-five Alphonse was cognisant of this 
 injustice is shown by the fact that in this story 
 'brother Jacques's' martyrdom is carried to the 
 extreme. To the younger, more brilliant, more 
 fortunate brother, Jacques gives up first his bride 
 and next his life. Doubtless had circumstances 
 exacted these sacrifices Ernest Daudet would have 
 conceded them, and in the history of contemporary 
 men of letters few things are more admirable than 
 this love of an elder brother for his younger and 
 more successful brother and rival. If the statue 
 of Alphonse Daudet is ever raised in any public 
 place and if the glorification of the writer who 
 was the master of French prose in the last half of 
 the nineteenth century is dear to the heart of the 
 French nation it surely will be raised then certainly 
 on the pedestal of that statue should stand on the 
 one hand the figure of Ernest Daudet, and on the 
 other that of the beautiful woman who was Alphonse 
 Daudet's wife, for it is indeed they who have 
 supported him and borne him aloft ; it is on their 
 love and devotion that his great fame is founded. 
 
 The conduct of Ernest during his father's mis- 
 fortunes in Lyons was certainly admirable. For a 
 boy of his tastes it must indeed have been a sacrifice 
 to abandon his studies, and, putting aside his pro-
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 87 
 
 nounced literary tastes, to work in his father's 
 workshop. 'How many hours,' he writes, 'did I 
 not pass there, folding goods, writing letters, draw- 
 ing up bills, making packing cases ! We toiled, 
 my father and I, like two labourers. Except that 
 we did not carry the boxes downstairs on our backs, 
 I do not see what we left for the porter, who acted 
 as our assistant, to do. But neither of us ever 
 thought of complaining ; our reward was in the 
 arrival of a customer.' 
 
 The goods manufactured by M. Daudet were 
 of excellent quality, and a good business might have 
 been founded had it not been for the absolute 
 want of capital which crippled him in all his enter- 
 prises. 
 
 ' What was lacking was money, the indispensable 
 capital, the possibility of providing for the outlay 
 necessitated by our industry. We were constantly 
 being obliged to reduce our manufacture when, on 
 the contrary, we ought to have increased it. At 
 other times, when with an effort we had succeeded 
 in stocking our shelves with goods, sales would 
 suddenly cease, under the effect of some accidental 
 crisis, and we remained without receipts of any 
 kind, after having exhausted all our resources in 
 the necessary advances. 
 
 ' What bitter cares were ours, thus tossed about
 
 88 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 between bankruptcy and protests for non-payment ! 
 And how shall I relate the anguish of the days on 
 which bills fell due ? The little notebook on which 
 all our acceptances were inscribed constantly re- 
 minded us of our obligations. . . . With heavy hearts 
 we watched these days draw nearer, hoping to be 
 able to meet our engagements through some 
 purchaser who never came. Bills were often 
 presented when we were quite unprepared to meet 
 them. Then two or three hundred pieces of foulard 
 silk would hurriedly be thrown into a box, the 
 porter would hoist the box on to his shoulders, and 
 off we would go to the traders whose sole business 
 it was to turn to their profit the embarrassments 
 of manufacturers in distress. With shame on our 
 faces and fury at heart we would sell them, dirt 
 cheap, enough of our goods to enable us to face 
 the liabilities of the day. There is no possibility 
 of growing rich in a business of that description.' 
 
 Often, moreover, this desperate method was of 
 no avail, and a day came when, on an execution 
 order, the huissiers, or bailiffs, came to seize the 
 furniture, the last belongings of this unhappy family. 
 It was one morning at seven o'clock. Madame 
 Daudet was ill in bed, Vincent was shaving himself 
 by the window, and Alphonse was seated at the 
 table giving a last look at his lessons before setting
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 
 
 out for school. There were three bailiffs, men in 
 rusty black, with the forbidding physiognomies of 
 their profession. 
 
 It was Ernest who saved his family on this 
 occasion. At the sight of these men, and on learn- 
 ing for what purpose they had come, he rushed out 
 of the house and went straight to a rich merchant 
 with whom they had been on friendly terms since 
 their arrival in Lyons. This man was also a friend 
 of the creditor, and he took upon himself to dismiss 
 the bailiffs from the apartment in the Rue Pas-Etroit, 
 interceded on Daudet's behalf, and obtained a respite 
 for him. It was Ernest's good fortune many years 
 later to meet the son of the man who had saved 
 their home at such a critical moment, when he in his 
 turn was in a position where assistance was welcome, 
 so that Ernest was able to pay off the old debt. 
 
 Though the furniture was saved on this occasion, 
 matters grew worse and worse at home. Ernest 
 was constantly being sent another little David 
 Copperfield to the neighbouring mont-de-ptite to 
 raise the money necessary for the daily expenses. 
 Madame Daudet's jewels, the silver spoons and 
 forks, were one by one deposited there in pledge. 
 It was a Micawber - like existence, and in this 
 respect, also, a great analogy exists between the 
 early life of the young Daudets and that of Charles
 
 90 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Dickens, so like both in point of appearance and 
 literary technique to Alphonse Daudet. 
 
 ' Oh, days of black misery, what a furrow you 
 have dug out in our memory, with what precocious 
 maturity you clothed our minds ! Yes, from living 
 with adversity we became men at a very early age. 
 One might become so under less trials. A child's 
 mind so soon tempers itself in such hard experi- 
 ences.' 
 
 From visiting the pawnshop, Ernest passed into 
 employment there, being engaged to receive the 
 pledges as they were handed in over the counter. 
 His salary was half a crown a day, which paid for 
 his food at home. His occupation distressed the 
 sensitive child, and remembering the miserable faces 
 that he had seen, and the lamentable manifestations 
 of poverty in the pledges offered, he was able on his 
 return home after the first day in his new employ- 
 ment to comfort his mother by saying : ' There are 
 people who are far more unhappy than we are.' A 
 few months later he obtained better employment, a 
 place as clerk in a forwarding office. 
 
 Meanwhile Alphonse was continuing his studies 
 at the Lycee. His progress was so rapid, in spite 
 of his frequent absences from school, that at the 
 age of fifteen he had already nearly finished his 
 humanities. What leisure was left him from his
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 91 
 
 studies and his wild pleasures was consecrated to 
 literature. A youth of his own age lived in the 
 house in the Rue Pas-Etroit, and this youth spent 
 the whole of his time in writing poetry, which he 
 copied out into a magnificent album, bound in black 
 morocco. The poetry was not in any way remark- 
 able, being but a youthful imitation of Victor Hugo, 
 whose ' Orientales ' and ' Odes et Ballades ' he 
 knew by heart, nor has the name of the young 
 poet of the Rue Pas-Etroit survived ; but one good 
 thing he did, by his example he stimulated the 
 two young Daudets to imitation, and, it may be, 
 was the first cause which drove them into that 
 career in which both have so distinguished them- 
 selves. Alphonse at the age of fifteen had already 
 written one or two poems, which may be read to 
 this day in his collection ' Les Amoureuses." 
 Ernest, less inspired and more troubled with the 
 perplexities of life, although fired also with literary 
 ambition, never got beyond the first verse of a poem 
 on religion which he had planned out, but never 
 wrote. Alphonse has quoted this verse in ' Le 
 Petit Chose ' : 
 
 ' Religion ! Religion ! 
 Mot sublime ! mystere ! 
 Voix touchante et solitaire. 
 Compassion ! compassion !'
 
 92 ALFHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Poor Ernest ! 
 
 It was natural that the two brothers should wish 
 to collaborate. However, nothing came of their 
 collaboration but the first line of a tragedy in verse, 
 which had been planned out by Ernest after reading 
 Ossian and Ducis : 
 
 ' Blood, blood everywhere ! Each tree, each leaf . . .' 
 
 The second line of this most appalling tragedy, the 
 scene of which was laid in Cornwall, was never 
 written, nor have the two brothers ever collaborated 
 since. Ernest felt that verse was not his vocation, 
 and turned his attention to prose, his example being 
 followed by his younger brother, who, however, did 
 not altogether abandon the Muse. The following 
 lines, since published under the title ' La Vierge 
 a la Creche,' date from this period : 
 
 ' Dans ses langes blanches, fraichement cousus, 
 La Vierge bergait son enfant Jesus. 
 Lui gazouillait comme un nid de mesanges. 
 Elle le berc.ait et chantait tout bas 
 Ce que nous chantons a ces petits anges . . . 
 Mais 1'enfant Jesus ne s'endormait pas. 
 Etonne", ravi de ce qu'il entend, 
 II rit dans sa creche, et s'en va chantant 
 Comme un saint levite et comme un choriste ; 
 II bat la mesure avec ses deux bras 
 Et la Sainte Vierge est triste, bien triste, 
 De voir son Jesus qui ne s'endort pas.'
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 93 
 
 The young poet had already discovered that there 
 are better and more interesting things in life than 
 the adventures which he had attributed to Rito, the 
 hero of his Venetian poet, and this early compre- 
 hension of the beauty and interest of very simple 
 things was distinctly full of promise for the future. 
 In the same mood and at the same time he wrote 
 his poem ' Les Petits Enfants,' which has also since 
 been published. The following are the three first 
 verses of this poem : 
 
 ' Enfants d'un jour, 6 nouveau-nes, 
 Petites bouches, petits nez, 
 Petites levres demi-closes, 
 
 Membres tremblants, 
 Si frais, si blancs, 
 Si roses ; 
 
 1 Enfants d'un jour, 6 nouveau-ne"s, 
 Pour le bonheur que vous donnez, 
 A vous voir dormir dans vos langes, 
 Espoir des nids, 
 Soyez be"nis, 
 Chers anges. 
 
 c Pour tout ce que vous gazouillez, 
 Soyez be'nis, baise's, choye"s, 
 Gais rossignols, blanches fauvettes, 
 Que d'amoureux 
 Et que d'heureux 
 Vous faites.' 
 
 There is certainly nothing remarkable about these 
 verses, but they show a modesty in the choice of a
 
 94 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 subject, a simplicity of expression, and a recognition 
 of natural beauties which are rarely to be met with 
 in the work of very young poets ; and in these respects 
 they strike the keynote of the whole of Alphonse 
 Daudet's work, characterized as it is by a choice 
 of the simplest subjects, treated in the most modest 
 way, and in the clearest and most unpretentious style, 
 that has graced French literature since Lafontaine. 
 
 These verses, and many others (of which a few 
 have survived in the pages of ' Les Amoureuses,' 
 while the majority have gone back to the limbo from 
 whence they came), were written in part after solitary 
 walks in the country or rows on the river, in part 
 after the excitement generated by tobacco-smoking, 
 potation, and discussion in a small room which 
 Alphonse and certain of his schoolfellows had hired 
 as their c&naculum. It may be supposed that it is 
 the poems which were written after the solitary 
 walks in the country or the excursions on the river 
 that have survived, and that it is those that were 
 generated of tobacco-smoke and liqueur - drinking 
 which have returned to the limbo from whence they 
 came. At least this should be so. 
 
 Although Daudet is heard of here and elsewhere 
 as frequenting the society of his schoolfellows, a 
 decided love of solitude was, and has always been, 
 one of his characteristics. At the same time, he is
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 95 
 
 very fond of society, and on his days of reception is 
 always to be found surrounded by a crowd of people. 
 He considers this love of solitude to be the effect of 
 the reaction from Meridional exuberance, an exuber- 
 ance which, perhaps, was never more pronounced than 
 in his case. Both De Goncourt and Zola have this 
 love of solitude, though neither is of an exuberant 
 nature. Their master, De Balzac, lived a lonely 
 life for twenty years, and bitterly regretted it. Con- 
 tempt for humanity and a disbelief in friendship 
 made De Maupassant a solitary man, and led him 
 whither we know, just as it led the unhappy Gerard 
 de Nerval to that iron grating in the sinister Rue de 
 la Vieille-Lanterne. It would be interesting to 
 study from the lives of great men which has more 
 profited to intellectual labour, solitude or sociability. 
 There are famous records of either kind of life, for 
 while we have Moliere so desirous of society as to 
 seek out his old cook to keep him company, when 
 in the throes of composition, we have also Schiller 
 double-locking himself in his Gohlis or Weimar 
 hermitages, and Wordsworth stalking, a solitary 
 wanderer, on the hills of Westmorland. In con- 
 sideration of which, one is induced to believe that 
 human minds are of two sexes that there are male 
 minds and female minds, and that the latter can only 
 produce and bring forth when brought into contact
 
 96 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 with the former. Such a man, a man with a female 
 mind, to whom in solitude no idea ever comes, will, 
 when in the right society, sparkle and coruscate, 
 bringing forth in fertile and unlaborious mental 
 parturition. The society, however, must be the 
 society that is right and requisite ; the female mind 
 must meet its male mate ; for how many a man, 
 reputed by So-and-So a dullard from his silence and 
 sterility in his society, is brilliant and fruitful in the 
 company of Such-and-Such another ? 
 
 Alphonse Daudet has greatly distinguished him- 
 self in life as a dramatic author, and that play- 
 writing would be amongst the occupations in which 
 he would excel was indicated already in his early 
 youth. It has been seen with what ardour he 
 ' staged ' his Robinson Crusoe when quite a child, 
 transforming a factory courtyard into those ' boards 
 which mean the world,' a few shrubs and a fountain- 
 basin into a mise-en-scene, enrolling as actors the 
 very decides on the dusty plane-trees, and investing 
 the good dog Lotan with lion-like propensities. 
 
 'Everything that we read,' writes Ernest, 'was 
 carried into action, and our minds thus accustomed 
 themselves to absorb and to assimilate everything.' 
 
 ' Han d'Islande,' the ' Mysteries of Paris,' and the 
 ' Burgraves ' were at this time Alphonse Daudet's 
 favourite books ; but any printed volume that came
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 97 
 
 into his hand was greedily devoured. Nor far from 
 the Rue Pas-Etroit, on the Quai Retz, lived an old 
 bookseller, named Daspet, whose dusty shop was 
 crammed with books of every kind, both antique 
 and modern. ' We used to halt for long hours 
 together at his shop, before the shelves covered with 
 frayed and dusty volumes.' Here the boys would 
 read whatever first came to their hands, good books 
 and bad, novels, books of science, medical treatises, 
 the classics, hurriedly and voraciously, in a manner 
 which for less solid constitutions would have induced 
 grievous mental dyspepsia. 
 
 Later on, when Ernest was earning money in his 
 forwarding-office, the lads were able to purchase a 
 few volumes, changing these, when studied, for 
 other books. In this way they acquainted them- 
 selves with the beauties of Shakespeare, Lamartine, 
 Chateaubriand, and Ariosto, the elegant flippancies 
 of Piron, the verve and grotesqueness of Pigault- 
 Lebrun, the sentimentality and hyperbole of the 
 Vicomte d'Arlincourt, the epicureanism of Abbe de 
 Chaulieu, and the laboriousness, research, and 
 imaginativeness of Buffon. One author that 
 Alphonse did not read when a youth was Charles 
 Dickens, and this is a fact that must be put on 
 record, for superficial critics have described his work 
 in general, and his novel ' Le Petit Chose ' in par- 
 
 7
 
 98 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ticular, as an imitation of, or at least as inspired by, 
 the English writer. The only true comparison which 
 can be made between Charles Dickens and Alphonse 
 Daudet is that in appearance they were not unlike, 
 that Alphonse, like Charles, had a Micawber-like 
 father and youth, and that certain events in the life 
 of the French writer seemed to be the enactment in 
 real life of events imagined and described by the 
 English novelist. ' David Copperfield ' was written 
 in 1849-50, when Alphonse was in the full tide of 
 his Micawber experiences. It had been published 
 six years when Mell-like usher experiences came" to 
 the young Frenchman. Alphonse Daudet is rather 
 sensitive about criticisms implying plagiarism, and 
 quite recently affirmed to the writer on his word of 
 honour that at the time when he wrote ' Le Petit 
 Chose ' he had not read a line of Dickens. 
 
 Besides the books mentioned, the two brothers 
 used to receive from a neighbouring lending library 
 volumes of the Revue des Deux Mondes and the 
 Revue de Paris, in which they learned to know 
 Octave Feuillet, Jules Janin, Sainte-Beuve, and that 
 writer who was afterwards to become the friend and 
 admirer of Alphonse Daudet, the incomparable 
 Flaubert. 
 
 The cleanliness and sweetness of the writings of 
 both brothers are proof that their early readings did
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 99 
 
 not affect or soil their minds. One could not 
 imagine a worse study for apprentice litterateurs 
 than some of the authors mentioned above, a Piron 
 or a Pigault-Lebrun. Even Buffon, with his de- 
 liberate insisting on animality in its basest mani- 
 festations, may be considered a pernicious book 
 for inexperienced readers in the age of prurient 
 curiosity. 
 
 'What did we not read,' writes Ernest, 'in those 
 far-distant years ? In the evening, when everything 
 was at rest around us, a lamp shed its light on 
 our prolonged vigils, placed near the bed which 
 we fraternally shared. Our parents thought that 
 we were asleep ; repeatedly from her chamber our 
 mother would call out to us to assure herself that 
 we had put out our light. We took care not to 
 answer her ; we held our breath, and turned over 
 the leaves without a sound, and, thanks to our pre- 
 cautions, we freely entered, instead of going to 
 sleep, into the confabulations which little by little 
 engendered the fecundity of our minds.' 
 
 The first piece of writing by Alphonse Daudet 
 that was ever published was a poem which ap- 
 peared, when he was fifteen years of age, in the 
 Gazette de Lyon, a Royalist journal, at that time 
 edited by one Theodore Mayery, who, knowing of 
 the attachment of the Daudets to the Legitimist
 
 ioo ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 cause, extended a friendly welcome to the two lads. 
 Ernest contributed a few articles of literary criticism, 
 Alphonse various poems, which have not survived. 
 It was to Mayery of the Gazette de Lyon, also, that 
 Alphonse Daudet carried his first novel. This was 
 a story entitled ' Leo et Chretienne Fleury,' the 
 story of a young soldier who, out of devotion to 
 his family, engaged in an adventure which was con- 
 sidered by his chiefs as a criminal breach of disci- 
 pline, punished by court-martial, and a duly executed 
 sentence of death. Mayery was most enthusiastic 
 about this story, and refused at first to believe that 
 it could be the work of a lad of fifteen still at school. 
 He agreed to publish it in the Gazette de Lyon, and 
 might have done so had not that journal been sup- 
 pressed by the Imperial police. It is not known 
 what became of the manuscript. It was probably 
 lost by Mayery. Alphonse was too taken up with 
 his troubles to press for its return, and at that age, 
 when labour is so easy and the task so pleasant a 
 one, what does a writer care for one manuscript the 
 more or the less ? Was not the delight of writing 
 it its own great reward ? Has not one youth and 
 energy to write so many more, so much better 
 books ? From what is known of this story, how- 
 ever, it would seem a regrettable fact that Mayery 
 mislaid the manuscript. Ernest relates that on the
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 101 
 
 evening when his brother read it out aloud to the 
 assembled family everybody burst into tears. It 
 was a story in two parts, the first of which was an 
 exchange of letters between Leo the soldier and 
 Chretienne, his sister ; the second part was narra- 
 tive. 
 
 ' All the grace, the wit, the freshness of heart, 
 the originality of style, possessed by Alphonse 
 Daudet,' writes his brother, ' were to be found in 
 this novel. The narrative which formed the second 
 part was impregnated with emotion, scented with a 
 sweet perfume of youth and tenderness.' And 
 again : ' Although since then twenty-five years have 
 passed by, the impression left in my memory of 
 " Leo et Chretienne Fleury " has remained lively 
 enough to authorize me to say that, had this novel 
 been published, it would in no wise have disfigured 
 my brother's collected works. This fact is worthy 
 of attention. It confirms all that is known about 
 Alphonse Daudet's talent, to whose qualities, when 
 their origin and first manifestations are considered, 
 must be added a rare precocity.' 
 
 Ernest also wrote a novel at this time, but, as was 
 always the case with Ernest, it was not read out to 
 the family, the family was not moved to tears, and the 
 editor to whom it was sent, the editor of the Journal 
 des Bons Exemples, after the bad example of certain
 
 102 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 of his kind, neither acknowledged the manuscript 
 nor returned it. And the same Ernest who re- 
 members his brother's story so well, and comments 
 upon it with such pride and admiration, has ' for- 
 gotten all about it, even what its subject was.' And 
 at home nobody believed in Ernest, and no doubt, 
 if he ever spoke of his vocation for letters, both his 
 father and mother would laugh. ' Stick to your 
 figures ! stick to your figures !' was what both used 
 to say to him time after time. Alphonse, on the 
 other hand, had plenty of time to practise literature, 
 time taken from his studies or from his leisure 
 moments.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FACING THE WORLD. 
 
 WHEN Alphonse Daudet was in his sixteenth year, 
 it became necessary for him to earn his own living. 
 Vincent Daudet's efforts in the Rue Pas-Etroit were 
 the last which this unfortunate man was able to 
 make on behalf of his family. The time came it 
 was in 1856 when he had to resign himself to 
 abandon commerce altogether, to sell off his stock, 
 and compound as best he could with his creditors. 
 The only result of seven years of unceasing labour 
 was an accumulation of debts, and what remained 
 for the unhappy man who had raised the Daudet 
 family from the blouse of the Cevenol peasant to the 
 frock-coat of burgherdom was to take a place in the 
 service of others, entering a firm of wine-merchants 
 as traveller with an interest in the business. The 
 apartment in the Rue Pas-Etroit was given up, and 
 the family moved to an entresol in the Rue Castries. 
 This entresol was situated in a pleasant house
 
 io 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 between the Place Bellecour and the Perrache 
 Avenue, in one of the brightest, airiest quarters of 
 Lyons, and this circumstance, together with the fact 
 that both the young men were delighted to have 
 turned their backs for good and all on foulards, silks, 
 bills, acceptances, and the other attributes of com- 
 merce, contributed to make them in after-life look 
 back on their stay in the Rue Castries, despite their 
 father's ambiguous position, as their happiest time in 
 the dismal and abhorred city of Lyons. 
 
 Yet it was in this entresol in the Rue Castries 
 that they heard of the death of their brother Henri, 
 the scene so admirably described in ' Le Petit 
 Chose ' by Alphonse. Henri, from what Alphonse 
 says and Ernest writes about him, was a remarkable 
 young man, who, if he had lived, would have added 
 still brighter lustre to the name of Daudet. 
 
 * His wish had been to enter Holy Orders, and he 
 had begun his ecclesiastical studies at the seminary 
 at Allix. He had remained there only a short time. 
 On the eve of his subdeaconship, at the moment of 
 pronouncing his definite vows, his ailing soul, 
 troubled by the excesses of an unmeasured devotion, 
 had conceived scruples, doubts as to the sincerity of 
 his vocation. He had returned home, much to the 
 annoyance of my father, who could not understand 
 his hesitations.
 
 FACING THE WORLD 105 
 
 4 During some months he had lived with us, seek- 
 ing to give piano lessons, occasionally playing the 
 organ in one of the Lyons parishes. At last, tired 
 of this purposeless life, he had left for Nimes, where 
 Abbe d'Alzon had offered him a place as teacher 
 in the College de 1'Assomption. I have preserved 
 most of the letters which our poor Henri wrote us 
 at this time. They are full of tender advice to 
 Alphonse and myself. They show a great want of 
 experience of life, a way of looking at it athwart a 
 somewhat narrow mysticism, which fitted but ill with 
 the inexorable demands which in an earlv future it 
 
 j 
 
 was about to make upon us, but they also revealed 
 a soul of infinite kindness, steeped in idealism.' 
 
 It was at this school that Henri Daudet was 
 stricken with brain-fever. His mother hurried to 
 his side to find him dead, a pale face in a mass of 
 black hair. The chapter in which Alphonse has 
 described the arrival of the fatal news at the home 
 in Lyons is certainly one of the best in ' Le Petit 
 Chose.' ' // est mort. Priez poiir hd,' was what 
 poor afflicted Madame Daudet telegraphed. It was 
 Alphonse who received this telegram. He relates 
 that for some minutes he refrained from showing it 
 to his father, who, however, at the sight of his son's 
 face soon guessed the terrible truth. Relating this 
 scene to the writer, Daudet said : ' My father rose
 
 io6 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 from the table, and cried : "He is dead ! he is dead ! 
 he is dead !" His gesture, his intonation, had some- 
 thing of ancient tragedy about them, and impressed 
 me profoundly.' And here another psychological 
 phenomenon is to be put on record. Most boys 
 lying awake on the night that followed the arrival of 
 such a piece of news would have thought over all 
 the periods of their lives which had been spent with 
 this brother, and, remembering his kindnesses and 
 their affection for him, would have sobbed and cried 
 until sleep came, and with it oblivion. Alphonse 
 Daudet, on the contrary, affectionate lad and excel- 
 lent brother as he was, was preoccupied almost 
 exclusively with the classic tragedy of the scene 
 which had been enacted between him and his father 
 on the receipt of the news. ' I remember that all 
 that night I lay awake, trying to imitate my father's 
 voice, to find the tragic ring of his voice, repeating 
 " He is dead! he is dead! he is dead!" over and 
 over again until I found it.' It is a sad thing that 
 with actors and artists, as with men of letters, there 
 is nothing in life that is not subjected by them to 
 the vocation which absorbs them, and is in some 
 sort the Doppelgaenger of their mental existence. 
 They cannot feel as other men feel, for in all emotions 
 they will strive to find the correlation of what they 
 experience to its application to the art which they
 
 FACING THE WORLD 107 
 
 profess. The cruel irony of this inevitable law is 
 cleverly expounded by Emile Zola, in that passage 
 in one of his novels in which he describes how a 
 father, a painter, sitting down to weep over the 
 cradle of his dead child, becomes gradually fascinated 
 by the soft outlines and subdued tonality of the little 
 corpse, sees a fine subject for a picture through his 
 tears, and, dashing these aside, snatches up canvas, 
 palette, and brush. 
 
 Alphonse avers, in describing the impression which 
 this scene produced upon him, that, long ago as it 
 happened, long ago as it is since his dear brother 
 whom he loved so much died, even to-day when he 
 receives a telegram he cannot open it without a 
 thrill of terror. ' It seems to me that I am going to 
 read that "he is dead," and that we " must pray for 
 him." ' 
 
 The few months which Alphonse spent in the 
 Rue Castries were employed by him in working with 
 that ardour which, when he elects to work, charac- 
 terizes his efforts. It was clear to him, from the 
 state of things at home, that he would not long be 
 able to continue his studies at the school, and that at 
 any moment he might be forced to earn his own 
 living. So, putting aside ctsnaculum and excursions, 
 the lad worked hard at his lessons, finishing his 
 education side by side with his brother Ernest, who
 
 io8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 devoted to his studies all the moments he could 
 spare from his office. ' " We jolly well sweated " in 
 those days,' says Ernest, 'and derived such happi- 
 ness from our voluntary labours, that, in spite of the 
 sad denouement of our stay in Lyons, this period 
 seems less sad to us when we look back upon it 
 athwart our souvenirs of the Rue de Castries.' 
 
 Alphonse says of himself that at that time he was 
 a very pretentious youth, who, quite in earnest, con- 
 sidered himself a philosopher and a poet, and, for 
 the rest, was not taller than a top-boot, without a 
 single hair on his chin or lip. He does not say 
 what others have said who saw him at this time, 
 that he was a lad of most remarkable beauty, with a 
 face and eyes which made women turn round in the 
 streets after he had passed them by, and look after 
 him in admiration. 
 
 If it be true that he was conceited about himself 
 as a poet, there was every excuse for him. All the 
 literary men with whom he was brought in contact in 
 Lyons Mayery, editor of the Gazette de Lyon ; 
 Paul Bertheret, who afterwards became secretary to 
 the Figaro under Villemessant ; Penin, the sculptor 
 and artist, and many others whom the Daudets used 
 to meet on the Place de Bellecour when the military 
 band was playing were loud in their praise of his 
 talents, in their predictions of his future success.
 
 FACING THE WORLD 109 
 
 Alphonse, as the author of a remarkable novel, 
 ' L6o et Chretienne Fleury,' was treated as a con- 
 frere by these men ; his opinions on literature and 
 art, the unvarying subjects of his conversation on 
 the Square de Bellecour, were listened to with atten- 
 tion, and discussed with consideration. Ernest used 
 to bring home to his parents glowing accounts of his 
 brother's successes and the high opinion in which 
 he was held in the literary world in Lyons. They 
 began to look upon him and to treat him as a 
 prodigy, full of brilliant promise, and was not all this 
 more than enough to turn the head and develop the 
 conceit of a lad of fifteen years of age ? 
 
 ' Our parents,' says Ernest, ' used to feel a tem- 
 porary relief from their troubles when I repeated to 
 them what our friends were saying of their youngest 
 son.' 
 
 Alphonse left school in August of that year 
 1856 being at that time a little over sixteen years 
 of age. His education was so far complete that he 
 felt quite ready to enter the examination for the 
 baccalaureate degree, which is the indispensable pass- 
 port to all professions in France. Nobody who has 
 not passed son bachot, as the French call it, can 
 enter any of the higher schools, nor, indeed, is the 
 man who missed his bachot considered to have com- 
 pleted his preliminary education. The examination,
 
 no ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 though it embraces many more subjects, is not more 
 difficult than are ' Responsions ' at Oxford, and 
 equally important is it as the sine qua non of future 
 progress. Unfortunately, the examination fees were 
 comparatively high at that time, and Vincent 
 Daudet's affairs were in such a bad state, and money 
 was so scarce at home, that it was quite impossible 
 for him to get together a sufficient sum for the pur- 
 pose of enabling his son to take part in the examina- 
 tion and compete for the indispensable baccalaureate 
 diploma. On the other hand, Alphonse was still 
 much below the limit of age in which this examina- 
 tion had to be passed, and might accordingly wait 
 till the next year, by which time it was possible, and, 
 from a Micawber point of view, probable, that affairs 
 at home would be better and the examination fees 
 forthcoming. In the meanwhile it was necessary 
 that some occupation should be found for Alphonse, 
 and the proposal made by a relation of the family 
 that he should enter the Lycee at Alais, as mattre 
 deludes, or usher, was considered by all concerned a 
 good and timely suggestion. Vincent Daudet was 
 assured that no objection would be made on the 
 score of Alphonse's youth, and that a hearty welcome 
 would be extended to Abbe Reynaud's great-nephew. 
 This being so, the arrangement seemed an excel- 
 lent one, for as maitre ddtiides Alphonse would have
 
 FACING THE WORLD in 
 
 plenty of spare time when the boys were in class- 
 to continue his studies, and prepare himself still 
 better for the examination next year, and, at the 
 same time, would not only cost his parents nothing 
 for his maintenance, but would even be able to put by 
 a little out of his meagre salary towards the amount 
 of his examination fees. On the other hand, the 
 Daudets felt heavy at heart at the prospect of part- 
 ing from their son, still a mere child, and frail and 
 small. However warm the welcome might be at 
 Alais College, the life of the pion, or usher, in a 
 French public school was well known to be a hard 
 one, difficult even for a vigorous young man, and 
 not lightly to be faced by a sensitive child. 
 
 ' Sixteen years old, with a tender soul and a 
 delicate imagination, with all the weakness of his 
 age, conspicuously unfitted to cope with material 
 difficulties, affected with desperate shortsightedness, 
 how would he be able to manage ?' This was the 
 question which kept putting itself to poor Ernest, 
 who relates that the thought of separating from his 
 brother rent his heart. ' He seemed to me so 
 young, so unexperienced, so badly armed for the 
 trials which he was about to face.' 
 
 As a matter of fact, no life is harder than that of a 
 maitre deludes in a French Lycee. The acceptance 
 of such a post is, ipso facto, a proof of indigence,
 
 ii2 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 and indigence is even a greater disgrace in the eyes 
 of boys than it is with their elders in this generous 
 society of ours. Again, the authority with which 
 the pion is vested is of the weakest kind. His 
 functions are not to teach the boys, but to super- 
 intend them. He accompanies them on their walks 
 abroad, he presides over the preparation of their 
 lessons, and he sleeps in their dormitory. The pro- 
 fessors do not associate with him ; he is a solitary, 
 ill-dressed, underpaid individual, with duties varying 
 between those of pupil-teacher and prison warder. 
 The boys hate him because he is poor and humble, 
 and because he constantly interferes with their 
 liberties. They play tricks on him, and are as cruel 
 as only children can be when they choose. They are 
 encouraged in this by the knowledge of the fact that 
 in a dispute between a pupil and a maitre cCe'tudes 
 the Lycee authorities will side rather with the former, 
 as a source of revenue. On the other hand, the pion 
 very naturally has a strong dislike for his trouble- 
 some charges, and exercises what authority he 
 possesses in venting his not unnatural rancour. It 
 is in his power to inflict impositions : he can deprive 
 unruly pupils of their fortnightly exeats, and he can 
 order them to remain indoors during playtime. He 
 has, however, no power to inflict corporal punish- 
 ment, under circumstances and in a milieu where
 
 FACING THE WORLD 
 
 such punishment would appear not only absolutely 
 justifiable, but urgently necessary. For of corporal 
 punishment there is none at the present day in 
 French public schools. Formerly the cane whistled 
 as merrily and the birch swished as vigorously 
 here as in most English schools, but such an abuse 
 was made of both, that the system was abolished by 
 Ministerial decree. The result is a bad one, and 
 the undeniable superiority of the English schoolboy 
 over his French contemporary may be largely 
 attributed to the severer, more salutary discipline to 
 which the former, under Biblical authority, is sub- 
 jected. When one sees the French lycden strutting 
 about the streets of Paris, with his k<*pi cocked on 
 the side of his head, a cigar or cigarette between his 
 lips, or observes him in his mooncalf glories in the 
 vile beershops of the Latin Quarter, one cannot but 
 regret that some sharper deterrent from precocious 
 viciousness cannot legally be applied. One often 
 finds one's self wondering what effect a course of 
 sound canings would have on Gyp's ' p'tit Bob,' that 
 truest type of the unchildlike elf which is produced 
 by the present scholastic system in France. Any 
 attempt, however, to reform this system in the 
 direction of sharper discipline would raise a deafen- 
 ing outcry throughout the length and breadth of 
 France. The French consider it a very brutal
 
 ii 4 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 thing for a master to strike a boy, no matter what 
 the provocation may be. Indeed, so cherished are 
 the little persons of the French public school boys 
 by their doting parents, that in many homes in 
 France the recent revival of athletic sports, of a 
 kind, in the French Lycees is held in strong dis- 
 approval, expression for which is found in various 
 newspapers. Physical exercise other than an occa- 
 sional walk, or a game of marbles in the college 
 playground, is so fatiguing as to be really dangerous 
 to the health of the dear little fellows. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet, inexperienced as he was, was 
 no doubt aware of what he might expect at Alais, 
 but, in spite of previsions, which fell very far short 
 of the reality, and the natural repugnance of a young 
 man of great independence and some self-esteem for 
 a post of certain humiliation, the proposal that he 
 should enter Alais College as a maitre deludes 
 appeared to him a most acceptable one. Doubtless 
 the affectionate lad was pleased to be able to 
 alleviate the burdens of his family ; his spirit of 
 independence welcomed the prospect of earning his 
 own livelihood, and no doubt he looked forward to 
 the long hours of leisure, when, in a study all to 
 himself, he would be able to give himself up entirely 
 to literature. That as maitre d'dtudes he would be 
 friendless and solitary pleased rather than frightened
 
 FACING THE WORLD 115 
 
 him. He was at the age when one thinks one's 
 self able to stand alone, and solitude, as has been 
 recorded above, has always pleased him. This is a 
 characteristic of most Southerners. Exuberant in 
 society, it delights them at certain periods to isolate 
 themselves, as though to gather fresh stores of 
 vivacity. How often one sees in the South, on 
 the benches under the canopy of vines in front of 
 the house, or in the shaded silence of the olive- 
 groves, men inert, immobile, expressionless, who, 
 seen thus, would appear veritable village naturals ; 
 at other times active, loquacious, headstrong, but 
 here reposing from past efforts, and recruiting fresh 
 energies for the bouts to come ! But the strongest 
 inducement of all found by this imaginative child in 
 the prospect held out to him was the novelty of the 
 change, the possible adventures of the journey, the 
 unknown that lay before him. 
 
 ' From what I see,' he said to his father, after he 
 had read the letter in which the principal of Alais 
 College offered him a place as mat ire d'ttudcs, ' I 
 have no time to lose.' 
 
 ' You will have to start to-morrow,' said his 
 father. 
 
 ' All right,' said Alphonse Daudet, ' I will start 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 On the morrow of this memorable day the whole
 
 1 1 6 A L PHONSE DA UDET 
 
 family accompanied him to the steamer by which 
 he was to travel to Alais, by way of Valence and 
 Nimes. ' By a singular coincidence it was the very 
 same steamer on which the family had travelled to 
 Lyons several years before. All at once the bell rang ; 
 it was time to leave. Little What's-his-name, tear- 
 ing himself from the embraces of his friends, bravely 
 marched across the gangway. " Be steady !" cried 
 his father. " Mind you don't get ill !" said his 
 mother.' Ernest, relates Alphonse, wanted to speak, 
 but was unable to because he was too much upset. 
 ' Yes,' says Ernest, ' he was weeping, but his tears 
 were no longer the morbid tears of his childhood ; 
 they were the fruitful tears of his precocious maturity, 
 forced from his eyes by the cruel sorrow of this 
 separation, the greatest sorrow which he had had 
 to undergo in his lifetime.' 
 
 ' Little What's-his-name,' says Alphonse, describ- 
 ing the scene; ' did not cry. As I have had the 
 honour of telling you, he was a great philosopher, 
 and really philosophers must not give way to senti- 
 ment. And yet God knows that he loved them, the 
 dear ones whom he was leaving behind him in the 
 fog. God knows that he would gladly have given 
 for them every drop of his blood, every ounce of his 
 flesh. But what could you expect ? The joy of leav ing- 
 Lyons, the motion of the steamer, the intoxication of
 
 FACING THE WORLD 117 
 
 the journey, his pride in feeling himself a man, a 
 free, grown-up man, travelling alone and earning his 
 own living, all this excited him, and prevented him 
 from thinking, as he ought to have done, of the 
 three persons whom he loved so well, who were 
 sobbing there on the quays of the Rhone. Ah, 
 those three were no philosophers ! With anxious 
 and loving eyes they followed the asthmatic progress 
 of the steamer, and when the cloud of smoke 
 above its funnel had dwindled down in their sight 
 till it was no larger than a swallow on the horizon, 
 they were still calling out, " Adieu ! adieu !" and 
 waving farewell. In the .meanwhile, Mr. Philosopher 
 was pacing the deck, with his hands in his pockets 
 and his head facing the wind. He whistled, he spat, 
 he stared at the ladies, he watched the sailors at 
 work, he walked along with his chest out like a big 
 man, and found himself charming.' 
 
 Alphonse adds that his vanity prompted him to 
 tell a lie. He informed the ship's cook and two 
 cabin boys that he held an important post in the 
 Education Department, and was already earning a 
 good income. ' These gentlemen complimented him 
 on the circumstance. This made him feel very proud.' 
 It has already been recorded in these pages that 
 Alphonse Daudet admits the fascination exercised 
 on him, in common with most Meridionals, by the
 
 n8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 practice of untruthfulness. The Lie is, indeed, with 
 most Southern Frenchmen, as it were, a figure of 
 speech, so common and so general in its application 
 as by that circumstance to be denuded of much of 
 its reprehensibility. When all lie, the individual is 
 not deceived to his prejudice more than he deceives 
 others. In speaking with a Southern Frenchman, 
 the latter will presume you are prepared for his habit 
 of untruthfulness, will count on a similar habit in 
 you. He will not expect you to believe his exaggera- 
 tions and misrepresentations any more than you can 
 expect him, with his way of thinking, to believe 
 what you tell him. In relating matters of plainest 
 truth, you will see in the eyes of your interlocutor 
 an expression of disbelief, half amused, half con- 
 temptuous. Mention your income, the Gascon will 
 immediately divide it by five and accept the dividend 
 as its actual figure. Relate a fact which may be 
 to your advantage or glorification, and he will 
 assume that what really occurred was precisely the 
 contrary. On the other hand, he will expect from 
 you the same treatment of his statements, and adapt 
 them in consequence. This characteristic detracts 
 from the charm of conversation in the South of 
 France, but it is a practice with which one soon 
 becomes familiar, and, universal as it is, soon loses that 
 repulsiveness of aspect with which in some other
 
 FACING THE WORLD 119 
 
 countries it is endowed in the eyes of men. Emile 
 Zola, moreover, speaks of the Lie as one of the 
 needs of humanity, and will have it that the desire 
 to be deceived is as human and natural as is the 
 desire for food and drink. His latest novel, 
 ' Lourdes,' is the exposition of the fact that the Lie 
 is one of the inherent requirements of mankind. 
 
 On arriving at Nimes, Alphonse first visited the 
 principal of the local academy, by whose recom- 
 mendation he was to enter Alais College, and the 
 principal's exclamation on seeing him was, ' Gocd 
 God, how small he is !' a remark which set Alphonse 
 trembling with apprehension lest he might be found 
 too little to fill the post. The principal, however, 
 did not seem to think that his colleague of Alais 
 would make any objection on this score, and wrote 
 a letter of introduction and recommendation for 
 Alphonse to present. He warned the lad that at his 
 age and with his stature and appearance the work 
 would be exceptionally hard, advised him to proceed 
 to Alais without delay, and dismissed him with a 
 friendly pat on the cheek. Alphonse rushed off at 
 once in great delight to secure his place on the 
 coach to Alais, a small town on the Garden, about 
 forty-five kilometres to the north-east of Nimes, the 
 Alestum of the Romans, a stronghold of Huguenots 
 in the sixteenth century, subdued by Louis XIII.,
 
 120 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 who signed the Peace of Alais there, transformed 
 into an episcopal See by Louis XIV., and fortified 
 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 
 Having booked his seat for this destination, 
 Alphonse had four hours to spare before the coach 
 started. These he employed first of all in visiting 
 their faithful servant Annette, who, after her return 
 to Nimes, had married, and was employed, with her 
 husband, in keeping a restaurant ; after lunching 
 with them in princely style, he went off to look 
 at his old home, the factory, where he had spent 
 so many happy hours as a child. 
 
 ' Do you want to know,' he writes, ' what it was 
 that little What's-his-name wanted to see in the 
 town before leaving? It was the factory, the 
 factory which he loved so much, and which he had 
 so mourned . . . the garden, the workshops, the 
 tall plane-trees, all the friends of his childhood, 
 all the joys of his early days. Ah ! well. The 
 heart of man has its weaknesses ; it loves what it 
 finds to love, even wood, even stones, even a 
 factory. And, besides, it is a fact, recorded by 
 history, that Robinson, grown old after his return to 
 England, took ship again and crossed who knows 
 how many thousand leagues of water to revisit his 
 desert island. So it is not at all extraordinary that, 
 in order to see his desert island, little What's-his-
 
 FACING THE WORLD 121 
 
 name should take a few steps. Already the lofty 
 plane-trees, whose crests peep over the house-tops, 
 have recognised their old friend hastening towards 
 them at full speed. . . . And he speeds and speeds; 
 but on arriving at the factory he halts, stupefied.' 
 
 Like many others who after years have revisited 
 the scenes of their childhood, he was to be dis- 
 appointed. The factory no longer existed ; it had 
 been turned into a convent (still standing) by the 
 Carmelite nuns. ' No windows were left, only 
 dormers ; a chapel stood in the place of the work- 
 shops. Above the door was a large cross in red 
 sandstone, with a Latin inscription surrounding it. 
 Oh, sad event, the factory is factory no longer ; it is 
 a Carmelite convent, where no man ever enters!' 
 
 And so Alphonse sorrowfully returns to the Alais 
 coach with his back upon his childhood, now finally 
 buried and effaced. From the experiences of a 
 Micawber, he was about to pass to those of a 
 Mr. Mell, to whom even a Steerforth, in the person 
 of a loutish Cevenol lad, was not to be wanting. 
 And be it noticed how much in the life of Alphonse 
 Daudet resembles the career of David Copperfield. 
 The coincidence of this similarity between the life of 
 the young French lad and that of the imagined hero 
 of an English novel is so strange that many super- 
 ficial and malevolent critics have accused Daudet
 
 122 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 of something akin to plagiarism in his novel ' Le 
 Petit Chose,' which in its salient particulars is a true 
 record of his own experiences. And apropos of 
 this criticism, this is what Alphonse Daudet, who 
 feels strongly on the subject, has to say : ' An 
 author who writes in accordance with his eyes and 
 the dictates of his conscience can have no answer to 
 make to such a criticism, unless it be that there 
 be certain kinships of imagination for which no 
 author is responsible, and that on the great day on 
 which men and novelists were created, Nature, in an 
 absent-minded mood, may easily have mixed up her 
 moulds. I feel in my heart the love which Dickens 
 felt for the poor and the disinherited, for troubled 
 childhoods, and all the miseries of life in big cities. 
 Like him, my first steps in life were heartrendingly 
 unhappy ; like him, I was forced to earn my bread 
 before I was sixteen years of age, and in this I 
 imagine lies our greatest resemblance.' 
 
 Daudet might have said ' our greatest and almost 
 sole resemblance,' for the differences between 
 these two popular novelists are well-marked. If 
 Dickens created, or, rather, synthetized, a large 
 number of types, whereas Daudet cannot claim a 
 similar paternity, except in the cases of Delobelle, 
 Numa Roumestan, and the immortal Tarascon, 
 Daudet's absolute superiority as a stylist will always
 
 FACING THE WORLD 123 
 
 be recognised by the readers of both. Dickens 
 wrote hastily under the spur of the immediate 
 necessities of weekly publication. Daudet, partly 
 from superior artistic conscientiousness, and partly 
 because at a very early period in his career he was 
 rendered independent of his pen as a means of 
 earning his daily bread, has always written slowly, 
 laboriously, and with infinite pains. In the matter 
 of humour, Dickens has a hearty contagious laugh, 
 the laugh of the coffee-room, which sometimes 
 descends to the guffaw of the pothouse ; Daudet 
 has the pale smile of irony, with cachinnation 
 only in Tarascon. Both to some extent are senti- 
 mentalists, but whilst Dickens too often relies on 
 easy effects, likely to please the Anglo-Saxon mind, 
 the subtler Daudet has carefully avoided the same 
 temptations. If Hortense in ' Numa Roumestan ' 
 dies of consumption, it is not an effect after the 
 manner of little Nell and her dead canary bird, but 
 was deliberately thought out, the criticisms likely to 
 be provoked being duly weighed and accepted in 
 advance. ' Why consumptive ?' asks Daudet in 
 reviewing his book in reference to Hortense le 
 Guesnoy. ' Why this sentimental and romantic 
 death, this so easy bait for the reader's sensibility ? 
 Well, because one is not master of one's work ; 
 because during the period of its gestation, when the
 
 i2 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 idea tempts and haunts, a thousand things dredged 
 up and collected on the way in the haphazards of 
 life mingle with it, like weeds in the meshes of a 
 net. Whilst I was in labour with " Numa," I was 
 sent to take the waters at Allevard, and there, in the 
 inhaling-rooms, I saw young faces haggard, drawn, 
 furrowed as with a knife ; I heard poor toneless 
 voices eaten away with disease, hoarse coughs 
 followed by the same furtive motion of the glove or 
 handkerchief hunting the red stain at the corner of 
 the lips. Out of these pale, impersonal apparitions 
 one formed itself in my book, as it were in spite of 
 myself, with the melancholy train of the watering- 
 place, its admirable pastoral setting, and all that 
 remained there.' 
 
 In one respect, however, besides their fondness 
 for the poor, and a preference for describing the 
 lives of the disinherited of fortune, Dickens and 
 Daudet resemble each other. Both are subjective, 
 neither has much power of invention ; both draw 
 their characters from living models ; and if Dickens 
 vexed Leigh Hunt, Numa Baragnon was not quite 
 pleased with Daudet. The latter has recognised 
 this quality of his, and to some extent deplores it. 
 ' I am a being altogether subjective,' he cries out in 
 conversation with De Goncourt. ' I am permeated 
 by actual things. ... I can invent nothing. ... I
 
 FACING THE WORLD 125 
 
 have already used up the whole of my family. ... I 
 cannot return to the South.' He has drawn upon 
 himself for many of his characters, to mention 
 only Daniel Eysette, Numa Roumestan, Elysee 
 Meraut. The Eysettes are his father, mother, and 
 brother Ernest. Risler was a draughtsman in Vin- 
 
 o 
 
 cent Daudet's factory, an Alsatian, and if Daudet 
 changed his nationality in transplanting him into the 
 novel to which he gives his name, it was in order 
 ' not to mix up with my book sentimental patriotism, 
 a catch for easily-earned applause,' the temptation to 
 do which, under analogous circumstances, it is not 
 certain that Dickens would have avoided. 
 
 The long drive from Nimes to Alais seems to 
 have left little impression on Alphonse Daudet's 
 mind. No doubt that he was too impatient to reach 
 his journey's end, too full of plans and hopes for the 
 future, to be open to the impressions of the drive. 
 The first thing that struck him on entering the town 
 was the cold. The tramontane wind had been 
 blowing all day, and Alais, as he has described it, is 
 an ice-cellar when the tramontane is blowing, just as 
 it is an oven when the sun shines. The next impres- 
 sion was the darkness. ' The streets were dark and 
 deserted.' By a curious coincidence Daudet's descrip- 
 tion of his first impressions of Alais is identical with 
 what Victor Hu^o wrote of his cell in Mazas Gaol. 
 
 O
 
 i 2 6 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' On entering it, one is struck first by the cold and 
 next by the dark.' Alais was to be a prison to 
 Alphonse Daudet, and worse than a prison, a torture- 
 room. ' It was on leaving the Lycee at Lyons,' he 
 has said to the writer of this book, ' that I entered 
 upon what was the worst year of my life. I was 
 utterly unhappy. It was only during that horrible 
 period that I ever thought of suicide. But I had 
 not the courage to finish with existence. The 
 misery which I afterwards suffered in Paris was 
 nothing compared to what I endured during that 
 year.' 
 
 On alighting from the coach Alphonse at once 
 proceeded to the college, ' anxious to enter on his 
 duties.' The college porter took him for a new boy, 
 so young did he look. One is reminded of Latimer's 
 unvarying attitude towards David Copperfield. The 
 porter's wife and a man who was supping with them 
 in the lodge compared him to certain of the pupils 
 who were both older and taller than the new master. 
 The principal, before whom Alphonse presently 
 appeared, was still more discouraging. 
 
 ' Why, he is a child,' he cried, springing from his 
 seat as the new usher entered. ' Whatever am I to 
 do with such a child ?' Alphonse was too frightened 
 to speak, and could only hold out the letter which 
 the principal of the academy at Nimes had given 
 him. The head-master, a man with a small, pale,
 
 FACING THE WORLD 127 
 
 wizened face, lighted by cold, colourless eyes, took 
 it and read and re-read it. Finally, to the youth's 
 great relief, he said that, thanks to the excellent 
 recommendation given and the high respectability of 
 the Daudet family, he consented to receive him, 
 although his extreme youthfulness was a decided 
 objection. This announcement was followed by a 
 long lecture on the importance of the duties of a 
 maitre deludes. ' But,' says Alphonse, ' I no longer 
 listened to him. For me the essential point was that 
 I was not to be sent away I was not to be sent 
 away. I was wildly happy. I could have wished 
 that the head-master had had a thousand hands, for 
 me to kiss them all.' 
 
 Before retiring Alphonse was introduced to one 
 of his colleagues, the second master, who handed 
 him a little book on the Complete Duties of the 
 Usher, divided into three parts, dealing with his 
 relations to his superiors, his colleagues, and his 
 pupils. He slept that night at an inn in the 
 town ; and when ' he found himself alone in that 
 cold room, in front of that bed, in a strange and 
 commonplace inn, far from all he loved, his heart 
 overflowed, and this great philosopher cried like a 
 child. Life frightened him now ; he felt weak and 
 helpless in face of it, and he cried, he cried.' 
 
 No doubt that Mr. Mell often cried too, although 
 Dickens does not tell us so.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL. 
 
 THERE is no more discouraging profession for a man 
 in any degree ambitious than the profession of 
 tuition. He finds himself assisting others to pro- 
 gress in life, whilst he himself stands still ; preparing 
 others to become persons of possible importance, 
 and condemning himself to obscurity in a station of 
 no account. It is, therefore, difficult to understand 
 the enthusiasm with which young Alphonse Daudet 
 entered upon his pedagogic career, all the more so 
 that he was a keen and ardent youth, independent, 
 undisciplined, adventurous, the very last person 
 whom one would have thought willing to accept the 
 monotonous drudgery of an usher's life. But it must 
 be remembered that another of Alphonse Dauclet's 
 characteristics was that he was a most dutiful and 
 affectionate son. He had seen the pitiful state of 
 things at home ; he had seen his mother's white 
 hands soiled with household labour, and he was
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 129 
 
 determined to do what was in his power to lighten 
 the burden of his parents. It is a fine trait of 
 character. Many young men, even of lesser parts, 
 would have had their heads turned by the praises 
 which he had already won ; and would it not have 
 been a thousand times more agreeable to have 
 remained on in Lyons, a budding poet and novelist, 
 to be pointed out as such in the Place de Bellecour 
 when the music was playing, and to listen while lolling 
 in some Lyons cafe to the not wholly disinterested 
 encomiums of Mayery, the editor ? But Alphonse 
 Daudet was a good son, and put his mother first, 
 himself second. Describing the scene where, in the 
 dismal room in the inn on his first night in Alais, 
 he broke down, he adds : ' Suddenly, in the midst of 
 his tears, the image of his people passed before his 
 eyes ; he saw the deserted house, the scattered 
 family. There was no home left, no hearth re- 
 mained ; and then, forgetting his own distress to 
 think only of their common misfortunes, he made a 
 great and fine resolution, to reconstitute the home, 
 and, unaided and alone, to reconstruct the dismantled 
 hearth.' 
 
