At the same time they kept the balance more evenly
than 'Jack' had done between the two elements of human drama,
good and evil, hope and despair, laughter and tears.
than 'Jack' had done between the two elements of human drama,
good and evil, hope and despair, laughter and tears.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v08 - Dah to Dra
4427 (#197) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4427
of many climates in the same country: he seldom exercises each
selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds
a long and a short-beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not
exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar
manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same
climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to struggle
for the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals,
but protects during each varying season, as far as lies in his
power, all his productions. He often begins his selection by some
half-monstrous form; or at least by some modification prominent
enough to catch the eye or to be plainly useful to him. Under
Nature, the slightest differences of structure or constitution may
well turn the nicely balanced scale in the struggle for life, and
so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of
man! How short his time, and consequently how poor will be
his results, compared with those accumulated by Nature during
whole geological periods! Can we wonder then that Nature's
productions should be far "truer" in character than man's pro-
ductions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most
complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of
far higher workmanship?
It may metaphorically be said that Natural Selection is daily
and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest varia-
tions; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all
that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and
wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic
being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
We see nothing of these slow changes in progress until the hand
of time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is
our view into long-past geological ages, that we see only that the
forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.
In order that any great amount of modification should be
effected in a species, a variety when once formed must again,
perhaps after a long interval of time, vary or present individual
differences of the same favorable nature as before; and these
must be again preserved, and so onward step by step. Seeing
that individual differences of the same kind perpetually recur,
this can hardly be considered as an unwarrantable assumption.
But whether it is true, we can judge only by seeing how far the
hypothesis accords with and explains the general phenomena of
nature. On the other hand, the ordinary belief that the amount
## p. 4428 (#198) ###########################################
4428
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
of possible variation is a strictly limited quantity, is likewise a
simple assumption.
Although Natural Selection can act only through and for the
good of each being, yet characters and structures, which we are
apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted
on. When we see leaf-eating insects green, and bark-feeders
mottled gray; the Alpine ptarmigan white in winter, the red
grouse the color of heather,- we must believe that these tints
are of service to these birds and insects in preserving them from
danger. Grouse, if not destroyed at some period of their lives,
would increase in countless numbers; they are known to suffer
largely from birds of prey; and hawks are guided by eyesight to
their prey - so much so, that on parts of the Continent persons
are warned not to keep white pigeons, as being the most liable
to destruction. Hence Natural Selection might be effective in
giving the proper color to each kind of grouse, and in keeping
that color, when once acquired, true and constant.
Nor ought
we to think that the occasional destruction of an animal of any
particular color would produce little effect: we should remember
how essential it is in a flock of white sheep to destroy a lamb
with the faintest trace of black. We have seen how the color
of hogs which feed on the "paint-root" in Virginia, determines
whether they shall live or die. In plants, the down on the
fruit and the color of the flesh are considered by botanists as
characters of the most trifling importance; yet we hear from
an excellent horticulturist, Downing, that in the United States
smooth-skinned fruits suffer far more from a beetle, a curculio,
than those with down; that purple plums suffer far more from a
certain disease than yellow plums; whereas another disease attacks
yellow-fleshed peaches far more than those with other colored
flesh. If with all the aids of art, these slight differences make a
great difference in cultivating the several varieties, assuredly, in
a state of nature, where the trees would have to struggle with
other trees and with a host of enemies, such differences would
effectually settle which variety, whether a smooth or downy, a
yellow or a purple-fleshed fruit, should succeed.
In looking at many small points of difference between species,
which, as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, seem quite
unimportant, we must not forget that climate, food, etc. , have no
doubt produced some direct effect. It is also necessary to bear
in mind that owing to the law of correlation, when one part
----
## p. 4429 (#199) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4429
varies, and the variations are accumulated through Natural
Selection, other modifications, often of the most unexpected
nature, will ensue.
