short stories and sketches, of fantasies and impressions. Not all the contents of the "Letters from my Mill," of the "Monday Tales" and of "Artists' Wives," as we have these collections now, were written in these early years of Daudet's Parisian career, but many of them saw the light before 1870, and what has been added since conforms in method to the work of his 'prentice days. No doubt the war with Prussia enlarged his outlook on life; and there is more depth in the satires this conflict suggested and more pathos in the pictures it evoked. The "Last Lesson," for example, that simple vision of the old French schoolmaster taking leave of his Alsatian pupils, has a symbolic breath not easy to match in the livelier tales written before the surrender at Sédan; and in the "Siege of Berlin" there is a vibrant patriotism far more poignant than we can discover in any of the playful apologues published before the war. He had had an inside view of the Second Empire, he could not help seeing its hollowness, and he revolted against the selfishness of its servants; no single chapter of M. Zola's splendid and terrible "Downfall" contains a more damning indictment of the leaders of the imperial army than is to be read in Daudet's "Game of Billiards."

The short story, whether in prose or in verse, is a literary form in which the French have ever displayed an easy mastery; and from Daudet's three volumes it would not be difficult to select half-a-dozen little masterpieces. The Provençal tales lack only rhymes to stand confessed as poesy; and many a reader may prefer these first flights before Daudet set his Pegasus to toil in the mill of realism. The "Pope's Mule," for instance, is not this a marvel of blended humor and fantasy? And the "Elixir of Father Gaucher," what could be more naïvely ironic? Like a true Southerner, Daudet delights in girding at the Church; and these tales bristle with jibes at ecclesiastical dignitaries; but his stroke is never malignant and there is no barb to his shaft nor poison on the tip.

Scarcely inferior to the war-stories or to the Provençal sketches are certain vignettes of the capital, swift silhouettes of Paris, glimpsed by an unforgetting eye, the "Last Book," for one, in which an unlovely character is treated with kindly contempt; and for another, the "Book-keeper," the most Dickens-like of Daudet's shorter pieces, yet having a literary modesty Dickens never attained. The alleged imitation of the British novelist by the French may be left for later consideration; but it is possible now to note that in the earlier descriptive chapters of the "Letters from my Mill" one may detect a certain similarity of treatment and attitude, not to Dickens but to two of the masters on whom Dickens modelled himself, Goldsmith and Irving. The scene in the diligence, when the baker gently pokes fun at the poor fellow whose wife is intermittent in her fidelity, is quite in the manner of the "Sketch Book."

There is the same freshness and fertility in the collection called "Artists' Wives" as in the "Letters from my Mill," and the "Monday Tales," but not the same playfulness and fun. They are severe studies, all of them; and they all illustrate the truth of Bagehot's saying that a man's mother might be his misfortune, but his wife was his fault. It is a rosary of marital infelicities that Daudet has strung for us in this volume, and in every one of them the husband is expiating his blunder. With ingenious variety the author rings the changes on one theme, on the sufferings of the ill-mated poet or painter or sculptor, despoiled of the sympathy he craves, and shackled even in the exercise of his art. And the picture is not out of drawing, for Daudet can see the wife's side of the case also; he can appreciate her bewilderment at the ugly duckling whom it is so difficult for her to keep in the nest. The women have made shipwreck of their lives too, and they are companions in misery, if not helpmeets in understanding. This is perhaps the saddest of all Daudet's books, the least relieved by humor, the most devoid of the gaiety which illumines the "Letters from my Mill" and the first and second "Tartarin" volumes. But it is also one of the most veracious; it is life itself firmly grasped and honestly presented.

It is not matrimonial incongruity at large in all its shifting aspects that Daudet here considers; it is only the married unhappiness of the artist, whatever his mode of expression, and whichever of the muses he has chosen to serve; it is only the wedded life of the man incessantly in search of the ideal, and never relaxing in the strain of his struggle with the inflexible material from which he must shape his vision of existence. Not only in this book, but in many another has Daudet shown that he perceives the needs of the artistic temperament, its demands, its limitations and its characteristics. There is a playwright in "Rose and Ninette;" there is a painter in the "Immortal;" there is an actor in "Fromont and Risler;" there are a sculptor, a poet, and a novelist on the roll of the heroine's lovers in "Sapho." Daudet handles them gently always, unless they happen to belong to the theatre. Toward the stage-folk he is pitiless; for all other artists he has abundant appreciation; he is not blind to their little weaknesses, but these he can forgive even though he refuses to forget; he is at home with them. He is never patronizing, as Thackeray is, who also knows them and loves them. Thackeray's attitude is that of a gentleman born to good society, but glad to visit Bohemia, because he can speak the language; Daudet's is that of a man of letters who thinks that his fellow-artists are really the best society.

III.

Not with pictures of artists at home did Daudet conquer his commanding position in literature, not with short stories, not with plays, not with verses. These had served to make him known to the inner circle of lovers of literature who are quick to appreciate whatever is at once new and true; but they did not help him to break through the crust and to reach the hearts of the broad body of readers who care little for the delicacies of the season, but must ever be fed on strong meat. When the latest of the three volumes of short stories was published, and when the "Woman of Arles" was produced, the transformation was complete: the poet had developed into a veritist, without ceasing to be a poet, and the Provençal had become a Parisian. His wander-years were at an end, and he had made a happy marriage. Lucky in the risky adventure of matrimony, as in so many others, he chanced upon a woman who was congenial, intelligent and devoted, and who became almost a collaborator in all his subsequent works.

His art was ready for a larger effort; it was ripe for a richer fruitage. Already had he made more than one attempt at a long story, but this was before his powers had matured, and before he had come to a full knowledge of himself. "Little What's-his-name," as he himself has confessed, lacks perspective; it was composed too soon after the personal experiences out of which it was made,—before Time had put the scenes in proper proportion and before his hand was firm in its stroke. "Robert Helmont" is the journal of an observer who happens also to be a poet and a patriot; but it has scarcely substance enough to warrant calling it a story. Much of the material used in the making of these books was very good indeed; but the handling was a little uncertain, and the result is not quite satisfactory, charming as both of them are, with the seductive grace which is Daudet's birthright and his trademark. In his brief tales he had shown that he had the story-telling faculty, the ability to project character, the gift of arousing interest; but it remained for him to prove that he possessed also the main strength requisite to carry him through the long labor of a full-grown novel. It is not by gentle stories like "Robert Helmont" and "Little What's-his-name" that a novelist is promoted to the front rank; and after he had written these two books he remained where he was before, in the