 On the following morning, having previously pro- 
 vided himself with a double eyeglass, which he 
 thought would add to the dignity and diminish the 
 youthfulness of his appearance, he proceeded to the 
 
 9
 
 i 3 o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 school, where he was formally introduced to his 
 pupils by the head-master in a lengthy but dignified 
 speech. To commence with, he was placed in charge 
 of the youngest boys. Boys are admitted to the 
 French lycdes at the age of seven, but children of 
 that age are not put to any serious tasks. They 
 spend most of their time in playing in the courtyard 
 at the games popular in French schools marbles, 
 tops, and touch-last and until the age of nine, when 
 their studies begin in earnest, they follow what may 
 be compared to the Kindergarten system. It is 
 part of the French educational scheme not to hurry 
 boys on in early youth ; and a child who at the age 
 of seven or eight can already read and write is con- 
 sidered an exception. As a rule, boys enter school 
 at the age of ten, but there seems to be no limit of 
 age. Zola, for instance, did not enter the Lycee at 
 Aix his famous Plassans until he was twelve 
 years old. There is no preliminary examination, 
 but every pupil must be furnished with what is called 
 a certificat cTdtudes, besides a certificate of good 
 conduct. The oldest boy in the department placed 
 under Alphonse Daudet's charge at Alais was only 
 eleven years of age. 
 
 At first the usher was not unhappy. Naturally 
 fond of children, he very soon made his charges 
 fond of him. He had established his authority from
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 131 
 
 the very outset by a forced show of energy, swell- 
 ing his voice and rapping vigorously on his desk as 
 he invited his pupils to work. ' The little ones were 
 not bad boys like the others. They never did me 
 any harm, and I, for my part, loved them.' He 
 never punished them. ' What good would it have 
 been ?' he asks. ' Does one punish little birds ? 
 When they twittered too loud, I had but to cry out 
 " Silence !" and all my aviary was hushed, for at least 
 five minutes.' Daudet's predecessor had boasted of 
 the way in which he had maintained discipline 
 amongst these children. Daudet found that the 
 best way to maintain discipline was to endeavour 
 always to be good and kind. When they had been 
 very well behaved, to reward them he would tell 
 them a story. No wonder they loved him. What 
 little boys are there who are not delighted to listen 
 to stories, especially in the monotony of the prepara- 
 tion-room ; and a wonderful story-teller Alphonse 
 Daudet must have been, even at that age, with his 
 vivid imagination and a talent for improvisation, which 
 has developed as he has grown older. Curiously 
 enough, his stories were not stories of adventure, as 
 one might have supposed from one's knowledge of 
 his tastes and aspirations at the time, but tales after 
 the manner of fables, tales about cicades, the ' Mis- 
 fortunes of Master Jack Rabbit.' For then, as now,
 
 i 3 2 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 La Fontaine was one of his favourite authors, and 
 the tales told by the young usher to his eager pupils 
 were but paraphrases of the master's fables inter- 
 spersed with the narrator's own experiences. Un- 
 fortunately, the college authorities did not at all 
 approve of any such innovations, and the fact that 
 Daudet was more than once found amusing his 
 charges, who should have been at work preparing 
 their lessons, no doubt contributed to bring him into 
 the disfavour in which he was afterwards held by his 
 superiors. At the same time, this story-telling was 
 good practice for the young author, exercising his 
 imagination, strengthening his powers of improvisa- 
 tion, and forming in him a pleasant and easy style 
 which, perfected with age, has made Daudet an 
 incomparable story-teller, so that the reader of 
 books finds himself, as it were, directly addressed, to 
 the great enhancement of his interest and delight. 
 But to this story-telling in the class-room the young 
 author, for the time being, courageously and self- 
 sacrificingly limited himself. In spite of his voca- 
 tion for letters, in spite of the literary successes 
 already obtained, and their encouragement to further 
 efforts, he remembered the resolution he had taken 
 on the first night of his stay in Alais, and, putting 
 all his personal hopes and ambitions aside, cast his 
 vanity behind him, and set hard to work to prepare
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 133 
 
 himself for success in the duller but more profitable 
 career into which the necessities of his family had 
 forced him. Not a moment of his leisure was 
 wasted in amusement or employed in pleasant 
 literary labour. Shut up in the little garret-room, 
 which he shared with a fellow-usher, who spent all 
 his spare time at one of the cafes in the town, he 
 worked at Latin and Greek. ' He worked and 
 worked unceasingly, cramming his head until it was 
 like to burst.' 
 
 ' Sometimes,' he relates, ' whilst in the midst of his 
 monotonous task, a mysterious finger would rap at 
 the door. 
 
 ' " Who's there ?" 
 
 ' " Tis I, the Muse, your old friend, the woman 
 of the red copybook. Open quick.' 1 
 
 ' But he took good care not to open. Something 
 very different from the Muse was in question. 
 
 ' To the devil with the manuscript-book ! What 
 was of importance for the time being was to clo a 
 great number of Greek exercises, to pass the 
 licentiate examination, to be nominated professor, 
 and to reconstruct a fine brand-new hearth as quickly 
 as possible. The thought that I was working for 
 my family gave me great courage, and rendered my 
 life more pleasant. My very room was beautified 
 thereby. O garret, dear garret, what happy hours
 
 i 3 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 have I passed within your walls ! How well I 
 worked there ! How brave and good I felt myself !' 
 And certainly it was brave and good of Alphonse 
 Daudet to work as he did and at what he did, even 
 though, as he relates, he enjoyed his garret, a taste 
 not uncommon amongst young literary workers forty 
 years ago, though sadly out of fashion at the 
 present time. Most youths, one fancies, enjoying 
 the friendship and approbation of the editor of an 
 important paper, would, if only for vanity's sake, 
 have plied him with contributions. Moreover, in 
 France, where letters have always been held in high 
 esteem, to be a poet is a title to respect, and the 
 temptation must often have been strong to Alphonse 
 Daudet to prove his claim to this title in the eyes of 
 his disdainful colleagues. Mayery would doubtless 
 have printed anything that Daudet had cared to 
 send him ; and a copy or two of the Gazette dc 
 Lyons, containing his contribution, left, as it were 
 by accident, on the table of the cafe which was 
 frequented by the masters of the college, would no 
 doubt have greatly increased the usher's importance. 
 For, as he relates, ' the professors despised me, and 
 looked down upon me from the eminence of their 
 degrees.' His colleagues all had an aversion for 
 him, especially as he never set foot in the cafe which 
 they frequented.
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 135 
 
 One of the pioris duties in a French school is to 
 accompany the boys on their walks, and a pitiable 
 object he looks as he strides along with his rebellious 
 and mocking charges. At Alais the boys used to 
 go out every Thursday and Sunday afternoon, two 
 by two, in three divisions. On reaching the Prairie, 
 a large meadow at the foot of the mountains, the two 
 other maitres deludes would go off to the taverns 
 with the elder boys, leaving the whole school in 
 the youthful usher's charge. It was a Tantalus 
 torture for a youth so fond of the country to be 
 forced to devote his whole attention to a number of 
 unruly boys. ' It would have been so pleasant to 
 stretch one's self out on this green grass in the shade 
 of the chestnut-trees, to intoxicate one's self with the 
 scent of the wild thyme, and to listen to the song of 
 the little spring. Instead of which, I had to keep 
 constant watch, to shout, to punish. I was in 
 charge of the whole school. It was terrible.' But 
 what distressed him most (and this shows that the 
 lad still possessed a proper vanity) was to have to 
 march his draggling battalion through the streets of 
 Alais when people were about. He felt the shame 
 of his shabby clothes and the lowliness of his 
 position. But his courage never failed him. He had 
 an object in view a pale mother to succour and to 
 comfort and nothing could turn him aside ; at least,
 
 136 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 so he thought, and, doubtless, had he remained in 
 the position which he first occupied at the college, 
 that is to say, in charge of the youngest boys, until 
 he had had time to prepare himself for his examina- 
 tions, he would have realized what was then his 
 ambition, and France might to-day have been richer 
 by one more professor, and poorer and the civilized 
 world with her by a master of prose and a novelist 
 of genius. However, at the beginning of the 
 second term of his stay at Alais he was promoted to 
 the charge of the middle division, and it was the 
 treatment which he received from these boys that, 
 after much moral torture, finally forced him to 
 abandon this career. 
 
 ' And so it was,' he relates, ' that I took possession 
 of the middle division. I found it composed of about 
 fifty mischievous scamps, fat-cheeked mountaineers 
 of from twelve to fourteen years of age, the sons of 
 rich farmers, whose parents sent them to the college 
 so as to make gentlemen of them at the rate of 
 1 50 francs per term. Coarse, insolent, proud, speak- 
 ing amongst themselves a rough Cevenol patois, of 
 which I did not understand a word, they were 
 almost all ugly with the ugliness of moulting child- 
 hood, their big hands red with chilblains, their 
 voices like hoarse cockerels, their looks brutish, and 
 over all the smell of the school.'
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 137 
 
 It is, by the way, only in ' Le Petit Chose' that 
 Daudet, who is claimed as a disciple by the Naturalist 
 School, ever speaks of the effects of smell. His 
 colleague Zola was to make ample use of appeals 
 to the nose in his descriptions. Daudet's finer, 
 more artistic sense led him at an early date in 
 his literary career to reject this aid to realism. If, 
 as De Goncourt once said, Zola has the nose of a 
 dog, with a special delight in sniffing out what is of 
 evil odour, Daudet may be said to have discarded 
 the use of his nose in his search after the truth of 
 modern life. It is for his readers to decide whether 
 he was well advised in so doing. Certain poets 
 have admitted their indebtedness to this sense in 
 the translation of their impressions. Others have 
 had temperaments of an opposite nature in this 
 respect ; and if Baudelaire could ecstatically exclaim 
 that his soul floated on perfumes, Wordsworth, it is 
 a well-known fact, was entirely deprived of this 
 sense, and one afternoon announced to Dorothy, 
 not without joyous surprise, that it seemed to him 
 that he had that day smelt the smell of primroses. 
 It would be interesting to know what part the nose 
 has played in the careers of the more eminent 
 writers in the past, and all the more so because 
 modern French literature abounds in appeals to a
 
 138 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 sense which, according to the physiologists, is 
 gradually dying out. 
 
 4 They hated me from the very outset, without 
 knowing me,' continues Alphonse Daudet, writing 
 about his new pupils. Ernest explains that the 
 prime reason of this hatred was that whilst they, the 
 boys, were loutish, ill-bred peasants for the most 
 part, the little usher was distinguished, elegant, 
 proud, handsome like a demi-god, whose look flashed 
 with intelligence, just as, under his shabby clothes, 
 his every movement betrayed his native gentility. 
 His delicacy clashed with their coarseness ; their 
 brutality mocked at his frailty. 
 
 ' I was to them the enemy, the usher ; and from 
 the day on which I first took my seat at my desk in 
 their midst there was war between us, war to the 
 knife, unceasing, without truce or respite. Oh the 
 cruel children ! How they made me suffer ! I 
 should like to speak of it without bitterness, for all 
 these sorrows are so long gone by. Well, I cannot 
 do so ; and, look you, as I write these lines I feel 
 my hand trembling with fever and emotion. It 
 seems to me that I am still in the midst of it all. 
 They, I imagine, do not think of me. They have 
 forgotten all about me and the fine double eye- 
 glass which I bought, in order to give myself a 
 graver aspect. My former pupils are men to-day,
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 139 
 
 sober, steady-going men. S must be a solicitor 
 
 somewhere up in the Cevennes Mountains ; V , 
 
 a clerk of the Court ; L , a chemist ; and B 
 
 a veterinary surgeon. They have positions in life, 
 paunches, and all the rest. Sometimes, perhaps, 
 when they meet at the club or on the square in front 
 of the church, they remember the happy days they 
 spent at school, and at such times, it may be, they 
 come to speak of me. 
 
 ' " I say, greffier, do you remember our little 
 usher, with his long hair and his pasty face ? What 
 good jokes we had with him !" 
 
 ' 'Tis true, gentlemen. You did have good jokes 
 with him, and your former usher has not yet for- 
 gotten them. Oh, that unhappy usher ! Did he 
 not make you laugh ? Did you not make him cry ? 
 Yes, cry. You made him cry, and that gave a par- 
 ticular savour to your jokes. How often at the close 
 of a day of martyrdom the poor devil, crouching in 
 his bed, clenched his teeth on his quilt so that you 
 should not hear his sobs! It is so terrible to live in 
 the midst of malevolence, to be always afraid, ever 
 on the alert, angry, under arms at all times ; it is so 
 terrible to have always to punish for one is often 
 unjust in spite of one's self so terrible to be always 
 in doubt, to see traps on every side, to be unable to eat 
 or sleep in peace, to be always saying to one's self,
 
 1 40 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 even in moments of respite, " My God ! my God ! 
 what are they going to do to me now ?" ' 
 
 He adds that were he to live a hundred years he 
 would never be able to forget all he suffered. That 
 was written when he was twenty-five years old, and 
 to-day, nearly thirty years later, and close upon forty 
 years since those days of suffering, his recollection is 
 as keen as if these things had happened only yester- 
 day. Speaking to the writer of his experiences at 
 Alais, Alphonse Daudet used almost the identical 
 language in which he described the same in the 
 book written thirty years previously, and those who 
 have conversed with Daudet know that he is never 
 at fault for language to describe an experience. The 
 sentence, ' Ah, the children were very cruel !' kept 
 repeating itself, and a real look of pain came over 
 his face. He must have suffered cruelly, deeply, 
 bitterly. Yet and this is another fine trait in his 
 character these early sufferings in no wise warped 
 his character or embittered his temper. It is 
 especially to be noticed that he has a great fondness 
 for children, a fondness akin to that of Dickens, 
 with whom here again he has, as a man, a point of 
 resemblance. In this respect he compares favourably 
 with Guy de Maupassant, his fellow in literature, 
 whose peculiar insistence on the meanness, egotism, 
 and cruelty of children is one of the bitterest com-
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 141 
 
 ponents of his unsweetened productions. And 
 De Maupassant had never had to suffer from the 
 treatment of children. For him they trailed no 
 clouds of glory, only an evil mist ; nor was it from 
 any heaven that it came, but from the same foul 
 swamp in which the protoplasm of selfish, cruel, 
 cowardly, lustful man oozed itself into being. 
 Daudet, on the other hand, is devoted to children. 
 It is a pretty sight to see him with his little daughter 
 Edmee, Edmond de Goncourt's godchild, the sweetest 
 little girl, Parisienne to the tips of her dainty little 
 boots. She is perhaps the only living being for 
 whom, when in the throes of composition, Alphonse 
 Daudet will lay aside his pen, and with it his pre- 
 occupation, so as to give himself up entirely to the 
 little lady. He has always some present in his 
 pocket for her, and worldly as he is to some 
 extent is never happier than when able to relate to 
 his guests some clever thing that Edmee said, some 
 pretty thing that Edmee did. One wonders that he 
 should have written so little about children from his 
 point of view. The little Prince in ' Les Rois en 
 Exil ' is a mere sketch, and as to Sapho's love-child 
 whose vileness De Maupassant and Zola would 
 so gleefully and redundantly have analysed, the 
 former as intrinsic, the latter as the natural outcome 
 of atavism it is merely introduced to stimulate
 
 j 4 2 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Gaussin's jealousy, to render the final rupture more 
 intelligible. 
 
 The boys took advantage of the usher's short- 
 sightedness to play their cruel pranks. One day 
 they placed an old trunk studded with nails on the 
 staircase down which he was to come, and Alphonse 
 Daudet fell over it and nearly killed himself. They 
 used to arrange booby-traps on the door of his 
 garret-room, to spoil his bed, and poison his food. 
 Their persecution was unceasing. His authority 
 was constantly set at nought, and the chapter 
 entitled ' L'Affaire Boucoyran ' in ' Le Petit Chose ' 
 is the description of a real occurrence. In fact, as 
 in the story, the principal invariably sided with the 
 boys, as sources of revenue, against the usher, and 
 the injustice and humiliation of this proceeding 
 added greatly to his sufferings. 
 
 It was only natural that under these circumstances 
 the college should become so distasteful to him that 
 after a time he sought change and relief in the cafe 
 of the town, where, indeed, an even more pernicious 
 society awaited him. It is indeed difficult to imagine 
 inanity so complete as that which characterizes the 
 habitual frequenters of a cafe in a small provincial 
 town in France. There may be seen the effects of 
 a prolonged starvation of the brain in their worst and 
 most striking aspect. These loafers have apparently
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 143 
 
 no other objects in life than to make a maximum 
 of canons on the soiled and sticky billiard-table ; 
 to colour their foul clay pipes ; and to absorb as 
 many glasses as possible of absinthe, vermouth, 
 or beer. Of ambition there is no more than in a 
 colony of limpets on a rock. When the conversation 
 rises from the pettiest gossip to general ideas, the 
 best talker is he who has most carefully read the 
 Paris papers of the day before yesterday. A fatal 
 miliezt, for a hungry-brained, inquisitive, knowledge- 
 seeking youth. In this atmosphere of brutishness, 
 with the despair of his miserable life at heart, 
 Alphonse Daudet, but for the strength of his nature, 
 might have sunk to the level of his companions, and 
 not without excuse. Mental anaemia soon sets in 
 from want of nutrition, and, as De Goncourt has 
 remarked, even the strongest man soon becomes a 
 ' stomach ' in the French provinces. Daudet might 
 have tried to console himself for his wretched life, 
 and compensate himself for his unceasing humilia- 
 tions by drinking, smoking, playing with the best of 
 them. He had every temptation to create for him- 
 self a ' pothouse glory.' He was a clever speaker, 
 and certainly the most cultivated of the frequenters 
 of that particular establishment. There was solace 
 to be found here for his wounded self-esteem. And 
 how this self-esteem was wounded, not only by his
 
 144 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 pupils and fellow-masters, but by all with whom he 
 came in contact, is illustrated by the following anec- 
 dote, related by him to the writer : 
 
 ' There was a child to whom I had been especially 
 attentive, who had promised me that he would take 
 me to his parents' house during the holidays. I was 
 so pleased, and did so look forward to this treat. 
 Well, on the day of the prizes, of which, thanks to 
 my coaching, my young friend had received quite a 
 number, he led me up to his parents, who were 
 standing waiting for him by the side of a grand 
 carriage. "Papa, mamma," he cried, "here is 
 Monsieur Daudet, who has been so good to me, to 
 whom I owe all these books." Well, papa and 
 mamma, stout bourgeois people, in their Sunday 
 clothes, simply turned their backs on me, and drove 
 off with my young pupil without a single word. And 
 I had so looked forward to a holiday in the country 
 with the lad, whom I loved sincerely !' 
 
 How keenly the sensitive boy must have felt this 
 humiliation and the many others of which this is but 
 a single instance ! Would there not have been 
 every excuse for him if he had sought after com- 
 pensation and redress in pothouse triumphs ? But 
 if, as Daudet himself has confessed, his wounded 
 pride more than once prompted him to seek the end 
 of his troubles in suicide, by the killing of his body,
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 145 
 
 he was not ready to destroy his mind. He passed 
 unscathed through the fumes of the Alais cafe, just 
 as he was afterwards to pass unscathed through a 
 pestilent Bohemianism. And, moreover, at the 
 moment when his life was becoming intolerable, his 
 brother Ernest intervened and rescued him for 
 better things. 
 
 After the departure of Alphonse from Lyons the 
 affairs of the Daudet family had become more and 
 more embarrassed, and so unceasingly did a catas- 
 trophe menace them, that the unhappy people found 
 themselves almost wishing that it might occur, so as 
 to know the worst. Ernest had determined, if the 
 home in Lyons were broken up, to go to Paris and 
 to try his fortune there in literary work. He some- 
 what naively remarks that his mother was not very 
 hopeful about the ultimate success of such a scheme. 
 She asked him what he expected to do in Paris, and 
 said that it might be a good thing for him to go 
 there if at least he had previously secured some 
 fixed employment. His father said that he might 
 do as he chose. Whilst Ernest was wondering how 
 he could ever get together the money necessary for 
 the journey to Paris, the catastrophe occurred which 
 broke up the home and dispersed the members of 
 the family. Since the Daudets had been living in 
 
 the pleasant apartment in the Rue Castries they had 
 
 10
 
 i 4 6 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 never once paid their rent, and as the fourth quarter- 
 day approached, the landlord, who had acted with 
 great forbearance because he sympathized with their 
 misfortunes, told them that unless the money, or 
 part of it, were at last forthcoming, he would be 
 obliged to force them to quit. When this decision 
 was communicated to the Daudets, Vincent was 
 away, and a council of war was held by Ernest 
 and his mother. They decided that it was hopeless 
 to attempt to hold out any longer, and resolved to 
 sell the furniture, pay their most urgent debts, and 
 separate, Ernest to go to Paris, Madame Daudet 
 and her daughter to return to Nimes, where a home 
 was offered them by one of her sisters. Only those 
 who know how a French bourgeoise clings to her 
 m&nage, equalled only in this respect by the English 
 workwoman's affection for what she calls her 'home,' 
 can appreciate how greatly Madame Daudet must 
 have suffered before coming to this decision. 
 Thanks to the courtesy of their model landlord, she 
 was allowed to preserve certain household objects to 
 which she was particularly attached ; the rest was 
 sold by auction, and when all had been paid that had 
 to be paid there remained enough to take Ernest 
 Daudet to Paris with just fifty francs in his pocket. 
 He spent the last week of his life in Lyons with a 
 friend called Beurtheret, who shared his bed with
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 147 
 
 him, and gave him the excellent advice always to 
 dress well in Paris. ' Make people envy you,' said 
 Beurtheret ; ' never, by any chance let them pity 
 you.' Ernest was fortunately able to find a good 
 tailor, who fitted him out fashionably on credit, and 
 afterwards did the same for Alphonse, thanks to 
 which circumstance the two young men were able to 
 go out into Parisian society, and to form connections 
 which apparently were of some advantage to them 
 at least, so Ernest thinks, and expresses a debt of 
 gratitude to the confiding tailor. It was in certain 
 drawing-rooms, he remarks, that Alphonse first 
 made a reputation. Where Alphonse has written of 
 the drawing-rooms which he used to frequent in the 
 first years of his life in Paris, he has ridiculed them 
 and the absurd pretensions of his hostesses of those 
 days. Who has forgotten his sketch of ' Les Salons 
 Ridicules,' published in ' Souvenirs d'un Homme de 
 Lettres ' ? 
 
 ' Oh, the number of comical drawing-rooms which 
 I have seen ! To what queer soirees did I take my 
 first evening-coat, at a time when, still an innocent 
 provincial, knowing life only through Balzac, I 
 thought it my duty to go out into society. One 
 must have draped one's self about in the four 
 
 oo 
 
 quarters of Paris for two consecutive winters to 
 know to what extremes the mania of giving recep-
 
 148 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 tions in spite of everything can be carried. It is all 
 rather vague in my memory, yet I remember the 
 small apartment of a clerk, an outlandish drawing- 
 room, where, to make room, the piano had to be 
 placed in front of the kitchen door. The glasses of 
 syrup were placed on the books of music, and when 
 sentimental songs were being sung the servant-girl 
 used to come and listen, resting her elbows on the 
 piano. . . . And that other house, that fantastic 
 fifth story, where the landing was used as a cloak- 
 room, and the baluster for hat-pegs.' And, again, 
 ' the house with a speciality for the relations of great 
 men. One was told as a great secret, " We shall 
 have Ambroise Thomas's brother this evening," or 
 "a cousin of Gounod's," or " Gambetta's aunt." 
 Never, indeed, Gounod or Gambetta themselves.' 
 To judge from this extract it would seem that 
 Alphonse Daudet does not consider himself very 
 greatly indebted to his social connections for his 
 subsequent very great success. Indeed, few of the 
 men of letters in France who have distinguished 
 themselves in this century may be said to be in any 
 
 way indebted to society for their success. Balzac 
 
 (&**' 
 lived a hermit's life until long after his name was a 
 
 household word in France ; Gerajd de Nerval lived 
 no one knows how, no one knows where; Baudelaire 
 hid himself from the world in a hotel-room in the
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 149 
 
 Rue d' Amsterdam ; Leconte de Lisle in his study 
 in the Luxembourg ; De Maupassant took refuge 
 from society on board his yacht ; Jules Verne buried 
 himself long ago in a suburb of Amiens ; and it 
 is only quite recently, when past fifty years of 
 age, ihat Emile Zola has begun to come out of 
 his cloistral retirement. George Ohnet and Jean 
 Rameau are, perhaps, the only two men of letters of 
 some repute who habitually figure in Parisian draw- 
 ing-rooms, and always have done so ; and of them it 
 may be remarked that their claims to the title of 
 men of letters are disputed by certain people. Balzac 
 asserted that the law of art is constant labour, that 
 Voltaire lived in his library just as Canova lived in 
 his studio, and describes those who pass their lives 
 ' in talking themselves, thus creating for themselves 
 a kind of salon glory,' as semi-artists. Balzac's 
 disciples seem to have taken this lesson to heart, 
 and very few are the drawing-rooms in Paris which 
 can boast the more notable of French litterateurs as 
 amongst their past or present frequenters. 
 
 Ernest had such confidence in the power of fine 
 clothes as a key to literary success in Paris that, as 
 he tells us, he walked out in the city, on the morning 
 of his arrival there, in evening clothes and a white 
 tie. Such an accoutrement at that time of the day 
 would not, of course, attract as much attention in
 
 i S o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Paris as it would, for instance, in London, for in 
 Paris the swallow-tail coat and the white cravat are 
 often worn on official and ceremonious occasions 
 even in the daytime. One of his. first visits was to 
 Claudius Hebrard, who was living in the Rue de 
 Tournon, to whom he brought two letters of intro- 
 duction from Lyons. Hebrard showed him round 
 Paris, and, better still, allowed him the use of his 
 rooms during a month's absence in Lyons, to which 
 city he started on the day after Ernest Daudet's call. 
 The second person on whom Ernest called was 
 Armand Barthet, who authorized him to use his 
 name whenever he wished a free pass to the Odeon 
 Theatre, then, as now, the Parnassus of young men 
 of letters. A third letter of introduction was to the 
 Comte de Pontmartin, who really did trouble himself 
 to be useful to his young protege. He took him to 
 the office of Le Spectateur, an Orleanist newspaper, 
 which had been founded after the suppression of the 
 Assemble Nationale, and introduced him to Mallac, 
 the editor, who, on Pontmartin's recommendation, 
 then and there engaged Ernest Daudet on the 
 editorial staff at a salary of ,8 a month. ' Two 
 hundred francs !' exclaims Ernest Daudet. ' That 
 meant that my daily bread was assured, that I was 
 certain of being able to assist my mother, that it would 
 be possible for me to bring Alphonse up to Paris.'
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 151 
 
 On the return of Claudius Hebrard, after a 
 month's absence in Lyons, Ernest was obliged to 
 provide himself with other lodgings, and engaged 
 a room in a hotel in the Rue Tournon, the Grand 
 Hotel du Senat, a house which is standing to this 
 day, and may be seen by those who are interested in 
 Alphonse Daudet's career, and have read his descrip- 
 tion of it in ' Le Petit Chose.' It is on the right 
 hand as one descends the Rue de Tournon from the 
 Luxembourg Palace, nearly opposite the barracks, 
 once the scene of Cartouche's most gallant exploit. 
 At that time it was entirely inhabited by students. 
 To-day it is frequented by grave senators and staid 
 provincials. It is within a few doors of the Cafe 
 Foyot, of recent dynamite notoriety. Ernest's room 
 was a miserable garret on the fifth floor, which was 
 let at the rate of twelve shillings a month. It was 
 furnished with a small iron bedstead, a broken-down 
 chest of drawers, which also served as washing-stand, 
 a writing-table, two chairs, a cracked stone-ware 
 stove, and a ragged piece of carpet laid on the red 
 tiles of the floor. The one small window commanded 
 a view of a chaos of chimney-pots, with the towers of 
 the church of St. Sulpice in the background. 
 
 'When for the first time,' writes Ernest Daudet, 
 ' on a gloomy October evening, I found myself alone 
 in this poor abode, having left Claudius Hebrard's
 
 152 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 comfortable apartment, the contrast was so cruel, 
 and the feeling of my misery so profound, that my 
 youth took fright, weakened by my isolation, by the 
 tension of my mind, by an excess of work. My 
 father without a position, my mother so far away, 
 living in a house which was not her home, my 
 brother in misery at his school all these were painful 
 visions which were brought before my eyes by the 
 sinister aspect of these walls. I was terrified at the 
 immensity of my task, at the weight of my responsi- 
 bility, and I wept in silence. The impression was a 
 passing one, and it was the remembrance of my 
 brother, of the good companion whose talents I 
 knew, in whom I trusted as in myself, that dis- 
 sipated it.' 
 
 It is to Ernest's credit that as soon as he secured 
 some sort of footing in Paris his first wish should 
 have been to rescue his brother, whose wretched 
 position was known to him from the many distressful 
 letters which he received from Alais. The Latin 
 Quarter is full of temptations to a young man. The 
 Boulevard St. Michel and the Bal Bullier were 
 within a minute's walk of the Grand Hotel du Senat, 
 and on an income of two hundred francs a month a 
 handsome young man could find some amusement. 
 Most young men, and not the most selfish ones, 
 would have considered it just enough for one. But
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF A MR. MELL 153 
 
 Ernest was a good brother, and decided that it was 
 enough for two. 
 
 ' One day, in answer to one of his letters, which 
 was more heartrending than the others, I wrote to 
 him, "Come!" And the wounded little bird took 
 wing and flew for refuge to my side.' 
 
 It was under these circumstances that Alphonse 
 Daudet left Alais to undertake the conquest of 
 Paris.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS. 
 
 THE journey from Alais to Paris can nowadays be 
 effected by the ordinary trains in a little under 
 eighteen hours. In 1857 it took the third-class 
 passenger the best part of two days and two nights. 
 This terribly fatiguing journey was undertaken in 
 October of that year by Alphonse Daudet, who set 
 out on the conquest of Paris with two francs in his 
 pocket over and above his third-class ticket, a few 
 poems in manuscript in a battered old trunk, and in 
 his mind a great determination to succeed. To the 
 latter possession he added a vivid imagination, a 
 thoroughly conscientious style, and a capacity for 
 sustained effort. He was shabbily dressed, and 
 wore a queer little felt hat perched on his long and 
 fuzzy black hair. A double eyeglass focussed the 
 fire of his eyes. He states that no matter how long 
 he may live, he never will forget this first journey to 
 Paris. One's memory is always keener for the
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 155 
 
 pains than for the pleasures which life brings with it. 
 Certainly the journey was a very tedious one, and 
 it was undertaken under conditions of the greatest 
 discomfort. It was bitterly cold, and all the clothes 
 that Daudet possessed were the light summer suit 
 which he wore. Even to-day the third - class 
 carriages on the French trains seem designed to 
 afford the greatest inconvenience to travellers in 
 the least possible space ; it is difficult to imagine them 
 as they were forty years ago. The young man had 
 nothing to eat all the way, for he dared not part 
 with any of his money two francs. He was 
 cramped up on his hard seat in a carriage in which 
 drunken and howling sailors, fat peasants, fidgety old 
 women, noisy children, and the like took their places 
 in succession. He had no boots, for he had been 
 unable to afford the purchase of a pair before 
 leaving Alais, and travelled in goloshes, his only 
 foot-wear. The compartment was pestiferous, ' with 
 its smell of pipes, brandy, garlic sausages, and 
 mouldy straw,' and this must have been a real suffer- 
 ing to a refined youth enamoured of the scent of 
 wild thyme. But what he suffered from most was 
 hunger, although no doubt a long course of meals at 
 the Lycee, with its pulse-foods and abondance, had 
 considerably weakened his digestion and impaired 
 his appetite. To add to his sufferings, everybody
 
 i 5 6 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 in the carriage had provisions in abundance. A 
 large basket of assorted victuals stuck out beneath 
 his seat and cramped his legs. ' The vicinity of 
 this basket,' he says, ' rendered me very unhappy, 
 especially on the second day.' The only refresh- 
 ment of which he partook during all those hours was 
 a pull of brandy from a flask which some sailors 
 handed him in good fellowship. One of Zola's 
 characters remarks, as others have also remarked, 
 that many will offer drink, where none will offer 
 food. ' The good fellows !' he exclaims in gratitude. 
 ' How beautiful were their rough songs ; how good 
 was their rasping brandy for one who had eaten 
 nothing for twice twenty-four hours. It saved me 
 and revived me.' The cold was terrible. ' India- 
 rubber goloshes are very good things, but to wear 
 them in winter in a third-class carriage ! My God, 
 how cold I was ! I could have cried. At night, 
 when everybody was asleep, I used to take my feet 
 in my hands and spend hours in trying to warm 
 them.' In spite of all, he was happy, for at the end 
 of his journey were Ernest and Paris. Ernest 
 depicts his situation at the time in the following 
 words : ' A child of seventeen years of age, delicate 
 and unhappy, arriving in Paris empty in purse and 
 stomach, curious, thirsting after the unknown, 
 hungry for fresh sensations, full of presentiments of
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 157 
 
 the future, but rendered timid by the excess of his 
 misery to the extent of doubting his own powers, of 
 not daring to believe in his star, still too young, 
 too poor in experience to appraise the value of the 
 intellectual treasure which he bears within him.' 
 
 It was before daybreak on the morning of 
 November i, 1857, that Alphonse Daudet first set 
 foot in Paris. He had no boots on his feet, and 
 just two francs in his pocket. His brother Ernest 
 was waiting for him with an unnecessary porter and 
 a superfluous hand-cart. ' Our two spirits rushed 
 together with all the force with which we embraced 
 each other with our arms.' Unfortunately railway- 
 stations are not organized for effusive demonstra- 
 tions. It is difficult to say which of the two was 
 the more delighted by this meeting. If Ernest's 
 brotherly heart ached to see how shabby, how cold, 
 how hungry-looking Alphonse was, it glowed with 
 pride at his remarkable beauty. Theodore de Ban- 
 ville has left a portrait of him, as he was in his 
 youth, in the Camtes parisiens : ' A marvellously 
 charming head, the skin of a warm and amber- 
 coloured paleness, the eyebrows straight and silken ; 
 the eye, bright-burning and liquid, at once fiery 
 and moist ; lost in dreams, it sees nothing, but it 
 is delicious to look upon ; the voluptuous dreamy 
 mouth, purple with blood, the soft and child-like
 
 158 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 beard, the abundant dark hair, the small and delicate 
 ear, combine in an ensemble which is proudly virile 
 in spite of its feminine grace.' 
 
 The hair is gray now, though still abundant ; 
 the eyes, save in moments of excitement, as when a 
 friend approaches, or a discussion grows warm, when 
 the Third Republic is attacked, or music is being 
 played, have lost much of their pristine fire ; the 
 warm amber of the complexion has faded, as amber 
 fades when torn from the bosom of the refulgent 
 sea ; there is little purple left in his lips ; pain has 
 left its impress everywhere, like a fire it has scorched 
 and seared and furrowed, and yet Alphonse Daudet's 
 marvellous beauty remains. When one looks at 
 him to-day, one is irresistibly reminded of certain 
 lines in the ' Hyperion ' of Keats : 
 
 ' How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 
 Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.' 
 
 In following Alphonse Daudet's career it is useful 
 for the purpose of forming an estimate of his 
 character to bear in mind the exceptional and 
 wonderful beauty which always has been his, for, 
 being endowed with it, it is all the more to his 
 praise that he ever held before him the high ideal 
 which was his when, hungry and frozen, he first set 
 foot in Paris to do the best that in him lay in the
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 159 
 
 terrible career of letters. There was exhibited 
 in this year (1894) in the Salon of the Champs- 
 Elys^es, in Paris, a picture by Rochegrosse which 
 represented a knight in silver armour walking 
 through a flowery meadow, steadily progressing 
 towards some far-off bourne on which his gaze was 
 fixed, while a throng of beautiful women, whose 
 flower-crowned tresses were reflected in the silver 
 sheen of his armour, surrounded him with alluring 
 gestures and smiles full of promise, and strove, but 
 strove in vain, to stay his step, to win a look 
 from those steadfast eyes. Well, those who knew 
 Alphonse Daudet, and what his career was, might 
 have thought of him as they looked on this picture 
 How many were the temptations, raised up around 
 him by his great personal attraction, which sought 
 to win his eyes away from the far-off bourne of the 
 highest and best in art to which he was progressing, 
 and only has not reached because to such an artist 
 there is no finality. To the young man who, being 
 poor, has any ambition of other than a sordid nature, 
 great personal beauty can only be a curse. In the 
 corrupt Paris on which Alphonse Daudet entered, 
 and in which his early manhood was passed, it 
 might have been for him doubly a curse. It was 
 not so, and it is to his great honour that it was not 
 so. The woman of the world must suffer to be
 
 160 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 beautiful. The artist must suffer because he is 
 beautiful, because his beauty will cause stumbling- 
 blocks of every baleful kind to be strewn in the 
 path along which he would proceed. One wants 
 the companion story to Hans Andersen's ' Ugly 
 Duckling.' 
 
 Paris exercises on the French provincial a fasci- 
 nation immeasurably superior to the attraction 
 which other capital cities possess for the rural popu- 
 lations of the countries in which they are situated. 
 The reason of this lies in the French character, in the 
 French ignorance of geographical facts, in the diluted 
 egotism so intrinsically French (unless, indeed, the 
 Chinese may lay claim to it in a higher degree), 
 which cannot be called patriotism for that is a word 
 of nobler significance and can best be described by 
 a term of their own coining, the word Chauvinism. 
 In the Frenchman's eyes Paris is the city. Victor 
 Hugo, the Chauvin of Chauvins, Taine's ' intoxicated 
 National Guard,' would have it that Paris was the 
 metropolis of the world and Europe its suburbs. 
 In the Frenchman's eyes Paris is the city of cities, 
 the Ville Lumiere. London for him is a brick and 
 plaster monster couchant in an unlifting fog ; Berlin- 
 well, Berlin ; Vienna, the goal of Bonapartist military 
 promenades ; Brussels, a city of which the principal 
 industry is the counterfeiting of French art and
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 161 
 
 letters, and Rome and Madrid, towns over the 
 frontier and too remote for comprehension. Nine- 
 tenths of living Frenchmen are firmly convinced 
 that Paris is not only the richest city in the world, 
 the most beautiful city in the world, but also the 
 largest city in the world. On account of this 
 national aberration it is always interesting to hear 
 what are the first impressions of a French provincial 
 of his metropolitan city. In the case of Alphonse 
 Daudet, whose education and intelligence must to 
 some little extent have modified the extravagant 
 expectations of an ardent imagination, the account 
 of his first impressions would be doubly interesting. 
 Unfortunately, he is unable to remember them. ' I 
 have often since tried,' he says, ' to remember the 
 exact impression which Paris produced upon me 
 that night, but things, like men, assume the first 
 time that we see them a wholly peculiar physiog- 
 nomy, which afterwards we fail to recognise. I 
 have never been able to reconstruct Paris as it 
 seemed to me on my first arrival. It appears to me 
 like a city lost in the mist, passed through by me 
 as a child, and never again seen. I remember a 
 wooden bridge spanning a river which was all black ; 
 then a long deserted quay, and an immense garden 
 skirting this quay.' Elsewhere he says : ' It was 
 barely daybreak ; we only met workmen with faces 
 
 1 1
 
 162 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 livid with cold, or newspaper carriers occupied in 
 pushing the morning papers, not unskilfully, under 
 the doors of the houses. The gas-lamps were dying 
 out ; the streets, the Seine, the bridges, all appeared 
 to me murky as seen through the morning mist. 
 Such was my entry into Paris.' 
 
 Whilst Alphonse was gathering these impressions, 
 the motherly Ernest, true to his role of Martha, 
 was looking round for an eating-house where his 
 starving brother might refresh himself. No such 
 place was, however, to be found until the lads 
 had reached the Rue Corneille, on the Place de 
 1'Odeon, hard by the Rue de Tournon. A coffee- 
 shop was open at the corner of this street, and it was 
 here that Alphonse first partook of the hospitality 
 of Paris. Three-halfpence worth of coffee, an 
 omelette, and some fruit was the bill-of-fare of this 
 humble repast. The bill-of-fare has its eloquence 
 also, and a comparison between that of Alphonse 
 Daudet's first meal in Paris and, say, one of such 
 banquets as in these days Paris delights to set 
 before him would be instructive. As a matter of 
 fact, Daudet is indifferent to the pleasures of the 
 table. His readers will have noticed that there is 
 little ' eating ' in his novels. Herein they again differ 
 from Zola's books, which are replete with mastica- 
 tion. Zola is sincerely interested in food and the
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 163 
 
 partaking of food. ' My God !' says poor Gervaise, 
 ' how good and how sad is it to eat when one is 
 dying of starvation.' When he describes a dinner- 
 table, he gives the bill-of-fare in detail with infinite 
 gusto. In private life he is a gourmet. When he 
 was a young man all that he could spare from his 
 meagre earnings was spent in primeurs. To-day 
 his table is royally served, and he has been heard 
 to say that good eating is the one true, abiding 
 pleasure of life. Balzac, on principle, fed himself 
 for a long time on bread dipped in oil. His glorious 
 disciple one day said to De Goncourt, who had asked 
 him if he were a gourmand, 'Yes, I am. It is my 
 only vice, and at home, when there is nothing nice 
 for dinner, I am unhappy, utterly unhappy. There 
 is nothing outside of that . . . nothing else exists 
 for me.' De Goncourt, by the way, also confesses 
 to an appreciation of gastronornical delights, but in 
 his case it is due to the tradition of French o-entle- 
 
 O 
 
 men, who have held cooking as one of the fine arts. 
 In his ' Me moires,' describing a supper at which a 
 fricassee of fowl with crayfish sauce and a salmi 
 of woodcocks were served to him, he remarks : 
 4 And as I relish these succulent things, with the 
 respect due to art, I think what a nation we have 
 been, what a paradise is France, and what savages 
 our conquerors are.' As for Alphonse Daudet, he
 
 164 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 never speaks, and rarely writes, about eating. Good 
 plain food is served on his hospitable table. ' A man's 
 nature improves when he has eaten,' he writes in one 
 of the rare passages in which he treats of this subject. 
 
 After partaking of this frugal meal they passed, on 
 their way to the Rue Tournon, by the Luxembourg 
 garden. ' It was broad daylight at last. Paris was 
 smiling on me with all her open shops ; the very 
 Odeon assumed an affable air to greet me, and the 
 white marble queens in the Luxembourg garden, 
 seen athwart the iron railings, in the midst of the 
 leafless trees, seemed to me to nod their heads 
 graciously, and to bid me welcome.' 
 
 Alphonse was delighted with the garret. It was 
 then a matter of tradition that great writers should 
 commence their career in a sixth-floor room. Balzac, 
 who could have afforded a better lodging, purposely 
 began his literary life in Paris in a miserable attic 
 near the Place de la Bastille, which was so low that 
 when he sat at his table his leonine crest appeared 
 outside the sloping skylight window. The name of 
 the hotel Grand Hotel du Senat tickled Alphonse 
 Daudet's vanity. Here, indeed, was a fine-sounding 
 address to give. And when he heard that just 
 opposite was a house inhabited by the famous 
 Ricord, physician to the Emperor, he felt that he was 
 indeed and at last in metropolitan Paris.
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 165 
 
 His first weeks in Paris were lonely ones. He 
 knew nobody but his brother, and was alone in the 
 midst of a crowd. He was shortsighted, cowed, and 
 timid. His brother had to leave him in the morn- 
 ing, staying away all day at his newspaper office. 
 Alphonse, after fitful periods of work in his attic 
 for he was writing poetry at the time, and no regu- 
 larity of labour is possible in the composition of 
 poetry used to creep out into the street, and make 
 his way to the Odeon Theatre hard by. An arched 
 gallery runs all round the basement of this theatre, 
 and in this gallery are innumerable book-stalls. It 
 was at that time in some sort the literary Rialto of 
 the left bank of the Seine, and was frequented by 
 writers, actors, artists, and lovers of books. In a 
 walk round the theatre in this gallery one could 
 acquaint one's self with the latest literary news, learn 
 what new books had been, or were about to be, 
 published, what new writers had sprung up in the 
 night, the names of those to whom one night had 
 brought the first beginnings of fame, and how, among 
 accepted authors, some were holding their ground and 
 others progressing onwards. This was forty years 
 ago ; since then literary Paris has to a large extent 
 deserted this quarter for the right bank of the river, 
 and to-day few men of letters, with the exception of 
 the eccentric litterateurs of the Latin Quarter, arc
 
 166 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ever to be met with under the Odeon galleries. 
 Leconte de Lisle, now dead, was at times to be 
 seen there, hastily turning over the leaves of some 
 recent book, nervously glancing round for fear of 
 recognition. Francois Coppee is one of the few 
 faithful, nodding, as he manfully strides along, to the 
 stall-keepers, who step out of their little office sheds 
 to salute the master, whose Roman-emperor mask 
 they know well. Sometimes, too, after dusk, when 
 the gallery lamps are lit, the Silenus head of Paul 
 Verlaine, waiting for the absinthe hour to strike, 
 may be descried in the penumbra. 
 
 In the year 1857, as has been said, it was other- 
 wise, and young Daudet could see in the galleries of 
 the Odeon most of the writers whom he burned to 
 emulate. A figure which greatly struck him was 
 that of Barbey d'Aurevilly, at that time contributing 
 to Le Pays, and already recognised as a master both 
 in fiction and in criticism. At that time he was 
 forty-nine years old, and a mystery in his life added 
 to the interest with which the young Southerner, 
 romantic and adventure-loving, must have studied 
 his strange appearance. For, twenty-seven years 
 previously, Barbey d'Aurevilly had disappeared sud- 
 denly, and nothing more was seen or heard of him 
 for twenty years, at the lapse of which period he 
 returned to Paris. He always refused to tell where
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 167 
 
 or how he had spent these twenty years, and the 
 strangest versions were afloat. Considered one of 
 the leaders of the young school of literature, in 1857 
 his fame already rested on more masterpieces than 
 one, ' La Vieille Maitresse,' ' L'Amour Impossible,' 
 ' L'Ensorcelee,' and others. The eccentricity of his 
 costume was such as must have attracted Daudet's 
 attention the very first time he saw him. He was 
 draped in an immense cloak of black cloth, one flap 
 of which, thrown back over his shoulder, revealed 
 that it was lined with costly velvet. In those days 
 the lining was black, in later years, when his head 
 had grown white, it was crimson. At all times the 
 materials of his clothes were of the richest qualities. 
 He had studied Beau Brummel, and had written a 
 book on dandyism and the dandy. He was a 
 fervent Catholic, and a frequenter of churches. His 
 books, written in a florid, sonorous style, not without 
 grandeur, were defaced in places by deliberate bad 
 taste, displayed, after the fashion of Baudelaire, to 
 shock the bourgeois, and enjoyed no favour with them, 
 though appreciated by the lettered few. D'Aurevilly 
 lived and died a poor gentleman, magnificent abroad, 
 miserable at home. A small room in a side-street in 
 Montmartre was where, in 1889, this Beau Brummel 
 of letters breathed his last. Paul Bourget closed his 
 eyes. His conversation was brilliant but cynical, and
 
 i68 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 breathed disdain for all and everything outside the 
 region of art. Alphonse Daudet came to know him, 
 and their acquaintance developed affection and 
 reciprocal admiration which lasted till the elder's 
 death. Barbey d'Aurevilly used to dine at Daudet's 
 house after Daudet's success had come, and De Gon- 
 court describes such a dinner, one of the last to 
 which D'Aurevilly came. He was dressed in white 
 nankeen trousers, and a frock-coat with skirts like a 
 petticoat. He ate little and drank copiously, and in 
 the latter connection reminded his host of the time 
 when, in the Latin Quarter, they used to sit together 
 outside the cafes quaffing champagne, to the amaze- 
 ment of the passers-by. In the early period of their 
 acquaintance Barbey d'Aurevilly seems to have 
 influenced Alphonse Daudet in the matter of dress, 
 and there was a time in Daudet's career when his 
 amazing coats and waistcoats were the talk of the 
 boulevard. Doubtless, like most men of artistic 
 temperament, he felt that influence of dress which 
 is expounded by Xavier le Maistre in his ' Voyage 
 autour de ma Chambre.' Indeed, he has confessed 
 it. He has related that his greatest joy as a child, 
 when he got away from his home in Lyons to the 
 club-room which he and his comrades had rented for 
 their tippling and smoking bouts, was to put on a 
 huge velvet Tam-o'-Shanter cap. ' With this cap
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 169 
 
 on his head, and an immense pipe between his teeth, 
 he felt rising within him the pride of a grown-up 
 man, an immeasurable feeling of pride.' The 
 philosophy of dress underlies the narration in his 
 charming sketch, ' Mon Premier Habit.' To-day 
 few traces of this particularity remain. At home he 
 sometimes wears a black velvet coat. For going 
 out he prefers a soft felt hat, but where a high hat is 
 necessary, he wears the flat-brimmed hat which is 
 particularly affected by French men of letters who 
 do not cut their hair. He is negligent rather than 
 careful in his dress, in spite of Madame Daudet's 
 motherly vigilance. And he likes his friends to 
 come to his house in informal costumes, even when 
 invited to dinner or to Madame Daudet's receptions. 
 ' Venez en grand appetit et en petite tenue ' (' Come 
 with a full appetite but not in full dress ') is the 
 characteristic wording of an invitation to dinner 
 which he recently addressed to the writer. The 
 question of the influence of dress on men of letters 
 and artists generally would form an interesting study. 
 It is known how Wagner accoutred himself when at 
 work, and the white monkish robe of Balzac is as 
 famous as his slippers. Amongst contemporary 
 French writers it is notorious that Jean Richepin 
 and Francois Coppee find that they can write best 
 when attired in flaming red. Leconte de Lisle used
 
 i7o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 to don a peculiar cap a thinking-cap indeed ! And 
 other instances might be cited. 
 
 Another writer to whom Alphonse Daudet's atten- 
 tion was attracted in his early peregrinations round 
 the Odeon Theatre was Jules Valles. ' Bilious, 
 sarcastic, eloquent, always dressed in the same 
 ill-fitting frock-coat, he used to speak in a grating, 
 metallic voice.' He had at that time just published 
 a revolutionary novel called ' L' Argent,' a remark- 
 able work for a man only just twenty-four years of 
 age. Daudet relates that it was not until his first 
 book had been published that he mustered up the 
 courage to speak to Valles. He does not tell us how 
 Valles received his advances. Ungraciously, no 
 doubt, for even at that age Valles was full of bitter- 
 ness against life and humanity ; and it was utterly 
 impossible that any sympathy should arise between 
 the bilious revolutionary on the one hand and the 
 sanguine Royalist on the other. It is an excellent 
 thing that circumstances willed it that Valles should 
 exercise no influence over Daudet. It could only 
 have been an influence for evil. Let one imagine an 
 Alphonse Daudet inoculated with the gall of a man 
 who did not hesitate in his novel ' Vingtras ' to 
 pillory his own mother. And Valles was a man 
 who did not allow others to speak in conversation. 
 De la Rochefoucauld's famous maxim, *de la conver-
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 171 
 
 sation,' might have been written for Valles. He 
 was a monologist, and as such would be intolerable 
 to Daudet, himself a brilliant talker. But his bitter- 
 ness especially would render him antipathetic to the 
 genial, warm-hearted Southerner, who, having gone 
 through equal miseries, took pleasure in his better 
 days in remembering them. Bitterness was the 
 literary stock-in-trade of Valles, and De Goncourt is 
 quite right in saying of him that he used to nurse it, 
 4 well aware that if it departed from him he would be 
 as a tenor who had lost his voice.' He saw life 
 through a glass stained with gall. Zola, the last 
 person in the world to be charged with optimism, 
 found his views on humanity nonsense and lies. 
 Dining with Daudet one day, he kept repeating 
 about Valles, ' with comical anger ' : ' For me Valles 
 is nothing but a hempseed. No, indeed, nothing but 
 a hempseed.' 
 