As we see that those variations which under domestication
appear at any particular period of life, tend to reappear in the
offspring at the same period; -for instance, in the shape, size,
and flavor of the seeds of the many varieties of our culinary and
agricultural plants; in the caterpillar and cocoon stages of the
varieties of the silkworm; in the eggs of poultry, and in the
color of the down of their chickens; in the horns of our sheep and
cattle when nearly adult; so in a state of nature Natural
Selection will be enabled to act on and modify organic beings at
any age, by the accumulation of variations profitable at that age,
and by their inheritance at a corresponding age.
If it profit a
plant to have its seeds more and more widely disseminated by
the wind, I can see no greater difficulty in this being effected
through Natural Selection, than in the cotton-planter increasing
and improving by selection the down in the pods on his cotton-
trees. Natural Selection may modify and adapt the larva of an
insect to a score of contingencies wholly different from those
which concern the mature insect; and these modifications may
effect, through correlation, the structure of the adult. So, con-
versely, modifications in the adult may affect the structure of the
larva; but in all cases Natural Selection will insure that they
shall not be injurious: for if they were so, the species would
become extinct.
Natural Selection will modify the structure of the young in
relation to the parent, and of the parent in relation to the
young. In social animals it will adapt the structure of each
individual for the benefit of the whole community, if the com-
munity profits by the selected change. What Natural Selection
cannot do, is to modify the structure of one species, without
giving it any advantage, for the good of another species; and
though statements to this effect may be found in works of nat-
ural history, I cannot find one case which will bear investigation.
A structure used only once in an animal's life, if of high import-
ance to it, might be modified to any extent by Natural Selection;
for instance, the great jaws possessed by certain insects, used
exclusively for opening the cocoon, or the hard tip to the beak
of unhatched birds, used for breaking the eggs. It has been
asserted that of the best short-beaked tumbler-pigeons a greater
## p. 4430 (#200) ###########################################
4430
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
number perish in the egg than are able to get out of it; so that
fanciers assist in the act of hatching. Now if Nature had
to make the beak of a full-grown pigeon very short for the
bird's own advantage, the process of modification would be very
slow, and there would be simultaneously the most rigorous selec-
tion of all the young birds within the egg, which had the most
powerful and hardest beaks, for all with weak beaks would inev-
itably perish; or more delicate and more easily broken shells
might be selected, the thickness of the shell being known to
vary like every other structure.
It may be well here to remark that with all beings there
must be much fortuitous destruction, which can have little or no
influence on the course of Natural Selection. For instance, a vast
number of eggs or seeds are annually devoured, and these could
be modified through Natural Selection only if they varied in
some manner which protected them from their enemies. Yet
many of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed,
have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions of life
than any of those which happened to survive. So again a vast
number of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be
the best adapted to their conditions, must be annually destroyed
by accidental causes, which would not be in the least degree miti-
gated by certain changes of structure or constitution which would
in other ways be beneficial to the species. But let the destruc-
tion of the adults be ever so heavy, if the number which can
exist in any district be not wholly kept down by such causes,
or again, let the destruction of eggs or seeds be so great that
only a hundredth or a thousandth part are developed, yet of
those which do survive, the best adapted individuals, supposing
that there is any variability in a favorable direction, will tend
to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less well
adapted. If the numbers be wholly kept down by the causes
just indicated, as will often have been the case, Natural Selection
will be powerless in certain beneficial directions; but this is no
valid objection to its efficiency at other times and in other ways;
for we are far from having any reason to suppose that many
species ever undergo modification and improvement at the same
time in the same area.
-----
―――
## p. 4431 (#201) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
443I
PROGRESSIVE CHANGE COMPARED WITH INDEPENDENT
CREATION
From the Origin of Species >
A
UTHORS of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied
with the view that each species has been independently
created. To my mind it accords better with what we know
of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the pro-
duction and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the
world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of an individual. When I view
all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants
of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of
the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become
ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not
one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant
futurity. And of the species now living, very few will transmit
progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in
which all organic beings are grouped shows that the greater
number of species in each genus, and all the species in many
genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct.
We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell
that it will be the common and widely spread species, belonging
to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will
ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As
all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those
which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain
that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been
broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.
Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of
great length. And as Natural Selection works solely by and for
the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments
will tend to progress towards perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes,
with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling
through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately
constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent
upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced
by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest
## p. 4432 (#202) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4432
sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance, which is
almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and
direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse:
a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life,
and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence
of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus
from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted
object which we are capable of conceiving,- namely, the produc-
tion of the higher animals,- directly follows. There is grandeur
in this view of life, with its several powers, having been origi
nally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and
that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endiess forms most
beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
CREATIVE DESIGN
From The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication >
S
SOME authors have declared that natural selection explains
nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual
difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage
utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been
raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were
used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, etc. ; and if the use
of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would
be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear
to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment
could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the
objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not
the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each
being.
The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our
precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct;
for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all
obeying natural laws: on the nature of the rock, on the lines of
deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which
depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly
on the storm or earthquake which throws down the fragments.
But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put,
their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we
## p. 4433 (#203) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4433
are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I
aware that I am traveling beyond my proper province. An
omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which
results from the laws imposed by him. But can it be reasonably
maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the
words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock
should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his
edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of
each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can
it be maintained with any greater probability that he specially
ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable
variations in our domestic animals and plants; many of these
variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far
more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did he ordain
that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in
order that the, fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fan-
tail breeds? Did he cause the frame and mental qualities of the
dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomi-
table ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's
brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case,—if
we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were
intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance,
that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed,—
no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that varia-
tions, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws,
which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the
formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world,
man included, were intentionally and specially guided. How-
ever much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa
Gray in his belief that "variation has been led along certain
beneficial lines," like a stream «< along definite and useful lines of
irrigation. " If we
assume that each particular variation was
from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity
of organization which leads to many injurious deviations of
structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which
inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and as a conse-
quence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest,- must
appear to us superfluous laws of Nature. On the other hand, an
omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and fore-
sees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a diffi-
culty as insoluble as is that of free-will and predestination.
VIII-278
## p. 4434 (#204) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4434
THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES
From The Descent of Man'
THE
HE main conclusion arrived at in this work-namely, that
man is descended from some lowly organized form-will, I
regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But
there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barba-
rians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of
Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by
me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind - Such were
our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed
with paint. . They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild
animals, lived on what they could catch; they had no government,
and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe.
He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much
shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more
humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part, I would
as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved
his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or
from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, car-
ried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of as-
tonished dogs, -as from a savage who delights to torture his
enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without
remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is
haunted by the grossest superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen,
though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the
organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of
having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a
still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here
concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our
reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the
best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to
me, that Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which
feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not
only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his
godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and
constitution of the solar system, with all these exalted powers,
Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his
lowly origin.
-
## p. 4434 (#205) ###########################################
ST
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## p. 4434 (#206) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET.
## p. 4434 (#207) ###########################################
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not c.
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## p. 4434 (#208) ###########################################
1
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## p. 4435 (#209) ###########################################
4435
ALPHONSE DAUDET
(1840-)
BY AUGUSTIN FILON
ORTY years have now elapsed since a lad of seventeen, shiv-
ering under his light summer dress in a cold misty morn-
ing, was waiting, with an empty stomach, for the opening
of a « dairy
» in the Quartier Latin. Young as he was, he looked
still younger: a pale, eager, intellectual face, with flashing eyes, del-
icately
carved features, and a virgin forest of dark hair falling low
on his brow. He had been an usher for a twelvemonth at a small
college in the South of France, and he had just arrived in Paris
after a two-days' journey in a third-class railway carriage, during
which time he had tasted no food and no drink except a few drops
of brandy from the flask of some charitable sailors. And there he
was, with two francs left in his pocket, and an unlimited supply of
courage, cheerfulness, and ambition, fully determined to make the
whole world familiar with the obscure name of Alphonse Daudet.
