Tartarin de Tarascon | Page 4

his much-loved younger brother. Fromont hangs himself.
Outside the main current of the plot Daudet sketches one of the little dramas of humble life of which he was so fond: the story of Delobelle, an impoverished actor who lives for his art while his devoted wife and daughter D��sir��e patiently ply the needle to earn bread.
Daudet up to this time had been recognized as the greatest of French short-story writers. The success of "Fromont jeune et Risler a?n��" was immediate, and in his succeeding novels he confirmed more and more surely his right to a place in the front rank of French novelists.
From this story of the life of the petite bourgeoisie he turns to a wider field. The Bohemia of Paris, a glimpse of the country, and especially the life of the artisan, fill "Jack" (1876). Daudet had known the real Jack at Champrosay in 1868. In the novel Jack is the illegitimate son of Ida de Barency, a shallow demi-mondaine who is passionately devoted to the boy but brings to him nothing but misfortune. Jack begins his suffering in a wretched school where his mother has placed him after the Jesuits had refused to receive him. This school is supported by the tuition fees of boys from tropical countries, petits pays chauds, as Moronval, the villainous director, calls them. The teachers belong to that class of rat��s, artistic and literary failures, whom Daudet learned to know well during his first years in Paris. One of these rat��s captivates Ida de Barency, and Jack's life of misery continues. Despite his physical unfitness, he is sent to labor in the shipbuilding yards at Indret, suffers tortures in the stoking room of an ocean steamer, is wrecked, and returns to France in a piteous condition. His love for C��cile, granddaughter of a gentle country doctor, is rapidly making a man of him, when his mother enters again into his life and the poor boy dies miserably in a hospital, killed by despair rather than by disease.
This is perhaps the most powerful of Daudet's novels; it is certainly the most harrowing. The tragedy of the whole is only slightly relieved by the interweaving of the romance of good B��lisaire, the hawker, one of Jack's few friends.
"Le Nabab" (1878) is concerned with politics, the richer bourgeoisie, and the aristocracy. Jansoulet, the "nabob," returns from Tunis with a large fortune and immediately becomes the prey of parasites. He is made the enemy of the banker Hemerlingue through the social rivalry of their wives. He is elected d��put�� from Corsica. The legality of the election is questioned. Jansoulet is supported by the prime minister, the duc de Mora, but the latter dies suddenly, Jansoulet's election is declared invalid, and he dies from a stroke of apoplexy.
Despite the protest of the author, contemporaries found originals for a number of the characters of this novel. The duc de Mora is Morny, and several others have been identified with greater or less certainty. F��licia Ruys is perhaps Sarah Bernhardt.
The purely romantic element of the work is found in the story of Paul de G��ry and the Joyeuse family, a secondary plot having no vital connection with the main story.
In "Les Rois en exil" (1880) Daudet explores a new vein in contemporary society. He explains that the idea of the work occured to him one October evening when, standing in the Place du Carrousel, he was contemplating the ruins of the Tuileries. The wreck of the Empire brought to his mind a vision of the dethroned monarchs whom he had seen spending their exile in Paris: the Duke of Brunswick, the blind King of Hanover and the devoted Princess Frederica, Queen Isabella of Spain, and others. "This is the work which cost me most effort," Daudet says, and the reason is not far to seek. He had always painted "from life," and the difficulties incident to gaining an entrance into the intimacy of even dethroned monarchs were almost insurmountable. The novelist's acquaintances were appealed to, from house-furnishers to diplomats. The story of the composition of "Les Rois en exil" is an interesting study of Daudet's methods, his inexorable insistence on truth, even to the most minute details.
As usual, the characters are sharply contrasted. Christian, the exiled king of Illyria, is detestably weak; Fr��d��rique, his wife devoting herself completely to the interests of her son, Zara, struggles with the aid of the faithful preceptor, M��raut, to prepare the prince for a throne which he is never to ascend. Of all the characters that appear in Daudet's novels it is perhaps Fr��d��rique whose appeal to the reader is strongest, and Fr��d��rique is almost entirely the product of the author's imagination. We cannot but regret the many visions such as Fr��d��rique which were refused admittance to Daudet's essentially romantic mind by the uncompromising