 Cressot, the author of ' Antonia,' to-day as for- 
 gotten as its author a starving Gringoire, who 
 lived nobody knew how ; Cressot, the eccentric, the 
 cUbonnaire, whom Daudet so often saw ' sidling 
 along the walks, with his sad and suffering face and 
 his long, starved body draped in a short cloak ' ; 
 Jules de la Madelene, 'one of our best minor prose- 
 poets, the too little known author of creations which 
 excel by the truly antique beauty of lines, " Les Ames
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 en peine " and " Le Marquis de Saffras," a man of 
 aristocratic manners, a fair head which reminded 
 one of the Christ of Tintoret, with delicate and 
 somewhat sickly features, and eyes full of sadness, 
 mourning for the sun of Provence, his fatherland - 
 were others of those whom Alphonse Daudet used 
 to meet, admire, and, it may be, envy in his lonely 
 walks in the Odeon galleries. 
 
 These walks, desultory as they were, inspired 
 and stimulated him. ' To meet famous men, to 
 exchange a few words with them by hazard, what 
 more is needed to inflame ambition ? "I, too, will 
 succeed," one says with confidence. With what 
 enthusiasm I then used to run up my five flights of 
 stairs, especially when I had been rich enough to 
 buy a candle, which enabled me to work all night to 
 elaborate by the light of its tiny flame verses, 
 sketches of plays, treading on each other's heels on 
 my sheets of white paper. Audacity lent me wings ; 
 I saw the future open wide before me ; I forgot my 
 indigence ; I forgot my privations.' 
 
 One cannot help wondering where, if Daudet had 
 been a provincial Englishman, he would have found 
 such stimulus in London. Where could he have 
 sought and found the inspiration of the sight of 
 famous men ? He might have wandered about out- 
 side certain literary clubs in Piccadilly or Pall Mall,
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 173 
 
 gazing wistfully up at the club windows, whilst in 
 the Strand or Fleet Street he might have met more 
 easily accessible journalists. But where the stimulus ? 
 One thinks of poor Chatterton's desultory wander- 
 ings about London, and that the galleries of an 
 Odeon might have saved him. The parallel might 
 be followed up. Both were poets, both came to their 
 metropolitan cities at a similar age, both came penni- 
 less ; and if Alphonse Daudet had a brother to go to, 
 Chatterton had a cousin. And Daudet came to 
 quaff champagne, to the amazement of the passers-by ; 
 and Chatterton well, it is too notorious what he 
 came to drink, and for what purpose. For if Paris 
 is the mother, London is the stepmother of letters. 
 
 As in the case of most young men, the first 
 literary endeavours of Alphonse Daudet were in the 
 writing of poetry. The men of letters who have 
 attained celebrity in France who have not com- 
 menced their careers as poets are few and excep- 
 tional. Even the bitter De Maupassant first stepped 
 before the public with a volume of verses, and 
 Zola's earliest efforts were in poetry. For in French 
 opinion the poet is the chief in the hierarchy of 
 letters, and it is for his place that all young men of 
 letters first strive in France. Daudet had brought 
 some completed poems with him in his scanty 
 baggage ; his activity during the first months of his
 
 174 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 stay in Paris added to their number, and produced 
 sufficient matter for a volume. In England a young 
 writer would have obtained immediate publication 
 for such verses, and remuneration withal, in the 
 weekly journals and magazines. In France there 
 was in Daudet's day, and is now T , no such outlet. 
 The French newspapers are conducted on even 
 more commercial principles than the American 
 press ; and though the unknown poet is not, as in 
 English-speaking countries, considered the fitting- 
 butt of ridicule, his productions, whatever their 
 intrinsic value may be, are considered as of so little 
 commercial value that no editor would risk the cost 
 of composition in publishing them. And as w r ith the 
 editors, so with the publishers. Daudet had the 
 exceptional good fortune to find a publisher who, at- 
 tracted either by his personal appearance, or charmed 
 by the ardour of his conversation, or, it may be, by 
 some strange caprice, consented to print his poems 
 at his own expense ; and Daudet is, perhaps, the 
 only living writer in France who had such good 
 fortune. The invariable rule of Parisian publishers 
 in dealing with unknown authors who have poems to 
 publish is to demand, in advance, the cost of print- 
 ing and publication. The estimate, although the 
 cost of printing is higher in Paris than in London, 
 is usually much less than would be asked under
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 175 
 
 similar circumstances by an English publisher. It 
 varies from 20 to ^30, according to the size 
 of the volume. It never enters the heads of 
 either publisher or author to make any allowance for 
 advertising the book, because books as a general 
 rule are not advertised in France, and books of 
 poems never. Nor does the young French author 
 enter upon such a transaction with any idea of gain 
 of a pecuniary nature in his mind. He knows that 
 by sending his volume to certain persons in Paris it 
 will be read and judged on its merits by the public 
 to which he wishes to appeal ; of the other, the 
 great, the shekel-bestowing public, he has no care 
 nor thought. It is a visiting-card which he wishes 
 to leave on his confreres and the dilettanti, and he 
 knows that his card will reach both. And then in the 
 world of letters an immense gulf separates the man 
 who has published nothing from the man who has 
 published a book, no matter what the book may be. 
 To have published a book is in certain circles in 
 Paris as much a distinction as the violet ribbon is to 
 the outer world. It is a title to consideration, the 
 handsel of possible fame, a first step on the ladder 
 of the literary hierarchy. The French publishers are 
 well aware of this, and for these advantages the 
 beginner must be, and is, prepared to pay. Alphonse 
 Dauclet secured these advantages without the pay-
 
 1 7 6 A L PHONSE DA UDET 
 
 ment which it would have been impossible for him 
 to make, and this was fortunate both for him and 
 for France. 
 
 It was at the house of M. Eugene Loudun, one 
 of the librarians of the Arsenal Library, to whom 
 Claudius Hebrard had introduced the two young 
 Daudets, that, according to Ernest, Alphonse made 
 the acquaintance of this publisher Jules Tardieu 
 who, a poet himself, was willing to do what probably 
 no other publisher living in Paris would have done 
 to publish at his own expense the first volume of 
 poems of a young and unknown writer. Indeed, 
 Alphonse, in his sketch entitled ' L'Arrivee,' has 
 described his chase after a publisher and the con- 
 stant disappointment which he experienced. 
 
 ' In the meanwhile,' he writes, ' I had finished a 
 little volume of poems, and went round calling on 
 the publishers. I knocked at the doors of Michel 
 Levy, of Hachette. Where did I not go ? I glided 
 into all the large book-shops, vast as cathedrals, 
 with my boots creaking terribly, and making a 
 horrid noise in spite of the carpets. Bureaucratic 
 clerks used to examine my appearance with cold 
 and arrogant stares. 
 
 ' " I should like to see Monsieur Levy about a 
 manuscript." 
 
 ' " Very well, sir. Will you give me your name?"
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 177 
 
 1 And when I had given my name, the clerk, 
 methodically, would put his mouth to one of the 
 holes in the speaking-tube and his ear to the other. 
 
 ' " Monsieur Levy is out." 
 
 ' Monsieur Levy was always out, and so was 
 Monsieur Hachette. Thanks to this insolent speak- 
 ing-tube, nobody was ever at home.' 
 
 A publisher called Jacobet, who looked like Balzac 
 without Balzac's forehead, in business at the famous 
 Librairie Nouvelle on the Boulevard des Italiens, 
 gave young Daudet some hopes. Unfortunately, 
 Jacobet never kept the appointments at which the 
 business was definitely to be settled. 
 
 ' He was constantly making appointments with 
 me for three o'clock in the afternoon at the Maison 
 d'Or. " We will talk the matter over there together," 
 he used to say, " and sign the contract on the corner 
 of the table." What a humbug he was ! Hardly did 
 I know where to find the Maison d'Or. My brother 
 alone used to console me a little when, with despair 
 at heart, I returned home.' 
 
 Alphonse Daudet relates that he made the ac- 
 quaintance of Jules Tardieu by chance one evening 
 when he was lounging in the Rue de Tournon, 
 where Tardieu had his offices and shop, and the 
 publisher was taking the air on the threshold of his 
 house. Imagination here has no doubt embellished
 
 178 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 fact, and Ernest's version must rather be accepted. 
 Of his publisher Daudet says that he was himself a 
 man of letters, the author of certain works which had 
 not been unsuccessful ' Mignon,' amongst others, 
 and ' Pour une epingle,' ' compositions of a senti- 
 mental order, written in rose-coloured ink.' He 
 does not say that this paragon of publishers came of 
 a celebrated family of engravers, already known in 
 the seventeenth century through Nicolas Henry 
 Tardieu, the pupil of Audran, and author of ' Les 
 Batailles d'Alexandre,' whose son Jacques Nicolas 
 won notice for himself by his ' Miseres de la Guerre,' 
 and his nephew Francois by his 'Jugement de 
 Paris,' after Rubens, and further distinguished by 
 Tardieu de 1'Estrapade and Alexander Tardieu, the 
 engraver of the well-known portraits of Voltaire, 
 Montesquieu, Marie Antoinette, and Napoleon. 
 
 Daudet's volume was entitled ' Les Amoureuses,' 
 and was published in a white cover with red imprint. 
 The book is not to be found to-day. Ernest says 
 that it at once won for its author the esteem of the 
 lettered and refined public. ' In one day he was 
 classified amongst those beginners of whom one 
 says, " He is somebody." Edward Thierry, whose 
 acquaintance the brothers had made in Loudun's 
 drawing-room, reviewed the book most favourably 
 in the Moniteur Officiel, a journal of great weight in
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 179 
 
 those days, when the truth was only supposed to 
 emanate from official sources. It was probably here 
 that the Due de Morny first noticed the name 
 of the young writer who was afterwards to become 
 his protege^ Amongst other agreeable things which, 
 in reviewing ' Les Amoureuses,' Edward Thierry 
 said about Alphonse was the following : ' At his 
 death Alfred de Musset left behind him two pens at 
 the disposal of those who could pick them up and 
 use them, the pen of prose and the pen of verse. 
 Octave Feuillet inherited the former, Alphonse 
 Daudet has just inherited the latter.' By a curious 
 coincidence Octave Feuillet had just written his 
 ' Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre,' and Daudet 
 was just beginning to live his romance as a poor, a 
 very poor, young man. 
 
 For he was miserably poor at the time. If the 
 paternal Lyons tailor had fitted him out so that in 
 respect of clothes he was presentable, he had no 
 money for linen or boots. The want of proper foot- 
 gear, which troubled him on his entry into Paris, was 
 to harass him for a long time. ' I have spent days in 
 bed,' he told the writer, ' because I had no boots to 
 go out in. I have had boots which made a squashy 
 sound each step that I took. But,' he added, ' what 
 made me suffer most was that I had often to wear 
 dirty linen because I could not pay my washer-
 
 i8o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 woman. Often I had to fail to keep appointments 
 given me by the fair I was a handsome lad, and 
 women liked me because I was too dirty and too 
 shabby to go.' 
 
 Some part of the immediate success of ' Les 
 Amoureuses ' was no doubt due to the fact that 
 previous to its publication the young author had 
 made himself and his verses known in various draw- 
 ing-rooms which Ernest had induced him to visit. 
 ' Eugene Loudun's drawing-room opened the doors 
 of others to us. At Madame Ancelot's, at Madame 
 Melanie Waldor's, at Madame Olympe Chodsko's, 
 and in the drawing-room of Madame Perriere-Pitte, 
 who was then rehearsing the part of fashionable 
 protectress of letters, my brother used to recite 
 his " Prunes," " Les Cerises," " Les Trois Jours de 
 Vendange." 
 
 The name of the last of these ladies is forgotten 
 to-day, but both Madame Ancelot and Madame 
 Chodsko are remembered in the world of literature. 
 Madame Ancelot, ne Chardon, was the wife of 
 J. F. Ancelot, who at the age of twenty-five pro- 
 duced a tragedy called ' Louis IX.,' which met with 
 great success, and won for its author a pension from 
 Louis XVIII., and an appointment to the post of 
 librarian at Meudon. In 1824 he produced 'Fiesque,' 
 a play inspired by his study of Schiller. He lost his
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES IN PARIS 181 
 
 place and his pension in 1830, and during the follow- 
 ing ten years wrote for money rather than fame, 
 producing a large number of comedies and vaude- 
 villes, many of which were well received. He was 
 elected to the French Academy in 1841, and died in 
 1854. Madame Ancelot was herself a writer of 
 considerable talent, helping her husband, whom she 
 had married in 1818, with his dramatic works. She 
 wrote some successful comedies alone, notably 
 ' Marie, ou Trois Epoques,' and ' Le Manage 
 raisonnable.' Her Complete Theatrical Works 
 were published in 1848. At the time that young 
 Daudet made her acquaintance she was writing 
 novels, and had recently published ' Ren6e de Var- 
 ville,' and ' La Niece du Banquier.' She died in 
 1875, just when her former protege was crossing 
 the border-line which divides obscurity from fame. 
 Madame Chodsko was the wife of James Chodsko, 
 the well-known Polish historian and author of 
 ' Tableau de la Pologne ancienne et moderne,' and 
 of ' Tableau des revolutions de la Pologne ' the 
 latter a conscientious picture of an immeasurable 
 subject. He was appointed librarian, first at the 
 Ministry of the Interior, and afterwards at the Sor- 
 bonne, and died in 1870. 
 
 In this society, says Ernest, his brother used to 
 recite his verses, the prologues of comedies, ' gener-
 
 1 82 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ously emptying his jewel-case, unceasingly enriched 
 with new treasures, in the presence of beautiful 
 ladies, who went into ecstasies over his graceful 
 bearing, his brilliant youth, his warm Southern 
 voice, and his seductive beauty.' 
 
 A certain public was therefore assured for ' Les 
 Amoureuses' even before it was published. One 
 does not like to detract from the merit of Tardieu's 
 altruism by supposing that he was aware of this fact 
 when he entered into the agreement with Alphonse 
 Daudet. It is fairer to presume that, like the 
 beautiful ladies of whom Ernest writes, he too was 
 won over by the graceful bearing, the brilliant youth, 
 the warm Southern voice, and the seductive beauty 
 of the young poet.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET AS A POET. 
 
 IN France the word ' poet ' has a wider application 
 than in England. It is a title of honour which is 
 given not only to those who write verse, but to all 
 those writers in whose works a certain artistic 
 temperament, a certain conscientiousness of style, 
 a certain love of the beautiful, and a certain striving 
 after an ideal reveal themselves. In England it is 
 applied to the writer of verse, and to the writer of 
 verse alone. That is the definition which the Eng- 
 lish dictionaries give of this word. Is it unnecessary 
 to add that, while a distinction in France, it is 
 amongst the great English public an appellation 
 which provokes smiles rather than respect ? 
 
 It is in the sense of the definition of the word given 
 in the English dictionaries that Alphonse Daudet 
 is to be considered in this place. To judge of his 
 title to the name of poet in the French sense of the 
 word, his whole literary career may be studied.
 
 184 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 His volume, ' Les Amoureuses,' now republished, 
 with the addition of poems and sketches written 
 up to the year 1861, by Charpentier, contains both 
 lyrical poems, poetical sketches, and fantaisies. Of 
 the lyrical poems perhaps the one best known is 
 that entitled ' Les Prunes,' the tale, in verse, of how 
 two cousins fell in love with each other in an orchard 
 whilst picking plums. In subject it is familiar, 
 domestic, and pretty, and in workmanship perfect. 
 It is, however, at best a slight production, and 
 the persistence with which it is recited in Parisian 
 drawing-rooms, or at dessert at Parisian dining - 
 tables, by precocious children, or white - frocked 
 young ladies, as a variation from the ' Greve ' of 
 Francois Coppee, has evoked for it, even amongst 
 Daudet's warmest admirers, a feeling akin to the 
 one which is bred of too great familiarity. 
 
 A verse or two may be quoted as illustrating the 
 commendable workmanship of the young poet : 
 
 ' Si vous voulez savoir comment 
 Nous nous aimames pour des prunes, 
 Je vous le dirai doucement, 
 Si vous voulez savoir comment 
 L'amour vient toujours en dormant, 
 Chez les bruns comme chez les brunes ; 
 En quelques mots voici comment 
 Nous nous aimames pour des prunes.' 
 
 The poet goes on to relate that his uncle had a
 
 AS A POET 
 
 185 
 
 large orchard, and that he himself had a cousin, 
 and that one morning he was walking 
 
 ' Dans le verger, avec Marietta,' 
 
 whom he describes in the following charming 
 
 manner : 
 
 ' Fraiche sous son petit bonnet, 
 Belle a ravir et point coquette, 
 Ma cousine se de"menait, 
 Fraiche sous son petit bonnet. 
 Elle sautait, allait, venait 
 Comme un volant sur la raquette : 
 Fraiche sous son petit bonnet, 
 Belle a ravir et point coquette.' 
 
 Together they approach a plum-tree ; Mariette 
 picks a plum, bites into it, and hands it to the 
 
 poet. 
 
 ' Ce fut tout, mais ce fut assez ; 
 Ce seul fruit disait bien des choses 
 (Si j'avais su ce que je sais ! . . .) 
 Ce fut tout, mais ce fut assez. 
 Je mordis, comme vous pensez, 
 Sur la trace des levres roses : 
 Ce fut tout, mais ce fut assez ; 
 Ce seul fruit disait bien des choses.' 
 
 This poem is simple and pretty, and, with the 
 exception of the stop-gap sixth line of the first 
 stanza, is of a very polished technique. It is a 
 good specimen of the now tender, now ironical 
 muse of Alphonse Daudet. The same may be
 
 186 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 said about his poem ' Les Bottines,' written on a 
 theme given by Goethe in his ' Wilhelm Meister': 
 
 ' Moiti chevreau, moiti satin, 
 Quand elles courent par la chambre 
 Clic! Clac! 
 
 II faut voir de quel air mutin 
 Leur fine semelle se cambre, 
 Clic! Clac!' 
 
 a poem about a pair of dainty woman's boots, and 
 all they suggest to the poet, and all the tender 
 things of which they remind him. Of a higher 
 order is the poem entitled ' La Vierge a la Creche,' 
 which depicts the Holy Mother bending over the 
 cradle of the Child Jesus, who will not be lulled to 
 
 sleep. 
 
 ' Dans ses langes blancs, fraichement cousus, 
 La Vierge berc.ait son Enfant-Je"sus. 
 Lui, gazouillait comme un nid de me"sanges. 
 Elle le berc,ait et chantait tout bas 
 Ce que nous chantons a nos petits anges. . . . 
 Mais 1'Enfant-Jesus ne s'endormait pas.' 
 
 She tells Him many things to woo Him to sleep, 
 but the Child will not be lulled, and 
 
 ' ... la Sainte Vierge est triste, bien triste, 
 De voir son Jesus qui ne s'endort pas.' 
 
 It is not until she weeps for very sadness that the 
 Child falls asleep.
 
 AS A POET 187 
 
 ' Et Marie alors, le regard voile, 
 Pencha sur son fils un front de"sol : 
 " Vous ne dormez pas, votre mere pleure, 
 Votre mere pleure, 6 mon bel ami ..." 
 Des larmes coulaient de ses yeux ; sur 1'heure, 
 Le Petit Je"sus s'e'tait endormi.' 
 
 It is evidence of a strong nature and elevated 
 morale, that, in spite of tobacco and absinthe bouts 
 in Lyons and the middle - class and inelegant 
 debaucheries of Alais, the young poet should have 
 found it in him to write a poem so tender, and yet 
 so lofty, as this ' Virgin by the Cradle.' A love for 
 children, and the recognition of what is beautiful in 
 childhood, are not usually the preoccupation of ardent 
 youths, and few, indeed, are the young poets who, 
 forgetting for the while their lady-loves, have given 
 expression to these sentiments. In Daudet's book, 
 on the other hand, beside the poems already 
 mentioned, are to be found amongst other verses 
 relating to children, 'Aux Petits Enfants,' and ' Le 
 Croup.' There is also an ode to a robin red- 
 breast, and though love is the theme of several of 
 the poems, there is only one set of verses to ' Celi- 
 mene.' The young Southerner's ardent nature 
 could not restrain itself in the sonnet's narrow 
 room, and there is not a sonnet, that favourite 
 form of expression amongst French poets, in ' Les 
 Amoureuses.'
 
 i88 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 In ' L'Oiseau Bleu/ in which the poet speaks of a 
 bird which lives in his heart 
 
 4 J'ai dans mon coeur un oiseau bleu, 
 Une charmante creature, 
 Si mignonne que sa ceinture 
 N'a pas 1'epaisseur d'un cheveu ' 
 
 which lived upon his blood, a pastime and pleasure 
 to him at first, and afterwards ate its way into his 
 very soul Alphonse Daudet shows that inclination 
 for the fantastic, after the manner of Hoffmann, 
 which later revealed itself in his stories, ' La 
 Legende de 1'Homme a la Cervelle d'Or ' and ' La 
 Pendule de Bougival,' an inclination to which 
 some may regret that he did not more frequently 
 yield. 
 
 On the other hand, nobody will regret that 
 Alphonse Daudet did not more frequently yield 
 to the inclination for pessimism which he manifests 
 in the poem ' Le ler Mai, 1857. Mort d'Alfred de 
 Musset,' which begins : 
 
 ' Nature de reveur, temperament d'artiste, 
 II est presque toujours triste, horriblement triste, 
 Sans savoir ce qu'il veut, sans savoir ce qu'il a, 
 II pleure ; pour un rien, pour ceci, pour cela. 
 
 Be it remarked, in this connection, that what 
 the youth Alphonse Daudet wrote here about
 
 AS A POET 189 
 
 De Musset, was to be in after years the very 
 experience of Alphonse Daudet, the man. In his 
 entry in his diary under date Sunday, April 2, 
 De Goncourt writes : ' How quickly in this trade of 
 ours as workers in creation is success paid for by 
 physical uneasiness and derangement of the nerves. 
 To-day I heard the happy Daudet cry out in tones 
 of despair : " Oh, some of my afternoons are so sad, 
 so sad ! Look you, I could wish to be a woman, so 
 as to be able to weep." In this poem on Alfred 
 de Musset he paints not unskilfully, though in 
 language which might have been better chosen, a 
 pessimistic picture of a poet's Weltschmerz : 
 
 ' Jusqu'au jour ou, sentant que son ame est atteinte, 
 Sentant son ame atteinte et son mal redoubler 
 II soit las de souffler sur une flamme eteinte . . . 
 Et meure de degotit, de tristesse . . . et d'absinthe ! 
 
 This last line is what is least commendable in the 
 volume. 
 
 ' Les Amoureuses,' as it was originally published 
 by Jules Tardieu, was a small book, the contents 
 of which fill only eighty-one pages of the three 
 hundred and fourteen that form the volume published 
 by Charpentier in which they are reprinted. This 
 volume is supplemented by a tale in verse, entitled 
 ' La Double Conversion ;' a dialogue in action called 
 ' Les Aventures d'un Papillon et d'une Bete a Bon
 
 1 90 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Dieu,' also in verse ; a fanciful dramatic sketch, ' Le 
 Roman du Chaperon Rouge ;' a mystery in two 
 parts, ' Les Ames du Paradis ;' a comedietta, 
 ' L'Amour Trompette ;' and a fable in dialogue, 
 1 Les Rossignols du Cimetiere,' the last four in 
 prose. These various pieces were written and 
 published in various periodicals between the date 
 of the publication of ' Les Amoureuses ' and the 
 year 1861, and are now reprinted in Daudet's one 
 volume of poems. 
 
 1 La Double Conversion,' written in jingling and 
 facile verse, is the story of how a young Catholic, 
 Andre", loved a young Jewess, Sarah. The parents 
 of the two young people would not hear of such an 
 attachment. In the end Andre finds a solution : 
 
 ' Oh, puisque 1'amour est si grand, 
 Mignonne, qu'au fond de nos ames 
 II fait table rase en entrant, 
 Et qu'il y trone en conquerant 
 Sur des debris et sur des flammes ; 
 Puisque nous voyons aujourd'hui 
 Que ni croyances ni systemes 
 Rien ne peut tenir centre lui, 
 Puisque je t'aime et que tu m'aimes, 
 Adonc pourquoi nous obstiner ? 
 Laissons faire 1'amour, mignonne, 
 Et suivons 1'elan qu'il nous donne.' 
 
 And so on. At the end he says : 
 
 ' Viens-t'en nous aimer quelque part.'
 
 AS A POET 191 
 
 'Yes,' she replies, and her answer re-establishes 
 all the innocence of this child idyll. 
 
 'Oui, mais ne rentrons pas trop tard.' 
 
 ' Les Aventures d'un Papillon et d'une Bete a 
 Bon Dieu' are given in extenso in ' Le Petit Chose,' 
 and were reprinted, in the same unfinished state, in 
 this volume. This dialogue in verse, which is a 
 fanciful and pretty conceit, inspired, it may be, by 
 La Fontaine, shows how a rakish blue Butterfly 
 seduces from his sober, steady ways a well-meaning 
 and respectable Lady-bird, who is anxious to get 
 home early, and in general displays all the bourgeois 
 virtues. But the Butterfly takes him on his back, 
 and flies away with him to the Lily of the Valley, 
 where Master Lady - bird drinks so heavily of 
 scented dew that on issuing forth it needs but little 
 persuasion on the part of the Butterfly to induce 
 him to visit the Rose. Here the Lady-bird becomes 
 totally intoxicated, and the Butterfly has to take 
 him home by force. Then the Butterfly sets out 
 on his way home, feeling very sad, because the 
 Lady-bird has told him how everybody hates him, 
 and he cannot understand why this should be so, 
 as he has never harmed anybody. On his way 
 home he is waylaid. A Thistle stabs him, a 
 Scorpion rips him with his claw, a Spider tears
 
 192 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 away his blue satin mantle, and a Bat breaks his 
 back with a blow of her wing. As he lies dying 
 on the grass, the Nettles laugh with glee, and the 
 Toads say : ' Serve him right !' And so on. This 
 is symbolism as it was understood in France not 
 so very long ago, and the fable is a true one, 
 although no doubt in real life the Lady-bird would 
 not, as in Daudet's poem, have come and wept over 
 the Butterfly's lonely grave. 
 
 Of a symbolism of the same nature is ' Le Roman 
 du Chaperon- Rouge,' which, by the way, was the 
 first paper which Alphonse Daudet contributed to 
 the Figaro. It was with this contribution, hurriedly 
 and nervously thrown one evening into Villemes- 
 sant's letter-box, that he commenced his brilliant 
 collaboration on this journal a collaboration which 
 laid the foundation of his fame. Red Ridinghood 
 in this fable in dialogue personifies the happy care- 
 lessness and unconcern of the artistic temperament. 
 She woos the child from school, the man of letters 
 from his work, two lovers from the perplexity of 
 an attachment on which their parents frown, and 
 having done these things goes off a-courting with 
 a madman, the only man she can love. The child 
 is beaten for playing truant, the man of letters has to 
 pay for a day's idleness with a month's starvation, 
 and the lovers have to atone for their dalliance by
 
 AS A POET 193 
 
 undergoing their parents' anger. So they bitterly 
 reproach Red Ridinghood, and though she calms 
 their resentment with a charming apology for her 
 pernicious doctrines, not one of them has any- 
 thing to say when, the Wolf having devoured her, 
 Polonius, who alone had resisted her blandishments, 
 points out that such is the lot of the crazy and the 
 improvident, of Red Ridinghood, and all her kind. 
 One could wish to have seen Villemessant's face 
 as he read this contribution in some worldly, sensual 
 environment, as the fresh, strange fancy elbowed 
 in amongst. the thoughts which filled his head 
 thoughts of ambition, commercial speculations, 
 schemes of enjoyment, hungry appetites. No doubt 
 it was its very contrast with what was familiar to 
 his bent of mind that won his approval for this 
 first effort of a young and unknown writer. Red 
 Ridinghood and all she personifies have ever pre- 
 occupied Alphonse Daudet's mind. Even to-day 
 he would be glad to have the time, the leisure, the 
 opportunity, to write ' The Last Red Ridinghood.' 
 Who is the author who would not so be o-lad of 
 
 o 
 
 time and leisure to write what he shall never write, 
 because time is short, and opportunity never comes, 
 and there is for all men a promised land where 
 they shall never set their feet ? Many are the 
 books that Daudet longs to write, but never hopes
 
 i 9 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 to write a story of suffering, drawn from all the 
 physical sufferings which in these last ten years he 
 has endured ; a story of Death lulling Pain to sleep 
 in the innermost recesses of a tortured body, a 
 theme which to some extent reminds one of a 
 certain passage in Shelley ; a story in which, in 
 the form of conversations between two couples of 
 different temperaments on a driving tour from Paris, 
 he could formulate all the thoughts for which he 
 has not yet found fitting application. 
 
 There is something of the youthful revolt of 
 Schiller, as expressed through Franz Moor, though 
 toned down by a keener artistic sense of values, in 
 ' Les Ames du Paradis.' Daudet contents himself 
 with concentrating his spirit of youthful revolt against 
 what is established and accepted, in a dramatic 
 attack against one tenet of the Roman Catholic 
 creed. The purport of this ' mystery in two 
 scenes,' and the style in which it is written, may be 
 gathered from the last words : 
 
 ' L'AMANT, levant ses poings calcines vers le del' 
 
 'En marche, soit! et puisqu'elle m'oublie, moi je 
 me souviendrai. Oui, ce beau pain blanc de 
 1'amour, qu'elle refuse, moi, je veux m'en nourrir 
 eternellement. Gardez done, votre bonheur, ames 
 infortunees, ames du paradis. II serait incomplet
 
 AS A POET 195 
 
 pour moi, et je n'en voudrais jamais, au prix dont 
 il se paye ; j'aime mieux mille fois cet enfer ou 
 1'amant se souvient, que votre paradis ou la 
 maitresse oublie.' 
 
 ' Les Rossignols du Cimetiere ' is another charm- 
 ing fable, a dialogue between the nightingales of a 
 cemetery, who try to soften by their song the selfish, 
 the ungrateful, the forgetful among those who visit the 
 graves of the dead, and a nightingale of the woods, 
 who has been drawing them away from the doleful 
 garden ; the former prevail and win over the stranger 
 to join them in their task. 
 
 It is impossible to compare the verse of Alphonse 
 Daudet, or the prose pieces which, with ample 
 justification, he has included in his volume of 
 poems, with anything that had been published 
 before, or has been published since. The work 
 is entirely original, and the sense of this fact forces 
 itself upon the reader even though here and there 
 he may have fancied himself able to trace certain 
 influences, to recognise certain resemblances. Un- 
 expectedly the track deviates ; in the moment of 
 recognition the fancied likeness fades away. The 
 Muse is here a very will-o'-the-wisp, leading on, 
 in fitful flight, from fancy to reality, from tender- 
 ness to raillery, now rising beyond the skies, now
 
 196 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 pumping down into the street ; a Muse who smiles 
 when she weeps, who comforts where she chides, 
 who is a philosopher here, and a next-door neighbour 
 there, whose transformations, if sudden, are never 
 brusqiie ; a Muse too ethereal for classification. 
 
 It is easy to understand that these works should 
 have attracted attention on their very appearance, 
 so different were they from anything that France, 
 at that time in her transition from romanticism to 
 naturalism, had ever seen. It is not easy to under- 
 stand that this attention was not more general, and 
 that long years had still to elapse before the author 
 of ' La Vierge a la Creche,' of : Les Ames du 
 Paradis,' and of 'Les Rossignols du Cimetiere ' 
 emerged from hungry obscurity to the banquets of 
 fame. It is true that at that time the attention of 
 men was elsewhere than in their studies. France 
 was in full cry after the quarry, as was presently 
 to be set forth by another hungry, yet observant, 
 Southerner, at that time writing impossible verses 
 in a garret in a dingy hotel in' the Rue Monsieur- 
 le- Prince. And when the appetites of the body 
 are aroused, ' the other,' as Plato calls it, may go 
 hang. 
 
 It may be of interest to read what certain promi- 
 nent men have written about Alphonse Daudet as 
 a poet.
 
 AS A POET 197 
 
 'Above all things,' writes Emile Zola, ' Alphonse 
 Daudet is a poet. His sensations are prolonged 
 and vibrating ; he beholds the crowds and the 
 scenes through which he passes in the semi- 
 hallucination of vivid imaginations. All things 
 increase in size, take colour, animation, and in- 
 tensity. . . . But there are at least two ways of 
 being a poet the rough and the tender. M. 
 Alphonse Daudet is a tender poet. He was not 
 born in rebellion, in bitterness, in the midst of 
 the feverish protestations of revolutionary spirits. 
 When he walks abroad, it is with the joy of finding 
 the sky blue, women beautiful, and men good. He 
 walks as a friend in the midst of human society. . . . 
 M. Alphonse Daudet acts fairly towards Nature ; 
 he does not lie, he does not paint himself rose- 
 coloured. He simply distils from Nature its 
 elements of happiness. . . . He is a poet a senti- 
 mental poet. ... M. Alphonse Daudet began by 
 writing verses. How many verses did he write? 
 How many hundred still repose in his drawers 
 those happy verses written in youth, acid, like fruits 
 which have ripened in a storm - swept orchard ; 
 those verses which one never publishes and con- 
 stantly re-reads ? I do not know, for poets have a 
 great bashfulness about their first lispings. M. 
 Alphonse Daudet contented himself with uniting
 
 198 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 in a volume entitled " Les Amoureuses " a thousand 
 or twelve hundred of his lines of poetry, and that 
 is the whole of his poetic baggage. The volume 
 is dated 1857 1861. Accordingly, the poems 
 which it contains were written by the author 
 between the ages of seventeen and twenty -one. 
 '] here is here but a handful of flowers plucked in 
 early youth. But these flowers of childhood already 
 possess a very fragrant smell, and even a dash of 
 originality, wherein may be scented the emotional 
 and mocking talent of the writer. One of these 
 poems remains famous, " Les Prunes," a series of 
 triolets, in which the poet relates his love for his 
 cousin Mariette under a plum-tree. It was very 
 popular, and is still recited in drawing-rooms as a 
 classic. I may also name " Les Bottines," " Le 
 Miserere de 1'Amour," and an admirable fantaisie 
 in dialogue " Les Aventures d'un Papillon et d'une 
 Bete a Bon Dieu." . . . Notwithstanding, it must 
 be said that M. Alphonse Daudet's poems are but 
 the waifs and strays of youth. They are but a 
 beginning, nothing more.' 
 
 ' It is well, I think,' writes Jules Lemaitre in an 
 essay on Alphonse Daudet, in which his bitterness 
 is entirely laid aside, ' for one who wishes to see 
 in truth and reality what is w r orth seeing, to begin 
 by not scrutinizing it too closely, to be a poet, a
 
 AS A POET 199 
 
 dreamer, no more, a being of delicate sensations, 
 vibrating for mere trifles, looking for nothing more in 
 things than such experiences, of pleasure or pain, as 
 they may afford him, without any idea of reproducing 
 them photographically. It is with some suspicion that 
 I look upon such young men as one meets to-day, 
 who, at an age when better men than they were 
 naively singing of roses, dash off ultra-naturalist 
 novels with descriptions of sinks or of dust-bins, 
 and deliberately insist upon the uncleanliness of 
 physical life. If they begin thus, where will they 
 end ? The least risk they run is that of always writing 
 the same book over again, for their field of observa- 
 tion, if observation be at all requisite, is soon 
 explored ; the number of their effects is extremely 
 limited, and nothing more resembles an oaristys 
 seen from the point of view which they prefer than 
 an oaristys seen from the same point of view. On 
 the other hand, to have built up pretty fancies in the 
 air in one's youth must lead one, when at last one 
 turns to the study of the real world, to put aside, 
 as unworthy of attention, what is commonplace and 
 insignificant, to attach one's self to what is peculiar 
 and unexpected in life, for if one studies life it is 
 in the hope that it will furnish documents of greater 
 interest than one's early imaginings. 
 
 ' Little What's-his-name accordingly commences
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 with fancy and with dreams. . . . Arriving in Paris, 
 delicate and pretty as a girl, timid, proud, impres- 
 sionable, absent-minded, he continues to dream 
 in a really shameless manner, writes verses about 
 cherries, about women's boots, and about plums, 
 sings of robin red-breast and the blue bird, sighs 
 out the Miserere of love, and addresses to Clairette 
 and to Celimene free stanzas which might be the 
 work of a mincing Musset, in which irony, as is 
 fitting, sheds a tiny tear. I know of no beginner's 
 book which is so truly youthful as this little volume 
 called " Les Amoureuses." 
 
 Criticising the fantaisie, ' Les Ames du Paradis, 
 mystere en deux tableaux,' Jules Lemaitre writes : 
 ' A woman has died, confessing herself to a priest 
 and repudiating a criminal love. The lover has 
 killed himself in despair. He is in hell, and his 
 mistress is in paradise. Each year on Corpus 
 Christi Day the roof of the Inferno gapes open and 
 the damned see the procession of the chosen pass- 
 ing over their heads. But, as one of them explains, 
 " We all have a friend, a relation, a brother, or a 
 sister, or a mother, or a wife up there, and never 
 have we been able to win one glance from these 
 dear ones." The new-comer has no better fortune 
 than the others. In vain does he supplicate and 
 weep, in vain does he evoke the days gone by ;
 
 AS A POET 201 
 
 his mistress remembers nothing-, does not recognise 
 him ; and it is so painful that St. Peter himself 
 cannot help feeling touched. Here is a " mystery " 
 in some degree redolent of heresy ; for the Church 
 teaches that not only shall the chosen forget the 
 damned, but that the damned shall detest the chosen. 
 But in this heterodox fancy, compromising as it is 
 for St. Peter, there is an altogether delicious mixture 
 of ingenuity, grace, and passion. Blending with 
 the touching little drama are charming details of a 
 paradise as imagined by a choir-boy the little choir- 
 boy of the St. Nizier Monastic School. " My eyes 
 and my heart have also recognised her, this little 
 cherub, clad in muslin, with the azure zone, waving 
 in the air, with all the might of pink and plump 
 little arms, a banner, spangled with flowers of gold, 
 a banner as large as herself; 'tis my sister, my 
 little sister Anna, whom I so mourned for." 
 
 ' There is above all things in this truly human 
 dream a deep tenderness, the gift of bringing little 
 warm tears to the eyes, a precious gift which 
 M. Alphonse Daudet will retain even when he 
 shall dream no longer. And that is why I have 
 somewhat tarried- over this the young man's work. 
 There is nothing better, after all, in order to depict 
 the world as it is, than to have much imagination 
 and sensibility. The spirit of our dear little
 
 202 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 What's-his-name, whose childhood was not a 
 happy one, who dreamed such pretty and such 
 tender dreams, continues to float lightly over 
 M. Alphonse Daudet's stories of real life, creeps 
 in here and there, mixes emotion with the exactness 
 of the pictures, and forces upon the observation so 
 rare and so delicate a selection of details that, with 
 no other artifice, it brings fancy welling up from 
 reality itself.' 
 
 Here, then, are the appreciations of men so widely 
 apart in every way of thinking as Jules Lemaitre, 
 the critical, the scholarly, and Zola, with his fixed 
 idea, and both appreciations of Alphonse Daudet 
 as a poet are favourable ones. (Be it remembered 
 that throughout this chapter the word ' poet ' is used 
 in the signification given in the English dictionaries.) 
 Both the criticisms quoted are from essays written 
 many years ago, in days when Mallarme was still 
 silent, Moreas had not been heard of, and Verlaine 
 was unknown. Since then French poetry has 
 assumed a strange aspect. It has come from the 
 fields and the glens, from hillside and brooks, from 
 tender dreams of pretty and pleasant things, like 
 Rossetti's 'Jenny,' and struts about the town a 
 bedizened thing, with kohl-inflamed eyes and painted 
 cheeks, hiding its wasted and anaemic form in flaring 
 robes. It is more refined, its conversation is more
 
 AS A POET 203 
 
 distinguished indeed, so distinguished as to be 
 often, if not invariably, incomprehensible ; but it is 
 not the fresh and buxom thing that it was. Beneath 
 an intricate tissue of phrases, the poets of to-day in 
 France the exceptions may be counted hide the 
 vacuity of their minds, their total absence of ideas, 
 the loss of all ideal, their want of courage, of 
 virility, of humanity. 
 
 ' Weil ein Vers dir gelingt in einer gebildeten Sprache 
 Die fur dich dichtet und denkt, glaub'st du schon Dichter zu 
 sein.' 
 
 One thinks of these lines of Schiller when one 
 hears of the many who in France to-day lay claim 
 to the title of poet. For French is a very cultivated 
 language, and it is to this fact that most of those 
 who to-day are known as poets in France owe this 
 distinction. In no language can vacuity of mind be 
 more effectually disguised. De la Rochefoucauld 
 reads tame in an English translation, and the 
 sparkle of most French wit dies out when de- 
 canted as completely as the sparkle in champagne 
 left standing in a cup. In passing over in one's 
 mind the thousands of lines of French poetry which 
 have been written and printed in the last decade, 
 how few are the lines which, technique aside, one is 
 glad to remember as lines which under possible 
 circumstances shall solace, or guide, or instruct !
 
 204 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 To-day it is sound only that is aimed at in French 
 poetry, which, no longer giving the lead to music, 
 is content to follow as one of her train. There 
 are Decadents, there are Symbolists, there are 
 Romanists and Neo-Symbolists, but where amongst 
 them is the man who tells something, imparts any- 
 thing, points anywhere ? And in lieu of fancy and 
 charming illusion are given the skimmings of the 
 lexicon and the rhyming dictionary. Poetry, which 
 should be man's spiritual wife, has been degraded in 
 France to a toy, a wanton, a mistress. She teaches 
 nothing ; in no wise does she comfort, or instruct, or 
 elevate. She flaunts and grimaces and coquets, a 
 spiced and yet insipid thing. From pointing up- 
 wards, or, if not upwards, away and beyond, she 
 points nowhere. She is herself for herself, art for 
 art, a silly self, and bad art at that. 
 
 And the amusing circumstance is that the poets 
 of the present day, if asked as to the title of Daudet 
 as a poet, will laugh and shrug their shoulders, and 
 say that he is but a novelist. It is true that the world 
 does not admit versatility. A man is classified 
 as a poet, as a novelist, as a politician, or as a 
 chimney-sweeper, and as a poet, a novelist, a 
 politician, or a chimney-sweeper only in spite of 
 the fact that, in addition to his accomplishments in 
 any one of these capacities, he may have other talents
 
 AS A POET 205 
 
 as well, and have otherwise manifested them. Who, 
 for instance, thinks of Shakespeare as an actor, 
 of Shelley as a novelist, of Wordsworth as a prose- 
 writer, of Burns as a ploughman, or of Swinburne 
 as a swimmer ? Yet they won a certain distinction 
 in these various capacities. But the world, chary of 
 discernment, gives a man a rank in one depart- 
 ment only. So Alphonse Daudet is not considered 
 a poet ; ' Les Amoureuses ' are left unread, and it 
 is only by the frequent recitals of ' Les Prunes ' that 
 the world knows that the author of ' Sapho ' has 
 the workmanship of verse at his finger-ends and, 
 outside the realm of reality, a charming fancy. It 
 is all the more unjust because Daudet has in an ex- 
 treme degree the sense of the picturesque in words, 
 and in his writings will often choose an archaic 
 form for the sake of the colour \vhich it lends, the 
 remembrances which it evokes, whilst explaining 
 such use, and apologizing for such preference. 
 
 Of these poets of the present day, Symbolists, 
 Decadents, et /we genus onine, Ernest Renan, 
 summing up their achievements and claims, said 
 on one occasion : ' They are babes who suck their 
 thumbs.' Leconte de Lisle was even more severe, 
 and described them to Jules Huret, author of the 
 ' Enquete sur 1' Evolution litteraire,' as ' humbugs, 
 these young people, every one of them.' Being
 
 206 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 pressed to give a less general opinion, the author of 
 ' Poemes Barbares ' remarked that his opinion 
 about them was a very simple one : that not being 
 able to understand a single word which they 
 uttered, and being in total ignorance of what they 
 meant to express, he had absolutely no opinion 
 whatever about them. ' Yes,' he added, ' I do think 
 of them that they are wasting their time, their youth, 
 in writing what in a few years they will burn. It 
 is really extraordinary, and, moreover, it is sad too. 
 I see some of them here who talk very well, very 
 clearly, like Frenchmen and like sensible people, 
 and then, as soon as they set pen to paper, it is 
 all over farewell, a long farewell to French, to 
 lucidity, to common-sense. Such aberration is 
 simply phenomenal. And their language ! Come, 
 take a hat, and fill it at hazard with adverbs, con- 
 junctions, prepositions, nouns, and adjectives, draw 
 the words out as they come and set them down 
 on paper, and there you will have symbolism, 
 decadentism, instrumentism, and all the balderdash 
 which is derived therefrom. . . . They are the 
 amateiirs de ddlire of whom Baudelaire speaks.' 
 
 Zola speaks of ' the vague label Symboliste, 
 which covers a few slop-shop verses.' ' To bring 
 to its close,' he exclaims, ' this mighty century, to 
 formulate the anguish of universal doubt, the per-
 
 AS A POET 207 
 
 turbation of minds panting for the truth, here is the 
 obscure twittering, here is the twopenny-worth of 
 Christmas cracker poesies written by a few assiduous 
 frequenters of pot-houses !' 
 
 It is by these amateurs de ddlire, by these 
 'producers of slop-shop verses,' and by those who 
 out of ignorance or want of taste accept their pre- 
 tensions, that Alphonse Daudet's claim to the title 
 of poet is disputed. His work will be admitted, 
 on the other hand, by all who understand poetry 
 as the beautiful if simple expression of beautiful if 
 simple ideas.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND. 
 
 A GREAT step in the life of the provincial debutant 
 in Paris is when he leaves his furnished room in a 
 hotel, buys a few sticks of furniture, and, furnishing 
 a home for himself, becomes a householder a duly 
 domiciled citizen of Paris with a chez lui of his own. 
 This is the first step out of, and away from, 
 Bohemia the first step towards respectability, 
 credit, and burgherdom. This step was taken by 
 the Daudets during the winter which followed 
 Alphonse's arrival in Paris. An upholsterer gave 
 credit for what was strictly necessary, and the 
 young men were, in consequence, able to move 
 from their hotel, with furniture of their own, into 
 the garret of a large house adjoining the church of 
 Saint Germain des Pres. This house, which was 
 situated at a distance of about five minutes' walk 
 from Alphonse Daudet's present most comfortable 
 apartment in the Rue de Bellechasse, has long
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 209 
 
 since been pulled down to make room for the new 
 Boulevard St. Germain ; but Daudet never passes 
 by the spot where it once stood without looking up 
 in the air as though in search ' of the scene of so 
 many follies, of so much misery, of such happy 
 nights spent in work, of so many hours of gloomy 
 and despairing solitude.' The window of their 
 garret looked out on the clock- tower of the old 
 church, parts of which date from the eleventh 
 century. It was here that long ago the Parisians 
 repulsed the Normans bent on conquest. Did the 
 young Southerners, likewise bent on conquest, think 
 of this, and resolve to have greater perseverance 
 and better fortune, such as, indeed, was afterwards 
 to be theirs ? In the meanwhile the outlook was 
 a dismal one. Certainly ' Les Amoureuses ' had 
 been a success, but no pecuniary benefit was to be 
 expected from its publication, and the entire income 
 of the two brothers was derived from Ernest's 
 scanty earnings. On the other hand, as house- 
 holders, though the house was but a garret, they 
 were assured against such temporary homelessness 
 as frequently befalls the needy lodger in Parisian 
 hotels. On more than one occasion, during their 
 stay at the hotel in the Rue de Tournon, rent being 
 overdue, the landlord had refused to allow them to 
 go upstairs to their room, and Alphonse Daudet
 
 2 io ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 often speaks of a bitterly cold winter night, during 
 which he walked about shivering and homeless, 
 until at last he found refuge in the garret of a 
 brother-author. He says that he will never forget 
 how keenly he enjoyed the luxury of the warmth 
 of that bed after the terrible cold of the streets. 
 
 But if assured of a shelter, they were not assured 
 of their daily bread, in the most literal sense of the 
 word, for in the meanwhile Le Spectateur had been 
 suppressed by the police. The editor, Mallac, had 
 written an article on the night of Orsini's attempt 
 against the Emperor's life at the Opera, in which 
 he had pointed out that it was only under despotic 
 Governments that such outrages took place. The 
 next morning, on arriving at the office, Ernest 
 Daudet found that, by Imperial decree, the Specta- 
 teur had ceased to exist, just at a time when the 
 editor had consented to receive occasional articles 
 from Alphonse, and matters had, in consequence, 
 begun to look more hopeful for the two brothers. 
 Alphonse relates that his first article had already 
 been written, accepted, and set up in type, and was 
 to have appeared on the very day when the Specta- 
 te2ir was stopped. He adds that his despair was so 
 great that he thought of suicide. Absolute starvation 
 was staring the brothers in the face, when a place 
 was found for Ernest on the staff of the Union, a
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 211 
 
 Legitimist paper, founded by the proprietors of the 
 defunct Spectateur. Unfortunately, the editor could 
 only give him a very small salary, less even than 
 the forty shillings a week which he had been 
 receiving, nor could any employment, even irregular, 
 be found for his brother. It is difficult to under- 
 stand how, during the period of Ernest's collabora- 
 tion on the Union, which lasted some months, the 
 two brothers can have managed to live. ' We 
 existed,' says Alphonse Daudet, ' and that is all.' 
 One cannot but admire the courage with which 
 these two lads, in spite of all difficulties, remained 
 true to their purpose to follow literature as a 
 career, and none other. Most people in their 
 situation would have put away this ambition as not 
 realizable ; some would have compromised. The 
 Daudets remained true to the motto of their 
 Legitimist political creed, ' Fides, Spes,' kept faith 
 in themselves and each other, and, while starving, 
 hoped for better things in the future. Even the 
 heroic Zola, starting in life with the same purpose 
 and the same ambition, did not dare to trust himself 
 to his pen from the very beginning. The idea of 
 earning a living by other than literary work never 
 once entered Alphonse Daudet's head, and had he 
 ever had such a thought, it is certain that his 
 courageous brother would have dissuaded him from
 
 212 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 such a course. It is true that his timidity and his 
 serious infirmity of short-sightedness would have 
 disqualified him for most bread-winning occupations. 
 No ; he was a poet, and a poet he would be, and 
 though De Banville had proclaimed that a poet's 
 craft was the only craft in Paris which ' did not feed 
 its man,' he preferred to starve as a poet rather than 
 to thrive as anything else. He went further. He 
 refused to employ his pen in the production 
 of anything merely because it was marketable. He 
 was as true to his conception, as conscientious in 
 its execution, as indifferent to public taste and 
 public demand when starving in his garret, as he 
 is to-day in his luxurious study. 'This literary 
 conscience, so strong, so severe towards itself,' 
 writes Ernest Daudet about his brother, 'awoke 
 within him simultaneously with his literary talent. 
 It explains his process, the implacableness with 
 which he constrains himself to perfect the expression 
 of his thoughts, his hourly struggles with words, 
 sifted, kneaded, moulded to the taste of his fancy. 
 "It is style which perfumes a book," he wrote one 
 day. And so it is that each one of his books 
 represents an almost superhuman labour. Many 
 are the pages, facile and harmonious, in which the 
 sentences flow majestically, as a river rolling gold- 
 spangled waters along, in which there remains not
 
 liRNKST DAUDKT. 
 
 To face page 212.
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 2 J 3 
 
 a trace of the effort which they cost, over which 
 this admirably gifted artist, never satisfied with 
 himself, has perspired, grown pale, and toiled in 
 an effort so excessive that for days after he has 
 remained broken with exhaustion. So none need 
 wonder if in the end he has won glory and fortune. 
 They represent a reward well earned by this great 
 worker, who, at the outset of his career, had the 
 courage to refuse all easy gains the courage never 
 to sacrifice to improvisation even when, as a young 
 man, he was struggling with the material difficulties 
 of existence, who at the age of forty can Hatter 
 himself that he has made of the cult of letters the 
 highest aim and object of his life.' 
 
 It may be said of Daudet that, though by nature 
 an improvisatore, thanks to his literary conscience 
 he has never extemporized. During the three 
 years which he spent in the Slough of Despond- 
 that is to say, until the time when the Comte de 
 Morny rescued him from literal starvation his pro- 
 duction of published work was limited to the prose 
 sketches and fables in dialogue which now form 
 a part of his volume of poems, and to a few tales, 
 also republished. Under the direst stress of 
 temptation his literary virtue remained intact. 
 
 It is certain that, to some extent, he owed this 
 maintenance of his self-respect to the Lyons tailor.
 
 2i 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Raggedness, even shabbiness, influences a young 
 man far more than hunger. Would Chatterton 
 have killed himself if he had been able to continue 
 to ' fit himself fashionably ' ? for it was certainly no 
 trouble about insufficient food that caused that 
 tragedy in Brook Street, whatever M. de Vigny 
 may have been pleased to write. Would a shabby 
 Alphonse Daudet have resisted the temptation to 
 earn money, not for his larder, but for his ward- 
 robe ? That at this time he was keenly sensitive 
 in the matter of his personal appearance is proved 
 by the fact that, as he told the writer, when his 
 boots were unpresentable and his linen was im- 
 possible, he preferred to remain abed even when 
 there was the strongest incentive to go abroad. 
 