We
all know how well he has succeeded in winning for himself a
foremost place in the ranks of French contemporary literature, and
indeed of literature in general. There is no doubt that he was
admirably equipped for the great struggle on which he was about to
enter;
but it may be also remarked that he had not to fight it out
alone and with his own solitary resources, but found at the very out-
set useful and strong auxiliaries. He was to have a powerful though
somewhat selfish and indolent patron in the famous Duke of Morny,
who admitted him among his secretaries before he was twenty years
old. Then he had the good fortune to attract the attention and to
take the fancy of Villemessant, the editor of the Figaro, who at first
sight gave him a place in his nursery of young talents. He had a
kind and devoted brother, who cheerfully shared with him the little
money he had to live upon, and thus saved him from the unspeak-
able miseries which would inevitably attend a literary début at such
an early age
and under such inauspicious circumstances. Later on,
he was still more fortunate in securing a loving and intelligent wife,
who was to be to him, in the words of the holy Scriptures,
panion of his rank," a wife who was not only to become a help and
a comfort, but a literary adviser, a moral guide, and a second con-
science far more strict and exacting than his own; a wife who taught
«< a com-
## p. 4436 (#210) ###########################################
4436
ALPHONSE DAUDET
him how to direct and husband his precious faculties,- how to turn
them to the noblest use and highest ends.
But before that was to come, the first thing was to find a pub-
lisher; and after long looking in vain for one throughout the whole
city, he at last discovered the man he wanted, at his door, in the
close vicinity of that Hôtel du Sinat, in the Rue de Tournon, where
the two brothers Daudet had taken up their abode. That publisher
was Jules Tardieu, himself an author of some merit (under the trans-
parent pseudonym of J. T. de St. Germain): a mild, quiet humorist
of the optimistic school, a Topffer on a small scale and with reduced
proportions.
And thus it happened that a few months after the lad's arrival in
Paris an elegant booklet, with the attractive title 'Les Amoureuses'
(Women in Love) printed in red letters on its snow-white cover,
made its appearance under the galeries de l'Odéon, where in the ab-
sence of political emotions, the youth of the Quartier was eagerly
looking for literary novelties, and where Daudet himself had been
wandering often, in the hope of an occasional acquaintance with the
great critics and journalists of the day who made the galeries their
favorite resort.
I have read that the book was a failure; that the young author
was unable to pay the printer, and was accordingly served with
stamped paper at the official residence of Morny, where he was then
acting as secretary; that the duke, far from showing any displeasure
at the occurrence, was delighted to find his secretary in hot water
with the bailiffs, and that he arranged the matter in the most
paternal spirit. This may be a pretty little story, but I fear it is a
"legend. " I cannot reconcile it with the fact that four years after the
first publication, the same publisher gave the public another edition
of 'Les Amoureuses,' and that the young poet dedicated it to him as
a token of respect and gratitude. The truth is that Daudet's little
volume not only did not pass unnoticed, but received a good deal of
attention, chiefly from the young men. Many thought that a new
Musset was born in their midst, only a few months after the real
one had been laid down to his last sleep in the Père Lachaise, under
the trembling shadow of his favorite willow-tree. Young Daudet al-
luded to the unfortunate poet-
་
«<
-
mort de dégoût, de tristesse, et d'absinthe; »
and he tried to imitate the half cynical, half nostalgic skepticism
which had made the author of 'Les Nuits' so powerful over the
minds of the new generation and so dear to their hearts.
But it did not seem perfectly genuine. When Daudet said,
"My heart is old," no one believed it, and he did not believe it
## p. 4437 (#211) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4437
himself, for he entitled the piece Fanfaronnade'; and in fact it was
nothing more than a fanfaronnade. The book was full of the fresh-
ness, buoyancy, and frolicsome petulance of youth. Here and there
a few reminiscences might be traced to the earliest poets of the
sixteenth century, more particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of
the expiring romanticism lingered in 'Les Amoureuses' with a
much more substantial admixture of the spirit of an age which made
pleasure-hunting its paramount occupation. The precocious child
could modulate the 'Romance à Madame' as well as the page of
Beaumarchais, if not better; but he could also laugh it down in
Gavroche's sneering way; he could intersperse a song of love with
the irony of the boulevard or the more genial humor of his native
South. He was at his best in the tale of Les Prunes'.