 It was to the Lyons tailor also that he owed the 
 possibility of figuring in certain drawing - rooms. 
 For a young poet with dramatic ambitions it was 
 a great thing to be invited, for instance, to the 
 house of Augustine Brohan, of the Comedie 
 Francaise, and it was at this soiree that Alphonse 
 Daudet's first suit of evening clothes, as he relates 
 in his ' Trente Ans de Paris,' received its baptism 
 of fire. It appears that on that famous occasion 
 the young poet was taken for a Wallachian prince, 
 a supposition which, be it put upon record, greatly 
 offended his dignity. It was, it should be men-
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 215 
 
 tioned, on the strength of the success of ' Les 
 Amoureuses ' that Alphonse Daudet had been 
 invited to this famous house. Ernest had said, 
 when the invitation came, that now his brother's 
 fortune was made. Had not Musset written his 
 comedy of ' Louison ' in this house ? Madame 
 Augustine Brohan was reputed the wittiest woman 
 in Paris ; her salons were in consequence frequented 
 by everybody who was somebody in the capital, 
 and valuable acquaintances of every kind were to 
 be made here by a young man of letters. Daudet's 
 debut was not a very successful one. The announce- 
 ment of his name attracted no attention, and his 
 shortsightedness made him feel and look awkward. 
 He caused a catastrophe at the buffet, whither the 
 pangs of hunger had drawn him, upsetting bottles 
 and glasses. After this achievement he thought it 
 best to make good his escape, and refusing the offer 
 of Dr. Ricord, who still took him for a Prince of 
 Wallachia, to drive him home in his brougham, 
 because he had no overcoat, and was ashamed to 
 be seen without one, he rushed off, to continue the 
 night in peregrinations about Paris, as described in 
 his sketch ' Mon Premier Habit.' 
 
 Of the other drawing-rooms which, thanks to the 
 Lyons tailor, he was at this time able to frequent, 
 Alphonse Daudet speaks not without raillery.
 
 216 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 1 What time lost !' he cries ; ' what hours wasted 
 over these venomous or foolish little nothings, in this 
 atmosphere of little mouldy verses, of petty rancid 
 calumnies, on these cardboard Parnassuses, where no 
 spring flows, where no bird sings, where the poet's 
 laurel has the colour of a head-clerk's green leather 
 cushion ! And to think that I also climbed these 
 Parnassuses ! A young man must see everything. 
 The habit lasted as long as my first suit of evening 
 clothes.' 
 
 Daudet is not, perhaps, quite right in thus under- 
 rating the society he frequented in the period referred 
 to. His hostesses may have been prdcieuses ridi- 
 cules, their guests people of little or no account, and 
 their conversation as pretentious and as hollow as 
 the drawing-rooms themselves ; still, it certainly was 
 an advantage to a young man, friendless and alone 
 in Paris, to have some other place than the Latin 
 Quarter cafes to frequent, other people than the 
 Bohemians of Paris to. talk with. He seems to 
 forget this, and jests at his hostesses, though no 
 doubt at the time he was not sorry to change his 
 cold and gloomy garret for the warmth and light of 
 their salons. Thus, he speaks of Madame Ancelot 
 as a lady, all in white, 'who in 1858 still imagined 
 herself to be the beautiful Madame Ancelot of the 
 year 1823, when all Paris was applauding her clever
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 217 
 
 comedy called "Marie, ou les Trois Epoques," ' and in 
 a somewhat fantastic vein depicts this interior where 
 all and everything had grown old without knowing 
 it. His descriptions of M. Patin, the Sorbonne 
 professor, of Alfred de Vigny, of Viennet, amongst 
 the habitues of Madame Ancelot's salon, given in 
 the briefest words, are little gems of literary por- 
 traiture. 'At times,' he adds, 'the salon grew 
 young again.' This was when young people came 
 to it. Amongst these was Lachaud, the celebrated 
 barrister, the son-in-law of Madame Ancelot, of 
 whom this lady used to say : ' I am the happiest of 
 women. I have a son-in-law about whom, every- 
 body speaks, and a daughter about whom everybody 
 is silent.' Then there were the young poets, Octave 
 Lacroix, Emmanuel des Essarts, Madame Anais 
 Segalas, and Jenny Sabatier, and the natural rivalry 
 provoked in the poetical tourneys which used to 
 take place at Madame Ancelot's receptions must 
 certainly have benefited young Alphonse Daudet, 
 even if he did not know it. 
 
 He speaks in the same tone of raillery about 
 Madame Walder, who had been satirized by Alfred 
 de Musset in verses 'which, for want of anything 
 better, will transmit her name to posterity. ... I 
 remember her well, all in velvet, with black hair 
 the hair of a centenarian crow who stubbornly
 
 2 i8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 refuses to grow gray stretched out on her sofa, 
 feeble and languishing, with the attitudes of a 
 broken-hearted woman. But her eye used to glow 
 and her tongue turn viperish as soon as her name 
 was mentioned.' It appears that there was great 
 enmity between Madame Walder and Madame 
 Ancelot 
 
 Of Madame Chodska he says that ' she must have 
 been very handsome formerly, but was now a tall 
 woman, straight and spare, with a commanding, 
 almost disagreeable look. Murger, it was said, 
 being very much impressed by her, had portrayed 
 her in his " Madame Olympe." Murger, it may be 
 remarked, at one time undertook a journey into le 
 grand monde, and this was le grand monde which, 
 artlessly, he had discovered.' 
 
 Yet he admits that he used to meet interesting 
 people at Madame Chodska's house Philarete 
 Chasles, Pierre Veron, Philibert Audebrand, and a 
 strange person called Philoxene Boyer, who, after 
 spending his patrimony in living like De Rubempre 
 for six months, devoted the rest of his existence to 
 collecting materials for a unique book on Shake- 
 speare, which was not destined to be written. 
 
 He is less severe in speaking of the receptions of 
 M. Eugene Loudun, at whose house he used to 
 meet Amedee Pommier, ' a marvellous artist in
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 219 
 
 words and rhymes,' who at one time collaborated 
 with the great Balzac himself, and Henri de Bornier, 
 author of ' La Fille de Roland,' and afterwards of 
 the French Academy, two notable men amongst 
 ' the journeymen poets and Christian rhymesters 
 who, after the champions of romanticism, had made 
 their way into this eighth castle of the King of 
 Bohemia.' 
 
 Unprofitable as this society may have been, it 
 w r as certainly in every w r ay preferable to the only 
 other society at that time open to the young pro- 
 vincial poet, the Bohemia of Paris. By the fault of 
 Henri Murger, this Bohemia was taking itself for 
 serious, just as to-day, nearly fifty years after the 
 publication of the ' Scenes de la Vie de Boheme,' it 
 still continues to do. It is always regrettable when, 
 by the curiosity or effort after originality of a man 
 of talent, a class of society is brought, from the 
 charitable obscurity in which it has wallowed unseen 
 and unheeded, into the light of publicity and public 
 attention. Thus to-day in France, in consequence 
 of the writings of De Goncourt, Zola, and their 
 hundred and one imitators both in prose and verse, 
 the Lantiers, the Jupillons of the city, with all 
 their womankind, have risen from the cesspool in 
 which the contempt of all decent people had kept 
 them out of sight, and now strut in the public
 
 220 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 places, taking themselves and their infamy in 
 earnest, believing themselves, because they have 
 been told so by men of talent, to be factors in the 
 picturesqueness of modern society, of sufficient im- 
 portance to be studied types, characters, having a 
 definite part to play in life, and on this account 
 having a raison d'etre all to the utter nausea of 
 respectable men and women. 
 
 The foolish Bohemians of Paris were, accordingly, 
 at the time of Alphonse Daudet's debut in this city, 
 taking themselves in earnest, and this erroneous 
 sense of their importance must have increased their 
 capacity for influencing those who came into contact 
 with them. And among Bohemians would be in- 
 cluded those semi-artists, as Balzac calls them, who 
 pass their lives in talking about themselves, who 
 may be distinguished at first sight by the eccentricity 
 and, usually, by the uncleanliness of their appear- 
 ance ; who, never doing anything, are always, by 
 their own statements, just about to produce some 
 great work ; whose instincts are as thievish, 
 though not as courageously so, as are those of the 
 nomads from whom they borrow their name, who 
 find money for the pot-house, but never pay their 
 creditors a noisy, frowzy, unprofitable set of men. 
 The type flourishes, if he can be said to fonris/i, 
 to-day even as in 1848. when Murger discovered
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 221 
 
 that he was an interesting subject, and anyone 
 wishing to convince himself how entirely Murger 
 was mistaken, can study scores of Bohemians in 
 any one of the cafes of Montmartre or of the Latin 
 Quarter. The study is not a pleasant one, for the 
 principal characteristics of these individuals are idle- 
 ness, a vacuity akin to imbecility, a pronounced 
 taste for disorderly living in all its phases, immense 
 pretentiousness, and a confirmed habit of vitupera- 
 ting all those who, by hard work, or by talent, 
 or by good fortune, have emerged from the obscurity 
 to which they are themselves condemned by their 
 incorrigible laziness. It is a study, moreover, which 
 is not without danger to the student, for the con- 
 tagion of loafing is great, and has communicated 
 itself to many who at the outset had come to 
 observe, as amused spectators, their rancours and 
 futilities. In his novel 'Jack,' Alphonse Daudet 
 has photographically depicted several of the char- 
 acters whose acquaintance he made amongst the 
 Bohemians of his day - - D'Argenton, the poet 
 against whom, although he never produced any- 
 thing, publishers, editors, theatrical managers and 
 the public were leagued ; Moronval, the publicist, 
 Labassindre, the musician, and Dr. Hirsch, the 
 scientist, who also imagined themselves the victims 
 of an immense cabal. Labassindres, Hirsches, and
 
 222 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 D'Argentons may be met with by the score in any 
 of the modern haunts of Parisian Bohemia. This 
 class of human weed is perennial. Who, that has 
 visited Montmartre or the Latin Quarter, has not 
 met the musical composer who hums his composi- 
 tions, but will never write them down ; the scientist, 
 who relies on eccentricity rather than on study and 
 research ; and the author, whose head is full of what 
 Daudet calls the empty covers of books, which, 
 incapable as he is of any sustained effort, will never 
 be filled ? Who also, that has lived in Paris, has not 
 met the Des Roches of ' La Fin d'un Pitre,' the 
 writer of one only article, in which his entire energy 
 had been exhausted ? 
 
 The headquarters of these failures was at that 
 time at the Brasserie des Martyrs, in the Rue des 
 Martyrs, just behind the church of Notre Dame de 
 Lorette. Daudet relates that he frequently used to 
 visit this caf6, and as it is situated a good three- 
 quarters of an hour's walk from what was his abode 
 at the time, it is evident that Bohemia had exercised 
 over him a decided fascination. One does not leave 
 one's work and walk for three-quarters of an hour, 
 especially with doubtful boots, unless the incentive 
 is a strong one. The gatherings at this cafe were 
 presided over by Murger in person, throned amongst 
 the futilities to which he had given a name. He
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 223 
 
 was then in an acute mental decline, and though 
 only thirty-six years old he died three years later 
 both physically and mentally exhausted. With 
 his bloodshot eyes and scanty beard, he should have 
 served as a living, if moribund, example to the 
 foolish young men around him. Francisque Sarcey, 
 who met him at this time, is fond of pointing to him 
 as a proof of how cruelly Bohemia acts towards her 
 stepchildren. 
 
 Amongst the men whom Daudet met here were 
 Pierre Dupont, also destined to die before his time, 
 the author of famous rustic songs, ' Les Bceufs,' 
 4 La Vigne,' ' Le Mois de Mai,' ' La Chanson des 
 Foins,' and of a volume of Socialist poems, ' Le 
 Chant des Ouvriers,' poems and songs, as Daudet 
 says, 'all trembling with the fine dreams of '48, all 
 echoing with the thousand voices of the Croix- 
 Rousse looms, all perfumed with the thousand 
 perfumes of the Lyonnese valleys ; Gustave Mathieu, 
 whose fame has not survived, the author of the 
 poems ' Les Bons Vins,' ' Le Coq Gaulois,' ' Les 
 Hirondelles ' ; Charles Monselet, a poet and prose- 
 writer, who fought for the gastronomic tradition in 
 France, and died, not many years ago, in great 
 indigence ; Castagnary, who shook the dust of 
 Bohemia off his feet before it was too late, and 
 died six years ago, at the age of fifty-eight,
 
 224 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 not without fortune and honours ; Alfred Delvau, 
 the story of whose sad life is one long sermon 
 against Bohemianism ; Malassis, a phoenix amongst 
 publishers, publishing at his own charges the works 
 of those who pleased him ; and, greatest presence of 
 all, Charles Baudelaire, who the previous year had 
 published his ' Fleurs du Mai,' a volume of poems 
 of which it may be said that never did any volume of 
 poems produce a greater or more lasting effect. He 
 was thirty-six years of age at the time, and was to 
 die ten years later of a softened brain, another 
 victim and what a splendid one! of the irregular 
 life glorified by Murger, which exhibited itself in 
 all its noise, spite, and emptiness in the Brasserie 
 des Martyrs. 
 
 And be it noted that all these men whose 
 names have been mentioned, each one of whom 
 died long before his time, insane or indigent, were 
 men of talent in the case of Baudelaire, of genius. 
 But what about the hundred or so of ' good fellows ' 
 poets, painters, and playwrights whom Daudet 
 used to meet there? what about 'the thinkers,' of 
 whom he writes : ' Those say nothing, nor do they 
 write ; they think. We admire them on trust ; they 
 are said to be as deep as wells, and the fact is that 
 one is disposed to believe so, from seeing the 
 number of glasses of beer which they swallow.'
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 225 
 
 To these gatherings the young poet of ' Les 
 Amou reuses ' came as a spectator, and as a spectator 
 only. In spite of his youth and inexperience, he 
 was keen-sighted enough to see the futility of this 
 life, to foresee its dangers. The sight of such a 
 master as Charles Baudelaire drinking gin or whisky 
 in inordinate quantities may have interested him ; 
 it did not stimulate him to imitation. He merely 
 looked round, and took mental notes to be used 
 in the future, as in ' Jack.' And speaking of his 
 brother's associations at this period, Ernest writes : 
 * Nobody has said, or will say, as well as he, how 
 much impotence, jealousy, narrow-mindedness, un- 
 conscious perversity there was amongst these poor 
 devils, defeated without a struggle by their laziness. 
 As I have already said, it is simply marvellous that 
 he should have lived with them without losino- a 
 
 O 
 
 tittle of his talent, or leaving behind him the flower 
 of his youth, the freshness of his intelligence, the 
 straightforwardness of his character. He shared 
 their misery often, their disordered instincts never. 
 He was always sufficiently master of himself to 
 study the causes of their failure, and to defend him- 
 self against succumbing in the same way, visiting 
 the lowest depths without ever leaving hold of the 
 guiding-line which was to direct him back to the light.' 
 But curiously enough for so the world will have 
 
 15
 
 226 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 it, with its classifications these excursions as a 
 mere explorer into the kingdom of Bohemia have 
 left, in the eyes of most, an ineffaceable stigma on 
 Alphonse Daudet. The illusion is perhaps strength- 
 ened by the fact that he does not cut his hair, and 
 avoids as far as possible the livery of the Philistine. 
 ' The legend of my Bohemianism,' he told the 
 writer, ' has clung to me all my life. Some people 
 never would take me au serieux. I remember once 
 dining with the Due Decazes, whom I was studying 
 at the time for the purpose of one of my novels. I 
 had written to tell him that I wanted to make use of 
 his experiences, and he had asked me to dinner. 
 Well, during the whole meal he related anecdotes of 
 his career, and thinking that he had to deal with 
 a Bohemian, he arranged his anecdotes in the way 
 which, on this supposition, would interest me most. 
 Thus, he always began each story with the words, " I 
 was taking a bock" I suppose he thought that my 
 idea of life was of beer-drinking in a cafe. At last 
 I said, " Your Excellency seems to be very fond of 
 beer," and afterwards added, " It is a drink that I 
 have never been able to stomach." He seemed to 
 understand what I meant, and changed his tone. 
 But just as I was leaving him it was at two o'clock 
 in the morning, and the lackeys, I remember, were 
 all exhausted and limp with fatigue he said, "And
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 227 
 
 now let us go and lay traps for Bismarck." I went 
 away thinking what an ass the man was to imagine 
 that I should believe he was going to do anything 
 but go upstairs to his wife ; and he no doubt went 
 upstairs to his wife thinking what an ass I must 
 be to believe what he had said.' 
 
 So persistent, indeed, is this illusion, that not many 
 months ago, when Alphonse Daudet was dining out, 
 a grande dame begged him to tell her all about the 
 fine times he must have at the Chat Noir, an 
 establishment which, it is almost superfluous to 
 state, he has never visited a question as apposite 
 as if some Park Lane hostess were to ask George 
 Meredith what might be the latest joke at Romano's 
 bar. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet never took train to Bohemia 
 without a return-ticket in his pocket. Most of his 
 time during this stormy period of his youth was 
 spent at his writing-table in his garret. The success 
 of ' Les Amoureuses ' was there to encourage him. 
 Had it not brought up his six flights of stairs, with 
 an offer of collaboration, the famous Henri Monnier, 
 creator of the immortal Joseph Prudhomme a 
 successful author, of sixty years of age, inviting an 
 obscure lad of eighteen to work with him on terms 
 of absolute equality Thomas Gray knocking at 
 Thomas Chatterton's door ? He enjoyed the
 
 228 AL1HONSE DAUDET 
 
 pleasures provided for the students in the student 
 quarter in which he lived, but, unlike many young- 
 men, did not give way to them. Bullier's saw him 
 occasionally, not regularly. He ever kept the curb 
 on an ardent youth, and, in spite of Marlowe-like 
 instincts, rode clear of a Marlowe-like fall. 
 
 It would not be fair to say that in this he made a 
 virtue of necessity, and that from a want of money 
 a man must perforce incur Luther's reproach of 
 folly. He liked ' Wein, Weib und Gesang' as well 
 as most young men ; but they were not his prime 
 preoccupation, and his literary dignity forbade his 
 indulging these tastes at the cost of his conscience 
 as an artist. Nor, in order to earn money, would it 
 have been necessary for him to force himself to take 
 the jobs which, as is duly recorded in ' Jack,' were 
 at that time offered him the writing of scientific 
 articles for an encyclopaedia at the rate of half a 
 centime the line, or a history of the Middle Ages 
 at twenty shillings the volume. He might easily 
 have earned a considerable income in journalism, 
 but 'journalism was distasteful to him,' who cared to 
 publish nothing which had not been polished, and 
 polished, and polished again. 
 
 That at this period he firmly adhered to this line 
 of conduct is all the more creditable that, not long 
 after the two brothers had removed to the Rue
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 229 
 
 Bonaparte, Ernest Daudet was forced to leave 
 Paris, to take over the editorship of a paper called 
 La France Centrale. Alphonse Daudet was in 
 consequence left to himself, friendless, alone, and 
 with no other resources than the pen which he 
 refused to hire out. When Ernest returned to 
 Paris, his place on the staff of the Union had been 
 taken, and the only employment which he could find 
 was as secretary to an old gentleman who had 
 served at the Court of Charles X., and was writing 
 his memoirs. He is portrayed in ' Le Petit Chose/ 
 Ernest's services in this capacity were remunerated 
 with fifteen shillings a week. This income being 
 totally inadequate to meet the needs of the two 
 brothers, Ernest threw his Legitimism by the board, 
 and offered his pen to the Empire. He was amiably 
 received by Vicomte de la Gueronniere, at that time 
 Director of the Press at the Ministry of the Interior, 
 and by him appointed to the post of editor of a 
 Government organ, L 1 Echo de Ardeche, at Privas. 
 His acceptance of this post definitely separated him 
 fr<3m his brother, and from that time forward 
 Alphonse Daudet had to face the world and Paris 
 alone entirely alone. 
 
 In view of his complete victory in this battle, it 
 may be well to sum up in a few words his character, 
 position, and prospects at this time.
 
 230 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 He was a young man in his twentieth year, of 
 great personal beauty, but afflicted with extreme 
 shortsightedness, awkward in consequence, and of 
 a timidity beyond his natural bent, proud and 
 passionate, yet of an affectionate and genial nature. 
 He had inclinations towards disorderly living as a 
 mental stimulus, but was restrained from dangerous 
 excesses by a caution doubtless inherited from his 
 prudent peasant ancestors, by an artistic repug- 
 nance for the vulgarity of debauch, and by a very 
 ardent ambition, not entirely egotistical, inasmuch 
 as it was his keen desire to be able to assist his 
 mother in her present distress. He was pains- 
 takingly industrious, and recognised that it was only 
 by constant labour and application that anything 
 could be achieved in the career which he had elected 
 to follow. He had suffered greatly, but had not 
 been embittered thereby ; rather, his suffering had 
 schooled him to face the difficulties which he 
 expected. 
 
 In point of position he was penniless, living in a 
 garret furnished on credit, dressed in clothes supplied 
 on trust, dependent for his daily bread on his brother 
 Ernest, and unable to look for assistance to any 
 other living being. His father, shifting from one 
 employment to another, could barely support himself; 
 his mother and sister were at the charges of relations,
 
 IN THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 231 
 
 who made them feel their obligation. On the other 
 hand, he had published a volume of poems, which 
 had been received with a certain esteem, and he had 
 the entree to various drawing-rooms, where acquaint- 
 ances of some value might be formed. His person 
 appeared to inspire sympathy, and from his know- 
 ledge of this circumstance he was inspired with that 
 self-confidence which in the battle of life is in- 
 dispensable. 
 
 His prospects under these circumstances may be 
 described as having been encouraging. There was 
 evident appreciation amongst the public of his 
 particular literary talents. He had never written 
 anything for publication which had not been pub- 
 lished, and afterwards praised ; even the lost novel 
 might be considered, from Mayery's appreciation of 
 it, a successful attempt. 
 
 He had accordingly every incentive to continue, 
 but in the meanwhile there was terrible hunger and 
 terrible cold in the garret of the Rue Bonaparte.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING. 
 
 FORTUNATELY, during his short stay in Blois, Ernest 
 Daudet had made the acquaintance of M. de 
 Villemessant, editor and proprietor of the Figaro, 
 and had spoken to him of his brother, so that De 
 Villemessant was to some extent familiar with the 
 name of Alphonse Daudet when the latter timidly 
 slipped his first contribution ' Le Roman du Cha- 
 peron Rouge ' into the letter-box of the Figaro. 
 The Figaro was at that time in the fifth year of its 
 existence, having been founded by Villemessant on 
 April 2, 1854. De Villemessant. the natural son of 
 Augustine de Villemessant and Colonel Cartier, had 
 begun in life as a dealer in ribbons at Blois, under 
 the name of Cartier- Briard, Briard being the name 
 of his wife. He was nineteen years old at the time, 
 and at the age of twenty-four was adjudicated a 
 bankrupt. He then came to Paris, and in 1840 
 founded a journal called La Sylphide, devoted to
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 233 
 
 fashions, fine arts, and belles-lettres. It failed in 
 1844. In this year, at the instance of the relations 
 of his putative father, he was forced by a judgment 
 of the courts to assume his mother's name. ' Yester- 
 day I had no name,' he said when this judgment 
 was pronounced, ' and to-day I have two. Such is 
 life.' It was as De Villemessant that he then 
 founded L? Abound, a monthly publication, dis- 
 tributed gratuitously. Tiring of this, he next 
 established a political paper, called La Chronique de 
 Paris, which was suppressed by the police shortly 
 after the coup dttat. In 1854 he revived the title 
 of Le Figaro in connection with a new weekly 
 journal, which from the very outset attracted the 
 favourable attention of the public by its wit and 
 cleverness. De Villemessant devoted himself body 
 and soul to his new venture, and, thanks to his 
 efforts, was able to assure its success. He soon felt 
 warranted to issue the paper twice instead of once 
 a week ; but it was not till 1866 that the Figaro 
 became a daily paper. He had many novel ideas 
 for attracting subscribers. On one occasion he 
 offered to present each quarterly or half-yearly 
 subscriber with a box of six oranges, whilst yearly 
 subscribers were entitled to a box of twelve. The 
 offer was found amusing-, and was talked about, 
 which was what De Villemessant wanted. He was
 
 234 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 the inventor of the new journalism, and the American 
 journalists and their imitators in England have only 
 borrowed his ideas and copied his processes. He 
 created the chrontgne, or leading article on subjects 
 other than political. It was in the Figaro that 
 personal gossip, the appetite for which in the reading 
 public goes on ever increasing, was first printed as 
 news of possible interest ; and it was in the Figaro 
 that the nouvelle a la main, or witty anecdote, first 
 found an abiding-place. De Villemessant attached 
 great importance to the daily nouvelle a la main, 
 and paid liberally for taking contributions of this 
 nature. If a nouvelle a la main which had appeared 
 in the Figaro was reproduced in other papers, a 
 douceur was awarded to its author. He admired 
 brevity, and impressed upon his contributors that 
 an anecdote or paragraph of personal gossip, to be 
 effective, should be as concisely written as possible. 
 He used to say that a good story told in three lines 
 was worth eighty francs, in ten lines half the money, 
 and in twenty lines only two francs fifty. A man 
 of little education, he was unable to write for his 
 paper himself, but he had wonderful skill in guiding 
 the pens of others. He maintained the severest 
 discipline amongst the members of his staff. Rising 
 early every morning, he used to read the day's 
 copy of his paper from the first line to the last,
 
 OAT HIS WAY REJOICING 235 
 
 and mark such passages as he specially approved 
 of or found reason to blame. The copy thus marked 
 used to be pasted up in the general editorial room, 
 and was always eagerly examined by the staff. So 
 great was his influence over his subordinates, that 
 even to-day, fifteen years after his death, the present 
 editor of the Figaro, as he himself told the writer, 
 does not send a copy of the paper to the press 
 without wondering with some anxiety whether it 
 would be approved of in all its details by De 
 Villemessant. He used to say that a leading article 
 should follow the order of a bill of fare. To begin 
 with, there should be the hors tfceuvre, in the form 
 of something light and piquant to stimulate the 
 reader's appetite, next should come the soup and 
 the entree in the setting forth of the subject, then 
 the plat de resistance, followed by a dessert of 
 flourishes. He was of opinion that every man had 
 talent and originality enough to write one interesting- 
 article, but he believed that there were only very 
 few men who could maintain a level of excellence 
 after their first or first few articles. He was pitiless 
 towards those of his contributors whose work 
 seemed to him to be falling off in quality, and 
 inaugurated the heartless, though strictly com- 
 mercial, system at present so greatly in favour 
 with American editors, of constantly renewing his
 
 236 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 staff, replacing by new and younger men the writers 
 who had given their best. He one day astonished 
 his staff, so Monselet relates, by bringing in a 
 chimney-sweep whom he had met in the street, and 
 bidding him seat himself at the editorial table and 
 write an article on his craft and experiences. He 
 pronounced the article when written excellent. His 
 appreciation of journalistic work was entirely con- 
 trolled by public taste ; and it was rather by reason 
 of the fickleness of public taste than on account of 
 hard-heartedness that he sacrificed old servants who 
 had ceased to please. He used to lunch on the 
 boulevard, and after lunch would engage his neigh- 
 bours in conversation, bringing the subject to the 
 day's Figaro, and soliciting opinions on its various 
 features. Guided by what appeared to be the 
 general opinion of his readers, he would dismiss or 
 reward the members of his staff. He was not a 
 hard-hearted man, although determined to allow no 
 sentiment to stand in the way of his success, and 
 many acts of kindness on his part have been re- 
 corded. Alphonse Daudet relates that on one 
 occasion after the Commune he asked De Ville- 
 messant to give a place as porter in the Figaro 
 office to a proteg6 of his, an ex-Communard. He 
 was interested in this man, whom he afterwards 
 depicted as Le Pere Joyeuse in the ' Nabab,'
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 237 
 
 because, having recently lost his place, he was 
 concealing the fact from his daughters, going out 
 every morning as if to his employment, and in the 
 evening, on his return home, inventing stories about 
 what had happened during the day at the office. 
 De Villemessant declined to give the ex-Communard 
 the place which Daudet had solicited, because he 
 said that to do so would be to give an arm to his 
 numerous enemies, but very generously offered to 
 make the man an allowance equivalent to what he 
 had been earning in his former place, so that he 
 might be able to continue his touching deception on 
 his family. This allowance w r as continued three 
 months, at the end of which time the man had 
 found employment. 
 
 'The man and his work resembled each other,' 
 writes Daudet, ' and never, it may be said, was 
 human being more exactly fitted to his destiny. Of 
 extraordinary activity, vivacious, busy, displacing an 
 enormous quantity of air, sober withal, to a degree 
 which used to be common, but would astonish people 
 to-day ; neither a drinker nor a smoker, fearing 
 neither scandal, nor blows, nor adventures, but with 
 few scruples at bottom, always ready to throw his 
 preconceived opinions by the board, and never 
 having had any very deep political faith, but pleased 
 to display a platonic Legitimism and a respect for
 
 238 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 traditions, because he thought them fashionable, 
 Villemessant was just the captain needful to steer 
 this hardy privateer, which during twenty years, 
 under the King's flag strewn withj&urs-de-fys, sailed 
 where its fancy guided it. He was tyrannical, 
 capricious, but the interests of his paper were 
 always at the bottom of his caprice and his 
 tyranny. . . . "Is he good ? Is he bad ?" One 
 is puzzled to answer ; and Diderot would seem to 
 have written his comedy with such a man in his 
 mind. Good he is, certainly. Bad also, according 
 to the day and the hour ; and a painter might, 
 without exaggerating a line or a tone, paint two 
 portraits of him one paternal, one cruel ; one all in 
 black, the other all rose-coloured and there would 
 be no resemblance between them, yet both would 
 resemble the original.' 
 
 On the first occasion on which Alphonse Daudet 
 saw De Villemessant, the latter showed himself in 
 one of his cruel moods, and the young Southerner 
 was present at the summary dismissal of Paul d'lvoy, 
 a leader-writer whose position on the paper seemed 
 unassailable. Daudet had been watching d'lvoy at 
 work at the editorial table whilst waiting for the 
 editor's arrival. ' He was writing, and as he wrote 
 he smiled to himself with the smile of a man who 
 is satisfied with himself ; the sheets of paper kept
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 239 
 
 blackening under his pen. As for me, I watched 
 M. d'lvoy smiling as he wrote. I see it all distinctly, 
 and I see my timid self, seated in a corner, pressing 
 to my bosom my first article, paternally rolled and 
 tied up. Villemessant had not yet returned. I had 
 been told to wait, and I was waiting.' Suddenly 
 the editor appeared. ' Are you pleased with what 
 you have written ?' he asked of the great leader- 
 writer. ' Yes ; I think it about hits the mark,' 
 answered Paul d'lvoy. ' So much the better,' said 
 De Villemessant, 'as it is the last article you will 
 write for me.' Daudet says that after this scene he 
 wished himself a hundred feet beneath the earth. 
 A shiver ran down his back. ' It is an impression 
 from which I have never recovered. I have often 
 seen Villemessant since, and he was always very 
 amiable towards me, yet I never saw him without 
 the shiver of disagreeable terror which Tom Thumb 
 must have felt on seeing the ogre.' 
 . Such was the man whose appreciation of Alphonse 
 Daudet's talent laid the foundation of his great 
 success. For though the Figaro was at that time 
 only a weekly paper of recent foundation, to write 
 for it was, as Ernest Daudet puts it, ' a consecra- 
 tion for a writer, a diploma of talent, the doors of 
 the publishers opened wide.' And so it is to-day 
 in Paris a o-reat distinction, the blue-ribbon of
 
 <2 4 o ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 journalism, to contribute to the Figaro. A single 
 successful article in this paper may make a man 
 famous in twenty-four hours. 
 
 It may be said that it was with the publication of 
 his first contribution to the Figaro, ' Le Roman du 
 Chaperon Rouge,' that Alphonse Daudet was drawn 
 from out the Slough of Despond and sent on his 
 way rejoicing. Precarious as was the revenue to be 
 looked for from work of this nature, there was at least 
 the prospect of earning something, and till then he 
 had been entirely dependent on his brother Ernest. 
 Moreover ; he had now a better tribune from which 
 to address a wider public than Madame Chodska's 
 salon or the study of Eugene Loudun. 
 
 He contributed to the Figaro for some years ; 
 and it was in the columns of this journal that first 
 appeared the tales and sketches afterwards re- 
 published in the volumes variously entitled ' Lettres 
 de mon Moulin,' ' Contes du Lundi,' ' Les Lettres 
 a un Absent,' ' Robert Helmont,' and ' Femmes 
 d' Artistes.' 
 
 It was no doubt entirely due to his conscien- 
 tiousness, which never allowed him to send in any 
 but his best work, and to the intense care with 
 which it was always prepared, that Daudet was able 
 to satisfy the terrible De Villemessant, and to remain 
 in connection with the Figaro until, his talents as a
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 241 
 
 novelist and playwright having been acknowledged 
 by the public, he was able to dispense with jour- 
 nalism as a source of revenue. 
 
 He often speaks of the joy with which on that 
 Thursday morning he ran down his six flights of 
 stairs and out into the street to the first newspaper 
 kiosque where the Figaro was to be found, how he 
 read and re-read the ' Roman du Chaperon Rouge ' 
 in print with a delight which far exceeded that 
 which he felt in picking up, off the ledge of the 
 Figaro cashier's desk, the remuneration of his work, 
 the first money which he had ever earned with 
 his pen. 
 
 His life from this period forth until when, in 1861, 
 De Morny gave him a Government post, was one 
 of suffering and humiliation, only relieved, now and 
 then, by the satisfaction of seeing his work published 
 in the most influential of the literary journals of 
 Paris, and the satisfaction of knowing that, thanks 
 to the remuneration for this work, bread, light, and 
 shelter were assured to him for some weeks to come. 
 When he could afford to treat himself that is to 
 say, on the days when he had received money from 
 the Figaro he used to go and dine at the table 
 d'hote at his old hotel, the Grand Hotel du Senat, 
 where a dinner was served at two francs a head, 
 a miserable repast, no doubt, but sumptuous in con- 
 
 16
 
 2 4 2 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 trast to what was his ordinary fare in his garret in 
 the Rue Bonaparte. When his solitude weighed 
 upon him, or when his natural propensity for 
 playing truant drove him away from his work, he 
 used to spend the evening at one of the cafes of the 
 Latin Quarter. ' The cafes of the quartier,' he 
 writes, ' were at that time not mere pot-houses 
 where one smoked and drank. In the heart of a 
 muzzled Paris, without public life or a public press, 
 these gatherings of studious and generous young 
 men, very schools of opposition, or, rather, of legal 
 resistance, were the only places where free speak- 
 ing could be heard. Each cafe had its special 
 orator, and a table, which at certain times almost 
 became a tribune, and each orator had, in the 
 quartier, his admirers and his partisans. 
 
 '"At the Voltaire there's Larmina, who's a 
 stunner. My word, what a stunner is Larmina !" 
 
 ' " I don't say he isn't, but at the Cafe Procope 
 there's Pesquidoux, who is better than he is." 
 
 ' And off we used to go in bands, as on a 
 pilgrimage, to the Cafe Voltaire to hear Larmina, 
 and then to the Procope to listen to Pesquidoux, 
 with the artless, ardent faith of the young men of 
 twenty of that epoch.' 
 
 To-day the young man of twenty might beat the 
 quartier from end to end without finding a single
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 243 
 
 gathering where his artless, ardent faith could hear 
 anything beyond a jealous criticism of successful 
 men, who do not frequent pot-houses, and the 
 chronique scandaleuse of a society of lost women and 
 men losing themselves. The Cafe Voltaire alone 
 has remained a place of discussion, a place where 
 obscure poets discuss their relative personal merits. 
 It was either at the table d'hote of the Hotel du 
 Senat or in Madame Ancelot's drawing-room that 
 Alphonse Daudet made the acquaintance of Gam- 
 betta. Gambetta was at that time living in the 
 hotel in the Rue de Tournon, studying law and 
 acting as secretary to Maitre Lachaud, Madame 
 Ancelot's son-in-law. Alphonse Daudet does not 
 remember at which of these places it was that he 
 first met the great orator. ' My memory,' he once 
 said to the writer, ' betrays me in many respects ; 
 there are periods in my life which to-day are quite 
 blank, so that I often compare my memory to a 
 forest in which large patches, burned up by the 
 sun, are quite dead.' Alphonse Daudet's detesta- 
 tion of politics and professional politicians has 
 always been a trait of his character. ' Oh politics,' 
 he exclaims in the epilogue to ' Robert Helmont,' 
 ' I hate you ! I hate you because you are coarse, 
 unjust, noisy, and cackling ; because you are the 
 enemy of art, the enemy of work ; because you
 
 244 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 serve as a label to every folly, to every ambition, to 
 every laziness. Blind and passionate, you separate 
 good hearts which were made to be united ; on the 
 other hand, you unite beings altogether dissimilar. 
 You are the great solvent of men's consciences, 
 you accustom men to lying and to subterfuges, and, 
 thanks to you, one sees honest men become the 
 friends of rogues, provided they belong to the same 
 party. But above all I hate you, O politics, be- 
 cause you have succeeded in destroying in our 
 hearts the sentiment, the idea of patriotism !' 
 
 In spite of this feeling, which w r as as strong 
 within him at the age of twenty as it is to-day at 
 the age of fifty-four, when the only occasions on 
 which the kindly Alphonse Daudet may be heard 
 to speak with bitterness are when the conversation 
 turns on the vagaries of the French Parlia- 
 mentarians, he seems to have conceived a great 
 admiration and some affection for Gambetta in his 
 youth ; he followed his career with considerable 
 interest, and still speaks with great regret of his 
 untimely end. It is true that Gambetta was a 
 Meridional too, that the Meridionals are a clannish 
 folk, and that Daudet, bent on conquest also, was in- 
 terested to see with what arms his fellow-Southerner 
 had entered the arena. Gambetta was only two 
 years Daudet's senior, and if the younger man
 
 2 45 
 
 abhorred politics, the elder, even at that time, took 
 a sincere interest in art. ' Gambetta,' says Daudet, 
 in an article written four years before the states- 
 man's death, ' is one of the few political men who 
 take an interest in Art, and suspect that Letters are 
 not altogether without a place in the life of a 
 people. ... In the days of the Hotel du Senat, 
 the young barrister, who was my friend, used some- 
 times to miss a lecture in order to go and admire 
 the masters in the picture-galleries.' 
 
 The difference in their circumstances prevented 
 any close friendship, however. Gambetta, in receipt 
 of an allowance of twelve pounds a month from his 
 family, was one of the richest men in the quartier 
 of his student days, and this sufficed to keep the 
 proud, needy Alphonse Daudet aloof, except on 
 rare occasions, as, for instance, when he used to go 
 with his comrades to one of the gatherings he has 
 described, to listen to Gambetta's vehement tirades 
 against the Imperial Government, and to applaud 
 his remarkable eloquence. What in later years 
 especially endeared Gambetta to Daudet was the 
 services which he rendered to the cause of the 
 national defence during the war. ' I, a Parisian of 
 the siege I for my humble part recognised how 
 admirable were the action of Gambetta in the 
 provinces and that great defensive movement
 
 246 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 which at first we had considered only a series of 
 bragging tarasconnades! For Daudet is a keen 
 patriot, partly, no doubt, on account of the 
 picturesqueness of the patriotic sentiment, which 
 has always appealed to the artistic temperament, 
 but chiefly because, having lived in the midst of 
 the suffering and the humiliation inflicted upon his 
 country by the invasion, he very naturally shares 
 his countrymen's resentment. 
 
 It was Daudet who introduced Rochefort to 
 Gambetta, at a table d'hote dinner at the Hotel du 
 Senat. Rochefort was at that time in municipal 
 employment, a clerk in the offices of the Paris 
 Hotel de Ville. He had written many poems 
 which had not been appreciated by the publishers, 
 and, disgusted by this failure, had turned his attention 
 to journalism, in which his success has been so 
 entirely unprecedented. When Daudet made his 
 acquaintance he was contributing theatrical critiques 
 to the Charivari, and there was nothing either in 
 his manner, in his way of life, or in his literary 
 style to portend his future career. The young men 
 were drawn together by a sympathy of tastes and 
 opinions, but were too dissimilar in character, 
 except perhaps in respect of a fondness for raillery, 
 to form any deep friendship. Daudet says that 
 Rochefort had a way of laughing vertically, from
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 247 
 
 nose to chin, which would remind him of the 
 Huguenot Provencal and predispose him against 
 his new acquaintance. Still, the two have always 
 preserved a feeling of mutual esteem. Rochefort 
 always writes well of Daudet, especially when he 
 can contrast him with Zola, whom he cordially 
 detests, and Daudet always speaks well of Roche- 
 fort, ' thinks him a man of extraordinary lucidity 
 of spirit,' and never misses one of his leading 
 articles in the Intransigeant. He has described 
 the first meeting of Rochefort and Gambetta at 
 the dinner-table. ' Gambetta and Rochefort were, 
 unfortunately, not made to understand each other, 
 and, if I remember, they barely spoke together that 
 evening. I see them, each at his end of the table, 
 separated by the whole length of the cloth, such 
 then as they were always to remain, the one, 
 cautious and reserved, laughing dryly, and from 
 nose to chin, chary of gestures ; the other laugh- 
 ing from ear to ear, shouting, gesticulating, over- 
 flowing and evaporating like a vat of Cahors wine. 
 And how many things, how many events, were 
 foreshadowed by the distance which these two 
 guests maintained between each other.' 
 
 That Alphonse Daudet, so shortly after his 
 arrival in Paris, and in spite of the circumstances 
 in which he was placed, should have made two
 
 248 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 friends so entirely different in character and aims 
 as Rochefort and Gambetta, shows that already 
 at that time he exercised over all who approached 
 him that charm which made Jules Lemaitre write 
 
 
 
 of him in his study of contemporary litterateurs: 
 ' He draws all hearts after him.' It may also be 
 noticed, as proving his firmness of purpose already 
 at that age, that though naturally timid, and a 
 younger man than either of the two, he was 
 influenced neither by Gambetta nor by Rochefort, 
 much as the example of both one and the other 
 must have tempted him to seek greater prosperity 
 in a less arduous career. 
 
 Amongst other friends whom he won for himself 
 during these early days in Paris may be mentioned 
 the names of Therion, blended in a composite 
 photograph with Daudet himself as the Elysee 
 Meraut of ' Les Rois en Exil,' Castagnary, author 
 of ' La Philosophic du Salon de 1857,' art critic 
 and " Government official, to whom allusion has 
 already been made, Emmanuel des Essarts, Bataille, 
 Jean Du Boys, Amedee Rolland, Pierre VeVon, 
 most inexhaustible of chroniqueurs, and Louis 
 Bouilhet. The last-named, with whom as a poet 
 Alphonse Daudet was naturally most in sympathy, 
 was at that time a man of thirty-seven, and had 
 just published his volume of poems, ' Festons et
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 249 
 
 Astragales,' which includes a remarkable Roman 
 tale in verse, entitled ' Me'laenis,' the original pub- 
 lication of which, in 1851, in the Revue dc Paris, 
 had first attracted public attention to his name. 
 Two plays from his pen, after the fashion of the 
 romanticists, had already been performed with some 
 success ' Madame de Montarcy,' a drama in verse, 
 at the Odeon in 1856, and in 1858, on the same 
 stage, ' Helene Peyron,' also in verse. He died 
 in 1869 at the age of forty-seven, and in this 
 connection it may be noticed that most of the 
 men of the generation which was in full literary 
 or artistic activity at the time when Daudet began 
 his career in Paris came to unfortunate, or at 
 least untimely, ends. Was the cause of this the 
 high pressure of life under the Empire, or the 
 body-and-soul-devouring Bohemianism glorified by 
 Murger ? 
 
 With reference to the Du Boys and the Bataille 
 mentioned above as amongst his first friends in 
 Paris, Daudet relates an anecdote which might 
 have served him for a fantastic story after the 
 fashion of his ' Homme au Cerveau d'Or,' and 
 other tales written in a Hoffmann vein. Whilst 
 on the visit to Munich which he has described in 
 ' L'Empereur Aveugle,' he purchased three Tyrolean 
 hats of green cloth as presents for Du Boys, Bataille,
 
 250 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 and Gill, the famous caricaturist, and, on his return 
 to Paris, gave them to his three friends. The 
 wearers of the three green hats all died insane, and 
 it was whilst wearing these hats that both Du Boys 
 and Bataille first manifested a tendency to madness. 
 In the case of Bataille this took place one day when 
 he was out walking with Daudet, when he told him 
 that his father was a drunkard, who drowned him- 
 self in a cesspool, and begged Daudet to prevent 
 him from drinking, for he felt that he would end 
 badly. Du Boys, usually a most placid man, one 
 day startled Madame Daudet with an outburst of 
 most violent language. He was wearing his green 
 hat at the time. Would not ' The Story of the 
 Three Green Hats,' treated by Daudet, make an 
 admirable conte fantastique ? Possibly Daudet, 
 remembering the precepts of De Villemessant, his 
 first patron in letters, has preferred to leave it as an 
 anecdote. 
 
 In the enjoyment of the appreciation of the most 
 influential editor in Paris, with the power of con- 
 tributing to one of its most prominent journals, with 
 the prospect of earnings, however precarious, before 
 him, and already possessed of many acquaintances 
 and friendships, the young man, who had come to 
 Paris penniless, friendless, hungry, cold, and ill-clad, 
 may well be described as rescued out of the slough,
 
 ON HIS WAY REJOICING 251 
 
 and on his way rejoicing. And so he was, though 
 rather because his nature was a hopeful one, 
 because he was young-, because he had confidence 
 in himself, and because this confidence filled him 
 with courage, than because there was any reason 
 for happiness in his actual circumstances. His 
 contributions to the Figaro were few, because he 
 would work slowly, and revise and re-write and re- 
 write again, and money was accordingly terribly 
 scarce in the garret by the church of Saint Germain 
 des Pres. The remuneration, at the usual rate of four 
 sous a line, was inadequate, for at that rate a man must 
 write many lines if he is to earn enough sous to clothe 
 himself, shoe himself, feed and warm himself, and 
 Alphonse Daudet could not find it in himself to 
 write lines merely because they represented sous. 
 So in consequence his clothes got very shabby, his 
 boots yawned at the toes, and he was often hungry 
 and almost always cold. Insufficiency of diet affected 
 his digestion, exposure injured his lungs. As after- 
 events showed, his privations, had he continued to 
 endure them, would have killed him. He was 
 marked out for an early grave, and the nightingales 
 of the cemetery were already preparing to sing of 
 the melancholy death of a poet who died from want 
 before he came to manhood, when one day, as he 
 was sitting at his table 'poetising,' having fasted for
 
 252 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 twenty-four hours, with an old blanket tied round 
 him for warmth, there came a knock at his garret 
 door, and a messenger presented himself from his 
 Excellency the President of the Legislative Body, 
 by command of the Empress.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS. 
 
 A FEW days previously Alphonse Daudet had been 
 out on an excursion in the woods of Meudon with 
 his friend Racinet, the draughtsman, who frequently 
 accompanied him when playing truant from his 
 writing-table. The two young men had filled their 
 pockets with bread and cheese, and carried one of 
 the blankets off Daudet's bed with them as a cover- 
 ing for the night, which they meant to spend out in 
 the forest. Long- after nightfall, as they were walk- 
 ing in the moonlight by the side of a hedge, Daudet 
 was suddenly startled by hearing the sound of a 
 wild laugh close behind him, and, curiously enough, 
 Racinet had heard it too. There was nobody in 
 sight, yet the laugh was not one of the voices of 
 the forest, but a clear human, if weird, cachinnation. 
 After looking round in vain to see whence this 
 sound proceeded, the two young men continued
 
 254 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 their walk. Presently the laugh was heard again, 
 and as they walked on seemed to follow closely in 
 their steps. By a sudden impulse both began to 
 run, but the laugh still pursued them. Racinet 
 halted first, and reminded Daudet that there was 
 a lunatic asylum in the neighbourhood, and sug- 
 gested that there might be somebody on the other 
 side of the hedge. Daudet, now very angry at 
 the fright which he had felt, plunged through the 
 bramble - hedge, tearing his face and hands, but 
 found nobody. Neither he nor Racinet was ever 
 able to understand what caused this laugh, nor 
 whence it proceeded. 
 
 Now, it appears and here again in Daudet's 
 career there is a touch of the fantastic that on 
 that very night, and at about that very time, there 
 was a reception at the Tuileries, in the course of 
 which one of the brothers Lyonnet recited from the 
 published verses of a young and unknown poet a 
 certain poem telling how two young cousins came 
 to love each other under a plum-tree in an orchard. 
 The Empress was greatly pleased with this poem, 
 and ordered it to be recited over again ; and when 
 her wish had been obeyed, she beckoned to the 
 Comte de Morny, and bade him find out who this 
 young poet might be, and what might be his con- 
 dition. De Morny obeyed, and was soon able to
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 255 
 
 report that the author of ' Les Prunes ' was a young 
 Southerner named Alphonse Daudet, who was 
 living in great distress in a garret in the Rue 
 Bonaparte. The Empress then expressed her 
 .pleasure that something should be done to assist 
 so talented a young man, and that is why at a very 
 critical moment in Alphonse Daudet's career there 
 came to him in the Rue Bonaparte a messenger 
 from his Excellency the President of the Legislative 
 Body, better known as Charles Augustus Louis 
 Joseph, Comte de Morny. The message was to 
 the effect that his Excellency would be pleased to 
 receive Monsieur Alphonse Daudet at the Presi- 
 dency of the Legislature, there to make to him a 
 communication of some importance. 
 
 It is needless to say that Alphonse Daudet kept 
 the appointment. He was duly received, and one 
 of the first questions which De Morny put to him 
 was on what income he thought he could live in 
 comfort and work free from all embarrassment. 
 Alphonse Daudet mentioned a sum which made 
 De Morny smile. He then offered the young man 
 a place in the offices of the Presidency, a pure 
 sinecure, to which a handsome salary was attached 
 the post of attack^ du cabinet. 
 
 1 But,' said Daudet proudly, ' I am a Legitimist.' 
 
 The Comte de Morny smiled again.
 
 256 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' The Empress is even more Legitimist than you 
 are,' he said. 
 
 Daudet found nothing more to say against his 
 good fortune, and accepted the post. De Morny 
 fixed the date on which he was to enter upon his 
 new functions, and as he dismissed him, he re- 
 marked with the same quiet smile : 
 
 ' And don't you think that you had better have 
 your hair cut ?' 
 
 Daudet thought not, and continued to wear it 
 long, as he still wears it to-day, in spite of repeated 
 representations from his chief. ' It was the only 
 point on which we ever disagreed,' he relates. 
 
 ' I passed at once,' he said to the writer, when 
 speaking of this point in his career, ' from the most 
 dingy Bohemianism to a butterfly life, tasting all 
 that there is of pleasure and luxury in existence. 
 From the age of twenty-one I only knew happiness. 
 I may say that I was too happy. I am paying for 
 it now. . . .' Then he added : ' I believe that people 
 always have to pay for what they have done and 
 for what they have enjoyed, and that therein lie 
 justice and compensation for all, even on earth. . . . 
 Everybody's account is settled on earth. Of that I 
 am sure.' 
 
 Having some weeks to spare before entering on 
 his appointment, Daudet hastened South to com-
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 257 
 
 municate to his friends, by word of mouth, the news 
 of his marvellous good fortune. His first visit was 
 to Privas, where he stayed with his brother Ernest, 
 who, when he heard that De Morny had become his 
 brother's protector, ' saw the future in rose-colour.' 
 After spending some weeks with Ernest, Alphonse 
 travelled, to Nimes, to bid his mother share their 
 hopes. From Nimes he proceeded to Fontvielle, 
 near Aries, in Provence, to the house of some 
 friends, hard by which was the famous windmill 
 which gave its name to the famous series of ' Lettres 
 de mon Moulin," many of which were, indeed, 
 written there. 
 
 It was whilst staying at this house at Fontvielle, 
 so admirably described in ' Trente Ans de Paris,' 
 that Daudet made the acquaintance of Frederic 
 Mistral, the Provencal poet, for whom his affection 
 and admiration have never since wavered. Mistral 
 was living then, as now, in a small cottage in the 
 village of Maillane, between Aries and Avignon, 
 and Daudet has often told the writer of the ruses 
 by which he used to induce Mistral to leave his 
 bed for he retires early and come to Avignon for 
 a revel. ' I used to talk and talk until his imagina- 
 tion was so worked upon that he would sit up in his 
 bed and say, " Let's go to Avignon." Then with 
 infinite precaution he would dress, lest he should 
 
 17
 
 258 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 wake the good-wife sleeping in the next room, and 
 we would steal out of the house on tiptoe. There 
 was a long walk across the plains to the station, and 
 all the way I had to talk and talk lest his courage 
 should fail him and he should return home. But as 
 soon as we were in the train and on our way to 
 Avignon I said nothing more.' Through Mistral, 
 Daudet came to know the other poets of the Feli- 
 brige Aubanel, Anselme Mathieu, Roumanille, and 
 the rest of the singers of Provence. They were all 
 poets together, and there was no other subject of 
 conversation between them but poetry, in discussions 
 animated by the generous wine of the Chateau des 
 Papes. Aubanel would often burst out into song 
 his favourite composition, ' La Venus d Aries ' and 
 all would join in the chorus. It was in the grave- 
 yard of Aliscamps, near Aries, that one day Aubanel 
 read out to Daudet and Mistral his drama in verse, 
 ' Le Pain du PecheY which was produced in 1888 at 
 the Theatre Libre in Paris. Mistral and Daudet 
 were lying on one old tomb, Aubanel read as he lay 
 on another. What a change from the Brasserie des 
 Martyrs and the stews of the Latin Quarter ! 
 