"Si vous voulez savoir comment
Nous nous aimâmes pour des prunes >>>
That exquisite little piece survived long the youthful volume of 'Les
Amoureuses. ' In those days, when Coquelin's monologues and saynètes
were yet unknown, the brothers Lionnet, then in the height of their
vogue, delighted the drawing-rooms with the miniature masterpiece.
Still, those who had prophesied the advent of a new poet were
doomed to disappointment. Every one knows what Sainte-Beuve once
said about the short-lived existence, in most of us, of a poet whom
the real man is to survive. Shall we say that this was the case with
Daudet, who never, as far as the world knows, wrote verses after
twenty-five? No; the poet was not to die in him, but lived on and
lives still to this day. Only he has always written in prose.
After his successful début, Daudet felt his way in different direc-
tions. In collaboration with M. Ernest Lepine, who has since made
a reputation under the name of Quatrelles, he had a drama, 'The
Last Idol,' performed at the Odéon theatre, at that same Odéon
which in his first days of Paris seems to have been the centre of his
life and of his ambitions. But he more frequently appeared before
the public as a journalist and a humorist, a writer of light articles
and short stories. Nothing can give a more true, more vivacious, and
on the whole more favorable impression of the Daudet of the period
than the 'Lettres de Mon Moulin' (Letters from My Windmill).
They owe their title to an old deserted windmill where Alphonse
Daudet seems to have lived some time in complete seclusion, forget-
ting, or trying to forget, the excitement of Parisian life. The
preface, most curiously disguised under the form of a mock contract
which is supposed to transfer the ownership from the old proprietor
to the poet, and professes to give the état de lieux or description of
the place, is an amusing parody of legal jargon. The next chapter
## p. 4438 (#212) ###########################################
4438
ALPHONSE DAUDET
describes the installation of the new master in the same happy vein,
with all the odd circumstances attending it.
Throughout the rest of the volume, Daudet disappears and re-
appears, as his fancy prompts him to do. Now he lets himself be
carried back to past memories and distant places; now he gives us a
mediæval tale or a domestic drama of to-day compressed into a few
brief pages, or a picture of rural life, or a glimpse of that literary
hell from which he had just escaped and to which he was soon to
return. He changed his tone and his subject with amazing versatil-
ity, from the bitterest satire to idyllic sweetness, or to a pleasant
kind of clever naïveté which is truly his own. We see him musing
among the firs and the pine-trees of his native Provence, or riding
on the top of the diligence under the scorching sun and listening, in
a Sterne-like fashion, to the conversation which took place between
the facetious baker and the unhappy knife-grinder, or chatting
familiarly with Frederic Mistral, who takes him into the confidence
of his poetical dreams. Then, again, we see him sitting down at
the table of an Algerian sheik; or wandering on the gloomy rocks.
where the Semillante was lost, and trying to revive the awful
tragedy of her last minutes; or shut up in a solitary light-house with
the keepers for weeks and weeks together, content with the society
and with the fare of those poor, rough, uncultivated men, cut off
from the whole world, alone with the stormy winds and his stormy
thoughts. Wherever his morbid restlessness takes him, whatever
part he chooses to assume, whether he wants to move us to laughter
or to tears, we can but follow him fascinated and spell-bound, and
in harmony with his moods. Daudet when he wrote those letters
was already a perfect master of all the resources of the language.
What he had seen or felt, he could make us see and feel. He could
make old words new with the freshness, ardor, and sincerity of the
personal impressions which he was pouring into them unceasingly.