 ' Daudet,' writes De Goncourt in his diary, 'spoke 
 to me to-day of his youth in this land of the sun 
 in the midst of these beautiful and brilliant girls, 
 and how he consorted with Aubanel, singing " La
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 259 
 
 Venus d' Aries " as he walked ; with the great Mistral, 
 haranguing the peasants when under the influence of 
 wine, drolly eloquent, never hoarse ; with the painter 
 Grivolas. ... A happy youth, entirely given up to 
 the sensual happiness of living, in this land of light, 
 of love, and of the wine of the Chateau des Papes.' 
 
 De Goncourt elsewhere records the opinion which 
 Mistral has formed of Alphonse Daudet's talents, 
 holding him to be a ' man of illusions and disillu- 
 sions, combining the scepticism of an old man with 
 the credulity of a child.' 
 
 After a few weeks spent in a life so entirely con- 
 genial to his nature, Alphonse Daudet, no doubt 
 reluctantly, retraced his steps to Paris, under cir- 
 cumstances very different from those in which he 
 had first journeyed thither. 
 
 Immediately on his return to Paris he entered 
 upon his new functions. ' My friends of that time,,' 
 he says, ' know what a figure I cut as a grave poli- 
 tical person. The Administration also must have 
 preserved a strange souvenir of that fantastic 
 employe with the Merovingian locks, who was 
 always the last to come to his work and the first to 
 leave it ; who never went upstairs to the Duke 
 except to ask for leave of absence.' 
 
 However this may be, it is certain that De Morny 
 had a great liking for his young protege, for very
 
 260 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 shortly after Daudet's entrance into the service he 
 granted his request that one of two places which 
 were vacant in the office should be bestowed on 
 Ernest. The other was already promised to Ludovic 
 Halevy. Ernest has described his first interview 
 with De Morny. Alphonse had summoned him to 
 Paris, and had told him that the President would 
 receive him at seven o'clock on the following morn- 
 ing. Ernest went in dress clothes and white gloves, 
 and had to wait several hours in a wonderful 
 Chinese drawing-room. He was at last discovered 
 famishing, by Madame de Morny, who appeared to 
 him at the time as ' a blonde profile in the smoke of 
 a cigarette.' She appears to have informed her 
 husband of his presence, for ' he entered suddenly, 
 in a tight-fitting blue velvet jacket, with a black cap 
 on his bald head. 
 
 ' " Who are you ? What are you doing there ?" 
 
 ' I gave my name. 
 
 ' "Oh, my poor fellow! I had forgotten all about 
 you. Well, your brother has spoken to me about 
 you. You want a post as secretary. It appears 
 that you are familiar with political questions. You 
 are appointed. Go and see M. Valette, the Secre- 
 tary-General. He will introduce you to M. Denis 
 de Lagarde, your future chief." 
 
 ' The audience had not lasted three minutes.'
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 261 
 
 The post of secrdtaire-redacteur, to which Ernest 
 had thus been appointed, had attached to it a salary 
 of five thousand five hundred francs, rising to seven 
 thousand francs a year. Till then Ernest had been 
 earning, by most laborious industry, a maximum of 
 two hundred francs a month. He might well be 
 delighted. Did ever a single poem bring such 
 fortune with it as did ' Les Prunes ' ? 
 
 Alphonse Daudet was at this time relieving the 
 tedium of his short office hours by literary composi- 
 tion. Whilst continuing to contribute occasional 
 tales and sketches to the Figaro, he had now turned 
 his attention to the stage. It happened that the 
 head of his department, M. Ernest 1'Epine, had also 
 a taste for play-writing, and what was more natural 
 than that the two should collaborate ? The first 
 result of this collaboration was a play in one act, 
 entitled ' La Derniere I dole.' It was continued as 
 long as the two remained in De Morny's Cabinet 
 that is to say, until the Duke's death in 1865 and 
 not without success. With the exception of M. 
 1'Epine, who afterwards distinguished himself in 
 journalism under the pseudonym of ' Quatrelles,' 
 Daudet has collaborated with nobody, unless the 
 labours of the professional playwrights, who drama- 
 tized certain of his novels ' Fromont Jeune et 
 Rtsler Aine,' the ' Nabab,' and ' Sapho ' may be
 
 262 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 styled collaboration. ' Whatever fruits this colla- 
 boration with M. 1'Epine may have yielded,' writes 
 Ernest Daudet, ' it did not convince Alphonse 
 Daudet of the efficacy of working in literary pro- 
 duction with a partner. He is persuaded that of 
 two writers engaged on the same book or drama, 
 however honourable they may be, one is always 
 defrauded in the allotment of the moral reward of 
 their joint labours, and since that time he has 
 abandoned all experiments of this kind.' 
 
 Though now wholly rescued from the slough, the 
 evil effects of the privations which he had endured 
 during his first years in Paris continued to make 
 themselves felt. Towards the end of 1861 he fell 
 ill of an affection of the chest, and began to spit 
 blood. De Morny heard of this, and sent for his 
 protege. ' I must appoint you sub-prefect some- 
 where down in the South,' he said to Daudet. ' You 
 are very young, and you will not cut your hair, but 
 that won't matter.' Then, seeing that it was no 
 laughing matter, he granted the young secretary a 
 leave of absence. ' You had better go to Algeria,* 
 he said, 'since the doctor recommends it.' This 
 advice was accompanied by a handsome gift of 
 money to pay the expenses of the tour. ' Write to 
 me once a month, to tell me how you are progress- 
 ing,' added the Duke, as he dismissed him.
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 263 
 
 ' He had had the fortune,' writes Emile Zola, 
 speaking of Daudet, ' to win a protector and a friend 
 in M. de Morny, who had attached him to his 
 Cabinet. His seduction was already making itself 
 felt. And this word " seduction " is the right word to 
 use ; later on he seduced his friends, he seduced the 
 public, he seduced all who approached him.' One 
 who was the intimate friend of De Morny has told 
 the writer that the statesman's affection and esteem 
 for Alphonse Daudet surprised all who knew him, 
 cold, cynical, and sceptical as he was. 
 
 'One day,' continues Emile Zola, ' Daudet fell ill ; 
 the doctors said that it was an affection of the chest, 
 and he was forced to start for Algeria. This was 
 again fortunate for him ; out of evil came good in 
 his favoured hands. His stay in Algeria completed 
 his childhood in Provence ; horizons of sunlight 
 opened out before him, and he retained a remem- 
 brance of them ; the songs of the Arabs lulled him, 
 blending in him a touch of roughness with the 
 sweetness of Provencal poetry. There may be 
 found even to this day in his works the great im- 
 pressions of this period in his life ; the long voyages, 
 the ports where ships lie sleeping, the perfumes of 
 exotic countries, bright colours and life in the open 
 air in sun-bathed lands.' 
 
 Daudet himself has often related what a great
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 influence this journey exercised not only on himself, 
 but on his work. Doubtless it gave him, at least in 
 some degree, the sense of colour, in which, till then, he 
 had been deficient. This deficiency may be noticed 
 to a certain extent in all his works. His descrip- 
 tions appeal to the ear rather than to the eye. 
 4 Daudet tells me,' relates De Goncourt, ' that he is 
 much more affected by the noise, by the sound of 
 beings and things, than by their appearance. . . . 
 And, as a matter of fact, his shortsightedness is 
 almost of the nature of an infirmity.' 
 
 He was accompanied on this voyage by one of 
 his Provencal friends, who afterwards served him as 
 the oriorinal of the illustrious Tartarin of Tarascon. 
 
 O 
 
 Like Tartarin, the two young men sailed for Algeria 
 with a perfect arsenal of weapons, as though bent 
 on the destruction of all the lions of Atlas. They 
 made their headquarters at Algiers. ' In the mere 
 act of speaking of it,' he says, ' I see it all again. I 
 am once more there ; I wander amongst the bazaars 
 of Algiers in a chiaro-oscuro which smells of musk, 
 of amber, of suffocated roses, and of warm wool ; 
 the guzlas drone with their three strings in front 
 of the small Tunisian glass-cupboards, with their 
 arabesques of mother-o'-pearl, whilst the waters of 
 the fountain falling on the tiles of the patio tinkle 
 with a fresh note. . . . And again I wander through
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 265 
 
 Le Sahel, the orange-groves of Blidah, La Chiffa, 
 the brook of the monkeys, Milianah and its green 
 slopes, its gardens all entangled with sunflowers, 
 with fig-trees, and with bottle-gourd plants like our 
 Prove^al farmhouses.' 
 
 At other times, riding on muleback with a flask 
 of cod-liver-oil, prescribed by the Paris doctors, 
 slung over his shoulders, he used to explore the 
 surrounding country, crossing the mountains, visiting 
 the Arab chiefs, and taking long excursions into the 
 interior. His doctor had ordered him a complete 
 rest, but perhaps never at any time was his activity 
 more prodigious. Each fresh impression, each new 
 idea that came to him, was carefully noted down in 
 those little note-books which have all his life formed 
 the foundation of his books, so that when he returned 
 to Paris he brought back with him a large amount 
 of material. To what good use this was put may 
 be estimated by those who have read his Tartarin 
 series, the Arab stories and sketches in ' Contes de 
 Lundi,' and the descriptions of Algerian scenes in 
 1 Lettres de mon Moulin ' and ' Trente Ans de 
 Paris.' 
 
 It was down in the valley of Chelif, in the 
 extreme south of Algeria, that, on February 5, 
 1862, Daudet, whilst resting from the fatigues of 
 a hunting expedition in an Arab's tent, received the
 
 266 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 news that his first play, written in collaboration with 
 M. 1'Epine, had been produced the night before 
 with great success at the Odeon Theatre. This 
 news came in a telegram from his brother Ernest, 
 couched in the following words : ' Play produced 
 yesterday ; great success. Rousseil and Tisserant 
 magnificent.' He has described how, wishing to 
 make others share his triumph and his joy, he 
 endeavoured to explain the purport of this telegram 
 to the Arabs around him a difficult task, seeing 
 that he barely knew twenty words of Arabic, and 
 his hearers not a score of French words. It was 
 this telegram that decided him to bring his holiday 
 to a close, and he at once set out for Paris, which 
 he had regretted even in the midst of his wonderful 
 life in Africa, anxious to satisfy himself with his 
 own eyes of the success of this first effort, and to 
 enjoy his triumph in the city where it had been 
 won. 
 
 ' La Derniere Idole,' a drama in one act, was 
 produced for the first time at the Odeon Theatre on 
 February 4, 1862. It represents how an old man 
 married to a young wife discovers, by reading a 
 letter delivered by the postman during his wife's 
 absence at church, that some years previously, and 
 for a considerable length of time, she had been 
 unfaithful to him with a young man, his intimate
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 267 
 
 friend, who had lived in their house for several 
 years. In a long, an over-long soliloquy the un- 
 happy old man expresses his grief, his indignation ; 
 but, ' poor Othello of seventy,' it is borne in upon 
 him that his tears and his anger are ridiculous, and 
 that if he needs must tell his sorrow to anyone, 
 4 death is there, the only confidant worthy of his 
 grief.' Madame Ambroix returns, and her husband 
 at once taxes her with her crime. She confesses it, 
 and after alternating between violent anger and 
 intense sorrow, Ambroix rushes out, determined to 
 leave the scene of his wife's infamy. He presently 
 returns. He has been to the church, and a voice 
 has told him that God has pardoned his wife, and 
 he also is ready to pardon her. But as the curtain 
 falls he cries bitterly, ' My poor idol my poor and 
 last idol !' The part of Ambroix was played by 
 M. Tisserant, that of Madame Ambroix by Madame 
 Rousseil, and the third part, that of a postman, 
 by M. Etienne. The theatre was crowded with a 
 brilliant audience, as it was known in Paris that 
 the two authors of the piece were the friends and 
 proteges of De Morny. The President of the 
 Legislative Body was there in person, and with him 
 was Madame de Morny, who applauded so violently 
 that she broke her fan. Indeed, everybody was 
 most enthusiastic about the piece, so simple, so
 
 268 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 new, and yet so profound, and the applause was 
 general. Even the old playwrights, who might be 
 heard to say that this was no playwriting, were 
 carried away by the pathos of an irremediable mis- 
 fortune, and could be seen applauding as violently as 
 the rest. Paul de Saint- Victor, afterwards Inspector- 
 General of Fine Arts, and at that time one of the 
 most influential dramatic critics in Paris, made his 
 hands sore in leading the applause. 
 
 On alighting from the train in Paris on his return 
 from Algeria, in spite of the fatigue of his long 
 journey, Daudet immediately drove off to the Odeon, 
 reaching it just in time to be present at the per- 
 formance. ' Certainly, the telegram had only told the 
 truth in saying that my little play was meeting with 
 enormous success. In the meantime I, the author, 
 wished myself a hundred fathoms beneath the earth. 
 I found my play, which the good people around 
 me were applauding, infamous and odious. Oh 
 misery ! was this what I had dreamed of this 
 fat man, who, to appear paternal and virtuous, had 
 made his head up to look like Beranger? ... I was 
 unjust, of course. Tisserant and Rousseil, both 
 artists of great merit, were acting as well as the 
 play could be acted, and their performance con- 
 tributed in no small degree to my success. But 
 the disillusion was too great, and the difference
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 269 
 
 between what I had seemed to write and what was 
 now being exhibited was too wide. . . . What a 
 relief it was when the curtain fell ; and how quickly 
 I hurried away, skirting the walls, with my collar 
 turned up, ashamed and furtive like a thief!' 
 
 In ' Un Soir de Premiere' in his ' Contes du 
 Lundi,' Alphonse Daudet has described his sen- 
 sations on the nights of the first production of his 
 pieces. Speaking to the writer on this characteristic 
 nervousness of his, he said : ' I am so nervous that 
 I can never be present at any of the first pro- 
 ductions of my plays. I always go as far away 
 from the theatre as possible. It is only on the 
 following morning that I learn whether the play 
 has been successful or not, and this generally from 
 the manner of my concierge. If it has been a 
 success she is most respectful ; if the papers have 
 informed her that her lodger has scored a failure, 
 there is pity blended with contempt in the way in 
 which she hands me my letters. It is an amusing 
 glimpse into human character that is afforded to a 
 dramatic writer by the conduct of his friends and 
 acquaintances on the morrow of a failure. Some 
 pretend not to see him when they meet him in the 
 street, not knowing what to say to him. Others 
 come and try to console him, literally try to rub 
 lotion on the wounded heart. The servants grow
 
 270 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 familiar ; and it is when the porter asks you for a 
 box, or a couple of seats in the dress circle, that you 
 know that your work is definitely condemned.' 
 
 The success of 'La Derniere I dole' increased 
 De Morny's esteem for the young attache. He paid 
 him the compliment of inviting him to collaborate 
 with him. De Morny had no small appreciation of 
 his own talents, both in versification and in musical 
 composition, and lightened the strain of his duties 
 to the State by writing now the words, now the 
 music, of various operettas, cantatas, and saynJtts, 
 which have not survived to this day. ' I have the 
 greatest poetical faculty,' he used to say to Daudet. 
 ' At school, when a difficult task was set, I used to 
 write it in verse.' Daudet no doubt remarked that 
 this, too, had been his habit, and the statement was 
 true in Daudet's case. ' As for music,' the Duke 
 would continue, ' I think I was a born musical 
 composer. It is extraordinary how spontaneously 
 tunes come to me. Listen to this, for instance.' 
 And so saying, he would begin to hum some tune, 
 which was never anything but a reminiscence, and 
 a bad one at that, of some popular tune. 
 
 In spite, however, of his estimate of his own 
 capacities, he would often ask Daudet to write him 
 the words of a song or operetta, and on one or two 
 occasions Daudet did so. He relates how one day
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 271 
 
 he brought De Morny a negro song, the music of 
 which had been written by L'Epine, and how De 
 Morny, L'Epine, and himself rehearsed it in the 
 President's cabinet, whilst Persigny, the Minister of 
 the Interior, and Boitelle, the Prefect of Police, were 
 impatiently waiting in the antechamber for an inter- 
 view with the Duke on business of the highest 
 importance. 
 
 Though tasting the sweets of a butterfly life, as 
 he himself has called it, Daudet did not neglect his 
 work during this period of his career. He continued 
 to collaborate with M. 1'Epine, and he continued to 
 contribute to the Figaro. Emile Zola has given a 
 portrait of him at this time. ' I remember my first 
 meeting with Alphonse Daudet. It was long ago 
 something like ten years.' In Daudet's own copy 
 of the book in which this article is reprinted the 
 word * ten ' is scratched out and the word ' twenty ' 
 written in in pen and ink. ' He was at that time 
 contributing to a widely read journal. He used to 
 bring an article, receive payment for it, and dis- 
 appear with the light-heartedness of a young demi- 
 god, having taken refuge in poetry, far from the 
 petty cares of this world. I believe that at that 
 time he was living in the suburbs, in some out-of-the- 
 way corner of the faubourg, in the company of other 
 poets, a whole band of joyous Bohemians. He was
 
 272 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 beautiful, with the delicate and nervous beauty of 
 an Arab horse, with abundant hair, a silky beard 
 divided at its point, large eyes, thin nose, and an 
 amorous mouth ; and over all an indescribable flood 
 of light, a breath of tender voluptuousness, which 
 bathed the whole face in a smile both sensuous 
 and spiritual. ... It must not be thought, however, 
 that his position with M. de Morny had given him 
 a stiff and pretentious bearing. He maintained his 
 free-and-easy manners, running about Paris with 
 the ardour of a boy let loose from school, scattering 
 verses and kisses over the four corners of the 
 town.' 
 
 At the end of 1862 Daudet's health failed again, 
 and once more the Duke granted him unlimited 
 leave of absence. His doctor, Marchal de Calvi, 
 ordered him to go to Corsica, and here, as in 
 Algeria, he spent his time in taking notes of what 
 he saw. Upon the material thus collected he drew 
 for several of his short stories, as, for instance, 
 ' L'Agonie de la Semillante,' ' Le Phare des San- 
 guinaires,' and ' Marie Anto,' as well as for the 
 descriptions of Corsica and Corsican political in- 
 trigues which are to be found in ' Le Nabab.' 
 Although Daudet wrote no more verse, he nursed 
 the poetry within him. Thanks to this precaution, 
 he was in later life able to steer clear of the
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 273 
 
 excessive brutality which characterizes the works of 
 some of his contemporaries, to keep alive his love 
 for the beautiful, and always to avoid any coarseness 
 of language or of imagery. If, on the other hand, 
 it occasionally prompted him to rhapsody, which to 
 some of the readers of his novels may be distasteful, 
 this is but a little evil in the midst of much good. 
 
 From Corsica he went to Sardinia, but seems to 
 have brought no notes back except what sufficed 
 him afterwards to write two exquisite pages on 
 ' Bouillabaisse.' The reason of this was no doubt 
 that he had no knowledge of Italian. Daudet is no 
 linguist, although he can read English and Italian 
 with no very great difficulty. De Goncourt will 
 have it, by the way, that it is very difficult for a man 
 who speaks several languages to write his own 
 language well that he loses the sense of the value 
 of words. This is certainly true ; and may not the 
 treachery of translators be but the result of this 
 deterioration of their knowledge of their own 
 language ? 
 
 Both on the way to Corsica and on the return 
 journey Alphonse Daudet spent several days at 
 Fontvielle, renewing acquaintance with Mistral, 
 Aubanel, and the rest of the filibrcs, drinking 
 Chateau des Papes, singing songs, or dancing the 
 farandole with the village lads and lasses. And 
 
 18
 
 274 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 when ' some old woman seemed to criticise the 
 freedom of our manners, the handsome Mistral, 
 proud as King David, would say from the height of 
 his grandeur : ' Let them be, good woman ; let 
 them be ; everything is allowed to poets.' And 
 then, confidentially winking at the old woman as, 
 dazzled and respectful, she bowed, he would add : 
 ' Es nautre que fasen li saume ('Tis we who write 
 the Psalms).' 
 
 Daudet's admiration for Mistral is unbounded. 
 In his ' Lettres de mon Moulin ' may be found an 
 exquisite sketch of this great poet of the Provencal 
 tongue. 'Oh, the good poet!' cries Daudet, 'and 
 with what perfect truth might Montaigne have 
 written of Mistral : " Souvienne-vous de celuy a 
 qui comme on demandoit a quoy faire il se peinoit 
 si fort, en un art qui ne pouvoit venir a la cognois- 
 sance de guere des gens. J'en ay assez de peu, 
 repondict-il. J'en ay assez d'un. J'en ay assez de 
 pas un." There is no one, indeed, to whom these 
 words could be more fittingly applied than to Daudet 
 himself, for he has always toiled hard at his art, and 
 that without thought of the public. Well might he 
 also say with regard to admirers, ' I have enough 
 with very few. I have enough with one. I have 
 enough with none.' The admirers have come in 
 their thousands, all the same.
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 275 
 
 The winter of 1863 was again spent away from 
 Paris, though this time Daudet only yielded to an 
 irresistible longing to visit the South once more. 
 His health had apparently been altogether re-estab- 
 lished, and it was not until several years later that 
 he was to reap the harvest sown in privations of 
 every kind. It was during this winter of 1863 that 
 he more particularly filled his note-books with 
 material which was afterwards used in his pictures 
 of the South and his descriptions of the Southern 
 Frenchmen. It was during this period that he 
 frequented his old windmill, which never, as 
 suggested by the purchase-deed which serves as 
 preface to the ' Lettres de mon Moulin,' ever really 
 belonged to him, though he often thought of pur- 
 chasing it. ' My windmill never belonged to me,' 
 he writes. ' But that did not prevent me from 
 spending long days of reverie and remembrance 
 there.' Elsewhere, speaking of his life at this 
 time, he says : ' I do not know where this taste for 
 deserted places, for a wild man's life, which has 
 been in me since I was a child, came from, so dis- 
 similar is it to the exuberance of my nature, unless, 
 indeed, it be at the same time the physical need to 
 repair, by a fast of words, by an abstinence from 
 cries and gestures, that terrible waste of all his being 
 which the Meridional practises. In any case, I owe
 
 276 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 a great deal to these mental retreats, and none was 
 more salutary to me than my old windmill in 
 Provence.' 
 
 It was, however, not until three years later that is 
 to say, in 1866 that Alphonse Daudet began to 
 write from the impressions gathered here. The 
 ' Lettres de mon Moulin ' first appeared over the 
 signature ' Marie-Gaston ' in a Parisian journal. 
 In the following year he revisited Provence with 
 his bride, and on his return to Paris resumed the 
 series in the Figaro, to which, amongst other stories, 
 he contributed ' Le Vieux ' and the humorous 
 ' L'Elixir du Pere Gaucher,' which is one of the 
 best specimens of Daudet's tender irony. It tells 
 how a loutish monk brought fortune to the monas- 
 tery in which he lived by the manufacture of an 
 elixir, after the fashion of the liqueur de la Grande 
 Chartreuse, for which he had the recipe of an old 
 aunt. But in tasting the liqueur to gauge its quality 
 Le Pere Gaucher gradually becomes a drunkard, 
 and shocks the monastery with his ribald and festive 
 songs. The holy brothers, however, compound 
 matters with Heaven, and offer up the Oremus, 
 whilst Father Gaucher is polluting his soul in the 
 interests of the community, so that he may be saved 
 without ceasing to enrich the monastery. These 
 stories and sketches were collected into one volume.
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 277 
 
 which was published by Hetzel, Jules Verne's pub- 
 lisher, in 1869. It had a small sale at that time 
 about two thousand copies but since Daudet's 
 reputation has become universal, few of his books 
 are more asked for. It certainly contains some of 
 his best, because his most characteristic, work. 
 
 On his return to Paris in the beginning of 1864, 
 Daudet wrote a comedy in one act entitled ' Les 
 Absents,' which was performed for the first time on 
 October 26, at the Opera Comique, with music by 
 Ferdinand Poise. It did not meet with any great 
 success. 
 
 Not much more successful was his comedy in 
 one act, written in collaboration with M. 1'Epine, 
 which was performed for the first time on April 8, 
 1865, at the Theatre Francais. This play had 
 originally been called ' Le Lys,' but on the repre- 
 sentations of the ' Censure ' the authors changed this 
 title to that of ' L'CEillet Blanc.' It is a story of 
 a young Marquis who ventures into France in spite 
 of the law against the dtnigrds, risking his life thus 
 in order to pick a flower for his lady-love, who is 
 also in exile in England, and has bidden him 
 gratify her whim to have a flower from her former 
 home. The young Marquis is detected by the 
 daughter of the conventionnel in charge of the 
 chateau, but charms her into silence. He makes
 
 278 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 good his escape with the coveted flower in spite of 
 the Republican zeal of an officious varlet, whose part, 
 it may'be mentioned, was taken by Coquelin aine. 
 With the exception of 'La Derniere I dole' and 
 ' L'Arlesienne,' produced for the first time at the 
 Vaudeville in 1872, on the same stage where five 
 years previously his ' Le Frere AineY written in 
 collaboration with M. 1'Epine, had been performed, 
 Alphonse Daudet cannot be said to have obtained 
 any very great success with his dramatic writings. 
 'Apropos of this part of his work,' writes Ernest 
 Daudet, ' I have often heard people expressing 
 surprise that his pieces did not meet with the same 
 success with the public as his books. It is certain 
 that he never scored one of those scenic victories 
 which make the fortune of an author or of a theatre. 
 I am not speaking of the plays taken from his 
 novels. Those only came upon the stage protected 
 by the recollection of the fame they had enjoyed in 
 their first form. As to the other plays which he 
 wrote, with the exception of " La Derniere Idole," 
 they brought their author more trouble than satis- 
 faction.' This was written after the production of 
 ' L'Arlesienne/ which at first did not meet with that 
 reception which was accorded to it at various 
 revivals which have since been given first at the 
 Gymnase Theatre, under the direction of Koning,
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 279 
 
 with Madame Hading in the principal part, and 
 quite recently at Porel's ill-fated theatre in the Rue 
 Auber. Daudet's enemies are accustomed to say 
 that it is Bizet's music, and not Daudet's prose, that 
 people go to hear ; but this is mere malice. Cer- 
 tainly Bizet's score is admirable, and, indeed, 
 first attracted attention to this great and ill-fated 
 musician ; but the qualities of ' L'Arlesienne ' in 
 point of feeling, language, colour, and development, 
 if not of intense dramatic action, cannot be denied. 
 From the point of view of the theatrical manager, 
 at least, this play has been a great success. 
 It was Porel who not long ago told the writer 
 that ' L'Arlesienne ' had drawn considerably over a 
 million francs from the purses of the theatre-going 
 public. 
 
 It is unnecessary to consider what may be the 
 reasons why, with these two notable exceptions, 
 the dramatic work of Alphonse Daudet has not met 
 with the success accorded to his novels. Such an 
 analysis could only be the repetition of all that has 
 been written and said as to the difficulties which 
 novelists, as such, seem to experience in writing 
 for the stage. It may, however, be pointed out 
 that amongst novelists Daudet, ' more affected by 
 the noise, the sound of beings and things, than by 
 their appearance,' has peculiar and characteristic
 
 280 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 difficulties to contend with. It was in this year, 
 1865, that Daudet lost his friend and protector, 
 M. de Morny. He was present during the last 
 moments of the Richelieu - Brummel, as he has 
 called him, and the description of the death of 
 Mora in ' Le Nabab ' is a very faithful account 
 of an event which no doubt contributed in a large 
 measure to the downfall of the Empire. 
 
 ' My brother was present at the death of the 
 Due de Morny,' writes Ernest, 'and followed hour 
 by hour this intimate drama which, by reason of 
 the great place held by the dying man, was soon 
 to be transformed into a historical tragedy. He 
 saw sickness enter the palace ; he saw death hang 
 the walls with black draperies. He noted down 
 from life the bewilderment of the politicians and 
 the jobbers, in whose eyes this event took the 
 proportions of a catastrophe. He heard the com- 
 ments of the servants, wavering between their pride 
 at having had so powerful a master, the regret at 
 losing him, and the hurry to secure new places. 
 He helped to destroy the private papers, the 
 voluminous correspondence, documentary evidence 
 of human baseness, which the dead man did not 
 wish to leave behind him. He entered the death- 
 chamber just as the embalmer was leaving it.' 
 
 After the death of the Due de Morny, unwilling-
 
 BY COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS 281 
 
 to serve a new master who very probably would 
 not have understood his nature, and for every 
 reason anxious to regain entire independence, now 
 that the first difficulties of a literary career had 
 been successfully overcome, Daudet resigned his 
 position in the Presidency of the Legislature, and 
 once more, with his pen as his only weapon, threw 
 himself into the struggle for life and fame. There 
 was certainly every encouragement for him to take 
 a step which in other men might have been con- 
 sidered foolhardy. Apart from the fact that his 
 talents were now recognised, and that his name 
 commanded respect in the literary mart, Daudet 
 could find in his astonishing good fortune the 
 security and confidence needed for this blow for 
 liberty. Indeed, no other career has been marked 
 by fortune so persistent. Within a few months of 
 his arrival, penniless and unknown, in Paris, he 
 finds a publisher who a thing unheard of in the 
 annals of publishing produces his first volume at 
 his own charges. One of the poems in this volume 
 attracts the attention of the Empress, and secures 
 him the friendship and patronage of the most 
 influential politician in France. He is at once, 
 and at a most critical moment in his career, 
 appointed to a highly remunerated sinecure, where 
 he has all leisure to continue his literary work free
 
 282 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 from all embarrassment. Thanks to this circum- 
 stance, as well as to the protection which he enjoys, 
 he has at the age of twenty-two the satisfaction of 
 seeing a play of his produced on the stage of the 
 second theatre in France a play which meets with 
 wonderful though well-deserved success. He is able 
 to assist his brother by securing for him an excel- 
 lent position, and leads a butterfly life, with absolute 
 freedom, and the privilege of indulging his inherent 
 taste for long journeys to the lands of the sun. At 
 the age of twenty-five a play of his is performed on 
 the stage of the first theatre in Europe, a success 
 for which most men have to wait until their hair 
 has grown gray ; and at this age, thanks to the 
 appreciation of the most influential middleman in 
 Paris, his literary wares are assured of a certain and 
 advantageous market. 
 
 Need it be added that, in the midst of their good 
 fortune, Alphonse and Ernest did not forget their 
 parents ? No sooner was their position assured 
 than ' the hearth was re-established.'
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ' LE PETIT CHOSE.' 
 
 IT may once more be said that it was characteristic 
 of Alphonse Daudet that, having turned his back 
 for good on the restraints of a life where there 
 were duties, however slight, and obligations, how- 
 ever small, he should gallop off in a wild fever of 
 delight at his liberty regained, like any boy let 
 loose from school. 
 
 It was characteristic of him that on the day when 
 it no longer behoved him to turn his steps towards 
 the office in which for some years his activity had 
 been limited, and the wide world lay open before 
 his feet, he should be seized with an immense desire 
 of slaking his thirst for liberty, of exercising this 
 activity to his heart's content. 
 
 It so happened that just at this time there was 
 amongst the friends whose acquaintance he had 
 made at that home of incapacity, the Brasserie des 
 Martyrs, in the days when he was wallowing in the
 
 284 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 slough of a futile Bohemianism, a certain Alfred 
 Delvau, who was also hankering after a debauch 
 of fresh air and free motion. This Alfred Delvau, 
 certainly one of the most regrettable of Murger's 
 victims, was a man of letters with a considerable 
 sense of style and a very appreciable quality of 
 imagination. It is true that his horizon, as may 
 be noticed with certain Parisians, was bounded 
 by that of Paris ; but in the matter of chronicling, 
 describing, and recording the life of Paris and of 
 such notable Parisians as came within his ken, this 
 unhappy man had in his life-time, and has had 
 since his death, no rivals worth mention. He had 
 the civicism of Aurelien Scholl, the taste for social 
 profundities of De Goncourt and Zola ; and it may 
 be said of him that none knew better than him- 
 self the life which seethes on the Parisian 
 boulevards. He died a very poor, and even 
 hungry, man ; and those he left behind him, as 
 the writer knows, have no other legacy than hunger ; 
 but many of his little books, for he wrote hurriedly 
 with his eyes fixed on the ' Finis ' and its con- 
 comitant remuneration, are to-day sought after by 
 the collectors of books concerning the history of 
 Paris and of recent Parisians. Thus the writer 
 recently disbursed the sum of one hundred francs 
 for his little life of ' Gerard de Nerval,' with the
 
 ' LE PETIT CHOSE ' 285 
 
 eau forte of G. Staal, originally issued at three 
 francs by the publishing house of Bachelin- 
 Deflorenne. His ' Dictionnaire de la Langue 
 Verte ' is the standard work for those inquisitive 
 in matters of philology ; and his ' Memoires d'une 
 Honnete Fille,' also with an eau forte by G. Staal, 
 reached a seventh edition even in its author's life- 
 time. There may also be mentioned, among the 
 works of this writer, a study of ' Henry Murger et 
 la Boheme,' which no money can to-day procure, 
 ' Les Heures Parisiennes,' with twenty-five eaux- 
 fortcs by Emile Bennasit, and a very pretty study 
 entitled ' Les Sonneurs de Sonnets.' This Alfred 
 Delvau, then, and Alphonse Daudet, both having 
 money in their purses and a desire for fatigue in 
 their legs, met at the Brasserie des Martyrs, 
 and, over beer and tobacco, planned out an ex- 
 cursion on foot which should be wonderful in point 
 of things seen and countries explored. 
 
 Alfred Delvau has described this journey in a 
 book called ' Du Pont des Arts au Pont de Kehl,' 
 but has spoiled these ' Notes de Voyage ' with 
 absurd flourishes. He speaks of Alphonse Daudet 
 as ' Fortunio,' and there is much nonsense of this 
 kind in the little book, which, in spite of its defects, 
 still comforts its present publishers on stock-taking 
 days.
 
 286 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' Not many years ago,' says Alphonse Daudet, 
 without flourish of any kind, ' I went on a journey 
 through Alsace, which has remained one of my 
 most pleasant recollections. Not an insipid journey 
 in a railway train of which one remembers nothing 
 but glimpses of landscape intersected by rails and 
 telegraph-wires, but a journey on foot, with a knap- 
 sack on my back, a stout stick in my hand, and a com- 
 rade who was not too talkative. . . . What a charm- 
 ing way to travel ! How everything that one sees 
 remains fixed in one's memory.' Thus equipped, 
 Daudet, with the not too talkative Delvau, walked 
 through France and Alsace, which was then France 
 also, into Germany and Switzerland. Of their 
 progress through the Reichsland Daudet writes : 
 ' I remember all my impressions of this country 
 which we have lost, so full of that savour of the un- 
 foreseen which arises from long walks in a beautiful 
 country, where the woods rise like green curtains 
 behind peaceful villages, swathed in sunlight ; 
 where in the turn of a mountain one sees church- 
 steeples, factories traversed by brooks, saw-mills, 
 wind-mills, and the startling and piercing note of 
 an unfamiliar costume suddenly rising from the 
 fresh greenery of the plains.' 
 
 And in connection with this quotation let it be 
 observed that, let an author polish never so carefully,

 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 287 
 
 a too great familiarity with language will always 
 place stumbling-blocks in his way. How can the 
 sight of an ' unfamiliar costume ' be described as 
 une note Jclatante ? one asks, just as one wonders 
 at the tautology of the ' furtive, like a thief ' of a 
 previous quotation from another careful stylist. 
 
 'Every morning,' continues Daudet, 'we were 
 afoot at daybreak.' They sought untrodden ways, 
 following no Baedeker itinerary. 
 
 ' With a companion almost as mad as myself,' 
 he writes elsewhere, ' I had tramped through 
 Alsace, Switzerland, the Duchy of Baden a real 
 pedlar's journey, with a knapsack on my back, 
 covering leagues by the score, avoiding the cities, 
 of which we only wished to see the gates, and 
 always following little side-roads without knowing 
 whither they might lead us.' 
 
 Neither Delvau nor Daudet could speak German, 
 but with the aid of a small dictionary they had 
 composed certain indispensable phrases for asking 
 for what they needed in the inns. In order not to 
 forget these phrases, they had set them to a kind 
 of tune, and on entering an inn would begin singing 
 a couplet somewhat after this fashion : 
 
 ' Wir wollen trinken Bier, 
 Wir wollen trinken Bier. 
 Wir wollen, Ja, wir wollen, 
 Ja, wir wollen trinken Bier.'
 
 2 88 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Or, again, 'Wir wollen essen Kaes,' and so on. 
 One wonders what the staid and unimaginative 
 German Wirtin must have thought of these two 
 wild-looking Frenchmen as they burst singing into 
 the Gasthauser. ' Was flir verriickte Kerle !' 
 must often have been exclaimed after their de- 
 parture. 
 
 One night in a forest near Bussang, in the Vosges, 
 when, having lost their way, they were preparing to 
 sleep in the open-air, and were discussing the risk 
 they might be running of being attacked for the 
 forest was reputed to be unsafe they were startled 
 by hearing a tune from ' Norma' breaking through 
 the almost sinister silence of the night. It was a 
 man with a barrel - organ, who took them for 
 brigands, a supposition indeed warranted by their 
 appearance, and prepared to defend himself with a 
 knife, when Daudet produced a two-franc piece and 
 calmed his apprehensions. He told them he was 
 going to Bussang to the fete, and then Daudet asked 
 him if he would care to earn the two francs by play- 
 ing them all the tunes in his organ. The man 
 consented, and lying stretched on the grass, smok- 
 ing their pipes, the two mad poets listened to the 
 music in the dark. When he had finished his 
 pieces, Delvau gave him another franc, and bade 
 him play as he continued on his way. The man
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 289 
 
 did so, and Daudet says that he has retained a 
 vivid recollection of the impression produced upon 
 him by the sound of this music gradually dying 
 away in the trees. The incident is trivial, but it 
 illustrates how Daudet has ever run after strange 
 sensations in a life which has been one continued 
 quest after romance. A fondness for music has 
 always characterized him. He is never happier 
 in his leisure-hours than when his wife or a friend 
 will play to him. He himself is a pianist of some 
 merit, though of late his fingers have refused the 
 task of playing. He has always been a singer, and 
 even to-day, when in a merry mood, will burst out 
 into some Provencal or Breton song. On one 
 occasion, at one of Madame Daudet's receptions, 
 there being a good pianist amongst the guests, the 
 whole evening, and most of the night, too, was spent 
 in music and singing. It was interesting to watch 
 the vivifying effect which this diversion produced 
 on Daudet, who usually becomes exhausted after 
 dinner. On this occasion he seemed full of life, 
 and his eyes sparkled as he waved his hands in 
 beating time, or, throwing back his head, sang to 
 his friend's accompaniment. One of the songs, a 
 song about a cemetery, by Gabriel Vicaire, he asked 
 for over and over again, but & farandole tune seemed 
 to give him the greatest pleasure. 
 
 19
 
 2 9 o ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 His preference is for French and Italian music, 
 and he does not, accordingly, share the general 
 enthusiasm which at present exists for Wagner in 
 France in any high degree. Wagner, on the other 
 hand, had a great admiration for Daudet both as a 
 man and as an author, and on one occasion, showing 
 Alphonse Daudet's portrait to Fourcaud, said that 
 there was the Frenchman whom he liked the best. 
 
 Their common fondness for music was one of the 
 principal attractions that Daudet found in Tour- 
 gueneff. ' I was delighted,' he records, ' to hear 
 that Tourgueneff was fond of music. In France 
 men of letters, as a general rule, have a horror for 
 it, painting having enslaved them all. Theophile 
 Gautier, Saint- Victor, Hugo, Banville, Goncourt, 
 Zola, Leconte de Lisle, all hate music. As far as I 
 know, I am the first writer in France who has made 
 a public confession of my ignorance of colours and 
 my passion for notes. This proceeds, no doubt, 
 from my Meridional temperament and my short- 
 sightedness ; one sense has developed at the 
 expense of another. In Tourgueneff the taste for 
 music was the result of his Paris education. He had 
 acquired this taste in the milieu in which he lived.' 
 
 Daudet often speaks of this tour with Delvau as 
 one of the pleasantest recollections of his youth. 
 One drawback to his full enjoyment of it, however,
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 291 
 
 lay in the fact that Delvau always used to go to bed 
 directly after his supper, just when Daudet was most 
 anxious to wander abroad in quest of those nocturnal 
 sensations which he has always pursued. ' It was 
 not amusing/ he says, 'to sit in our bedroom and 
 watch Delvau sleeping.' He used to spend this 
 time, perhaps more profitably than he would have 
 done had he had a companion fond of late walking, 
 in filling the little note-book which was the prin- 
 cipal treasure in his knapsack. One night his wake- 
 fulness stood them in good stead. They were 
 sleeping in an inn by the Rhine, and in paying for 
 their supper Daudet had displayed some gold hun- 
 dred-franc pieces. That night, as he was standing 
 at the window, he overheard two pedlars in the 
 adjoining garret discussing some question in which 
 the words ' Franzosen,' ' schlafen,' and 'Gold' were 
 being repeated. It was evident that a plot was 
 being made to rob them in their sleep. With great 
 difficulty Daudet waked the lethargic Delvau, and 
 with him arranged to give the thieves a strange 
 reception. On stealthily opening the door of the 
 Frenchmen's room the two thieves were startled by 
 a hideous yell, as two wild-looking men came rush- 
 ing at them, one brandishing a gigantic club, the 
 other armed with a formidable knife. The thieves 
 screamed with terror and turned and ran for their
 
 292 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 lives, pursued hotly. It would appear that the inn- 
 keeper was in the plot, for he refused to give any 
 assistance in capturing the thieves, who were able to 
 make good their escape. 
 
 At another inn in France this time the two 
 young men were taking their humble meal of bread 
 and cheese and beer in the kitchen, when the land- 
 lord came up to them and said that some of the 
 finest gentlemen in the district were dining in the 
 parlour, after a day's shooting ; that they had seen 
 them come in, and would be pleased with their 
 company, if in return they would undertake to 
 amuse them with their tricks for, of course, they 
 were two mountebanks after the dinner was over. 
 Delvau was rather indignant, but Daudet urged 
 him to accept. They were not, however, able to 
 keep up the illusion. 'You are no mountebanks,' 
 said Monsieur 1'Inspecteur, as soon as he had heard 
 them talk. Everybody wanted to know who and 
 what they might be, but neither Daudet nor Delvau 
 would satisfy them on this point. Daudet amazed 
 the company with his knowledge of Parisian life, 
 and described the recent death of the Due de 
 Morny, at which, it will be remembered, he was 
 present. The fine gentlemen opened their eyes as 
 they listened whilst this ill-clad, travel-stained youth 
 related what the Empress had said on this or that
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 293 
 
 occasion, and whilst his equally strange-looking 
 companion talked of the great Ledru-Rollin as 
 though he were on the most familiar terms with 
 him. They pressed them hard to give their names 
 and tell their business, but both refused to gratify 
 
 them, and, as Daudet says, ' the Marquis de M , 
 
 who presided at that dinner, and who pressed his 
 card upon me as we departed, must often have 
 wondered who his mysterious guests of that evening 
 might be.' 
 
 It was during this tour that Daudet first felt the 
 sensation of fear, which he often speaks of as the 
 sensation which produces the greatest impression 
 upon him. ' All things around me,' he says, 
 ' become blurred as though enveloped in mist. My 
 body grows cold, whilst, on the other hand, every 
 mental faculty suddenly acquires intense and unusual 
 force.' He adds that he has been very subject to 
 the influence of fear, and that so potent are the 
 effects which it produces in him that he welcomes 
 rather than dreads it. The feeling of fear often 
 comes upon him where no cause is apparent, and 
 he will nurse it rather than shake it off. The sub- 
 ject is one which he is fond of discussing ; he is 
 glad to hear from others whether they are subject 
 to this feeling, and under what circumstances it 
 usually comes upon them. The writer remembers
 
 294 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 a long summer afternoon at Champrosay which was 
 spent in continued discussion of this subject, when 
 Daudet related the more striking occasions on which 
 he had so been influenced. From what he said it 
 appeared that his periodical fits of fear are the out- 
 come rather of a peculiar nervous organism than 
 the result of terror at actual danger. His conduct 
 
 o 
 
 during the siege of Paris certainly did not betray 
 timidity. 
 
 His experience in this respect an experience 
 which he qualifies as an invaluable one was, as 
 stated, acquired during his tour with Delvau, the 
 occasion being whilst mountaineering in Switzer- 
 land. ' It was the most precious thing that I 
 brought back from that journey,' he says. 
 
 Having in this wise slaked to the full his thirst for 
 liberty and adventure, Alphonse Daudet returned to 
 Paris with the same eagerness with which he had 
 left it. He was delighted with the prospect of entire 
 independence which awaited him there, for he was 
 determined that in the future nothing should stand 
 between him and a life entirely devoted to literature. 
 Immediately on his return to Paris he set to work 
 in writing out from his notes the stories and 
 sketches published and republished under the title 
 1 Lettres de mon Moulin.' At the same time he 
 was working at two dramatic pieces the ' Frere
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE 295 
 
 Aine",' alluded to above, in collaboration with 
 L'Epine, and later on in the year at a three-act 
 comedy entitled ' Le Sacrifice,' which was even- 
 tually produced at the Vaudeville for the first time 
 on February n, 1869. It was to finish this comedy 
 in quiet and seclusion that towards the end of 1865 
 he returned to Provence, taking up his abode on 
 this occasion in a lonely country house on the road 
 between Beaucaire and Nimes. 
 
 'Never,' he says, 'and at no time in my life 
 not even when, yielding to a caprice for silence and 
 isolation, I have closeted myself in a room in some 
 lighthouse have I lived so completely alone as I 
 lived there. The house was far away from the 
 highroad, in the fields. Twice a day the farmer's 
 wife there was a farm attached to the house, but at 
 such a distance that it was out of earshot used to 
 serve my meals at the end of an immense dining- 
 room, all the windows of which, except one, were 
 closed with shutters. This Provencale, unable to 
 understand what strange business it might be which 
 had brought me down there in the midst of the 
 winter, did not cease to hold me in suspicion and in 
 fear, and used to set down the dishes in a hurry and 
 rush off without speaking or turning round to look 
 at me. And this was the only face that I saw 
 during this hermit's life.'
 
 296 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 It was here, and under these circumstances, that 
 Daudet wrote his first novel, ' Le Petit Chose.' At 
 least, it was here that he wrote the first copy of it. 
 For of all Daudet's books at least two, and often 
 three copies have been written before they have 
 been given to the public. His conscientiousness in 
 this respect has already been commented upon ; it is 
 unnecessary to enter into further consideration of 
 the subject. Still, what he relates may be quoted : 
 ' No sooner had I finished the draft of my book 
 than I at once began the second copy, the painful 
 part of my task, so contrary to my nature as an 
 improvisatore, as a troubadour.' And be it noted 
 that at this time, as before he was taken under 
 De Morny's protection, Daudet was absolutely 
 dependent on his pen for his livelihood, so that once 
 more there was inducement for him, especially now 
 that his name commanded attention, to spend less 
 time over his work and to devote to it less care. 
 
 However, just as he was commencing to re-write 
 the story, with a view to style and correction, a 
 friend broke in upon his silence, and, with his talk 
 about Paris, aroused in Daudet, the most loyal of 
 the foster-children of Paris, an intense desire to 
 return to the metropolis. This desire, as he has 
 told the writer, has always haunted him during his 
 ' mental retreats,' and on this occasion it broke out
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 297 
 
 with such violence that the same evening he packed 
 his manuscript in his trunk, and took train back to 
 town. It was not until the following winter that 
 the labour thus interrupted was resumed, this time 
 in a hotel-room on the Place de 1'Odeon. This 
 room was the abode of Jean du Boys, already 
 mentioned, where Daudet had taken refuge from 
 the disturbances of his own suburban abode. His 
 primary motive in going to live with Du Boys was 
 that the latter was a writer of the most methodical 
 habits, who allowed nothing to interfere with the 
 production of an allotted daily task. He used to 
 write with his eyes on the clock, which he set up as 
 his taskmaster. Du Boys was a writer of feuille- 
 tons that is to say, of serial stories of the kind 
 appreciated by the readers of the small daily papers 
 in Paris but a man of ambition withal, with a vast 
 conception of ' the cylindrical development of 
 humanity,' which he essayed to set forth in a great 
 philosophical poem, entitled ' Enceldonne.' He 
 was one of the wearers of the three o-reen hats, 
 
 o 
 
 and went mad and died before the poem was 
 finished. In this room and in this companionship 
 Daudet worked for three months at the second 
 copy of ' Le Petit Chose,' interrupted now and again 
 by poor Du Boys, who would insist on informing 
 him of the weird adventures through which the
 
 298 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 heroes of his feuilleton were passing, interspersed 
 with disquisitions on the cylindrical movement. 
 Outside, the Latin Quarter raised its foolish voices, 
 but these were never siren-calls for Daudet, who 
 ' sweated hard ' that winter. 
 
 A man who is a great man in Paris to-day has 
 told the writer that in that winter of 1866-1867 he 
 used to pass almost every night across the Place 
 de 1'Odeon on his way home. ' It was sometimes 
 as late as two o'clock in the morning,' he said ; 'yet 
 there was always a light in that window of the 
 Hotel Lassus. I often wondered who might be in 
 that room, and what assiduous labour kept him so 
 constantly at his task. I afterwards knew that it 
 was Alphonse Daudet.' Who, wandering about 
 the streets of a great city at nights, has not seen 
 such lights and felt this wonder ? 
 
 One likes to imagine the interior thus lit up. At 
 one table the placid Du Boys, his face covered by 
 a beard which seemed a mask, with calm delibera- 
 tion tracing line after line of easy-flowing prose, 
 glancing from time to time at the clock to see how 
 soon the hour of deliverance would strike ; at 
 another table a second writer, feverish, restless, now 
 writing hard, now throwing down his pen to stride 
 about the room, now tearing up the written sheets 
 with a gesture of despair, and on such occasions
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 299 
 
 going to the frosted window to cool his brow and 
 gather thoughts by a long contemplation of the 
 desolate scene without. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that the first 
 part of ' Le Petit Chose,' as it is now known to the 
 public, was written. Daudet's marriage interrupted 
 the task, which was not resumed until the honey- 
 moon was passed. 
 
 ' It was not until the summer came, that, under 
 the shade of the trees of the Chateau de Vigneux, 
 I once more set to work upon my interminable 
 novel. Six delicious months, far from Paris, at that 
 time all distracted with the Exhibition of 1867, 
 which I refused to visit.' The book was at last 
 finished in the autumn of this year, and was first 
 published in serial form in the Petit Moniteur, at 
 that time under the editorship of Paul Dalloz. It 
 was published in volume form some months later 
 by Hetzel, and, says Daudet, ' met with some 
 success, in spite of all its defects.' 
 
 The demand for this book appears to have 
 continued, for in 1892 the publisher, Charpentier, 
 found it necessary to issue a new edition. It 
 is, however, one of the least successful, from 
 a market point of view, of Alphonse Daudet's 
 books. 
 
 It has the defects of all books in which authors
 
 300 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 have endeavoured to relate their experiences at 
 a time in their lives when real experiences have 
 been rare, and yet it is the part in which Daudet 
 describes his own life that the book most closely 
 appeals to the reader. Soured critics like Jules 
 Lemaitre have confessed that they have yielded to 
 the charm of ' Little What's-his-name,' whilst Zola, 
 on the other hand, will ' mention its title only, a 
 book which is half conte, half nouvelle' The 
 imaginary career of ' Le Petit Chose,' after his 
 arrival in Paris that is to say, where the author 
 no longer records but invents reads unsatisfactorily 
 in contrast to the picturesque reality of the first 
 part. From this point onward the book, in its 
 artlessness, is just the book that one would have 
 expected from ' Le Petit Chose ' himself. A more 
 experienced writer would not have asked us to 
 believe in the sacrifice of an adventuress, who 
 throws up a luxurious position to go play-acting 
 with a lad whom she does not love ; nor that a 
 respectable tradesman of Paris would have bestowed 
 his only daughter, together with an interest in his 
 hardware business, on this same lad after he had 
 seen the error of his ways. And admirable as is 
 the devotion of ' Mother Jacques ' in the first part of 
 the book, it is difficult of conception where he is 
 described first as giving up his bride to his younger
 
 'LE PETIT CHOSE' 301 
 
 brother, and next as working himself to death to 
 support him in the extravagances of his life. The 
 old negress, the servant of the adventuress referred 
 to, is the outcome of the hankering after the 
 fantastic which has been noticed in Daudet's mental 
 organism, and is out of place in a novel which 
 indirectly claims to be a story of real life. On the 
 other hand, the character of ' Le Petit Chose,' un- 
 disciplined, not unegotistical, but good at heart, at 
 all times winning by his natural charm and his very 
 weaknesses, is admirably drawn, and the impression 
 is sustained from the beginning of the book to the 
 end. It is one of those books which inspire the 
 reader with a keen desire to know the author, to 
 ascertain how much in his narrative is fact and how- 
 much is invention. Daudet himself admits the 
 defects to which allusion has been made. ' I was 
 too young when I wrote this book,' he says. 'A 
 whole part of my existence was at that time too 
 near me ; I lacked the necessary distance for seeing 
 it in its true light, and not being able to see, I 
 invented.' To the writer he has often said about 
 ' Le Petit Chose ' : 'I wish that I had waited. 
 Something very good might have been written on 
 my youth.'
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 As related in the preceding chapter, Alphonse 
 Daudet married in the year 1867. 'A final, a 
 supreme piece of good fortune,' writes Emile Zola, 
 ' awaited him ; he married after his return from 
 Algeria, and from that time forward became a 
 respectable citizen, a worker entirely given up to 
 his work. The poet who, till then, had widely 
 scattered his refrains, entered upon a period of 
 maturity and of regular production. Marriage, 
 according to my way of thinking, is the school of 
 the great contemporary producers.' 
 
 ' How did it happen ?' asks Daudet, speaking 
 about his marriage. ' By what witchcraft was the 
 gipsy verily possessed, that I was at that time 
 ensnared, and thrown under a spell ? What charm 
 was it that was able to hold fast the eternal 
 caprice ?' 
 
 Daudet had always said, as a young man, that in
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 303 
 
 the event of his marrying he should be careful 
 not to select a woman of literary tastes for his wife. 
 He professed a horror of the bas-bleu and all her 
 works. 
 
 One day, in the summer of 1866, Alphonse met 
 at the house of his parents, who were now living 
 at Ville d'Avray, near Paris, a young lady named 
 Julia .Allard, the daughter of parents of pronounced 
 literary tastes. Both M. and Madame Allard were 
 poets, and in collaboration with their daughter had 
 written and published a volume of poems entitled 
 ' Les Marges de la Vie.' On the occasion of her 
 visit to the Daudets' house at Ville d'Avray, Made- 
 moiselle Allard recited one of the poems in this 
 volume, written by herself, a piece called ' Le 
 Tremble.' She was dressed in white, and her 
 appearance, as well as the way in which she 
 recited these verses, produced an immense impres- 
 sion on the young man. As he was afterwards 
 walking back to the station, his sister, who was 
 with him, said : ' Well, I suppose you don't like 
 Mademoiselle Allard ; she is too much of a blue- 
 stocking for you ?' But Daudet shook his head ; 
 the coup de foudre had operated, and stammeringly 
 he replied that he had no other hope than that that 
 lady should become his wife. A feeling of the same 
 kind existed towards him in Julia Allard, who had
 
 3 o 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 seen him some time previously at the performance 
 of ' Henriette Marechal,' on the memorable occasion 
 of De Goncourt's defeat at the hands of ' Pipe-en- 
 Bois ' and other adversaries of the new order of 
 things in literature. Daudet had attracted especial 
 attention to himself by the enthusiasm he had dis- 
 played, and, besides winning a wife, secured for 
 himself on that occasion the precious friendship of 
 M. de Goncourt, who also saw him then and there 
 for the first time. 
 
 The marriage took place towards the beginning 
 of 1867, only a few months after the first meeting of 
 the young people, and this marriage, as Emile Zola 
 has said, was for Alphonse Daudet a final and 
 supreme piece of good fortune. ' I was fortunate 
 enough to win her,' he said to the writer, ' and it 
 has been the greatest blessing that has been 
 accorded to me in the course of a most happy and 
 successful life.' The Daudet manage is a living 
 example that an entire dissimilitude in the characters 
 of two spouses may produce great domestic happi- 
 ness. And certainly the difference is great between 
 Madame Daudet, the typical Northern woman, with 
 her great practical common-sense and uncompro- 
 mising logic, reserved, undemonstrative, cool and 
 equable, and Alphonse Daudet, capricious, romantic, 
 superstitious, exuberant, guided by impulse rather
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 305 
 
 than by calculation. The difference between them 
 is all the immense difference that distinguishes the 
 Northern from the Southern Frenchman. In the 
 French Navy, so Daudet relates in ' Jack,' the 
 sailors are divided into Mocos and Ponantais, into 
 Southerners and Northerners. If one may do so 
 without disrespect, one might speak of the Daudet 
 manage as composed of a Moco husband and a 
 Ponantais wife. 
 
 So marked is this difference between their two 
 characters, that Daudet has often desired a more 
 active collaboration with his wife. Thus, at the 
 time that he was occupied in dramatizing ' Numa 
 Roumestan,' he suggested to De Goncourt that it 
 would be very interesting if his wife would write 
 the part of Numa's wife,, the Northern woman, 
 brought up in monogamous surroundings ; whilst he 
 should analyze himself in the part of the Southerner, 
 with the Southerner's penchant for polygamy. It 
 may be mentioned, in passing, that the Roumestan 
 mdnage is an example of the great domestic un- 
 happiness which an entire dissimilitude of character 
 may produce between two spouses, and that in this 
 respect it is the exact contrary of the union of 
 Alphonse Daudet and his wife. 
 
 In a private letter in the possession of the writer, 
 Madame Daudet, speaking of her collaboration with 
 
 20
 
 306 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 her husband, says that she has always been more 
 a housewife than a writer. Indeed, she seems to 
 possess to the full those qualities which make of the 
 Parisiennes the best housewives in the world, com- 
 bining with the loyalty of the English wife and the 
 economy, domesticity, and indefatigable activity of 
 the German Haus-frau a taste, a refinement, and 
 an elegance which are rarely met with in other 
 countries. It is not surprising that Daudet was 
 eventually ' buckled down,' to use his own expres- 
 sion, when one considers the comfort and elegance 
 of his home, even in the days when the young 
 couple were in humble circumstances. The Pari- 
 sienne has the sense of ' home ' in a very high 
 degree, though she never talks of it, and although 
 no Frenchman whose name one can recall has set 
 the sentiment to music. She differs from the 
 German Haus-frau in this respect that she is a 
 wonderful organizer, and finds time for the parlour 
 as well as for the kitchen, in which poor Charlotte 
 is an eternal prisoner. And the Parisienne, not 
 without reason, attaches to the elegancies of life 
 as great an importance as to its necessities. Indeed, 
 she is by nature disposed to give preference to the 
 former. She will put flowers on the mantelpiece 
 before she tucks up her sleeves for the kitchen- 
 range. The first thing that impresses the visitor to
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 307 
 
 Daudet's house is that it must be under the direction 
 of an admirable housewife, who combines with a 
 very high sense of order the taste and refinement of 
 an artist. Some who visit Daudet for the first time, 
 and come to his house with preconceived ideas of 
 his legendary Bohemianism, are surprised at the 
 scrupulous tidiness that is everywhere displayed. 
 ' What a capital wife he must have !' is the first 
 thought of the visitor. 
 
 This impression can only be confirmed in those who 
 are so happy as to spend much time in the society 
 of Madame Daudet. Her constant watchfulness 
 over her husband, her motherly care of the dear 
 invalid, discreet, careful, disguised, but constant, are 
 admirable to behold. Now there is a draughty 
 door to be closed, now a glaring lamp to be shaded, 
 and all these things are done naturally, quietly, 
 without ostentation, as the most obvious duties. In 
 Madame Daudet that womanly devotion which in 
 most women is only one form of feminine egotism 
 is divested of all its irritating attributes, and 
 appears, as indeed is the case, to proceed from a 
 high sense of duty and the promptings of a tender 
 and affectionate nature. 
 
 A rare modesty is another characteristic of this 
 admirable woman. She indeed practises self- 
 effacement to a degree which inspires those who
 
 308 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 know her worth with actual regret. She listens 
 when she might speak ; she contents herself with 
 the part of a Stella, although entitled to the role of 
 a Stael. In these days of assertive, noisy, unsexed 
 femininity, she is pre-eminent among the ladies who 
 by their manners reclaim the respect due to their 
 sex. Julia Daudet is the living answer to Sarah 
 Grand. She is Wordsworth's Dorothy, with a note 
 of elegance superadded. 
 
 Her charm proceeds from her entire unselfish- 
 ness. Daudet has recorded in conversation that in 
 the days of straitened circumstances, when he used 
 to take a louis d'or for his minor pleasures from the 
 slender common fund, Julia Daudet from time to 
 time would draw a threepenny-piece for an indis- 
 pensable omnibus fare. In respect of her require- 
 ments as of her personality, she was always content 
 to be the shadow of her husband's substance. One 
 wonders what this Peter Schlemihl would have done 
 without it. And in other respects she also reminds 
 one of Chamisso. His lyrics which begin with the 
 famous lines 
 
 ' Du Ring an meinem Finger, 
 Du trautes Ringelein,' 
 
 might have been written for her. By few women 
 has the part of wife and helpmeet been better 
 understood.
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 309 
 
 She has the instinctive cautiousness of the house- 
 wife. This will explain the noticeable reserve with 
 which she at first receives entire strangers. She 
 knows her husband's weaknesses, and how shame- 
 lessly these are worked upon by the unscrupulous. 
 In the Daudet manage it is the wife who has acted 
 as the lord, or loaf-warden, as a check on the loaf- 
 giving propensities of the husband. She has been 
 the ant when he has been the decide. In the 
 early days of her marriage she saw what leeches 
 fastened on the generosity of her husband, and 
 the consequence is that until she knows a new 
 friend of his well, she maintains an observant 
 attitude. This explains a certain noticeable reserve 
 in her towards the people whom she meets without 
 knowing them, for Daudet is, indeed, childish in 
 those matters of money which are the A B C of a 
 woman's philosophy. Thus, he has related that, 
 having received the sum of sixty pounds on account 
 of his rights in the comedy in one act entitled 
 ' L'CEillet Blanc,' from Peragalle, the manager a 
 sum which he insisted on receiving in gold he 
 was not satisfied until he had spent the whole of 
 it in a single evening at the Maison d'Or. The 
 gold made a great lump in his pocket, and his only 
 regret on the following day was that there was no 
 lump there any longer.
 
 3 io ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 This indifference towards money, a characteristic 
 also of De Goncourt, whilst the opposite trait dis- 
 tinguished De Maupassant, as it still distinguishes 
 Sardou and Zola, has always been a noticeable 
 feature in Daudet. Thus, on the occasion of his 
 first terrible journey to Paris, if he travelled with 
 only two francs in his pocket out of an initial sum 
 of twenty francs, it was because he had paid the 
 remaining eighteen francs for excess of baggage, 
 this excess being produced by the books which he 
 took with him. Thus, also, when money first came 
 to him by the great success of his novel ' Fromont 
 Jeune et Risler Aine,' he brought home the first 
 receipts in notes and gold and silver, and spreading 
 the coins out on the floor in front of his wife, danced 
 a dance which he afterwards denominated as the 
 ' Pas de Fromont.' 
 
 That this indifference towards the material ques- 
 tions of life should be shamelessly worked upon by 
 those who knew of Daudet's weaknesses is not 
 surprising. It is certain that there is no man in 
 Paris more preyed on by borrowers than Alphonse 
 Daudet. His generosity is unbounded, and the repu- 
 tation of it is world-wide. On one occasion, when 
 the writer was spending the evening with him, in 
 company with Mr. Rowland Strong, the gifted Paris 
 correspondent of the Morning Post, there came
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 311 
 
 amongst the evening's letters a long epistle from 
 Glasgow. As this was written in English, and as 
 Daudet is no linguist, he handed it to Mr. Strong, 
 asking him to tell him its purport. This letter 
 came from a Scotchwoman, who ' had heard of 
 Mr. Daudet's great charity,' and accordingly set 
 forth a most dismal tale. Her husband, numerous 
 children, and herself, she wrote, had for several 
 weeks past been living on dry bread and the 
 cheapest kind of tea, and what she asked of Daudet, 
 
 whom she had addressed as ' Daudet, Esquire, 
 
 Fourth Floor, Faubourg St. Germain, Paris,' was 
 that he should advance the sum necessary to take 
 her, her husband, and the numerous children to 
 Palermo, in Sicily, where they were assured of 
 remunerative employment. 
 
 It cannot be here recorded what was the answer 
 vouchsafed to this extraordinary application. It is 
 only one example of the numerous letters which 
 Alphonse Daudet receives every day applying for 
 relief from persons who are totally unknown to him. 
 The English and American begging-letter writers 
 seem to include other notable Frenchmen on their 
 lists, and Francois Coppee has told the writer that 
 out of the twenty letters which he receives daily, at 
 least four, on an average, are applications for money 
 from Anglo-Saxon foreigners of whose names he
 
 3 i2 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 has never heard. With no less vigour is Alphonse 
 Daudet assailed by the needy in Paris. It may be 
 added that few really in distress appeal to him in 
 vain. On one occasion within the writer's know- 
 ledge a man, describing himself as a man of letters, 
 called on Alphonse Daudet, and after vague con- 
 versation about literature, as he stood pulling at 
 a straggling beard, told Daudet, who had chal- 
 lenged him to state the real reason of his visit, that 
 he was three terms behind with his rent, and that 
 unless he paid his landlord he would be turned into 
 the street, together with his wife and one forgets 
 how many children. ' I asked him what the sum 
 was,' said Daudet, in relating this incident ; ' and 
 when he had mentioned it, I said that Ebner and 
 I would see what could be done.' On another 
 occasion the writer had an appointment to see him 
 at his house, and on arriving there heard that there 
 was a gentleman with M. Daudet. On entering the 
 familiar study, after the gentleman's departure, the 
 writer found Daudet in a state of great nervous 
 exhaustion, and on the table before him lay a loaded 
 revolver. ' I had to get my revolver out to the 
 fellow,' he cried. ' I never saw such a scoundrel. 
 He told me that he was a writer on the Triboulet, 
 and he said that unless I gave him two thousand 
 francs he should be obliged to commit suicide. He
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 313 
 
 afterwards reduced his demand, and implored me to 
 lend him twenty francs, promising to return them on 
 the fifteenth of this month. He managed to soften 
 me, and I lent him the money ; and I said as I 
 gave it to him, " On the fifteenth of this month I 
 shall know whether you are a man of honour or une 
 canaille." He then became so rude that I really 
 had to take my revolver out of the drawer. And 
 to think that you were in the ante-chamber all 
 the time.' The money, it need hardly be men- 
 tioned, was never returned. Daudet must be the 
 most liberal lender in Paris. He says that he 
 knows the borrower's shake of the hands the shake 
 that gropes for bullion in the palm. ' When there 
 is only five francs, the fingers seem to say to me, 
 " Hullo, there's not much fat to-day." On the 
 other hand, when I have slipped a louis d'or into 
 my palm, the fingers are jubilant.' Not unfrequently 
 on the days of reception at Champrosay there 
 joins himself to the invited guests some shabby 
 individual, who appears known to nobody, but 
 makes his way with the rest to the Daudets' house. 
 His greeting of the 'dear master' is effusive, and 
 the time always comes when he is seen drawing 
 Alphonse Daudet aside, under the half amused, 
 half anxious glance of Madame Daudet, for a long 
 and whispered confabulation. The result of this
 
 3 i 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 conversation is that whilst the mysterious stranger 
 jubilantly withdraws, Daudet, harrowed, in spite of 
 an incredulity which is more than justified, by some 
 altogether lamentable tale, is nervous and distressed 
 for a long time after. By reason of this nervous- 
 ness, and of the fact that he finds it difficult to 
 refuse a request, Daudet has never been a good 
 business man. ' Sometimes this nervousness of 
 mine,' he told the writer, 'plays me bad tricks. I 
 remember that it cost me a large sum of money one 
 morning not very long ago. A kind of dramatic 
 agent, accompanied by his wife, came to see me, to 
 ask me to sell the rights of translation of my 
 play ' La Lutte pour la Vie,' and they bothered and 
 irritated me so, that in order to get rid of them 
 I sold them this right for four thousand francs. 
 The woman told me how handsome I was, and said 
 that women must have been very fond of me when 
 I was a young man. She had a hat with huge 
 feathers in it, and was altogether a most extra- 
 ordinary person. I afterwards heard that im- 
 mediately on leaving me this very business-like 
 couple had rushed off to dispose of the English 
 rights in my play to a London manager, who had 
 come to Paris for the purpose of securing them, and 
 within an hour had sold these rights for thirty 
 thousand francs, reserving the American rights to
 
 MA DA ME ALPHONSE DA UDET 3 1 5 
 
 themselves. So that my nervousness that morning 
 cost me about one thousand pounds. It is true that 
 as a rule I manage my affairs better than that.' 
 
 Madame Daudet, with greater prudence, is not so 
 easily moved by harrowing tales of distress. Her 
 experience of the shiftless, borrowing Bohemian has 
 assisted her to form a true estimate of the compas- 
 sion of which he is deserving. She, very rightly, 
 does not approve of the abuse of her husband's 
 good-nature ; and this is one of the few points on 
 which the husband and wife do not agree. De 
 Goncourt relates that he was present on one occa- 
 sion when Daudet laughingly taxed his wife with 
 having little pity for the unfortunate an accusation 
 which Madame Daudet denied, saying that formerly 
 that was so, when she was a happy girl and bride, 
 and was altogether taken up with her own happi- 
 ness ; but that with time a feeling for the mis- 
 fortunes of others entered her character. She might 
 have added that most of the Bohemian gentlemen 
 who worry her husband for loans, to be spent in 
 riotous living in the Latin Quarter, are totally un- 
 deserving of pity of any sort. Like most women, 
 she has a better sense of the value of money than 
 her husband. Although, unlike the Zola manage, 
 the Daudets, after their marriage, were never in 
 actual distress, there were times in the beginning of
 
 316 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 their married life when money was scarce, and the 
 shadow of want cast itself over the happy home. 
 In those days Alphonse Daudet used to frequent 
 the pawnshop, though his wife never knew it. 
 Indeed, for a long time after she was married 
 Madame Daudet did not even know of the exist- 
 ence of the Mont-de-Piete. When she knew of it, 
 she would never mention its name. ' Have you 
 been there ?' she would ask of her husband. In 
 referring to this, De Goncourt remarks, ' And what 
 is pretty about this is, that this young woman, 
 brought up in a bourgeois way, was never in the 
 least bewildered by the strange life into which she 
 stepped on her marriage, in the society of this world 
 of self-invited guests, who ate her dinners and 
 worried her husband for loans of twenty-franc pieces 
 and pairs of trousers.' 
 
 During the first years of their married life, Daudet's 
 ambition seems to have lain fallow. At that time, 
 he says, all that he asked of life was to be allowed 
 to live 'actively, violently, noisily'; to be allowed to 
 sing, to make music, to roam about the woods with 
 the fumes of wine in his head, and to have Marlowe- 
 like struggles in the beer-houses. He adds that it 
 was the war that transformed him, that made him 
 think that he must die one day, and that if he con- 
 tinued to live as he was living then, he would leave
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 317 
 
 nothing behind him. It was then that he set to 
 work. At other times he has said that it was his 
 wife who so influenced him ; and this is certainly 
 the fact, although, no doubt, the serious considera- 
 tions evoked by the war may have contributed 
 towards the good result. He has related how his 
 wife ' buckled him down.' His critics attribute his 
 transformation into a ' great producer ' to the in- 
 fluence of his wife. Jules Lemaitre, for instance, 
 writes : ' Without her, it may be, the Petit Chose 
 would have continued all his life to write here and 
 there, as the fancy took him, his short and exquisite 
 fantaisies. It is she who will force him to work, 
 without making her influence felt, and will make 
 him write fine books.' 
 
 The above passage occurs in M. Lemaitre's study 
 on Madame Alphonse Daudet in his ' Les Con- 
 temporains, Etudes et Portraits Litteraires,' and, 
 indeed, Madame Daudet deserves to find a place in 
 any and every book in which the more prominent 
 literary persons of contemporary France are con- 
 sidered ; and this not alone on account of her 
 admitted collaboration with her husband, but because 
 what little she has produced and published as her 
 own work is marked by qualities of style which 
 entitle it to admiration and its author to respect. 
 Her volume, ' Impressions de Nature et d'Art,'
 
 3 i8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 which has reached a second edition, is composed 
 of a series of papers entitled ' L'Enfance d'une 
 Parisienne,' followed by several prose and poetical 
 fancies and pensdes, described as ' Notes et Impres- 
 sions,' and is completed by a number of critical 
 essays and studies. These last were originally pub- 
 lished in Le Journal Officiel, under the editorship 
 of Ernest Daudet, which at that time was not, as 
 to-day, a mere budget of official news, but contained, 
 besides Government intelligence, articles both of 
 literary and of dramatic criticism. Madame Daudet 
 commenced contributing to Le Journal Officiel very 
 shortly after her marriage, writing under the name 
 of ' Karl Stern.' 'This was great fun,' she said, in 
 speaking of the matter with the writer, ' because 
 the authors whose books I used to review, and the 
 people who read the Officiel, all took me for a man, 
 and I used to receive quantities of letters every 
 week beginning " Sir," some of them hardly worded 
 with the politeness with which one addresses a 
 woman.' 
 
 Madame Daudet's method of criticism, as ex- 
 emplified in the republished ' Etudes Litteraires,' is 
 painstaking and indulgent to a degree, which sur- 
 prises one when one remembers that of all critics 
 the most severe are women themselves engaged in 
 literary production. It is a kind of criticism which,
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 319 
 
 unfortunately for literature in France, no longer 
 exists. Indeed, literary criticism of any kind may 
 be described as a lost art in France, and Sainte 
 Beuve, one fears, would find his occupation gone 
 could he return to earth in these days when the 
 commercialism both of men of letters and of the 
 newspaper proprietors and editors has discarded the 
 careful study of contemporary literature as matter of 
 an encumbering and profitless nature. 
 
 ' L'Enfance d'une Parisienne,' which contains 
 Madame Daudet's reminiscences of her childhood, is 
 not a mere relation of facts, but the rendering, in a 
 style of peculiar picturesqueness and charm, of the 
 various sensations of her youth. Amongst the 
 sketches in which her light and supple pen, as 
 Lemaitre calls it, may be admired at its best may 
 be mentioned, ' Le Bal,' ' Les Greniers,' and ' Ce 
 qu'on voit a travers un voile de mousseline blanche,' 
 the sensations of a girl on the day of her confirma- 
 tion, which last is the best known of her writings. 
 A touch of melancholy pervades all these remini- 
 scences of childhood, communicated, it may be, by 
 the old seventeenth -century house in which the 
 writer used to spend many months of the year 
 when a child. One remembers what Flaubert 
 wrote about the melancholy that is inspired by 
 old houses.
 
 320 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 In her book, ' Notes d'une Parisienne,' Madame 
 Daudet has formulated her literary creed. She is 
 not impressed by facts themselves, but only by the 
 atmosphere which they create around themselves. 
 Things and persons only exist for her in a literary 
 sense by that imperceptible frisson which they leave 
 behind them, a frisson which is felt only by those 
 very delicately sensitive, to adequately describe 
 which on paper requires a miracle of style. She 
 sums up her idea of art in the phrase : ' En art 
 pour etre exact, il faut que cela tremble aux yeux.' 
 Style, in her opinion, is the principal element of a 
 book, its sole raison d'etre, its sole excuse. The 
 subject of a book may be such as most people, 
 especially women, would find revolting ; Madame 
 Daudet considers the style in which it is written 
 alone, and if it is well written it will enjoy her 
 approval. Thus, she applauded M. de Goncourt's 
 ' Germinie Lacerteux,' and is a great admirer of Zola's 
 ' L'Assommoir,' because, although she dislikes the 
 subject of both, she considers them both admirably 
 well written. In literature, it is to the form and not 
 to the fond that she looks. This was duly set forth 
 in the literary studies in her book ; her opinion has 
 not altered since. In the part of ' Impressions de 
 Nature et d'Art ' which bears the sub-title ' Notes 
 et Impressions' may be found certain poems and
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 321 
 
 pensdes> besides word-pictures, which may be said to 
 be the work of a very artist in letters. 
 
 There is lofty thought set forth in noble language, 
 for instance, in the ' Ode to Melancholy ' : 
 
 'Comme une songeuse Ophelie, 
 Pr^s de Fame, fleuve irise, 
 Se penche la Melancholic. 
 
 ' Sous ses doigts blancs elle a brise 
 Tous les rameaux dont 1'Esperance 
 Ombrait le rivage apaise.' 
 
 Amongst Madame Daudet's pensdes, the following 
 one denotes a keen if pessimistic observation : 
 
 ' It is a sign of a want of feeling to like novels 
 and plays which cause the reader or spectator to 
 weep, a confession that one's own well-spring has 
 dried up, and that it must be fed afresh.' 
 
 A little gem, too, is the following, which must be 
 left in the original French : 
 
 ' Les fenetres fermees ressemblent a des yeux 
 d'aveugle. Les vitres luisent, le bleu du ciel s'y pose 
 en surface et elles regardent sans voir ; elles se con- 
 tentent du reflet, puisqu'il leur manque la vision.' 
 
 After the transformation of Le Journal Officicl 
 into a mere daily budget of official news, Madame 
 Daudet contributed regularly to La Vic Modcrne, 
 but anonymously. Her first signed contribution in 
 any paper was a poem, which was printed in a 
 
 21
 
 322 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 journal called La Renaissance. Amongst the con- 
 tributions to La Vie Moderne may be mentioned 
 the pictures of child-life ' Be" be Dessine,' 'La 
 Lecture,' ' Les Emplettes.' Of late years Madame 
 Daudet has not unfrequently contributed to Le 
 Figaro. In the meanwhile, she published a 
 volume of fragments entitled, ' Fragments d'un 
 Livre Inedit,' of which M. Lemaitre writes : 'In 
 this book Madame Alphonse Daudet no longer 
 expresses her distant souvenirs, but describes her 
 recent impressions, day by day. The sky of Paris, 
 the streets of Paris, the women of Paris, the flowers, 
 music, journeys, society, drawing-rooms, toilette, 
 home-life, and child-life, her pen steps merrily 
 through them all, more nervously, more keenly, 
 and with greater subtlety and hardiness than in her 
 former volume. Here she decidedly " De Gon- 
 courtizes " herself, with a slight touch of fever, a not 
 altogether healthy wish to "express the impalpable," 
 to " say what has not been said." And at times, 
 indeed, the impression is held fast until it escapes 
 and flees athwart the words, like smoke which 
 escapes between fingers which, subtle and agile as 
 they may be, cannot hold it back. But the effort 
 is in itself charming. " Originality in art pleases 
 me, even when it is a mistaken originality," says 
 Madame Daudet, and may be said by us with her.'
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DA UDET 323 
 
 And lower down he sums up his opinion on this 
 book in the words : ' Morbid art and a healthy 
 mind, a somewhat ill - poised style and a well- 
 balanced brain, such is the double attraction of 
 this diary, which sets one dreaming of an altogether 
 modern impressionist Penelope.' 
 
 It is rumoured in the Republic of Letters that 
 Madame Daudet has largely collaborated with her 
 husband, and that the production of many of his 
 masterpieces is of as much credit to her as to him. 
 The exact nature of this collaboration, by reason of 
 Madame Daudet's great modesty, has never been 
 defined. Yet that Daudet acknowledges his in- 
 debtedness to his wife has been shown on several 
 occasions. To the writer he has declared in conver- 
 sation : ' I must say that in my literary work I owe 
 nearly all to my wife. She re-reads all my books, 
 and advises me on every point. She is all that is 
 most charming, and has a wonderful mind, entirely 
 opposed to mine, a synthetic spirit.' When he 
 was struck down by illness whilst engaged on 
 ' Numa Roumestan,' and expected to die, he called 
 his wife to his bedside and said, ' Finis mon 
 bouquin,' as a dying wish. To the ' Nabab ' he 
 prefixed a preface, worded as follows : ' To my 
 discreet and indefatigable collaborator, to my very 
 dear Julia Daudet, I offer, with great gratitude and
 
 324 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 thankful tenderness, this book, which owes so much 
 to her.' Madame Daudet refused to allow this 
 preface to be printed, and insisted on its suppression 
 when the presses were already at work. Only a 
 few copies of the first edition bear this testimony to 
 Madame Daudet's collaboration and literary worth. 
 The other copies of the hundred and ten thousand 
 since issued may be said to bear testimony to her 
 rare modesty. 
 
 Two interesting letters, one from Madame Daudet 
 and the other from her husband, which bear upon 
 this intimate collaboration, are in the possession of 
 the writer, and may be produced here in part. 
 
 ' I write,' says Madame Daudet, ' in a state akin 
 to that of somnambulism, and my work often 
 astonishes me when I read it over again as though 
 it were not from my pen. I am subject to im- 
 pressions which are, as it were, reflected impres- 
 sions, and emotions which I may describe as the 
 emotions of a dream. No more. I only know, 
 and I only see, that which is within me, and as 
 to the manner in which others penetrate me, as it 
 were in lightning flashes, I am not sure of being 
 able to render it. The things which strike me are 
 the atmosphere which surrounds persons and things, 
 the indiscernible and the indescribable, and style 
 leads me away from matters of human interest.
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 325 
 
 Believe me that my little definition of my collabora- 
 tion with my husband by comparing it with a fan 
 is the true one, no more, no less. It is natural 
 enough that marriage and regularity of life should 
 have steadied my husband in his work, maturity of 
 age coming upon him simultaneously with maturity of 
 talent. My good influence upon him in this respect 
 may be attributed rather to my bourgeois qualities, 
 my good motherly care, than to my qualities as a 
 writer, which are indeed most fitful.' 
 
 It is in the following words that in his letter 
 Alphonse Daudet describes his wife's character and 
 her influence on him as a writer : 
 
 ' That she is a Parisienne, goes without saying. 
 Fond of gray skies, wet streets, society, show- 
 windows, flowers, the theatre, a pretty home, always 
 full of light and always adorned. 
 
 ' As a mother, she excels all that I have ever come 
 across. Till the age of eleven Leon had no other 
 tutor, and from the very beginning he showed him- 
 self the pupil that you know of. She began it all 
 over again with Lucien, and whilst giving her 
 lessons watched and listened as the good seed fell 
 and germinated in the little head. And in the 
 same way when at her milliner's or at her dress- 
 maker's, whilst awaiting her turn to be served, the 
 inquisitive Parisienne keeps her eyes open, and
 
 326 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 hence those studies which appeared in La Vie 
 Moderne and elsewhere, studies afterwards repub- 
 lished under the title ' Les Enfants et La Femme.' 
 
 Her childhood was spent in Paris in the great 
 commercial quarters, the summers being passed in 
 the country at her grandfather's house, at the Chateau 
 de Vigneux. For twenty consecutive years she went 
 there. It was there that she acquired her taste 
 for nature, for deep shades, for luxurious parks, 
 pheasantries and ornamental waters. In her father's 
 library all the poets might be read, but not Scribe 
 or the Gymnase. Her father and mother, poets 
 themselves, had produced, in collaboration, a volume 
 of verse, ' Les Marges de la Vie,' and had signed it 
 with both their names. Theirs were delicate and lofty 
 minds, the refined educators of this elegant nature. 
 
 ' When we first came to know each other for 
 after seventeen years of married life an exchange 
 of faculties has taken place when we first came to 
 know each other, she was living as in a dream, all 
 living things having for her the impalpability and 
 softness of touch of shadows thrown upon a screen. 
 But if she be less observant, less vital than myself, 
 she is also more of an artist. 
 
 ' I have told you what part she has had in my 
 literary work, her revision of every single page. 
 She herself, in a note which I find in one of her
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 327 
 
 note-books, will give you the definition of our dual 
 labours : 
 
 ' " Our collaboration is like a Japanese fan. On 
 one side are the subject, the characters, the atmo- 
 sphere in which they move. On the other side 
 sprays of verdure, petals of flowers, the slender pro- 
 longation of a little branch, what remains of colour 
 or of gold-leaf on the painter's brush. 
 
 ' " And it is I who do this minuter task, bearing 
 in mind what is beneath, and ever careful that my 
 flights of storks shall be the continuation of the 
 wintry landscape, or that the green shoots on the 
 brown hollows of the bamboos shall complete the 
 spring spread out on the other, and principal, side 
 of the fan." 
 
 De Goncourt gives a very pretty picture of this 
 travail a deux, as witnessed by himself, when the 
 Daudets were living in the old house in the Marais, 
 where ' Fromont Jeune and Risler Aine ' was 
 produced. He shows us Daudet sitting at one 
 table in the large room, and Madame Daudet at 
 another table, with little Leon running between the 
 two, carrying the page which his father has just 
 written to his mother, who revises it. 
 
 Daudet has sometimes complained of his wife's 
 influence. On one occasion he exclaimed to De 
 Goncourt : ' Look here, it is very unfortunate
 
 328 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ... as a matter of fact you have disturbed me . . . 
 yes, you and Flaubert and my wife. ... I have 
 no style, no, I have no style, and that is a fact. 
 People born on the other side of the Loire do not 
 know how to write French prose. . . . What I 
 was, was an improvisatore, a man of imagination. 
 . . . You can have no idea what I have in my 
 head. . . . Well, but for you, I should never have 
 bothered myself about this brute of a language . . . 
 and I should have brought forth, and brought forth 
 in peace and quiet.' 
 
 Here we have the cry of the cicade constrained 
 to husbandry the querulous complaint of ' Le Petit 
 Chose ' brought back by the ear from Rhoneside 
 ramblings, and tied down to his desk, a complaint 
 which is in itself the most eloquent testimony to the 
 advantage which this writer has derived from his 
 wife's influence. 
 
 On one of the first occasions on which De Gon- 
 court saw the Daudets he noted in his diary : ' It is 
 a manage which resembles the one that I and my 
 brother made together. The wife writes, and I 
 have reason to suspect that she is an artist in the 
 matter of style.' Some days later, having met 
 Madame Daudet again, he writes of her : ' She is 
 really a very extraordinary woman, Madame 
 Daudet. I have never yet met a living being,
 
 MADAME ALPHONSE DAUDET 329 
 
 man or woman, who has read so well as she has, or 
 a reader who so thoroughly possesses the methods 
 of optics, of colouring, the syntax, the tricks and the 
 turns of all the militant writers of the present day.' 
 
 The wide difference in the character of husband 
 and wife sometimes reveals itself in their discussions 
 about literature. Daudet, for instance, is a great 
 admirer of Montaigne. At one time a volume of 
 the ' Essais ' was his inseparable companion. There 
 is amongst the books in his library a copy stained 
 with water, which he used to take with him into 
 his bath at Allevard. His wife finds Montaigne 
 ' abominable, with the commonplace selfishness of 
 his doctrines, his ugly pessimism, and his parti- 
 cularly abominable estimates of woman.' This is 
 the revolt of the monogamous woman-respecting 
 North against the polygamous woman -despising 
 South. In all other respects, however, the Daudets 
 are in perfect harmony, and Emile Zola is indeed 
 right where he speaks of the great good fortune 
 which came to Alphonse Daudet on his marriage.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 As Daudet himself has related, marriage did not 
 bring with it at once the regularity of life and con- 
 duct which is indispensable for the production of 
 work of serious importance. The ' Petit Chose,' as 
 Lemaitre puts it, continued to scribble his brief and 
 exquisite fancies on the corners of tables. This 
 first year of married life, however, saw him at work 
 in finishing his first novel, ' Le Petit Chose,' re- 
 written from the draft during six delicious months of 
 honeymoon. It may be remarked that at this time 
 of his life Daudet delighted in writing out-of-doors, 
 a fancy which charms most young men of letters till 
 they find that the inconveniences of the practice far 
 outweigh the imaginary benefits of the fancied inspira- 
 tion. ' I wrote " Le Petit Chose,"' he writes, 'now 
 on some mossy bench at the end of the park . . . 
 now in a boat on the lake.' But his most curious 
 confession is that when it was raining he used to
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 331 
 
 write indoors, whilst Madame Daudet played Chopin 
 to him. 
 
 Towards the end of this year, 1867, a third piece 
 by Alphonse Daudet was produced in Paris, ' Le 
 Frere AineY a drama in one act, written in col- 
 laboration with M. Ernest Lepine. The first per- 
 formance took place on December igth, at the 
 Vaudeville Theatre. It is the least commendable, 
 as an acting play, of any of the plays that Daudet 
 has brought before the public. The story is of two 
 brothers. The younger brother had married a 
 woman who was loved by his elder brother. To 
 escape his moral torture, the latter leaves the house 
 and travels abroad for years. The curtain rises on 
 his return. In the meanwhile his brother's first 
 wife has died, and the house has a new mistress. 
 The one act is devoted to the exposition of the 
 elder brother's undying love for the departed woman, 
 his displeasure with his brother for taking a second 
 wife, and his dislike of the woman who has taken 
 his beloved one's place. In the denouement) the 
 married brother and his wife agree to quit the 
 house, leaving him as sole master, so that he may 
 give himself up undisturbed to his memories of the 
 dead. There was not here the material for an 
 acting play, though the idea would have been a 
 good one for an analytical novel after the fashion of
 
 332 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Bourget. ' Le Frere Aine ' was not well received, 
 and was withdrawn after a very short time. 
 
 It was not until several months later that Daudet, 
 not discouraged by the comparative want of suc- 
 cess of ' Le Petit Chose,' set to work on a new 
 novel. This novel was the now famous ' Tartarin 
 de Tarascon.' Before entering upon the history of 
 this book, it may be of interest to note for what 
 reason it was courageous on the part of Daudet, in 
 view of the sale of ' Le Petit Chose,' once more to 
 attempt a long work. It is a mere question of re- 
 muneration, and it must be remembered that Daudet 
 now had the burdens of a married man, and that, on 
 the other hand, he had no income but such as was 
 produced by his pen. Now, at the time that he 
 began to write ' Tartarin de Tarascon,' the entire 
 amount derived from his first long novel, apart from 
 the inconsiderable sum paid him by Dalloz for its 
 use as a serial, did not exceed, at the rate of a 
 royalty of threepence a copy, a total sum of sixty 
 pounds. The temptation to him, therefore, to em- 
 ploy himself in the more profitable field of journalism 
 must have been great, especially when we consider 
 the charges upon him. His courage, however, did 
 not fail him. His purpose was firmly maintained. 
 
 The materials for ' Tartarin de Tarascon ' were 
 derived from the note-books which Daudet had
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 333 
 
 filled during his journey in Africa in the winter of 
 1 86 1. His knowledge of Meridional insincerity, 
 untruthfulness, and braggadocio, especially fitted him 
 for the task of caricaturing the Southern Frenchman ; 
 and Tartarin may be looked upon as a caricature 
 of the Frenchman born on the far side of the Loire. 
 It is a subtle, not a broad, study so elaborately 
 worked out that it is often difficult to decide where 
 the portrait ends and the caricature begins. But 
 caricature it remains, and it is well that Daudet in 
 this book threw off the excess of his ridicule for 
 the Meridional, or Numa Roumestan might never 
 have been the admirable portrait, true to life as a 
 photograph, that it is. For Pegasus as for the race- 
 horse, the preliminary canter has its advantages. 
 
 The original title of this work was ' Barbarin de 
 Tarascon,' but it happened that a family of that 
 name actually resided in Tarascon, and the French 
 law permits a man to forbid the use of his name by 
 a novelist. In consequence, the name was changed 
 to Tartarin. This story appeared in the first place 
 in Dalloz's paper, Lc Petit Moniteur Universcl, with 
 sketches by Emile Benassit, and elicited great dis- 
 satisfaction on the part of the readers of that journal. 
 Daudet and the editor were assailed with insulting 
 letters, and several subscribers threatened to with- 
 draw their patronage unless the story were dis-
 
 334 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 continued. Daudet could console himself with the 
 reflection that such of Balzac's masterpieces as were 
 originally published as serials in the Paris papers 
 had met with a similar reception from the newspaper 
 readers of his day. At the same time, he took pity 
 on Dalloz, who was threatened with ruin by offend- 
 ing his patrons, and, accordingly, after ten instal- 
 ments of ' Tartarin ' had been printed in Le Petit 
 Moniteur Universel, he withdrew it from that paper 
 and offered it to the Figaro, where it was readily 
 accepted. The readers of the Figaro, being of a 
 more enlightened class, were better disposed towards 
 innovations in the matter of literature. At the same 
 time it shows that Daudet's standing must at that 
 time already have been a high one for Villemessant 
 to accept the publication of a serial which had 
 menaced a rival publication with ruin. The story was 
 appreciated by the readers of the Figaro, although 
 the assistant editor, Alexander Duvernois, who was 
 vexed at the way in which the author wrote about 
 Algeria, did his best to spoil its success by inter- 
 rupting the publication on any and every pretext, 
 so that the story dragged its slow length along, and 
 De Villemessant on more than one occasion was 
 heard to mutter and to grumble. Published in 
 volume form by Dentu, ' Tartarin de Tarascon ' did 
 not at first meet with any but ordinary success.
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 335 
 
 To-day, that is to say twenty-seven years after its 
 first appearance, there have been sold of this book 
 140,000 copies, and the demand continues at the 
 rate of from 2,000 to 5,000 copies per annum. Of 
 its sequel, 'Tartarin sur Les Alpes,' 190,000 copies 
 have been sold, and the book is still selling briskly. 
 ' Port-Tarascon,' the least well known of the series, 
 is in its seventieth edition. From first to last, that 
 is to say, from his departure on the shooting expe- 
 dition to Africa down to his pathetic death, as 
 described in the last of the series Barbarin, alias 
 Tartarin, has brought his author not less than 
 ,15,000, bequeathing him a revenue worth many 
 farms in Beauce. 
 
 The preface to the present editions of this book is 
 an interesting one. ' Judged freely, after many 
 years,' writes Daudet about this book, ' Tartarin, 
 with his mad, unbridled manners, seems to me to 
 have qualities of youth, of vitality, of truth a truth 
 peculiar to the far side of the Loire, which swells 
 out facts, exaggerates them, but never lies. The 
 fibre of the style is neither very fine nor very com- 
 pact. It is what I call " stand-up literature," spoken, 
 gesticulated, with the exuberant gestures of my 
 hero. But I must confess that however great my 
 love of style may be, or my admiration for har- 
 monious and coloured prose, my opinion is that
 
 336 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 the whole question from the novelist's point of view 
 is not centred there.' 
 
 This statement may be compared with the opinion 
 expressed by Madame Daudet, that style is the only 
 thing in a book which she considers. It illustrates 
 the difference in the literary creeds of husband and 
 wife. 
 
 'The novelist's real delight,' continues Alphonse 
 Daudet, ' rests in the creation of beings. . . . For 
 my part my emotion is always the same when in 
 connection with some passer-by in life, some one of 
 the thousand puppets of political, artistic, or social 
 life, I hear people say : " He is a Tartarin a Mon- 
 pavon a Delobelle." A thrill runs through me at 
 such times, the thrill of pride which a father feels 
 who is hidden in the crowd whilst his son is being 
 
 applauded, and all the time longs to shout out, "He's 
 
 i i" > 
 my boy ! 
 
 Although a work written in youth before the 
 maturity of his talent, these ' Prodigious Adventures 
 of Tartarin de Tarascon ' must be taken into careful 
 consideration in a critical study of Alphonse Daudet's 
 works. One is, therefore, surprised to find Lemaitre 
 dismissing them in a few words, which also deal with 
 several of Daudet's short stories. It is true that 
 these words are words of high praise. ' What a 
 treasure of mirth ! What charming gaiety, and what
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 337 
 
 vivacious raillery ! Little wit in the way of itiots, 
 but marked comicality of verve, of imagination, of 
 hyperbole, and, oftener still, a comicality of situa- 
 tions and characters.' 
 
 Emile Zola, on the other hand, considered this 
 book as of sufficient importance to devote to it six 
 pages that is to say, a whole day's work of the long 
 study on Alphonse Daudet which appears in his col- 
 lection of essays, ' Les Romanciers Naturalistes/ 
 ' This work,' he writes, ' lives by its sustained merri- 
 ment, a merriment at times refined, anon bursting 
 out into excesses of buffoonery. Never have the 
 ingenuous liars of Provence been depicted with more 
 lively gaiety. And the irony remains a poet's irony, 
 winged and soaring like the last line of a stanza. 
 Even in the passages where the author loses all 
 measure, and seems on the point of falling into 
 exaggeration, he is saved by the sure insight of an 
 artist's eye. His book never tells anything but the 
 truth, seen from its humorous side, and carried to 
 lyricism. I have always remarked the good humour 
 of his jests ; there is no bitterness at the bottom of 
 them, and nothing which is too roughly satirical. 
 M. Alphonse Daudet, as I have said, is no rebel, and 
 he loves mankind.' Elsewhere Zola remarks that 
 this book is one of special interest as exemplifying in 
 a characteristic manner one side of Daudet's talent. 
 
 22
 
 33 S ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 The story of Tartarin will be found humorous 
 even by those who, not knowing the Provencal, with 
 all his foibles and all his virtues, are unable to 
 appreciate the delicate and truthful portraiture 
 which has here been executed. Tartarin is the 
 King of the Nimrods of a small Provencal town. 
 Possessed of a very arsenal of lethal weapons, he 
 has never, for want of game, been able to distinguish 
 himself in proportion to his immense ambition. A 
 menagerie enters the town, and Tartarin spends 
 long hours in gazing at an African lion in the collec- 
 tion. This would indeed be a quarry worthy of 
 his guns. His neighbours jump to the conclusion 
 that his mind is made up to start for Africa, and 
 to rival Gerard, the Lion King. Tartarin had no 
 such intention, but is eventually forced away by the 
 stress of public opinion. He sails for Algeria with 
 a collection of guns, hunting-knives, and Nimrod 
 appliances. At Algiers he falls in with a couple of 
 swindlers, who work upon his artlessness. He 
 shoots no lions, and, indeed, seeks to shoot none, 
 until one day it is impressed upon him that the eye 
 of Tarascon is upon him, and that he must establish 
 his reputation. 
 
 In spite of the assurance of all those whom he 
 consults, that there are no lions left in Algeria, and
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 339 
 
 that Gerard has killed them all, he goes out, and is, 
 indeed, successful in killing one. It happens to be 
 a blind lion, which was being led by a string by two 
 negroes on their way to some religious ceremony. 
 Some time previously he had shot a donkey, which 
 he had mistaken for a lion, and had been obliged to 
 satisfy its owner with the 'sum of 200 francs. The 
 blind lion costs him still more. He is sued by 
 its owners, and has to pay ^"100 damages. The 
 skin, however, is a good trophy, and he sends it 
 home to Tarascon. In the meanwhile he is robbed 
 of his money by the swindlers, and has to beg for a 
 free passage home to France. As the steamer is 
 leaving the harbour a camel, which he had purchased 
 for his expeditions in the desert, having conceived a 
 violent affection for him, jumps into the water and 
 swims after the ship. It is taken on board, and 
 lends peculiar lustre to his triumphant entry into 
 Tarascon, where he finds his fellow-citizens in a 
 state of wild enthusiasm about his prowess. The 
 camel 'who saw him kill all his lions, good beast,' 
 silences even the few incredulous. 
 
 The English reader of these ' Prodigious Adven- 
 tures ' would prefer less restraint in the fun. It is 
 just this restraint which commends the book to its 
 French readers. Indeed, in spite of the moderation
 
 340 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 observed throughout by the author, there are many 
 of Daudet's critics who have regretted that he 
 should have lent his pen to caricature. But if by 
 contrast with his other creations ' Tartarin ' may be 
 considered as a caricature, it was, as has been 
 remarked above, a good thing that in this book the 
 author's Provencal penchant for exaggeration should 
 have found a full and free vent. Having satisfied 
 this inclination to the full, it did not hamper him in 
 his later creations. 
 
 It was, however, with the conte, or short story, 
 that Alphonse Daudet principally occupied himself 
 during the first years which followed his marriage, 
 and, indeed, ' Tartarin de Tarascon ' is by most of 
 his critics, as by Zola, classified amongst these, so 
 that passing over ' Le Petit Chose,' his first novel is 
 considered to be ' Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine.' It 
 was, indeed, with this longer work that Daudet first 
 conquered the great public, but even though he had 
 never written either this or any one of the long series 
 of novels which followed upon it, yet his literary 
 productions up to the year 1873, when this first 
 novel was written, would by themselves suffice to 
 rank him, as regards both style and the qualities of 
 imagination, sympathy and humour, with the first 
 French writers of the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century. Before proceeding, however, to the exami-
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 341 
 
 nation of this work, there must be recorded another 
 important event in Daudet's life, which took place 
 in the year 1867. 
 
 This was the birth, on November 16, of his son 
 Leon, who to-day, at the age of twenty-seven, 
 shares with Maurice Barres the foremost place 
 amongst the younger French novelists, and with his 
 last novel, ' Les Morticoles,' has achieved a success 
 established not only by the cordial appreciation of 
 the authorized critics, but also by the continued sale 
 of numerous editions. A spirit of revolt and bitter- 
 ness is breathed from the works of this young man, 
 who in this respect also differs entirely from his father. 
 
 Leon Daudet will be found a most interesting 
 study by those who believe in the theory of 
 heredity, being as he is the son of such a father 
 and of such a mother ; and they will point now to 
 some qualities as coming to him from his Northern 
 mother, with her cool common - sense, logic, and 
 love of style, and now to other qualities as inherited 
 from his Southern father, with his vivid imagination 
 and minute powers of observation. That such 
 investigations will not meet with the approval of 
 their subject on the ground of their possessing any 
 scientific value, is proved by the remark which the 
 author of ' Les Morticoles ' puts into the mouth of 
 one of the heroes of that book. ' Doubtless,' he
 
 342 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 writes, ' I partake of the nature of my parents, but 
 more than both I am myself. ... I could not be 
 reconstituted by pounding them up together in a 
 mortar. Thanks to my impressionability, my senses 
 are every second adding little lumps of clay to my 
 very personal statue.' 
 
 In the same way Monsieur G. Larroumet, late 
 Director of Fine Arts in France, writes of Leon 
 Daudet : ' From such a father and such a mother, a 
 son of literary inclinations must have received, if 
 one believes the theory of heredity, a nature in 
 which the antithesis should produce, as in the union 
 from which he issued, an equilibrium of logic and 
 sentiment. But of all the pretentious and murky 
 theories which we owe to contemporaneous science, 
 I do not know of one more contestable. It has by 
 no means been proved that a man must necessarily 
 resemble his father or mother, or even any one of 
 his direct or indirect ascendants. If a son often 
 reproduces atavistic characteristics, he often, also, 
 renders them unrecognisable. There are examples 
 of men of genius who have sprung from a race of 
 mediocre intelligence, and there are examples of 
 people of high intelligence who have engendered 
 descendants very unworthy of themselves. In this 
 respect, as in many others, Nature acts as she 
 pleases ; she does not consult us, she does not take
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 343 
 
 us into her confidence, and if she be conscious of her 
 work, with what pity must the assurance of our 
 affirmations inspire her ! This question of heredity 
 has been attacked by M. Leon Daudet himself, and 
 he will tell us what he thinks of it. For my part, 
 in comparing what he has already written with the 
 work of his father or the books of his mother, I find 
 that he resembles them but little, and, however 
 great may be my sympathy and my admiration for 
 these two writers, I cannot but congratulate him on 
 this circumstance. It needed great courage for 
 M. Leon Daudet to enter upon the career of letters. 
 As a rule, the heirs to a great name, if they in their 
 turn take to literature, cut but a sorry figure in 
 literary history. M. Alexandre Dumas is a glorious 
 exception to a too general rule, and has only realized 
 it by differing altogether from his father. M. Leon 
 Daudet affords an exception of the same kind. He 
 is himself, he has his own originality, and, as far as 
 he is concerned, is the negation of the law of literary 
 heredity.' 
 
 If Leon Daudet's literary work differs so com- 
 pletely from that of his father, so has his life differed 
 absolutely from his father's. ' I was always brought 
 up,' he told the writer, ' in the most extraordinary 
 cotton-wool ' a Parisian colloquialism for luxury - 
 ' and, in consequence, like happy nations, I have no
 
 344 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 history.' He was educated at the Charlemagne and 
 Louis-le-Grand Lycees, and, like his father, was of 
 a temperament strong enough to resist the in- 
 dividuality-crushing system of a French University 
 education. ' Among my professors,' he continued, 
 ' 1 found some excellent, others who were hideous 
 scoundrels. I had my petty woes, my little worries, 
 my little punishments ; but at that period in my life 
 I was disposed to obey rather than to revolt, and 
 did not feel injustice either towards myself or towards 
 others at all keenly. To-day,' he added significantly, 
 ' matters have altogether changed.' 
 
 On leaving school, Leon Daudet commenced to 
 study medicine. ' I had the taste for science, that 
 taste with which the whole age is radiating, and, an 
 Atheist by juvenile principle, I sincerely believed 
 that man could raise himself to the Divinity by 
 species of formulae. But at the same time I had 
 a taste for speculation in its lyrical form, and 
 studied philosophy with Burdeau ; and I used to 
 amuse myself in constructing thoughts in the style 
 of Kant, of Spinoza, and of Fichte all this with 
 a great respect for the biological accumulations of 
 Darwin and Spencer.' 
 
 The study of medicine, according to himself, 
 showed him the sufferings of the flesh, and con- 
 vinced him that all was for the worst in the most
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE '345 
 
 hideous society possible. ' At the same time,' he 
 continued, ' I went into the world and found that 
 the majority of clothed beings were as hideous as 
 the naked corpses, and that their selfishness was 
 in proportion to the quantity and quality of their 
 clothing. I saw hypocrisy and intrigue everywhere. 
 This falling-off of the masks coincided with certain 
 personal vexations to which I was exposed. I was 
 refused admission to the internal' 
 
 Just at this time Leon Daudet married Jeanne 
 Hugo, February 12, 1891, and, as he says, 'was 
 boiling over with unoccupied imagination.' His 
 experiences and his conclusions turned him away 
 from the study of science, for which he was now 
 ' filled with disgust* ' He turned to literature, and 
 wrote and published in succession the novels 
 ' Germe et Poussiere,' ' Hoeres,' ' L'Astre Noir,' 
 and ' Les Morticoles,' besides numerous contri- 
 butions of an advanced political nature to the anti- 
 Governmental Figaro, the Socialistic Germinal, the 
 Nouvelle Revue, and the Incttpendance Beige. 
 
 ' To-day,' he added, ' however pretentious such 
 an assertion may appear, I think that I have made 
 a clean sweep of most of the prejudices of my age.' 
 He has faith in no form of Government, in no code 
 of laws, and approves of no restraint of the individual 
 from without. He is, in brief, an Anarchist in the
 
 346 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 proper and dignified sense of the word. At the 
 same time he believes that religious faith is the only 
 deep and immovable motive which prevents men 
 from acting like wolves or tigers. He does not 
 hold any such faith himself, but he suffers from the 
 want of it, and he execrates scepticism of every 
 kind. He hates the memory of Renan. He looks 
 on the sciences as immense impostures. ' They 
 give neither truth (which can only be subjective) 
 nor happiness ; for they crush down the living, and 
 legalize death.' On the other hand, he has a great 
 faith in the destiny of literature, but holds that ' it 
 is sublime only in proportion to the remedy which 
 it brings for the numerous wrongs which social life 
 brings with it. Art for art, the literary ring, the 
 ccenaculum, are as stupid and as malodorous as the 
 academies, which are the schools of coteries.' His 
 literary gods are, in their different manners Rous- 
 seau, Goethe, Lamennais, Swift, Rabelais, Pascal, 
 Shakespeare, Balzac, Walt Whitman, and Aristo- 
 phanes. Like his father, Leon Daudet has a deep 
 sympathy for the weak and the oppressed, and 
 is sure of always being kept strong for the fight 
 ' by the atrocious injustices which each day brings 
 forth.' 
 
 ' In this practice,' he concluded, ' I have lost my 
 peace of mind, and I cannot hope ever to recover it.
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 347 
 
 The slogan of our modern existence is dtbattons 
 nous? . 
 
 This is the account, entirely from his own mouth, 
 of the opinions held by Leon Daudet, and it denotes 
 the standpoint from which he writes. Of his work 
 up to and including ' Les Morticoles,' which was 
 published in the spring of this year, 1894, it may 
 be said that he has kept the principles enunciated 
 above steadfastly before his eyes. The purpose of 
 his stories, which are pre-eminently stories with a 
 purpose, appears to be to establish the truth of that 
 dictum of Francois Rabelais which is prefixed to 
 ' Les Morticoles ': 
 
 'Science sans conscience est la ruine de 1'ame.' 
 
 In the construction of his stories he is evidently 
 influenced by Swift and Rabelais. He takes his 
 readers to fantastic countries, as Swift takes Gul- 
 liver and Rabelais takes Pantagruel. The scene 
 of his novel ' L'Astre Noir' is an imaginary con- 
 federate principality between France and Germany, 
 a buffer-state called Senestre. In ' Les Morticoles ' 
 his heroes, lost on the high seas, happen upon a 
 country of which geography does not make mention, 
 ' the land of the Morticoles,' by which is figured the 
 hospital world of Paris. In ' L'Astre Noir ' Daudet 
 has described, in the person of one Malauve, how
 
 348 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 a great mind and an incomparable intellect, unre- 
 strained by faith, may miserably go astray. In 
 ' Les Morticoles ' he expounds all the horrors of 
 which men of science, unrestrained by faith and the 
 human charity which proceeds from the belief that 
 men are the creatures of a living God, may be 
 capable. The picture is certainly overdrawn, but 
 not so pronouncedly so as to lose its value as a 
 warning cry. The last lines of the book may be 
 quoted, as the conclusion arrived at from this pitiless 
 exposure, contained in three hundred and fifty-eight 
 pages of close type. It is Felix Canelon, the hero, 
 who speaks : ' I then placed myself between my two 
 companions, with one hand resting on the shoulder 
 of each, and turning towards the horizon, where 
 Freedom lay, I cried out : " My God, Thou art the 
 source of all goodness, of all love. Without Thee 
 conscience is a mere word, and man but a heap of 
 mud and blood. Let the example of the Morticoles, 
 which we have quoted, save the whole world. 
 These unhappy men believed that matter was all- 
 sufficient ; they have driven Thee forth from their 
 minds. Thy vengeance lies in their state of false- 
 hood, of hatred, of wretchedness. Believing them- 
 selves free, they are slaves ; believing themselves 
 immortal by knowledge, they are the most ignorant 
 and the most ephemeral of men, for they are blind
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE 349 
 
 to the high truth which lies in Thee alone, and pro- 
 ceeds from no other source but Thee. . . . Weighed 
 down with evils, blind and deaf, they will ever 
 grope in a killing obscurity, whilst the simple in 
 heart and mind shall see clearly, shall enjoy pure 
 emotions and an eternal beatitude. Glory to Thee, 
 alone glorious ! Woe, thrice woe, upon this un- 
 hallowed city where Thy name is forgotten !' 
 
 ' Les Morticoles,' as has already been mentioned, 
 has achieved decided success in Paris, and it would 
 be quite untrue to state, as has been stated by some 
 of Leon Daudet's critics, that this may be accounted 
 for by the fact that the novel is supposed to be 
 a novel in which well-known living people are 
 attacked. The novelty of the theme, the minute 
 care with which every detail has been worked out, 
 the author's pleasant and vivacious style, all con- 
 tribute to render the book a popular one. It may 
 be noticed as a sign of its success that the word 
 ' Morticole,' as designating a doctor, has already 
 been adopted by the Paris public, just as the word 
 ' Delobelle ' has been borrowed from M. Leon 
 Daudet's father to designate a pretentious and 
 incapable mummer. 
 
 M. Leon Daudet is at present at work on a novel 
 to be called ' L' Automate, 1 a title which shows that 
 the series of philippics upon which he has engaged
 
 350 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 has not been exhausted. It will be followed by a 
 book entitled ' Le Fleuve Humain.' This young 
 writer is a man of great industry, and, thanks to 
 circumstances, is able to give himself up entirely and 
 without disturbances to his art. His study in the 
 Avenue Kleber is the workroom of a savant rather 
 than of a young novelist ; but his love for the 
 serious by no means interferes with a natural 
 vivacity and gaiety which may be found in his 
 books also. A glance at his writing-table shows 
 that its owner does not work with a running pen. 
 It is hollowed out in the centre, so that when he 
 is at work at this table there is a flap on either 
 side of him. Each flap is for the books which, as 
 his novel progresses, have to be consulted. This 
 little peculiarity establishes the fact that Leon 
 Daudet relies on the serious study of authentic 
 materials and 'documents.' It is difficult to predict 
 what may be the future of the scientific novel as 
 typified in the work of Leon Daudet. It can only 
 be recorded that, as the evidence stands at present, 
 there exists amongst the Paris public a large number 
 of readers who take considerable interest in this 
 novel experiment in the art of fiction.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET'S SHORT STORIES. 
 
 ONE often hears it said in these, days, when under 
 the stress of circumstances people embark on litera- 
 ture in the same commercial spirit as on all other 
 bread -winning professions, that it is disadvan- 
 tageous for a writer to apply himself to the com- 
 position of short stories, because in so doing he 
 sacrifices, for the sake of greatly inferior re- 
 muneration, an idea, or occasionally a series of 
 ideas, which might serve him for the more market- 
 able, and certainly more remunerative, novel. Of 
 few writers can it be said with more truth than of 
 Alphonse Daudet, that in his short stories he has 
 lavished ideas which, had his imagination ever 
 failed him when he afterwards came to write books, 
 would have stood him in excellent stead. Of many 
 of Daudet's contes and nouvelles it may be said, as 
 both Zola and Lemaitre have said, that they are 
 complete novels in miniature, with exposition^ de-
 
 352 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 velopment, and denouement, which, if duly elabor- 
 ated, would have furnished forth volumes well 
 worthy to stand beside ' Sapho,' the ' Nabab,' and 
 all the other novels which Daudet has written. 
 
 In a conversation which the writer had with 
 Alphonse Daudet, the latter remarked that it was 
 he who invented the short story. In saying this, M. 
 Daudet meant to imply that it was he who was the 
 first to contribute short stories to the periodical 
 press, for, of course, the short story, call it conte, or 
 nouvelle, or fabliau, is as old as French literature. 
 Nor is it quite certain that Daudet can lay claim to 
 the exclusive credit of an innovation which has 
 certainly done much to raise the standard of French 
 periodical publications, and to invest them with a 
 literarv value which raises them above the level, in 
 
 > 
 
 this respect at least, of the periodical press of other 
 countries. For unless one be mistaken, Emile 
 Zola was at this time also writing short stories, the 
 admirable miniatures which are to-day known as 
 ' Contes a Ninon ' and ' Nouvelles Contes a Ninon.' 
 It is, however, incontestable that of all con- 
 temporary writers it was Alphonse Daudet who 
 applied himself with the greatest energy, enthu- 
 siasm, and affection to this form of literary com- 
 position, and therein achieved a success which only 
 his later triumphs have to some extent obscured.
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 353 
 
 For, as has already been remarked, the world will 
 not admit universality of talent. A man must be 
 labelled, and must be known by his label. We 
 applaud Guy de Maupassant as a writer of short 
 stories, whereas his best work is to be found in two 
 of his novels ; and we hail Alphonse Daudet as a 
 great novelist, when he has at least equal claim to 
 our applause as a writer of short stories, which in 
 point of imagination, invention and style are superior 
 to any which have been written in France during 
 the last half of this century. 
 
 Emile Zola is of opinion that the reason why 
 Alphonse Daudet in the early part of his literary 
 career devoted himself almost exclusively to the 
 writing of short stories was that, being in need of 
 immediate remuneration, he could not afford the 
 time for work which by its nature produces only a 
 deferred remuneration. One does not think, from 
 one's knowledge of Daudet's character and of the 
 ideal which all along he had set before him, that any 
 such consideration moved him. It is much more 
 probable that the greater possibilities of artistic 
 treatment offered by the conte or nouvelle, as com- 
 pared to the long novel, attracted him, whilst, on 
 the other hand, his capacity for industry and sus- 
 tained effort was by no means fully developed at this 
 period of his career, and he would thus be attracted 
 
 23
 
 354 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 by tasks which could be more rapidly completed. 
 Nobody can say that it was the desire for immediate 
 remuneration which prompted Guy de Maupassant 
 to write short stories in preference to longer works, 
 because Guy de Maupassant enjoyed a handsome 
 private fortune ; and why should Alphonse Daudet 
 be accused of writing ' pot-boilers ' because at that 
 time his purse was light ? One cannot expect in 
 the cicade the laborious industry of the ant, and 
 these were the cicade years of Alphonse Daudet's 
 career. 
 
 His marvellous series of short stories commenced 
 with the ' Lettres de mon Moulin' in 1866, the 
 first of which appeared in De Villemessant's 
 L'Evenement. After his marriage Daudet returned 
 to Provence, taking his wife with him ; and from 
 the same house at Fontvielle, on the road between 
 Aries and Avignon, collected material for a new 
 series of ' Letters from my Windmill.' The latter 
 were written at Champrosay, in Eugene Delacroix's 
 studio, and were published in the Figaro during the 
 years 1867, 1868, and 1869. Many of these little 
 masterpieces cost their author weeks of unremitting 
 labour. Never did author so assiduously perform 
 the functions of whetstone. It is recorded that 
 days were often spent over one page in that terrible 
 hand-to-hand fight with words of which the con-
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 355 
 
 scientious writer alone knows. These stories strike 
 the keynote of Daudet's talent. The reader finds 
 in them all the qualities which distinguish this 
 writer's work : infinite pity, a comfortable optimism, 
 and a spirit of genuine humour, which at times 
 develops into rollicking fun. But especially are 
 they noticeable for the extreme polish which radiates 
 from every line. The infinite capacity for taking 
 pains, which has been described as synonymous with 
 genius, is here most strikingly exemplified. Zola 
 speaks of these stories as ' little jewels.' Lemaitre 
 says that the word 'charming,' cleansed of the 
 ignoble uses to which it has been put, might be used 
 alone to qualify them. 
 
 In the ' Lettres de mon Moulin,' then, we find 
 exemplified, apart from the perfection of style which 
 has characterized everything that Daudet has ever 
 written, his supreme qualities of pity, fancy, and 
 humour. For a picture of human pity what better 
 illustration could one need than the little sketch 
 4 Les Deux Auberges ? Here we are shown two 
 inns, one opposite the other, in some Provencal 
 town. The one is full of customers ; to the other no 
 one ever comes. For the hostess of the deserted 
 inn, as she tells the author, ' is not pretty, and is 
 always sad.' She suffers from fever, and then she has 
 recently lost her two little children. People always
 
 356 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 like to see cheerful faces, and so all the customers 
 prefer to go to the inn on the other side of the way, 
 where the hostess is a buxom Aries woman, ' with 
 lace and a gold chain which goes thrice round 
 her neck/ Even her own husband prefers the 
 other inn. ' Men are like that,' explains the poor 
 woman ; ' they don't like to see people cry, and I 
 I am always crying since my little ones died.' 
 ' Hush !' she adds, as a Provencal song breaks out 
 over the way ; ' there he is singing again.' And 
 trembling, with her hands stretched out in front of 
 her, her cheeks bedewed by large tears, which only 
 added to her uncomeliness, she stood there as in an 
 ecstasy before the window, listening to her Jose as 
 he sang for the woman of Aries : 
 
 ' " Le premier lui a dit : 
 
 Bonjour, belle mignonne."' 
 
 ' Le Portefeuille de Bixiou ' is another story in 
 this collection in which Daudet's pity for the weak, 
 the unfortunate, the conquered in life's battle, for 
 whom Zola ' has no pity whatever,' again manifests 
 itself. For Daudet is a lover of mankind, and its 
 misfortunes afflict him where they rejoice others. 
 It is proof of a strong nature that this should be so, 
 for Daudet had many reasons to be bitter. One 
 need but remember his youth. And in this con-
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 357 
 
 nection he himself has said, no doubt with reference 
 to himself, in ' Jack ': ' Childhoods so sorrowful as 
 these produce bitter maturities. The joys of life, 
 prosperities without number, are needed to efface 
 the impression of these first years ; and one sees 
 men who are rich, happy, powerful, and in high 
 places, who never seem to enjoy their good fortune, 
 so completely have their mouths retained the bitter 
 curve of their former disappointments, and their 
 manners that shamefaced timidity which is acquired 
 by young bodies in old and shabby clothes, made up 
 out of discarded garments.' 
 
 It may be urged, indeed, that Daudet's miseries in 
 youth were not of long duration ; that the excellent 
 good fortune which befell him so shortly after his 
 arrival in Paris was more than sufficient to efface 
 any feeling of resentment against life and mankind 
 which he may have acquired in the years of un- 
 happiness ; and that consequently his buoyant and 
 unvarying cheerfulness, his radiant optimism, may 
 justly be attributed to exceptional circumstances 
 rather than to a strong nature and a faithful creed. 
 As a set-off, however, we would point out that 
 during the last twelve years of his life Alphonse 
 Daudet has known suffering of the keenest nature, 
 a pain-racked body, unceasing torment, the annihila- 
 tion of all the hopes that he had formed for his
 
 35 8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 middle age ; that, in spite of his activity, he is 
 constrained to inertia ; that, though he is full of 
 mental energy, his body refuses its offices ; that the 
 periods in which actual pain quits him for awhile have 
 been compared by him to those intervals of rest 
 which, for crueller torment, were accorded by the 
 Romans to the crucified whom they took down from 
 the cross previous to once more nailing them on the 
 accursed tree ; and that, in spite of all this, his 
 sympathy has never wavered, his altruism has never 
 turned to egotism, his merry, optimistic cheerfulness 
 has always remained the same. This is the most 
 lovable feature in a wholly lovable nature, and it is 
 one that may well be insisted upon in these days of 
 bitter complaints, which are for the most part the 
 wailings of irritated selfishness. It is his great 
 strength, and at the same time his weakness ; for 
 where he has been prompted, as in the case of 
 'Jack,' to write a 'cruel, a bitter book,' his pity 
 urges him to untie the knots in the knout with 
 which his indignation has armed him. Thus, of the 
 very men whom he had steeled himself to scourge, 
 we find him writing in ' Jack ': ' So much misery was 
 written on their shabby appearance, that, in spite of 
 everything, one felt compassion at the sight of the 
 feverish brilliancy of these eyes intoxicated with 
 illusions, before these ravaged countenances, where
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 359 
 
 all the vanquished dreams, all the hopes struck 
 dead by failure, had left their traces.' And one 
 might quote many other instances of this untying 
 of the knots in a salutary and desirable knout. 
 
 In ' L'Homme a la Cervelle d'Or ' Daudet dis- 
 plays a fantastic vein which reminds one of Hoff- 
 mann. He tells of a man who is gifted by nature 
 with a brain of pure gold, and goes squandering it 
 the world over, till in the end all the gold is gone, 
 and his feverish, groping fingers can bring forth 
 from his head only tiny fragments of gold stained 
 with blood. One fancies that this conceit may have 
 come to him one evening as he sat in the noisy 
 Brasserie des Martyrs, and watched the men with 
 the brains of gold, and foresaw the day when their 
 prodigality would wreck the store, and blood only 
 would come at their last call Murger, Baudelaire, 
 and a thousand other prodigal sons of Nature, for 
 whom she has no pardon when once they have 
 squandered their heritage. 
 
 In a similar strain, but here blended with humour, 
 is his ' La Pendule de Bougival,' which reminds one 
 of the manner of Wilhelm Hauff. This story is to 
 be found in ' Corites du Lundi.' It relates how a 
 Parisian clock, stolen by Bavarian soldiers, finds its 
 way to Munich, and by its influence debauches a re- 
 spectable family of German bourgeois, transforming
 
 360 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 them from staid and learned citizens into flippant, 
 frivolous, and pleasure-loving persons, who finally 
 flee from Munich with the art-treasures confided 
 by the Government to their care. One thinks 
 of Andersen and his ' Goloshes ' in reading this 
 story, though the general impression is that Daudet 
 had read Hauff, which was not the case. 
 
 For excellent examples of Daudet's humour one 
 need but read ' L' Elixir du Pere Gaucher' (already 
 referred to), ' Le Cure de Cucugnan,' and in ' Contes 
 du Lundi ' his ' Le Pape est Mort.' This is the true 
 story of an act of youthful untruthfulness, and on 
 this account is excellent testimony to the fact that 
 Daudet's humour is innate and personal. When he 
 was quite a little boy in Lyons, and had one day 
 come home very late from one of his truant excur- 
 sions, he was in great perplexity how to explain his 
 delay and escape chastisement. So when his father 
 angrily asked him, ' Where have you been ?' he 
 answered, by a sudden inspiration, ' Oh, haven't you 
 heard ? The Pope is dead.' This grave piece of 
 news caused his parents to forget all about his fault, 
 and the evening was spent in sad stories of the 
 deaths of Popes. The next morning everybody was 
 too glad to hear that the report was unfounded to 
 think of resuming inquiry into the cause of little 
 Alphonse's untoward absence.
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 361 
 
 But what more than anything else is apparent 
 from Alphonse Daudet's short stories, as contained 
 in his ' Lettres de mon Moulin,' his ' Contes du 
 Lundi,' his ' Lettres a un Absent,' and his ' Femmes 
 d' Artistes,' is the universality of his perception, his 
 wide knowledge of humanity and of human life in 
 all its phases, his comprehension of motives, whether 
 base or noble, and his conviction, with all this know- 
 ledge, that, though not everything that is is right, 
 only a little tolerance, a little altruism, are necessary 
 to make a very habitable world of the world we live 
 in. Great as is one's admiration for De Maupassant, 
 we are forced to admit, in reading Daudet's short 
 stories, that he is but Daudet's disciple, and that his 
 originality only lies in the more or less pronounced 
 dose of bitterness which he infused into each one of 
 his tales. ' Le Prussien de Belisaire,' ' Le Petit 
 Stenne,' ' Maison a Louer,' and ' Les Petits Pates,' 
 are all stories which De Maupassant would have 
 loved to tell, whilst perverting the motives of their 
 heroes, and insisting on the baseness, egotism, and 
 cupidity of their conduct. As for the story entitled 
 ' Un Teneur de Livres ' in ' Contes du Lundi,' it is 
 De Maupassant to the life ; and it is a fact on which 
 readers of Daudet may congratulate themselves, that 
 it is, perhaps, the only occasion on which Daudet's 
 tolerance did not untie the knots of the scourge
 
 362 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 which his revolt against certain forms of selfishness 
 had put into his hand. We have here the book- 
 keeper at the Paris Morgue, who, on his way to his 
 office, buys apples for roasting on his office-stove, 
 and, whilst registering the suicide of a girl who had 
 killed herself because her illegitimate child was 
 dying of hunger, is greatly occupied as to the state 
 of the roasting apples. In this one little story 
 Daudet let his bitterness such bitterness as by 
 painful and laborious pressure on his gall he was 
 able to produce flow out in a tiny stream which 
 almost at once ran dry. 
 
 Even the great Zola has in some respects been 
 preceded by Alphonse Daudet in this ' Conte du 
 Lundi.' Take the following passage in his sketch 
 entitled ' Alsace, Alsace ' : ' . . . Debout devant son 
 champ ruine, un grand paysan long, voute, vetu a la 
 mode de la vieille Alsace, regardait cela silencieuse- 
 ment. II y avait une vraie douleur sur sa figure, 
 mais en meme temps quelqtie chose de resign^ et de 
 calme, je ne sais quel espoir vague, comme s'il 
 s'etait dit que sous les epis couches sa terre lui 
 restait toujours vivante, fertile, fidele, et que tant 
 que la terre est la, il ne faut pas desesperer.' Now 
 compare this with the notable passage in Emile 
 Zola's novel ' La Debacle,' where, at the end of the 
 battle of Sedan, Maurice sees a peasant whom he
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 363 
 
 had noticed in the morning : ' . . . le paysan qu'il 
 avait vu le matin et qui continuait a labourer sans 
 hate, poussant sa charrue attelee d'un grand cheval 
 blanc. Pourquoi perdre un jour ? Ce n'etait pas 
 parce qu'on se battait, que le ble cesserait de croitre 
 et le monde de vivre.' 
 
 Again, in his story 'Arthur' in ' Contes du Lundi * 
 Daudet shows that he had seen all the horrors that 
 alcohol produces in a workman's family. His de- 
 duction from an admirable exposition of the effects 
 of drunkenness is not an ' Assommoir,' but the reflec- 
 tion that it is hardly reasonable for workmen who 
 drink their wages and beat their wives to wish to be 
 masters of society. 
 
 The production of these various masterpieces was 
 so unremunerative that a glance at Daudet's income 
 during this period at once disposes of the statement 
 that in writing them he was moved by any thought 
 of lucre. As a matter of fact, when, in 1872, 
 Edmond About, writing for the London Atheuezum 
 on the incomes of various men of letters in France, 
 came to consult him as to what might be his annual 
 earnings from his pen, Daudet made up his accounts, 
 and found that his average receipts from his pen, 
 including his dramatic pieces, did not exceed ^200 
 a year. 
 
 This work, however, brought him recognition of
 
 364 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 another kind. In 1870, just before the war, Alphonse 
 Daudet was created a Knight of the Legion of 
 Honour, at an age when this distinction is rarely, if 
 ever, accorded to Frenchmen. It is not recorded 
 how Daudet received his nomination. To-day he 
 expresses some contempt for distinctions of this 
 kind, as given by politicians to artists. Some time 
 ago, when speaking to the writer about his dignity 
 as an officer cf the Legion of Honour, he remarked : 
 ' The part of my success which gave me the least 
 pleasure, perhaps, was my advancement in the 
 Legion of Honour to the degree of officer. I re- 
 member well, it was seven years ago, and I was 
 watching Mounet-Sully playing the part of Hamlet 
 in a box at the Theatre Francais, and just when the 
 curtain fell on the first act, and I had risen, saying, 
 " I must go and embrace Mounet ; he has been 
 sublime !" I felt myself plucked by the sleeve, and, 
 looking round, saw Floquet. He seemed much 
 excited, and said : " I have a piece of good news for 
 you, Daudet. It is settled. Your nomination as an 
 officer of the Legion of Honour will appear in to- 
 morrow's Journal Officiet" And I said : " Oh, I 
 can't stop to talk about that now. I must go and 
 kiss Mounet, who has been magnificent !" And I 
 remember reading in Floquet's eyes that he did not 
 believe that my indifference was sincere. These
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 365 
 
 people who decorate us against our will I am sure 
 that I never solicited any such honour, and if I did 
 not refuse it, it was only because it is priggish to 
 refuse it, because it gets one talked about these 
 people, I say, are all people who themselves are not 
 decorated, who seem to despise the reward which 
 they dangle before our eyes, saying : " If you are 
 good boys, and write properly, you shall have this 
 pretty cross." They treat us like chileiren, despising 
 themselves what they hold out to us as such a great 
 inducement. Floquet wouldn't believe that I did 
 not care one snap of the fingers for his rosette, and 
 that all I wanted was to be allowed to get away 
 behind the scenes and to compliment Mounet on his 
 success. When I saw the news officially announced 
 next day, I felt sorry because I had received this 
 distinction above the head of De Goncourt, and I 
 feared lest De Goncourt would feel hurt at the 
 preference accorded to me.' 
 
 De Goncourt, by the way, cares even less for the 
 ribbons of the French Government. In one passage 
 of his Diary he expresses his intention to ask the 
 Minister to strike his name off the rolls of the 
 Legion of Honour. 
 
 Zola, on the other hand, does not conceal his 
 satisfaction in the possession of the officer's rosette, 
 which was only given him on the conclusion of the
 
 366 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Rougon-Macquart series. He is fully entitled to 
 every satisfaction that his heroic life has won for 
 him. 
 
 Daudet's literary activity was naturally interrupted 
 by the ' terrible year,' which for him, at least, was 
 laden with treasure in the shape of observations to be 
 made, incidents to be marked down, characters to 
 be studied, and emotions to be experienced. Many 
 are the admirable tales which he has written about 
 the war. ' Contes du Lundi ' contain several master- 
 pieces which are the result of his experiences and 
 reflections during this troubled period. Many con- 
 sider his ' La Derniere Classe ' and ' La Partie de 
 Billard ' in this volume his two best stories. Cer- 
 tainly, the pathos of the subject in the former, and 
 the wonderful picturesqueness of the style in the 
 latter, place them altogether in the forefront of his 
 literary achievements. 
 
 De Maupassant would have been pleased to write 
 the story ' Le Siege de Berlin,' where a pious family 
 delude a dying veteran in Paris during the siege 
 with fictitious reports of the victories of the French 
 troops. In this story, by the way, as in certain 
 others in the same book, a defect excusable, per- 
 haps, but none the less regrettable is to be com- 
 mented upon, namely, the abuse of ' coincidences. 
 The veteran in this story falls dead at the very
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 367 
 
 moment when he recognises that he has been deceived, 
 that it is the Prussians, and not the victorious French 
 army, who are marching into Paris. In other stories, 
 also, we find the heroes falling dead just at the 
 critical moment, and even the chances of pathology 
 do not warrant such extermination. It is a per- 
 version of the dramatic sense. 
 
 In ' Robert Helmont,' on the other hand, pro- 
 portion is altogether observed, and we have here a 
 vivid and altogether truthful set of pictures of the 
 great and terrible drama. The peasant with his 
 pruning-shears, who murders stray Prussians in the 
 forest of Sennart, is a character worthy of classical 
 tragedy. Daudet has recorded that it was the war 
 that first set him thinking of the seriousness of life. 
 There is no doubt that the stress through which, in 
 common with all his fellow-citizens, he passed during 
 that period influenced him greatly for the good. It 
 opened his eyes, as it did the eyes of most of his 
 compatriots, to the fact that, however charming 
 might be the existence of a butterfly, the butterfly 
 by its very lightness runs serious risk of extermina- 
 tion. 
 
 He relates that no period of his life is more 
 vividly stamped on his memory than the period of 
 the war. 'That year,' he told the writer, 'is as 
 clear in my mind as if it were yesterday. I can see
 
 3 68 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 the unlit streets, and the slouching shadows passing 
 through them. I remember, as if they had just 
 crossed my lips, the infamous fricassees that we 
 ate.' He did not go to the front, but remained in 
 Paris, and during the siege was incorporated in the 
 National Guards. ' I was a soldier at the time, and, 
 oh! so energetic and full of life. It was the most 
 active period of my existence. I was always a 
 batailleur, fond of sword-play and the hazards of 
 combat, and I think that that period was the most 
 intense of my existence. One date that I remember 
 most vividly was October 31, when the news of the 
 surrender of Metz reached Paris. I was then in 
 the 97th de marche, and was sent to communicate 
 the news on a winter's morning to Myre de Villiers, 
 who took me with him to carry it to the soldiers in 
 the different forts round Paris. What a heartrending 
 business it was ! At each fort the General was sur- 
 rounded by the men. " Metz has surrendered ! We 
 have been betrayed ! Bazaine has turned a traitor !" 
 was what we had to say. I can remember some 
 who burst into tears, others who threw down their 
 guns and swore horribly. It was a great and a 
 terrible experience.' 
 
 A picture of Alphonse Daudet during the war, in 
 the performance of his military duties, may be of 
 interest : ' The scene takes place in the month of
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 369 
 
 January, 1871. A battalion of the National Guard is 
 encamped outside the fortifications, whose duty it is 
 to watch the Versailles gate. A number of soldiers 
 are seen to leave the battalion and to advance into 
 the open. This is to post a sentry at the junction 
 of two high-roads. This sentry is quite a young 
 man, a bleu, who no doubt has never served before. 
 He wears large spectacles, the spectacles of a short- 
 sighted man, and on his military cloak gleams the 
 cross of the Legion of Honour. He walks up and 
 down, stamping his feet to warm them, clutching his 
 rifle, which, in spite of his woollen gloves, freezes his 
 fingers, and hums a soldier's song. Hours go by, 
 and the sky grows dark. Vague murmurs rise from 
 the white plain, now lighted only by the wan beams 
 of the moon. The young soldier glances at the 
 horizon with anxiety. Has he been forgotten ? 
 Has the battalion returned to Paris ? Why has he 
 not been relieved ? Suddenly he starts. A sound 
 of steps has fallen on his ear. He stands on guard. 
 " Who goes there ?" " Officer's round." " Give 
 the countersign." It is indeed an officer, a superior 
 officer, a colonel. Our private is already presenting 
 arms, when the Colonel calls out : " Daudet !" 
 " Claretie !" "And what are you doing here, my 
 poor Daudet?" "As you may see, Colonel, I am 
 on sentry duty." " Poor fellow ! why, you are frozen 
 
 24
 
 370 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 to death." "Yes, I am." "Come on, you must 
 come with me." And off they go together, Private 
 Daudet and Colonel Claretie, arm-in-arm, both 
 shivering with the cold, but delighted at this happy 
 meeting.' 
 
 When the Commune broke out Daudet left Paris. 
 His reflections as to what might have become of 
 him if he had allowed himself to be carried away by 
 the fever, which at that time had infected most of 
 his fellow-citizens, may be found most eloquently set 
 forth in his address to ' Mon Kepi ' in the ' Contes 
 du Luhdi.' 
 
 Returning to Paris after the re-establishment of 
 order, he set to work on the immense quantity of 
 material which he had collected during the previous 
 twelve months, and it was then that the stories of 
 the war which are to be found in * Robert Helmont ' 
 and the ' Contes du Lundi ' were written. At the 
 same time (in 1872) he made another bid for success 
 as a playwright, and produced a melodrama, ' Lise 
 Tavernier,' at the Ambigu in the course of that 
 year. The piece was badly mounted, because the 
 manager was a man without capital, and failed com- 
 pletely on this or other accounts. He has not 
 thought fit to republish it amongst his dramatic 
 works. 
 
 At the age, then, of thirty-two we find Alphonse
 
 HIS SHORT STORIES 371 
 
 Daudet already known to fame as the author of 
 two successful plays, of numerous remarkable short 
 stories, and of two long novels (of which one had 
 been fairly successful, and the other was pushing its 
 way towards an almost unparalleled popularity), a 
 writer distinguished by the Government, the hus- 
 band of a distinguished wife, and the father of a child 
 of the greatest promise. And yet, such has been 
 his career since, that it may be said of him that at 
 that period he was not even on the threshold of his 
 future greatness.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ' FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER A1NE.' 
 
 ' EGLI ci tiene a quella disgraziata Arlesienne.' 
 Thus the noted Italian publicist, Edmondo de 
 Amicis, wrote years ago about Alphonse Daudet. 
 And, indeed, perhaps the one little grudge that 
 Alphonse Daudet does bear against Fortune is, that 
 at the time when its success would most have 
 pleased him, his play, ' L' Arlesienne,' failed. Let it 
 be stated at once, that since that notable first per- 
 formance, on the night of October i, 1872, at the 
 Vaudeville Theatre, when a cynical boulevard audi- 
 ence laughed away this poetical idyll, the play has met 
 with better receptions at various revivals. It 'has 
 made its million,' to quote the coarse, if eloquent, 
 words of a theatrical manager who spoke about it 
 to the writer at Daudet's house, and it is to-day 
 looked upon as a piece that will draw money under 
 certain favourable conditions of public feeling. 
 
 But Daudet does not seem ever to have for-
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE' 373 
 
 given or forgotten that chute notable, as Zola calls 
 it. That is not difficult to understand. It contains 
 much of his best work, all the poetry of his Provence, 
 and a certain dramatic originality which must have 
 been indulged in by the author with the firm deter- 
 mination to stand or fall thereby. Having fallen, 
 his mortification could only be the greater. It was 
 doubtless this originality of treatment which dis- 
 pleased the public. Originality is the last desire of a 
 theatre-going public. In ' L'Arlesienne ' the spec- 
 tator is unceasingly exercised about a woman of Aries, 
 who never appears on the stage, a person not only 
 mute, but invisible. This is a very delicate con- 
 ception, but it irritates your ordinary play-goer. 
 ' Where is the Arl6sienne ?' he cries. ' Produce 
 her.' And when the author does not produce her, 
 but continues until the fall of the last curtain to 
 suggest her, the playgoer will not admit that there 
 can be any such person. He has all the indigna- 
 tion that was felt by Betsy Prig on a notable occa- 
 sion. It is invariably unsafe to provoke a curiosity 
 in the playgoer which is not to be satisfied. 
 
 In dramatic writing, certain vulgarities of curi- 
 osity have to be regarded, to which originality must 
 be sacrificed. Ernest Daudet opines that the public 
 of Paris was sated with things Provencal by the 
 production of ' Mireille,' which it had applauded.
 
 374 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Zola says that the play failed because ' it was 
 altogether too novel,' adding that ' the piece had 
 the immense fault of having an accent, a language 
 all of its own.' When one of the characters in the 
 play spoke of ortolans singing, everybody in the 
 theatre laughed. The only song of the ortolan that 
 the Parisian knows is its frizzling murmur as the 
 spit glides round. This laughter more especially 
 wounded Daudet's heart, and in conversation with 
 De Amicis, years afterwards, he vindicated the song 
 of the ortolan ' si mise a imitare il loro trillo ' re- 
 moving from his mouth a pipe, presented to him by 
 Flaubert, to do so. They laughed at the love-scene 
 between the old shepherd and the aged wife of a 
 former employer, whom he had left because he felt 
 that a guilty love was springing up in his heart for 
 her, and did not meet again till age in him and her 
 had removed all danger of guilt. The boulevard 
 Parisian could not, of course, be expected to believe 
 in a sacrifice of this sort, nor to admit it on a stage 
 where, as Heine said, adultery is the manure from 
 which modern French play-writing almost entirely 
 draws its life. The play failed, in spite of its 
 intrinsic charm, in spite of Bizet's music. The 
 poetical story therein dramatized may be read in the 
 tale entitled ' L'Arlesienne ' in the ' Lettres de mon 
 Moulin.'
 
 1 FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE' 375 
 
 ' Risero dell ' " Arlesienne " e applaudirono 
 " Fromont Jeune" ' (they laughed at ' L'Arlesienne,' 
 and they were about to applaud ' Fromont Jeune') 
 said Daudet to De Amicis, who adds that, after 
 making this remark, Daudet shrugged his shoulders 
 (' E scrollo le spalle '). 
 
 Yet it was during one of the rehearsals of this 
 play that Daudet first conceived the germ-idea of 
 the story which was to bring him fame and fortune. 
 It struck him whilst listening to his piece that the 
 Parisians would no doubt be more interested in 
 a story nearer to their hearts, ' unrolling itself in 
 their atmosphere.' He was at that time living in 
 the Marais quarter of Paris, and it seemed to him 
 that this would be an excellent background for a 
 story of modern Parisian life. 
 
 The Daudets were residing in a flat in a house 
 which had at one time been the mansion of the 
 Lamoignon family, illustrious in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries in the magistracy of Paris, a 
 house which De Goncourt describes as ' a piece of 
 the Louvre, inhabited in these numerous little 
 lodgings into which the immense apartments of 
 former days have been cut up by numberless 
 industries, the names of which are to be read on the 
 stone landings of the staircases. This was the very 
 house to live in to write " Fromont Jeune et Risler
 
 376 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Aine." Daudet, who lived here from 1868 on- 
 wards, used to say that the quiet, laborious atmo- 
 sphere of this house had done much towards pacify- 
 ing the ardour of his temperament, and had inspired 
 him with a taste for industry. 
 
 Having found his background, it seemed to him 
 that a partnership between two partners of entirely 
 different natures would afford the subject of an 
 admirable study of character and modern life. His 
 early reminiscences of his father's unfortunate 
 partnerships satisfied him of the picturesqueness 
 of the contrasts to be drawn from ' this com- 
 mercial collaboration, where mutual interests couple 
 together in unremitting toil, and sometimes for years 
 together, beings different in temperament and in 
 education.' It was natural that on to this idea the 
 second one, of a jealousy between the wives of the 
 two partners whom he proposed to depict, should 
 graft itself; that one of the two women should be 
 as noble as the other was contemptible ; that the 
 noble wife should have a contemptible husband, and 
 that the contemptible wife should be married to the 
 noble husband. ' Unfortunately,' he adds, ' there 
 must be passion in a play.' For the original idea of 
 ' Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine ' was for a stage 
 play, and the plot was conceived from a playwright's 
 point of view. It accordingly became necessary to
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE' 377 
 
 create a base intrigue between the two characters 
 predestined to base intrigue, the contemptible wife 
 and the contemptible husband. 
 
 The unjust reception accorded to ' L'Arlesienne ' 
 disgusted Daudet, for the time being, with the stage, 
 and he accordingly determined to write this story as 
 a novel, not as a play, 
 
 In his account of this book, given in ' Trente Ans 
 de Paris,' Alphonse Daudet declares that all the 
 characters in ' " Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine " 
 existed, and may be living still.' The old miser, 
 Gardinois, Madame Fremont's grandfather, was, 
 Daudet declares, one of his friends, and if he 
 sacrificed him to his book, it was because ' he could 
 not suppress this type of terrible and selfish old 
 man.' Planus, the cashier, was an Alsatian cashier 
 in the Rue de Londres, by name Scherer. Risler 
 was an Alsatian, who had worked in the Daudets' 
 factory in Nimes. The immortal Delobelle was 
 made up of various types of pretentious, inefficient 
 actors, such as every playwright may meet in the 
 world that surges round the playhouse. Sidonie is 
 also copied from nature, but Daudet says that the 
 original was not so bad as the heroine of his story. 
 However this may be, there are certainly thousands 
 of Sidonies to be met with any day in a few hours' 
 walk in the streets of Paris. The frivolous, heart-
 
 378 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 less woman, with neither religion nor scruples, and 
 no motives other than vanity and ambition, warped 
 by instinctive perversity, which the perversity of 
 modern Parisian life has intensified, is one of the 
 commonest types of the French capital, and is likely 
 to become even more common with the progressive 
 decline of all religious influence, and the continued 
 increase of demoralizing literature. 
 
 In connection with this book Daudet declares 
 very emphatically that he does not invent his char- 
 acters ; he copies them from nature. Some are 
 direct copies, trait for trait, as was Jansoulet, other- 
 wise 'the Nabob,' photographed from one of the 
 friends of the Daudet family, a man named Fran- 
 9ois Bravay, who, like the Nabob, had made an 
 immense fortune in the East, and was ruined in 
 Paris. In certain cases, moreover, Daudet has not 
 even changed the names of the persons from whom 
 he has drawn his characters. The handsome 
 Mangin, who marries Roudic's daughter in ' Jack,' 
 and has no conversation other than about custom- 
 house tariffs, lived in the flesh and was known by 
 the same name. This practice accounts for the 
 striking truthfulness to life which delights the reader 
 in Daudet's characterization. At the same time, 
 many of his characters are composite photographs, 
 so to speak, and in most of these, as in Numa
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE> 379 
 
 Roumestan, or Elysee Meraut, for instance, his own 
 moral features have entered largely into the com- 
 position. A natural consequence of his admission 
 of this process has been that in many of his char- 
 acters people have detected resemblances to living 
 persons from whom the author had never drawn. 
 A notable instance of this was in the case of Numa 
 Roumestan, who, as has been said, is largely 
 Daudet himself, and, in spite of this, and the 
 author's repeated denials, was considered a not 
 kindly portrait of Gambetta. 
 
 Daudet's process of collecting materials has never 
 varied during all the years in which he has followed 
 a literary career. Mention has been made of the 
 little notebooks which he invariably carries about 
 with him. Day after day, during all these years, 
 there have been noted down in these little note- 
 books, of which Daudet has amassed a very large 
 collection, descriptions of scenery, thoughts, names 
 of persons and places, traits of character, character- 
 istic sayings, striking anecdotes, pen-portraits of 
 persons of notable appearance, suggestions for plots, 
 and all the brick and mortar of literary construction. 
 This habit of perpetually note-taking became 
 eventually with Alphonse Daudet a very mania. 
 In his library may be found books, the margins of 
 which are covered with fine and delicate writing.
 
 380 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 These margins were the only paper at hand when 
 such or such a note was to be made, and were used 
 accordingly. 
 
 The writer remembers picking up a book on 
 Daudet's table which bore on the cover the title 
 ' Impressions.' It was the work of some scribe 
 jealous of De la Rochefoucauld's laurels, and the 
 book, a book of many pages, contained short 
 maxims, pretentiously set out, one to each page, a 
 minimum of text to a maximum of margin. All the 
 blank spaces of this book were covered with 
 Daudet's notes. ' It was a capital book,' he said ; 
 'there was so much paper in it.' To the writer's 
 question, whether by a coincidence any of the 
 author's maxims had had a bearing on the subject 
 treated in the notes written on the pages on which 
 they were printed, Daudet answered that he did not 
 know, as he had not read the maxims. 
 
 Zola's note-taking is quite as ample and laborious, 
 but this writer does not lay up store for future use, 
 and brings out his pencil and notebook only for the 
 book actually in preparation. Daudet collects and 
 collects, a regular magazine, without being sure that 
 this material, or that, will ever be used. Nor has he 
 any system of indexing or of classification. He 
 depends on a remarkable memory to guide him to 
 the booklet in which a particular note of which he
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE* 381 
 
 may stand in need is to be found. When he has 
 decided on a book, and mapped out the plot, he goes 
 to his storehouse for materials, just as a weaver 
 goes to his storehouse for the yarns which are to 
 be woven into a fabric. He takes sunshine here, 
 gloom there ; here virtue, there vice ; and on a 
 broad palette presses out the various colours as he 
 thinks they may be required. 
 
 In the description of the evolution of this novel, 
 Daudet pays a high compliment to his wife. After 
 stating that it is his habit to talk over his books in 
 preparation with anyone who will listen to him, 
 and that this mute collaboration assists him in eluci- 
 dating his subject, in appraising the value of certain 
 passages, and in discovering certain valuable develop- 
 ments which might otherwise not have suggested 
 themselves to him, he adds : ' But it is my wife who 
 has chiefly had to endure these repetitions in the 
 discussion of my work, when the subject is turned 
 over and over twenty times in succession : "What 
 do you think about making Sidonie die?" "Sup- 
 posing I were to let Risler live ?" " What ought 
 Delobelle or Frantz or Claire to say under such 
 circumstances?" And so on from morning till 
 night, at every minute of the day, at meals, in the 
 cab, on the way to the theatre, on the way home 
 from an evening party, during the long cab-drives
 
 382 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 through the silence and the slumber of Paris. Oh, 
 luckless wives of artists! It is true that my wife 
 is so thorough an artist herself that she has taken 
 a great part in all that I have written. Not a page 
 of mine she has not read over or touched up, or 
 over which she has not scattered a little of her 
 beautiful azure and gold powder.' It is worthy of 
 notice in this account that Daudet asserts that he is 
 liable at any moment, before the actual writing of 
 the book, to alter the destinies of the characters, 
 which shows that in novel-writing, also, his nature 
 of improvisatore abides by him. 
 
 ' Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine ' was written in 
 1873, and first appeared in serial form in a periodical 
 called Le Bien Public. It here attracted consider- 
 able attention. ' For the first time,' writes Daudet, 
 ' I felt around my work the earnest interest of the 
 crowd. Claire and Desiree had friends ; I was 
 blamed for killing Risler, and people wrote to me 
 to intercede for the little crippled girl.' Readers of 
 Dickens will remember that this was also the experi- 
 ence of the English novelist, and that there are 
 to-day living people who consider him a heartless 
 man for having killed Little Nell in spite of their 
 intercessions. The story was published in book- 
 form in 1874, and was a great success from the very 
 beginning. Some days after its publication, Daudet
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE' 383 
 
 went ' all trembling ' to the publisher's office to ask 
 how the first edition was selling, and heard that a 
 second edition had already been called for. The 
 demand grew and grew, and edition followed edition. 
 From all parts of the world came applications for the 
 purchase of the rights of translation from Italy, 
 from Germany, from Spain, from Sweden, from 
 Denmark, and, last of all, from England. ' Eng- 
 land,' writes Daudet, 'is the country into which I 
 took the longest time to penetrate, in spite of a love 
 for the intimacy of home-life, which, it seems to me, 
 should have been more appreciated there than any- 
 where else.' 
 
 Daudet was at that time one of a select society of 
 ' authors who had been hissed,' which used to meet 
 once a month at some restaurant for a dinner, known 
 amongst themselves as the dinner ' des auteurs sifflds' 
 The other members of this select society were Gus- 
 tave Flaubert, mortified that his better works did 
 not find the same success as ' Madame Bovary,' a 
 creation of his which in his last years became to 
 him a very Frankenstein ; Zola, who was still 
 struggling with the public indifference towards the 
 Rougon-Macquarts ; De Goncourt, who, in spite of 
 an immense productiveness, and the honour of having 
 entirely revolutionized French literature, was prac- 
 tically unknown, and where known, ridiculed rather
 
 384 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 than applauded ; Daudet, with the laughter against 
 ' Lise Tavernier ' and ' L' Arlesienne ' ringing in his 
 ears ; and Tourgueneff, ' when he was not troubled 
 with the gout,' who, in his own country, was held no 
 prophet, and had come to seek sympathy, if not 
 appreciation, in France. 
 
 Daudet relates that, as the success of ' Fromont 
 Jeune ' grew and grew, he became almost ashamed 
 to present himself before his less fortunate friends. 
 ' How many thousands since we last met?' was the 
 question that used to be put to him when he made 
 his appearance, and it was with a certain hesitation 
 that he used to name the figure. ' Really, I did not 
 know where to hide myself and my success.' Zola 
 would mournfully remark on such occasions, for 
 himself and the others : ' Our books will never sell. 
 No, we shall never sell,' a prophecy which subse- 
 quent events were to refute in a striking manner. 
 
 De Goncourt gives an account of the reception 
 accorded to this novel in the drawing-room of Prin- 
 cess Mathilde, where it was read out aloud to a 
 large company, whilst Her Royal Highness amused 
 herself with colouring little bits of paper with a 
 paint-brush. 
 
 The critics gave the book a very favourable 
 reception. ' Applaudirono Fromont, 'said Daudet to 
 De Amicis. Zola found its action ' clean-cut and
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE' 385 
 
 characteristic.' He specially admires the character, 
 as a creation, of Sidonie, and applies to her an 
 expression which he was afterwards to use about his 
 more businesslike Sidonie, Nana, ' C'est un cham- 
 pignon pousse dans le ruisseau parisien,' which sug- 
 gests the idea that there may be some kinship 
 between the two women. He adds that it is in 
 the creation of Risler and of Sidonie that Daudet 
 especially reveals himself as a powerful novelist. In 
 his conclusion he remarks that ' great novelists may 
 be recognised by this, that they are, before anything 
 else, the creators of living beings.' One finds some 
 difficulty in reconciling this opinion with one's know- 
 ledge of the process by which the characters of the 
 great novelists of the present day in France, in- 
 cluding Zola himself, De Goncourt, and Alphonse 
 Daudet, are generated. Photography, even in com- 
 posite, is not creation. The method is an admirable 
 one, but it bears the same relation to the creation 
 of Shakespeare, for instance, or of George Eliot, 
 that ' process ' does to wood-engraving. 
 
 In whatever manner, however, the characters in 
 ' Fromont Jeune ' may have been generated, the 
 fact remains that they are singly and severally in- 
 teresting, and that their actions are in a noteworthy 
 degree what one would expect from the acquaint- 
 ance possessed by the reader with their various 
 
 25
 
 386 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 moral temperaments. Not continuously so, how- 
 ever. For instance, it is questionable whether so 
 frivolous a creature as Sidonie, bad as we know her 
 to be, would have had enough energy and force of 
 will to carry out the villainous plot by which she 
 secures from her husband's brother the confession 
 of his guilty love for her, which afterwards deals 
 Risler his death-blow. The intelligence necessary 
 for scheming of this description would have guided 
 her in paths as pleasant as, but less dangerous than, 
 those which she is seen to follow. And, again, im- 
 prudence is always the companion of guilt, and here 
 we have a guilty woman who displays a prudence 
 worthy of the veriest Hausfrau. Nor does one 
 believe that Frantz would have desired an elope- 
 ment with his brother's wife. He came of a stock 
 too practical for any nonsense of the kind. A living 
 Frantz would have managed matters without any 
 extravagances of this sort. He is doing it every 
 day of his despicable little life in the Paris of to-day, 
 as no doubt he was doing it in the days when 
 ' Fromont Jeune ' was written. Napoleon very 
 neatly defined adultery as practised in France when 
 he said that it was 'une affaire de canape.' Else- 
 where it may be a matter of elopement, but not in 
 Paris, and not between a Frantz and a Sidonie. 
 Risler, again, is a splendid character ; but in the
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE' 387 
 
 denouement he rises from the natural to the super- 
 natural. It is true that amongst the middle classes 
 in Paris adultery is not looked upon with the horror 
 that it excites elsewhere, because marriage in France 
 is always more or less of a commercial contract, and 
 it is therefore possible that, having failed in one 
 commercial association namely, in his marriage 
 Risler would be all the more willing to maintain in 
 its integrity the other commercial association in 
 which he was interested his partnership with the 
 individual who had wrecked the former. But one 
 finds it hard to believe that even under these con- 
 siderations a man like Risler could have consented 
 to live on in the house of his betrayer, in hourly 
 communication with a detested presence nay, more 
 than this, could have consented to work for him in 
 an inferior capacity, at the very time when every 
 fibre in his body must have been strained, under 
 the lash of an outraged pride, to prove himself 
 the superior of the man who had been preferred 
 to him. 
 
 When Charles Bovary tells Rodolphe, his be- 
 trayer, when he meets him after his wife's death, 
 that he bears him no grudge, one cannot help 
 finding him rather contemptible, in spite of the 
 immense pity and pathos of the situation, because 
 there are certain situations in life in which no com-
 
 3 88 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 promise between nature and sentiment is possible. 
 Certainly, Risler does endeavour to manifest his 
 superiority, but a moral superiority only, and the 
 phase is here purely physical. Moreover, the 
 author does not point out that it was to prove 
 even a moral superiority that Risler acted as he did 
 after his discovery, but describes his action as 
 prompted by a desire to save the fortunes of the 
 commercial firm and the jointure of his partner's 
 wife. 
 
 The suicide of Risler, again, is a sacrifice to the 
 exigencies of sentimentality, just as was the death 
 of 'Mother Jacques' in ' Le Petit Chose.' One 
 does not believe that Risler would have killed 
 himself because he found a letter, sent him by 
 Sidonie, which revealed to him that his brother 
 had endeavoured to betray him. If, as a practical 
 man, he had believed in the authenticity of the 
 letter, if his knowledge of his wife's villainy had 
 not prompted him to suspect the value of this piece 
 of documentary evidence, the terrible disillusion 
 caused him by his wife's ill conduct would have pre- 
 pared him for ill conduct of any and every kind from 
 any and every body, even from his brother. And one 
 fancies that a genuine flesh-and-blood Risler would 
 have concluded that, if betrayer there had to be, it
 
 'FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER A1NE' 389 
 
 might as well have been Frantz as Fromont at 
 least, so De Maupassant would have written. 
 
 The fault of this novel is that we are given 
 Faubourg St. Germain sentiments on a Marais 
 stage. Daudet animates modern life with his own 
 temperament, which is that of a poet and of a man 
 of great good-heartedness. But there is little poetry 
 and less good-heartedness in modern life, and espe- 
 cially is there little in the lower and middle classes. 
 Whether this infusion of poetry and good-hearted- 
 ness into a sordid body is a commendable practice 
 or not is another question, the answer to which 
 depends on the view one takes of the real functions 
 of the novel. For those who read a novel with 
 little care as to the functions of the novel, and 
 desire only to be interested, amused, and affected, 
 ' Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine ' will always appear 
 a masterpiece. It may be noted, however, that 
 although it has obtained a very great success, and 
 is to-day in its ninety-fifth edition, there are others 
 of Daudet's novels in which this fault is very much 
 less pronounced, as, for instance, ' Sapho,' which has 
 been received with even greater appreciation. 
 
 The jubilation of the ' Fromont dance' was all the 
 more natural, seeing that at one stroke Daudet had 
 proved that it was as easy for him to succeed in a
 
 390 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 long work as in the short efforts with which, till 
 then, his name had been associated. Just at the 
 time when the public was preparing to ticket him 
 a nouvelliste, he affirmed himself a novelist, a 
 description only possible in macaronic prose.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS. 
 
 ' DAUDET is a handsome lad, with magnificent hair, 
 which he is constantly in the habit of throwing back 
 with a superb gesture, while in the management 
 of his single eyeglass he reminds one of Scholl.' 
 This is a portrait sketched about the time of the 
 appearance of ' Fromont Jeune' by De Goncourt, 
 who had made, one year previously, at the house of 
 Gustave Flaubert, the acquaintance of the striking 
 young man whom he had seen applauding vio- 
 lently at the ill-fated performance of his play, 
 ' Henriette Marechal.' From this period clown to 
 the present day the friendship between Alphonse 
 Daudet and Edmond de Goncourt has grown, till 
 to-day it is a friendship that can only be severed by 
 what severs all human ties. It is a friendship to 
 which both owe much. To Daudet it has brought, 
 during a period of intolerable suffering, both en- 
 couragement and sustenance. De Goncourt, on the
 
 392 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 other hand, has been able to console himself with 
 the whole-souled admiration of the younger artist 
 for the disappointments which all his life long have 
 singularly beset this gentleman of letters, too fine, 
 too delicate, too much, in short, of an artist and 
 aristocrat, to be rightly appreciated by a turbulent 
 democracy. It is a friendship which it is pleasant 
 to behold, and it only seems right that Daudet, with 
 his belief in humanity, should enjoy the best that 
 humanity has to offer the friendship of a great and 
 pre-eminent man. 
 
 The libellers, who can leave no sacred thing un- 
 soiled, have, indeed, essayed to traduce this perfect 
 union of two brother-souls, and there are those whose 
 incredible malice has prompted them to state that 
 Daudet has a material interest in his friendship with 
 a gentleman who possesses one of the rarest artistic 
 collections of any in France, a lie which is all the 
 more unwarrantable, seeing that for the past ten 
 years De Goncourt's will and testament has been 
 in the hands of Alphonse Daudet, his appointed 
 executor ; that Daudet has no interest whatever in 
 his friend's inheritance ; and that this fact was long 
 since made public in connection with some malicious 
 libel of the sort in a letter contributed by De Gon- 
 court to the public press. 
 
 The interest that Alphonse Daudet has in his
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 
 
 friendship with De Goncourt is far greater and more 
 enviable than that resting on any sordid speculation, 
 could one fancy any such to exist in Alphonse 
 Daudet's mind. It is the daily society of a man who 
 has always held art the highest cult in the world, a 
 perfect artist, endowed with an extraordinarily acute 
 sense of style and colour and form, which reveals a 
 temperament such as, perhaps, Sarah Bernhardt 
 alone of living contemporaries possesses. And in 
 the case of De Goncourt this artistic sense is not 
 mere fibre. It has all the muscle of wide reading 
 and an encyclopaedic knowledge of all subjects to 
 which by natural selection his interest has attached 
 itself. He is a great writer. His history of Marie 
 Antoinette, written in collaboration with his brother 
 Jules, is one masterpiece out of many. Their 
 histories of French society under the Revolution 
 and under the Directorate are books which no 
 student of the history of that period can afford to 
 neglect, just as they are works which none curious 
 as to the application of a sense of style to historical 
 writing can afford to overlook. His ' Actresses of 
 the Eighteenth Century' are three monographs 
 which are literary miniatures that can be compared 
 to such miniature portraits as Meissonnier, with his 
 knowledge of technique, might have painted, if he 
 had had the artistic temperament of Whistler. De
 
 394 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Goncourt, with his ' Germinie Lacerteux,' his 
 'Cherie,' 'La Faustin,' and 'La Fille Elisa,' was 
 the writer who sowed the crop which other naturalist 
 writers have reaped. If it was not given to him to 
 reap what he had sown, that was because the public, 
 the bestower of harvests, could not believe in the 
 sincerity of a gentilhomme who occupied himself 
 with the offscourings of the proletariate. It is a 
 public which can hardly credit the Vendee, and 
 refuses to believe in any understanding between an 
 Edmond Huot de Goncourt and a Jupillon. 
 
 De Goncourt suffers also as Byron suffered, for in 
 France, too, the craft of letters has not been one 
 that aristocrats have been known to pursue. 
 Honore de Balzac dropped the particle of nobility 
 when he sat down to his writing-table. 
 
 De Goncourt's Diary, of which six volumes have 
 now been published, is a book which no writer can 
 dispense with. It contains more wit, more anecdote, 
 more character-painting, more literary perfume and 
 artistic colour, than any book that one can call to 
 mind. There is in its pages the equipment of a 
 hundred novelists, both in plot, psychological 
 analysis, character-study, scene-painting, epigram, 
 and maxim, and the wherewithal to fit out a 
 thousand writers of leading articles with new and 
 striking subjects. His is indeed a striking figure
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 395 
 
 in modern French society, combining the presence 
 of an English aristocrat with the manners of a 
 French gentleman, and a conversation which takes 
 one from Marivaux to Schopenhauer. His present 
 life is spent between his marvellous home at Auteuil 
 and the Daudets' town or country residence. So 
 familiar is his presence either in the Rue de Belle- 
 chasse or at Champrosay, that, as one enters either 
 abode, one looks round instinctively to see and 
 greet him. He has become almost indispensable to 
 Alphonse Daudet, and it is interesting to watch 
 with what attention the younger artist listens to 
 every word that he has to say. ' Don't speak,' 
 he will sometimes say ; ' I want to listen to De 
 Goncourt.' 
 
 Encouraged by the success of ' Fromont Jeune,' 
 and having danced the ' Pas de Fromont,' Daudet, 
 the cicade, sat down to sing the song of 'Jack.' 
 This was his second novel. It is noticeable about 
 this book that its very size shows that Daudet's 
 industry only needed encouragement to develop. 
 It is a very long book, and Flaubert said about the 
 two volumes in which it first appeared that ' there was 
 too much paper in it.' In writing this story Daudet 
 followed his invariable system. His Jack lived in 
 the flesh, the son of pain of a woman of pleasure, 
 who loved his mother, and who was misunderstood,
 
 396 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 and slighted, and set aside, and died miserably. 
 The subsidiary characters, already referred to in 
 these pages, were reminiscences of life in the 
 Quartier Latin, and the Brasserie des Martyrs. 
 Daudet intends this book as a scourge, but all the 
 knots have been picked out of the thongs. His 
 pity here, also, has tempered the blast of his irony. 
 For instance, he asks us to despise D'Argenton, 
 and, indeed, in the latter part of the book he does 
 his best to elicit our contempt. Yet such is his 
 good nature towards his spiritual children, that in an 
 early passage of the book he endows D'Argenton 
 with the very qualities of which afterwards, as his 
 anger grew hotter, he deprived him. D'Argenton 
 is in the latter chapters of the book represented as a 
 man of incorrigible laziness and utter selfishness, 
 who desires success, but is not prepared to make 
 any sacrifice to obtain it. Yet on page 1 1 8 of the 
 Collection Guillaume edition of this book we find 
 the following description of the man : 
 
 ' At the age of twenty-seven he had succeeded in 
 nothing, except in publishing at his own expense a 
 volume of humanitarian poems, which had brought 
 him down to bread and water for six months, and 
 had been spoken of by nobody. Yet he worked 
 very hard, he was endowed with faith and will ; 
 but these are forces which are ineffectual in poetry,
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 397 
 
 which above all else demands the possession of 
 wings. D'Argenton had no wings.' 
 
 So here Daudet's pity inspires us with com- 
 passion for the very man whom afterwards he asks 
 his readers to despise as a man having wings, yet 
 too selfish and too lazy to use them. It is true that 
 pity in man lies very near to cruelty. 
 
 In ' Trente Ans de Paris' Daudet describes the 
 sources whence he drew his materials for his book. 
 We learn that here also all the characters are 
 drawn from persons whom the author knew ; that 
 Doctor Rivals was Doctor Rouffy of Draveil, near 
 Champrosay ; that Mangin was Mangin, and that 
 Labassindre, Hirsch and Moronval all vapoured in 
 the flesh. 
 
 The book was written for the most part at Champ- 
 rosay, ' in the security of independence, and the 
 reassuring sensation of being all alone with one's 
 idea.' 
 
 ' Long before daybreak,' he relates, ' I was at my 
 deal-wood table in my dressing-room, only two 
 paces away from my bed. I wrote by lamplight.' 
 
 The story began to appear in Dalloz's Moniteur 
 long before the book was finished, and Daudet wrote 
 under the whip of the printing-press. He declares 
 that the advantage of this system of publication, so 
 far as he is concerned, has been that it has forced
 
 398 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 him to detach himself from the successive portions 
 of the book, when his instinct would have prompted 
 him to re-write and re-write again. The book 
 appeared in its bulky volume form in 1875 at 
 Dentu's publishing house. It was well received, but 
 its success did not warrant a ' Pas de Jack.' Yet 
 George Sand wrote to the author that she had been 
 so affected by reading it that she had been unable 
 to work for three whole days. It is to-day in its 
 eighty-ninth edition. 
 
 Zola devotes eight pages three days' work' to 
 his criticism of this tale. He does not praise it 
 beyond measure, but he finds many of the characters 
 well drawn, and he describes as a masterpiece the 
 scene in which a steam-engine, manufactured at the 
 Indret works, where Jack is employed as a work- 
 man, is shipped on board a steamer. This personifi- 
 cation of inert matter, to which the skill of man 
 gives life, pleased the critic greatly, so much so 
 that in ' Germinal ' he, in his turn, in the notable 
 scene where the works of the inundated mine are 
 swallowed up in the sinking soil, invested the inert 
 matter of a steam-pump with a living personality, 
 and afterwards expanded the idea in ' La Bete 
 Humaine.' 
 
 ' Jack ' is the very touching story of the son of 
 pain of a woman of pleasure. But for the fact that
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 399 
 
 Daudet has been classified amongst the realists, the 
 painters of modern life as it really is, there could be 
 found no fault with it. It interests from beginning 
 to end, it affects to tears, and in parts it excites a 
 merry and pleasant hilarity. What could be funnier, 
 for instance, than the story of the little prince of 
 Dahomey, who, after being received into the 
 Moron val pensionnat with the honours due to his 
 rank, sinks, after the dethronement of his sable 
 father, into the position of a drudge, and yet always 
 hopes, thanks to the amulet which he wears, to 
 return to Dahomey as king, ' to write nice little 
 letter to Papa Stick, to get him come out there and 
 then cut off his head in big basin, and make drum 
 of his skin for to go and fight the Ashantees '? Or 
 what more pathetically humorous than the story of 
 Belisaire, the hawker, who suffered tortures from his 
 ill-fitting boots, and meant some day to buy another 
 pair, but never did, a trait borrowed from the 
 history of Edouard Drumont, who, however, unlike 
 Belisaire, has come to be able to afford comfortable 
 foot-gear. But there are one or two little blemishes 
 which must be commented upon in a realist writer. 
 Of these, one is the pity which tempers the irony, as 
 has already been set forth. Another, for instance, 
 is the conduct of D'Argenton in founding a review 
 at his own cost. The raid founds no review at his
 
 400 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 own charges. He has such an arrogant belief in 
 himself that he always expects to be financed. But 
 supposing that D'Argenton, as an exception, had 
 put his own moneys into such a speculation, can one 
 be expected to believe that he would call round him 
 as collaborators nay, as his own collaborators the 
 wretched frauds with whom his own obscurity had 
 forced him to live ? No ! The very essence of a 
 society of failures is that, whilst each individual failure 
 believes himself a paragon, he looks upon his fellow- 
 obscurities, with whom he is forced to associate in a 
 common outermost darkness, as the most despicable 
 of men. The gnashing of teeth which one knows 
 so well proceeds from the indignation that each 
 individual feels at the companionship thus forced 
 upon him, and D'Argenton, had he been enabled 
 by fortune to emerge, would above all things have 
 striven to shake off with his gloomy past his gloomy 
 companions. For Daudet insists that there was not 
 a spark of generosity in the man's nature, and this 
 being so, why should he be kind to Hirsch, Labas- 
 sindre, or Moronval, when he was so very unkind to 
 Jack? 
 
 When ' Jack ' was commenced, Alphonse Daudet 
 was already at work on the ' Nabab,' which in 
 many respects is the best of his novels. In this 
 book he seems to have looked on life as it is, and
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 401 
 
 not athwart his own poetic and optimistic tempera- 
 ment. The character of Jansoulet is as admirable 
 in its strength and in its weakness as that of 
 Monpavon is in its foppery, and that of the black- 
 mailing journalist in its persistent infamy. The 
 material, it is true, was abundant and excellent. 
 For Mora there was De Morny, the ' Richelieu- 
 Brummel ' of Daudet's younger days ; for Jansoulet 
 there was Francois Bravay ; for the blackmailing 
 journalist there were a hundred and one well- 
 dressed gentlemen taking their absinthe] outside 
 Tortoni's or the Cafe Americain on any afternoon 
 of the year; for the Pere Joyeuse there was the 
 Communard, to whom allusion has already been 
 made ; and for scenery there was Daudet's intimate 
 knowledge of Paris, and the note-books brought 
 back from Corsica. Of this material Daudet made 
 indeed most excellent use, and the pictures in ' Le 
 Nabab ' of Parisian life of the period are as true 
 as the Parisian impressions of De Nittis, which one 
 may admire in the Luxembourg Gallery. It is to- 
 day in its hundredth edition, and Charpentier is 
 taking fresh stereos from the existing matrices. It 
 may be mentioned, in passing, that Francois 
 Bravay's family was offended at the use made of 
 Francois Bravay's personality, though it is difficult 
 indeed to understand what exception even his most 
 
 26
 
 402 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 devoted relations could take to a portrait so en- 
 tirely sympathetic and amiable. 
 
 During this period of literary activity we hear 
 little of Daudet's private life. He remains the 
 faithful friend of Flaubert, and a constant visitor to 
 the little house in the Rue Murille, where, apart 
 from himself, Tourgueneff, De Goncourt, and Zola, 
 nobody ever goes. He visits Tourgueneff also, and 
 in the community of their tastes in literature, and 
 the closer community of a common love for music, 
 grows very fond of the Russian, who, in his 
 'Souvenirs,' published after his death, aimed 
 against Daudet's tender heart a Parthian shaft 
 which wounded, and might have caused it to take 
 a less loving view of humanity, but, to Daudet's 
 credit, failed to achieve this result. Tourgueneff, 
 with his house always full of flowers and ringing 
 with musical voices, himself used to lie in long-drawn 
 agony on his couch, watching his own sufferings 
 with a view to describing them in realistic language 
 to his friends at the Flaubert dinner. And all the 
 while he was storing up in his Parthian mind the 
 tiny exceptions which might be taken against 
 Daudet as a man and as a writer, to be shot out 
 in his ' Souvenirs,' and to wound a friend after his 
 death. 
 
 In the meanwhile Alphonse Daudet was pro-
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 403 
 
 gressing from success to success. He had dis- 
 covered his strength, and he gave it the fullest play. 
 A series of masterpieces followed in succession upon 
 the first books, which had solidly established his 
 reputation as a writer of fiction. The writer who, 
 when Edmond About consulted him as to his 
 income in 1874, was able to appraise the public 
 appreciation of his talent at ^200 a year, after the 
 publication of ' Fromont Jeune,' ' Le Nabab,' 'Jack,' 
 and ' Les Rois en Exil,' was never earning less than 
 ,4,000 a year. And it is no 'fine feeling for the signi- 
 ficance of big sales ' that prompts this remark. For 
 the world's discernment of the merits of an artist 
 is to-day gauged not by the wreaths which he may 
 wear, but by the amount of gold which a commercial 
 democracy is willing to divert annually from its 
 trafficking for his comfort and luxuries. The artist 
 for whom the world will divert no gold may be an 
 artist whose brow should be all obscured with 
 laurel-wreaths, but he is not one in whom the 
 world takes interest, or of whom a writer can write 
 for the world's interest. And, all these things con- 
 sidered and most examples remembered, with the 
 exception, perhaps, of Poe and De Nerval, amongst 
 a few others, the fact that a commercial world has 
 diverted some of its gold has always been a sure 
 indication of merit on the part of the recipient.
 
 404 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 Amongst the various novels which in due course 
 have marked Alphonse Daudet's progress from suc- 
 cess to success, special reference should be made 
 to that excellent masterpiece 'Sapho,' a book which 
 will survive if all Daudet's other books should pass 
 away, and when the world's interest in French 
 society in the latter half of the nineteenth century 
 shall have died out, as tales which have been told 
 are said to pass away ; for ' Sapho ' is a story which 
 will move men as long as there are men and women, 
 and men shall love women and women men, with 
 those reserves which differentiate the attachment 
 of the male from the attachment of the woman. It 
 is a book which should be written in Latin, or, as 
 an equivalent, carved on marble. For when the 
 French language may be a forgotten tongue, and 
 all our paper may have crumbled into dust, there 
 will always be the love of man and woman, and in 
 no book that one knows of have the possible pathos 
 and the uncertain logic of this love been more 
 masterfully expounded. Sapho has loved Gaudin, 
 and has loved him with a woman's dog-like 
 devotion. And he, with a jealousy of her past 
 and an affection for his future, with passion under- 
 lying all, has turn by turn drawn her to him, re- 
 pudiated her and drawn her back. And when the 
 day comes on which he has put aside, under the
 
 FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 405 
 
 stimulus of his passion and an acquired affection, 
 this jealousy of her past and this affection for his 
 future, and would have her return for ever to his 
 arms, she says him nay. She is too old. She 
 needs to be loved for herself. She is afraid of the 
 task of loving, where her love may again be re- 
 pudiated. And in the end she prints one last kiss 
 on his neck, ' on the place on your neck which you 
 know of, my friend.' And all this is human and 
 eternally true, and it shows that the poet, if he may 
 make a bad realistic writer, will out with the truth, 
 where the truth is a great and an eternal one. It 
 is Daudet's masterpiece, and it is, one believes, the 
 book by which he will always be remembered. 
 
 A word should also be said about ' Numa Rou- 
 mestan,' which is of special interest, inasmuch as it 
 shows us Provence and the Provencal as viewed 
 by Alphonse Daudet after his vision had been 
 modified by long years in Paris. So modified, both 
 Provence and Provencal have lost their great attrac- 
 tions, and we are informed rather of the natural 
 dustiness of the one and the moral ' dustiness ' of 
 the other. It retains, however, sufficient local 
 colour to require for its due appreciation an acquired 
 taste, and Daudet admitted this when, in a conver- 
 sation with the writer, he remarked that Mounet 
 made an unnatural Numa Roumestan, because he
 
 406 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 had no comprehension of the Provencal of that 
 particular type. Mounet laughed en long when he 
 should have laughed en large, and, according to 
 Daudet, all the point was there. The readers who 
 laugh en long, both physically and morally, are 
 accordingly not fitted to approach his book with 
 due comprehension. In this respect it appeals to 
 a smaller public than its merit would warrant. And 
 had it not been for Daudet's Parisian modification 
 of his view of Provence, this public might have been 
 a still smaller one. At the same time it should be 
 remarked that eighty thousand individuals of the 
 said public have produced from their purses forty 
 thousand crown pieces for the sake of possessing 
 this book to read and read and read again. And 
 how many have borrowed the book from each of 
 these eighty thousand ?
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE FATE OF POLYCRATES. 
 
 ABOUT a year ago the writer came to the Rue de 
 Bellechasse to Alphonse Daudet's house, from the 
 neighbouring Hopital de la Charite. He had been 
 present at certain hypnotic experiments performed 
 by Doctor Luys, who had vouchsafed to him the 
 information that, whilst in the hypnotic trance, his 
 subjects could discern proceeding from the faces of 
 persons on whom their attention was directed, whilst 
 in that state, emanations of light, of which the 
 colour differed according to the state of health of 
 the person scrutinized. The robust and altogether 
 healthy man, according to Doctor Luys, emitted 
 from his person an effulgence similar to that which 
 the hypnotized subject noticed as proceeding from 
 the North Pole extremity of a magnet that is to 
 say, of a pleasant and hopeful blue colour. Other 
 people affected with different diseases emitted now 
 a green, now a purple, now a yellow effulgence,
 
 4o8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 according to the nature of their maladies. The man 
 suffering from acute nervous disorders so the 
 Doctor's subjects informed him appeared to them 
 to be surrounded with a red light similar to that 
 which these subjects also noticed at the South Pole 
 extremity of the magnet. The writer informed 
 Alphonse Daudet of these things, and Daudet 
 said : 
 
 ' I must be a mass of red effulgence, I had not 
 heard of Doctor Luys's experiments, but there are 
 times when I have felt that if a light were set to me 
 I should blaze up in red flames. I am all red. I 
 am very, very nervous.' Then, waving away the 
 extravagances of the Hopital de la Charite with his 
 cigarette, he continued, ' I have worked too hard 
 
 o 
 
 . . . and I have been too happy. I am paying for it 
 now.' 
 
 ' C'est Polycrate,' he added after awhile, 'ce tyran 
 de Samos.' 
 
 Alphonse Daudet has worked hard. He has 
 worked too hard. When the cicade was won over 
 to ant -like laboriousness, like all renegades, he 
 embraced his new faith with an exaggerated ardour. 
 If he has not killed, but only crippled himself in the 
 effort, it is because he was endowed by Nature with 
 a physical constitution as remarkable as his moral 
 temperament.
 
 THE FATE OF POLYCRATES 409 
 
 An extemporizer by nature, he has always been 
 prevented by his literary conscience from indulging 
 in this instinct. He has slaved and slaved, and 
 still slaves and slaves. 
 
 ' I write slowly, very slowly,' he told the writer; 
 'and revise and revise. I am never satisfied with 
 my work. My novels I always write myself. I 
 never could dictate a novel. As to my plays, I -used 
 formerly to dictate them. I had a certain talent in 
 my legs, just as Napoleon had a certain genius in 
 the legs of his soldiers. My books go through 
 many processes. To begin with, I fill my note- 
 books. Each note, as it is used, is scratched out in 
 blue or red pencil. From these written notes and 
 the tablets of my memory, " the deltoi of my 
 memory," I write out in copybooks the first copy 
 of my novel. I write this first copy on alternate 
 pages of my copybooks, and leave the opposite 
 sheet blank. When the book is finished in its 
 rough state, I re-write it page by page on the blank 
 sheets. The page on the right is the amended copy 
 of the page on the left. Then my wife looks at this 
 second copy, and suggests to me what improvements 
 might be made. I note these down. Then I re- 
 write the whole book again with the joy of a school- 
 boy who feels that a wearisome task is ended. So 
 that, apart from my notes, I write each manuscript
 
 4io ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 three times over, and, if I could do so, I would 
 write it as many times more, for, as I have said, I 
 am never satisfied with my work. But I am very 
 irregular in my way of working. Sometimes I work 
 for eighteen hours a day, and day by day. At other 
 times I pass months without touching a pen.' 
 
 ' " Le Petit Chose," ' said the writer. 
 
 He has worked too hard. 
 
 Thus, when writing ' Le Nabab,' the eight months 
 which he devoted to the actual penmanship of this 
 work, apart from the days of note-taking, the months 
 of observation, and the years of experience, were 
 spent almost entirely in his bedroom, transformed 
 for the time being into a study. For weeks together 
 he never set foot outside of his house, and many 
 were the days when he worked for eighteen con- 
 secutive hours. His meals were set on the table at 
 which he wrote, and he used to continue writing as 
 soon as he had eaten. He has remarked that the 
 function of digestion does not trouble his mind if he 
 sets to work immediately after eating, that it is only 
 after resting awhile after a meal that the familiar 
 drowsiness makes itself felt. Even when asleep his 
 mind continued active, and his dreams were, for the 
 most part, about his book. At four o'clock every 
 morning he used to spring from his bed, ' stammer- 
 ing sentences from his novel like a man in delirium.'
 
 THE FA TE OF POL YCRA TES 4 1 1 
 
 His room had been set to rights whilst he slept, so 
 that he had but to dress and sit down at his little 
 deal table. In the mornings, however, his mind was 
 never very clear, and he accordingly used to occupy 
 the first hours of the day in revising what he had 
 written on the previous day, in correcting, copying, 
 and preparing the day's task. It was towards night- 
 fall that inspiration used to come to him, and that 
 his pen began to gallop in a vain effort to keep pace 
 with the exuberant flow of his thoughts. And this 
 fine speed would be kept up for the best part of the 
 night. And so on, day after day, so entirely ab- 
 sorbed that he would sometimes wake up to find 
 himself writing by lamplight with a bright sun 
 blazing outside. When the task had been com- 
 pleted, although already the idea of ' Les Rois en 
 Exil ' had been haunting him for some time past, he 
 rested his brain for several weeks, and spent the 
 time in fencing each day till the foil fell from his 
 hand in very exhaustion. And then suddenly back 
 to work again. This is how he has always worked. 
 ' I am not one of those who, like Zola, can work 
 a certain number of hours every day, and day after 
 day. I abandon myself to the caprice of inspira- 
 tion, and in turn pass through periods of cerebral 
 excitement and periods of dead calm. For the last 
 three months I have not written a line.' These
 
 4 r 2 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 words, quoted from his own lips, merit attention, 
 because they prove how very conscientious a writer 
 he is. For the author who writes by inspiration 
 and in a fine frenzy will very rarely be found re- 
 vising, correcting, polishing, as Alphonse Daudet 
 does, being so careful over his work as to make at 
 least three copies of each book that he writes. For 
 the fever of composition urges a man on and on, and 
 here we have a writer, in whom this fever manifests 
 itself in periods of great intensity, who yet has 
 strength of will enough and sufficient artistic con- 
 scientiousness to hold himself back, and step by step 
 to walk over again and again the ground over which 
 he has just galloped, though every muscle in him 
 strains to dash onward. The method of Zola is a 
 very different one. He walks all the way, and 
 between these two writers and the fable of the hare 
 and the tortoise a comparison might be drawn, did 
 not the hare in this case know how to transform 
 itself into a tortoise as occasion requires. 
 
 In his method of work Alphonse Daudet differs 
 greatly from his brother Ernest, whose great pro- 
 duction is the result of steady and regular work. 
 Ernest is a very hard worker, and is fortunate 
 enough to be able to work at any time with equal 
 appetite and lucidity. Some days he never leaves 
 his handsome study in the Avenue Marceau, though,
 
 THE FATE OF POLYCRATES 413 
 
 as a general rule, he takes long walks every day, 
 and works as he walks. He has achieved a very 
 high place in French literature, and those who, out 
 of political rancour, have essayed to ridicule his 
 literary work, writing of him as ' Daudet not the 
 one who has talent, you know, the other,' have been 
 unable to diminish his prestige. He is the author of 
 several novels, but it is especially in political and his- 
 torical writing that he has distinguished himself. His 
 ' Mceurs des Temps,' originally published under the 
 pseudonym ' Jacques Rigaud ' in the Figaro, and his 
 ' Coulisses de la Societe Parisienne,' are studies of 
 contemporary life in Paris which no student of 
 French history will hereafter be able to overlook. 
 The latter volume has met with considerable success, 
 and a sequel is being prepared by its author. One 
 is glad to find Ernest at last in pleasant places. 
 The warm affection between him and Alphonse has 
 never wavered. ' Such as it was when we entered 
 on life,' he recently said to the writer, 'so it has 
 always remained. It is cloudless and unalterable.' 
 Yet in one or two respects the tastes of the two 
 brothers have differed. Whilst Alphonse hates 
 society and salons, Ernest, true to the predilection 
 which he showed from the very first days of his 
 life in Paris, may, in some measure, be described as 
 a mondain. Yet he only frequents a few houses,
 
 and those the best It is to these tastes that we 
 owe the two volumes on Parisian society mentioned 
 above. Again, whilst Alphonse has always abhorred 
 politics, Ernest, led into political life from the first 
 by his relations with party journalism, has been 
 forced to sacrifice a large part of his life to them. 
 It is he who during the last five years has 
 championed in the Figaro the movement by which 
 the reaction, Orleanist and Bonapartist, has gradually 
 rallied to the Republic. 
 
 Ernest Daudet, like Alphonse, has a son of 
 literary tastes, George Daudet, who is a journalist, 
 and acts as dramatic critic to the Petit Moniteur. 
 He has recently founded a successful historical 
 annual, L 1 Annuaire UniverseL Ernest, like his 
 brother, has a great fondness for the country, and 
 spends three months in the year at a place called 
 Les Petites Dalles, in Normandy, a wooded and 
 secluded seaside place which he discovered. 
 
 If his literary fortune has not equalled that of his 
 brother, and if it is of Alphonse Daudet that one 
 rather thinks when their family name is mentioned, 
 life, on the other hand, has in other respects been 
 kinder to him. His maturity is a serene and placid 
 one, and, close upon sixty years of age, he is as 
 vigorous and alert as a young man. There are 
 years of life and work before him.
 
 THE FATE OF POLYCRATES 415 
 
 It would appear, however, that Alphonse Daudet's 
 method of work, excellent as have been the results 
 in the matter of production, is a fatal one for the 
 writer who adopts it. ' I deserve all that I am 
 suffering,' he said to De Goncourt during one night 
 of torture, as they were speeding north in an 
 express train. ' I have abused my body too much.' 
 
 A mental fire is as beneficent as the fire of which 
 Schiller wrote, but under the same conditions of 
 restraint and supervision. And Daudet has neither 
 restrained nor supervised. He has let it leap up 
 into flame, and flicker down and then leap up again. 
 And the result of this repeated over-exertion, com- 
 bined, no doubt, with the ineradicable effects of the 
 privations which he suffered as a young man, has 
 been to wreck a body intended by nature to enjoy 
 a vigour equal to that of his mind, which, thank 
 Heaven, has never suffered. 
 
 As far back as fifteen years ago the first effects 
 of these privations and these periods of over- 
 exertion manifested themselves. It was at one of 
 Flaubert's receptions. Those who were present 
 noticed the waxen pallor of Daudet's hands. ' I 
 wonder if I am going to be ill,' he said, with the 
 air of a man who fancies that he has heard a knock 
 at his door, but is not certain. ' Last night, though 
 it gave me no pain, I had an attack of haemorrhage
 
 416 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 of the lungs. It frightens me ; I must go and see 
 Potain.' 
 
 A year later, during a dinner at Tourgueneffs, he 
 is heard to say : ' I passed a week so full of the 
 joy of life that I could have kissed the very trees, 
 and then one night I coughed blood, so that my 
 bed was stained all over. And now I cannot put 
 my handkerchief to my mouth without looking to 
 see if it be not stained.' 
 
 In 1884, as he returns from the funeral of his 
 publisher, Dentu, he says that he has suffered so 
 much of late that he never goes to a funeral without 
 feeling a keen envy for the person who is being 
 laid to rest, because that person will never suffer 
 pain. In the same year he is heard to exclaim : 
 ' I am always in pain, and this continuity of pain, 
 and the prospect that this will always go on, are 
 really hideous. Formerly I used to look forward 
 to my bed. My bed was a hope. Now it is a 
 thing full of ambushes and horrid surprises. I am 
 forced to rise from it, to walk about, so as to wear 
 my pain away. I suffer all that a man can suffer. 
 My foot, for instance, feels sometimes as though a 
 goods train were passing over it.' 
 
 In a conversation with the writer, he said that 
 the only period in his life when he had thought of 
 suicide was during the period of his life as an usher
 
 THE FA TE OF POL YCRA TES 4 1 7 
 
 at Alais School. Yet, in 1885, one morning after a 
 night full of horrid surprises, he said that he had 
 suffered so horribly, that the pain was so cruel, so 
 wicked towards him, that there were moments when 
 it was more than he could bear, and that at such 
 times he found himself calculating how many drops 
 of opium would be necessary to give him a final 
 repose. ' This temptation haunts me,' he added, 
 ' and I feel very frightened.' 
 
 When, at this time in his life, he again takes to 
 absinthe, it is with the addition of laudanum. The 
 active man, whom we have seen dashing about 
 Paris, covering leagues by the score with Alfred 
 Delvau on dusty highroads, or scaling mountains 
 and scouring Provence with the athletic Mistral, is 
 now so crippled that when one day his little son 
 Lucien, in the garden down at Champrosay, cries 
 out to him, ' Papa, run after me,' and toddles away, 
 his feet refuse to obey his will, and ' beat the ground 
 like the paddles of a steamer.' 
 
 For the last twelve years he has been forced to 
 send himself to sleep with chloral, and to wake 
 himself up with morphine. In the summer of the 
 present year there were found on the gates of 
 Champrosay traces that burglars, who might be 
 expected to return, had visited his home. ' So for 
 several nights,' he told the writer, ' I stopped taking 
 my chloral grog, and, oh, it was terrible ! No 
 
 27
 
 4 i8 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 sleep and continuous pain.' There are mornings 
 when he wakes up and finds his hands ' shrivelled 
 up like dried leaves.' The man in whom in his 
 youth, the joy of life was so keen' is often heard 
 to talk about death. ' There must be an infinite 
 sweetness in the feeling of a cessation from all pain 
 gradually stealing over one.' 
 
 He was talking not long ago with the writer 
 about the ' sunny and dust-powdered days ' of his 
 youth, when, knapsack on back, he roamed whither 
 his fancy guided him. ' I have always hoped,' he 
 said, ' to go over the same ground again with my 
 sons, to tell them of the ideas that had come to 
 me in the various places, to translate to them the 
 influence that the various scenes had had upon my 
 temperament. And now I'm nothing a cripple ! 
 It is a pity.' 
 
 It is indeed a pity, and a pity which is emphasized 
 when one sees by Daudet's side the stalwart De 
 Goncourt, now seventy years of age, firm and 
 valiant, with the robustness of a young- man, or 
 thinks of Emile Zola, ferreting about Paris with 
 serviceable legs and the most eupeptic digestion. 
 
 His moral suffering is very great, and though he 
 patiently conceals it, it sometimes reveals itself. 
 ' One would like to say one's say on the things 
 that are happening,' he remarked one day, when 
 the conversation had turned on the sordid Panama
 
 THE FATE OF POLYCRATES 419 
 
 scandals, and allusion had been made to a police- 
 agent named Soinoury, whose passage-of-arms with 
 Madame Cottu has not been forgotten. ' I can 
 see him,' cried Daudet, ' this police official, full of 
 his own importance, with his stupid disdain for 
 women, proceeding from his ignorance of any real 
 woman, stroking his whiskers. I can hear him say, 
 "I'll soon get the little woman to tell me all she 
 knows." Yes, I should like to say my say ; I 
 should like to write what Drumont writes, but there 
 must be a rapier ready behind the pen.' And, as he 
 spoke, he made a gesture as though to say, ' Think 
 of me, as I am, with a rapier.' 
 
 Yet time was when Daudet was as ready with 
 his rapier as with his pen. One remembers a 
 famous soiree at the Odeon, when the ' Germinie 
 Lacerteux ' of his friend De Goncourt was being 
 performed, and the public was offensive, and 
 Alphonse Daudet and his son Leon were seen 
 striding about the corridors of the theatre, ready 
 to provoke the first person whom they might hear 
 malevolently criticising. Each tried to calm the 
 other, and each was the readier to blaze forth. 
 
 On the occasion when Daudet remarked that 
 ' there must be a rapier ready behind the pen,' he 
 added what is interesting and worthy of reproduction 
 as to the extraordinary passiveness of the French 
 people under the whips of a tribe of Soinourys ;
 
 420 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 ' If the people have not revolted,' he said, ' and if 
 there have been no revolutions caused by abomina- 
 tions which, only a few years ago, would have 
 caused barricades to rise in every street of Paris, 
 it is because, as I have noticed, a complete trans- 
 formation has been effected in the character of the 
 French people during the last ten or fifteen years 
 by the militarism to which this country has been 
 subjected since the enforcement of the new army 
 laws. The fear of the corporal is upon every 
 Frenchman, and it is discipline which keeps quiet 
 the men who fifteen years ago would have pro- 
 tested at the point of the bayonet against the 
 abominable scoundrels who are plundering France.' 
 
 The old combatant exists in Daudet in spite of 
 his infirmities. He says his say, as occasion 
 warrants. A few months ago he was sitting in a 
 drawing-room, next to an advocate-general, who 
 began a panegyric of a certain procureur-general 
 who at one time was the most powerful man in 
 France. ' I don't want to hear a word about him,' 
 cried Daudet ; ' he is a very detestable blackguard ; 
 the most contemptible rascal that I have ever 
 heard of.' 
 
 Yes, the fate of Polycrates has befallen Alphonse 
 Daudet also. ' I was too happy, and I am paying 
 for it now,' he said. Which is what the crucified 
 tyrant of Samos may also have said.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE DAUDET OF TO-DAY. 
 
 THERE are few homes in Paris which it is a greater 
 privilege to frequent than the home of Alphonse 
 Daudet. It is a privilege, however, which is open 
 to all those who, by their allegiance to Art in any 
 form, appeal to the sympathies of the master of the 
 house. The shabbiest, frowsiest Bohemian who has 
 written or painted or composed, or is just about to 
 write or paint or compose, is assured of a welcome, 
 a smile, and a cigarette, when, after mounting the 
 most elegant staircase of any apartment-house in 
 Paris, he rings at the door of Alphonse Daudet in 
 the Rue de Bellechasse. For the Legitimist lives 
 in a Legitimist quarter, not too far removed from 
 the scene of his early struggles and the first blandish- 
 ments of fortune. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet's study, to which immediate 
 access is gained from the antechamber, is unlike all 
 the other studies of Parisian men of letters. It has the
 
 422 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 scrupulous tidiness of a banker's office, the elegance 
 and refinement of a lady's boudoir, and, above all, 
 the peculiar perfume of the workshop. It combines 
 the characteristics of the den of the man of letters, 
 the study of the student, the snuggery of the artist. 
 ' L'amice che m'accompagnava,' says De Amicis, in 
 relating a visit which he paid to Daudet, ' mi disse 
 nell' orecchie, accennando interne : " Ci si vede la 
 mano della donna.'" And the friend of De Amicis 
 was right ; one does see a woman's hand in Daudet's 
 room, and a loving hand at that. One sees those 
 'heavenly roses,' of which Schiller speaks, 'woven 
 into an earthly life.' One fancies that David Copper- 
 field received Dan'l, on his return from Australia, in 
 just such a room, and that, if Dan'l had had an 
 observant friend with him, he would have said : ' Ci 
 si vede la mano della donna.' 
 
 To the left, as one enters, is the writing-table, a 
 large and ornamental one, of solid carved oak. On 
 it all the papers and books are arranged with 
 methodical precision. The pens are clean, the 
 crystal inkstand is free from stains, and all the 
 paraphernalia of the writer's craft show themselves 
 in holiday attire. Behind the table stands a com- 
 fortable chair, stately and decorative, although less 
 throne-like than the one that may be seen in Zola's 
 temple-like study. To the left of the writing-table,
 
 THE DAUDET OF TO-DAY 423 
 
 against the wall, is a very striking buffet from some 
 Norman chateau in time-worn oak, a handsome 
 piece of furniture, which Paul Renouard would buy 
 at any cost. Behind the writing-chair is a low 
 bookcase, the shelves of which are covered with 
 a triple row of books, each one most neatly, and 
 some decoratively, bound. Above the bookcase a 
 not- very successful portrait of Madame Daudet 
 smiles down on the visitor. The floor is comfort- 
 ably carpeted, and the armchairs which stand about 
 the room witness to the hospitality of the owner. 
 To the right of the writing-table is one of the three 
 windows which, draped with red curtains of an 
 Oriental pattern, light up the study. These three 
 windows look out on a pleasant garden, and, as 
 they face the South and Provence, the sun streams 
 into the room nearly all the day. Between the 
 table and the window which is to the right of it is a 
 door, which opens into the tapestried and unpre- 
 tentious drawing-room. Facing the table is the 
 fireplace, adorned with a carved overmantel, in 
 which, in a little niche, stands mercurial Figaro, 
 reminding one of the laboriousness of Beaumarchais 
 and of the patronage of De Villemessant. To the 
 right and the left of the fireplace are two couches, 
 and between there stands a little Oriental table, on 
 which cigars, cigarettes, and the latest books are
 
 4 2 4 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 always to be found. Daudet's favourite seat is on 
 the couch to the left of the fireplace, with his back 
 to the light, and his eyes in full view of an idealized 
 portrait of Flaubert, which hangs on the wall be- 
 tween the door leading from the antechamber 
 and the Normandy buffet. Behind the couch on 
 the right and to the right of it, against the wall, is a 
 high bookcase. It is on this couch that the visitor 
 usually sits, facing the host. Here is De Gon- 
 court's place, and here at times Henry James will 
 sit and talk or be silent with Alphonse Daudet for 
 hours together. 
 
 The welcome extended, even to strangers, in this 
 room is of the essence of hospitality. Those who 
 are familiar with Alphonse Daudet are called by him 
 ' my sons '; but, to be a son, one must belong to the 
 freemasonry of letters or of art. 
 
 It is in this room that Daudet receives his friends 
 on Sunday morning, the only morning in the week 
 when he does not work. On those days, from ten 
 till twelve in the morning, his valet is constantly 
 occupied in opening the door which leads out on to 
 the most elegant staircase in Paris. 
 
 Amongst his constant visitors are Marcel Schwob, 
 the editor of the weekly literary supplement of the 
 Echo de Pans, a young man who knows more 
 of English literature than any man in France,
 
 THE DA UDET OF TO-DA Y 425 
 
 and who will spend hours in reading aloud to 
 Daudet, and translating as he goes along, from 
 Swift, Defoe, Stevenson, or Addison's Spectator ; 
 Hugues Leroux, a brisk young knight of the 
 Legion of Honour, who is a journalist because 
 he has a wife and children, and cannot give 
 himself to pure literature ; Louis de Robert, a still 
 younger man, who in Le Journal displays a sense of 
 style and a knowledge of the human heart amazing 
 in one so young ; the Coquelins, who are the Coque- 
 lins ; the Conservator of the Versailles Museum, 
 an artist appointed guardian of Philistia ; Frantz 
 Jourdain, an architect, who emerges from the 
 straight lines of his craft in the curves and fancies 
 of the novel ; Henry Ceard, one of the best read 
 men in Paris, the librarian of the Carnavalet 
 Museum, who supplied Emile Zola with his best 
 documents, and is a handsome, eyeglass-wearing, 
 frock-coated gentleman ; Paul Margueritte, whose 
 father was killed at Sedan, and who is envious of 
 the income of George Ohnet ; Rosny, of ' Le Bi- 
 lateral ' and other intense novels of a Socialistic 
 tendency, who hides under a threadbare frock-coat 
 one of the finest artistic natures in Paris ; Gustave 
 Geffroy, who has worn out his eyes in the salles de 
 redaction of Parisian newspapers, and yet has a keen 
 insight, as his novels show ; and others by the score.
 
 426 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 the whole Tout-Paris of literature and art. And, 
 most welcome presence of all, De Goncourt, who 
 ' has reached such a point of intimacy with Daudet 
 that we sit together for hours without exchanging a 
 hundred words, and are happy all the time.' 
 
 On Thursdays Madame Daudet holds her recep- 
 tions, and on this occasion the door between the 
 writing-table and the window to the right of it is 
 thrown open. In the tapestried drawing-room there 
 is music, and if the pianist be a facile one, Daudet 
 will keep him at the instrument till late into the 
 night. Leon Daudet is always present at his 
 mother's receptions, and, if any Englishmen are 
 present, will inform himself on any points which 
 have been left undecided in discussions with his 
 intimate friend, Marcel Schwob. ' What about 
 Walt Whitman ?' ' Et ce Stevenson ?' His wife, 
 ne Jeanne Hugo, a woman in the Rubens style, 
 endowed with wit and a warm heart, hands round 
 tea, sometimes assisted by Madame Descaves, the 
 wife of a plump little man, whose comfortable pre- 
 sence is in contradiction with the bitterness which 
 he expressed in ' Sous-Offs.' 
 
 It is on Thursdays, most often, that one dines 
 chez Daudet, a comfortable dinner, sweetened by 
 the presence of altogether lovable people. At the 
 head of the table sits the beloved master of the
 
 THE DAUDET OF TO-DAY 427 
 
 house, and opposite him Madame Daudet, whose 
 constant attention to the details of hospitality make 
 one wonder if this lady be indeed the sensitive 
 author of the ' Impressions de Nature et d'Art.' 
 Somewhere down the table will be seen Jeanne 
 Daudet, nde Hugo, who is a brilliant talker and 
 can discuss your Balzac or your Ibsen with the 
 best of them. Sometimes the pale face and crushed 
 vitality of George Courteline, a living criticism on 
 the brutality of the French military service, may be 
 discerned across the flowers of the tyergne^ silent 
 and observant, with occasional outbursts of a very 
 characteristic humour. The conversation is general. 
 Daudet has the art of gathering round his table only 
 those who can listen as well as talk. He himself 
 will listen amiably, and offer comment where occa- 
 sion requires. Only, however, when De Goncourt 
 is present the conversation is less general, and the 
 guests listen rather than hold forth, for whatever 
 De Goncourt says is worth hearing, even though 
 flavoured now and then with a tinge of bitterness, 
 provoked by the disappointments of a misunderstood 
 career. 
 
 It is a comfortable dinner and a comfortable 
 company, and one rises from the liberal table with a 
 satisfaction alike of mind and body, looking forward 
 to the after-dinner causcries of the master of the
 
 428 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 house. For the most part, unless there be musicians 
 in the tapestried drawing-room, he will be found on 
 his chair behind the writing-table in his study. And 
 it is books and books and books that one talks 
 about, whilst the master twirls between the nervous 
 fingers of his waxen hand a cigarette, which in his 
 forgetfulness he is constantly allowing to go out. 
 
 One cannot conceive a more paternal man than 
 Alphonse Daudet shows himself towards 'his sons.' 
 ' What have you been writing of late, mon fils ? 
 Tell me about it. You must remember to bring it 
 next Sunday and translate me passages. In the 
 meanwhile give me a general idea of the subject. I 
 see that you are not smoking. You will find some 
 cigars in that box there, between Catulle Mendes' 
 last volume, a masterpiece, and that heap of manu- 
 script. So, and now give me a light. This is the 
 pipe which Flaubert bequeathed to me. But, why 
 don't you sit down ? You may sit down here and 
 smoke into the bargain. We are not under the 
 circumstances depicted in Raffet's picture. You re- 
 member the guards under Napoleon in Italy, when 
 they spent the night in a swamp, near Arcole, and 
 were told that they mustn't smoke, but that they 
 might sit down in two feet of water ! I wish I 
 could write about Napoleon from the point of view 
 that Napoleon was a Meridional, which is a circum-
 
 THE DAUDET OF TO-DAY 429 
 
 stance which explains all the faults which his 
 northern critics have found in that very great man.' 
 And so on, a flood of conversation of the most 
 entertaining nature, a will-o'-the-wisp conversation, 
 which only leads one into pleasant places, and is 
 altogether kind, sympathetic, and straightforward. 
 
 In the summer months the Daudets live down 
 at Champrosay, near Draveil, by Etiolles, where 
 D'Argenton flourished. Their house is not far from 
 the house where Daudet wrote many of his master- 
 pieces, the house of the Allards, Madame Daudet's 
 parents. It is a very comfortable house, which 
 ceases to be a chateau where chateaudom would be 
 oppressive. Behind the house there stretches down 
 to the Seine, which in this district is an unsophisti- 
 cated river, a pleasant pleasure-garden, with fruit- 
 trees and timber, and paddocks and a tennis-ground. 
 The house is near the Sennart forest, and not far from 
 the scene of the attack on the Lyons Mail. Daudet, 
 with his hatred for Lyons, would possibly have ap- 
 proved of Lesurques. Here Daudet is to be seen 
 in his happiest moods. He loves the country, and 
 Madame Daudet shares his affection for unbounded 
 horizons and the green, rather than the gray. Here 
 one may meet Madame Allard, his mother-in-law, a 
 comfortable and soothing presence, such as one 
 would have expected at Rydal Mount in Words-
 
 430 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 worth's days. A calm, placid old lady, who has said 
 her say, as in ' Les Marges de la Vie,' and is now 
 satisfied to enjoy the serenity of a noble old age. 
 She talks, but does not discuss, and seems more 
 interested in the doings of little Charles Daudet, 
 her great-grandson, and also the great-grandson of 
 Victor Hugo, as under the motherly child-eyes of 
 Edmee Daudet he toddles across the room a pale 
 child, with a prominent forehead and eyes than in 
 any pother about the sonnet as compared to the 
 triolet. 
 
 Here Daudet may be found in his serenest moods. 
 ' Give me your arm, my son, and let us walk on the 
 lawn.' And when not walking he will most often 
 be found sitting on the terrace, which looks on the 
 Seine, in a hooded chair, twirling a cigarette in the 
 fingers of his waxen hands. ' There is an immense 
 working power in tobacco,' he will say. ' In writing 
 I have always found my capacity for work diminish 
 as the tobacco in my pipe burned lower and lower.' 
 It was on this terrace that one night, as the writer 
 was sitting with the master, and they had been 
 silent together for a long time, the news of De 
 Maupassant's death was communicated to Alphonse 
 Daudet. ' My father,' said Jeanne Daudet, putting 
 her head through the glazed door, ' do you know 
 De Maupassant is dead?' And Daudet said nothing,
 
 THE DAUDET OF TO-DAY 43 1 
 
 keeping his eyes fixed on the Seine, from which a 
 white vapour rose and slowly progressed citywards ; 
 and he said nothing. 
 
 On this terrace, also, he may be found in studious 
 hours, with Defoe, Chateaubriand, Montaigne, and 
 Shakespeare piled around him on neighbouring 
 chairs and tables. ' Shakespeare,' he may say, ' is 
 one of the writers with whom I hope to die. His 
 works shall be the bedside-book by the side of my 
 last bed. I keep a few books very close to me, so 
 that when death does come, they may be my com- 
 panions to the end.' 
 
 So may Alphonse Daudet be heard to speak, and 
 the person to whom he so speaks will always turn 
 away his face. 
 
 ' I often hope for death,' he adds. 'Give me a 
 light, my son. Yes, I often hope for death, which 
 shall bring me an end to all my pain. And I know 
 that I shall survive.' 
 
 ' In your books, master?' 
 
 ' No ; my books have been but the expansion of 
 an active nature, which might have exerted itself in 
 many other ways.' Then, pointing to Leonard, 
 Lucien, and Edmee, watching with motherly eyes 
 over little Charles Daudet's tottering steps, he adds, 
 ' No, in my children.' 
 
 And as he speaks a bright light comes into his
 
 432 ALPHONSE DA UDET 
 
 weary eyes, and over the tortured face there spreads 
 so sweet a smile, that one would like to put one's 
 arms about ' Little-What's-His-Name's ' neck and 
 kiss his face and cry at the unutterable sadness 
 of knowing such a man and hearing him speak of 
 
 death. * 
 
 * See note at end of Preface. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 HILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 JUN 1* 
 
 97? 
 
 
 
 JUN L! 
 
 \ 107? 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
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