The Letters from My Mill' had been scattered here and there
through different newspapers, and at different times. They were re-
printed in the form of a book in 1868. The year before he had given
to the public 'Le Petit Chose' (A Little Chap), which is better
known, I believe, to the English-speaking races under the rather mis-
leading title of 'My Brother Jack. ' 'Le Petit Chose' was a commer-
cial success, but it is doubtful whether it will rank as high among
Daudet's productions as the 'Lettres de Mon Moulin. ' He began to
compose it in February 1866, during one of those misanthropic fits to
which he was subject at periodical intervals, and which either par-
alyzed altogether, or quickened into fever, his creative faculties. He
finished the work two years later in a very different mood, imme-
diately after his marriage. As might have been expected, the two
## p. 4439 (#213) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4439
parts are very dissimilar, and it must be confessed greatly unequal.
'Le Petit Chose' has reminded more than one reader of 'David Cop-
perfield'; and it cannot be denied that the two works bear some
resemblance both as regards manner and matter. But though Dick-
ens was then widely read and much admired in France, plagiarism is
out of the question. If there is a little of Dickens about 'Le Petit
Chose,' there is a great deal more of Daudet himself in it. Young
Eyssette, the hero of the novel, starts in life as Daudet had done
and at the same period of life, in the quality of an usher at a small
provincial college. Whether we take it as a fiction, with its innumer-
able bits of delicate humor, lovely descriptions of places and glimpses
of characters in humble life, or whether we accept it as an autobi-
ography which is likely to bring us into closer acquaintance with the
inner soul of a great man, the first part is delightful reading. But
we lose sight of him through all the adventures, at once wild and
commonplace, which are crowding in the second part, to culminate
into the most unconvincing dénouement. Even when speaking of
himself, Daudet is sometimes at a disadvantage, perhaps because, as
he justly observed, "it is too early at twenty-five to comment upon
one's own past career. " Only the old man is able to look at his
former self through the distance of years and to see it as it stood
once, in its true light and with its real proportions.
'Tartarin of Tarascon' saw the light for the first time in 1872.
Strange to say, the readers of the Petit Moniteur, to whom it was
first offered in a serial form, did not like it. In consequence of their
marked disapproval, the publication had to be abandoned and was
then resumed through the columns of another newspaper. This time
the mistake was entirely on the side of the public. For-apart from
the fact that the immortal Tartarin was not yet Tartarin, but
answered to the much less typical name of Chapatin-the general
outlines of the character were already visible in all their distinctness
from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chap-
ters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed
with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve
and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,›
'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I
know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and
so well sustained a joke. How is it then that we never grow tired
of Tartarin? It is probably because beneath the surface of Daudet's
playful absurdity there underlies rich substratum of good common-
sense and keen observation. Since 'Don Quixote' was written, no
caricature has ever been more human or more true than Tartarin.
Frenchmen are not, as is frequently asserted by their Anglo-Saxon
critics, totally unfit to appreciate humor, when it is mingled with the
## p. 4440 (#214) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4440
study of man's nature and seasoned with that high-spiced irony of
which they have been so fond at all times, from the days of Villon
to those of Rochefort. Still, Daudet would never have acquired such
a complete mastery over the general public in his own country, if
he had not been able to gratify their taste for that graphic and
faithful description of manners and characters, which in other centu-
ries put the moralists into fashion. Realism never disappears alto-
gether from French literature: it was at that moment all-powerful.
Zola was coming to the front with the first volumes of the well-
known 'Rougon-Macquart,' and Daudet in 1874 entered on the same
path, though in a different spirit, with 'Fromont Jeune et Risler
Aîné. ' The success was immediate and immense. The French bour-
geoisie accepted it at once as a true picture of its vices and its
virtues. The novel might, it is true, savor a little of Parisian cock-
neyism. Fastidious critics might discover in it some mixture of
weak sentimentalism, or a few traces of Dickensian affectation and
cheap tricks in story-telling. Young men of the new social school
might take exception to that old-fashioned democracy which had its
apotheosis in Risler senior. Despite all those objections, it was pro-
nounced a masterpiece of legitimate pathos and sound observation.
Even the minor characters were judged striking, and Delobelle's
name, for instance, occurs at once to our mind whenever we try to
realize the image of the modern cabotin.
'Jack,' which came next, exceeded the usual length of French
novels. "Too much paper, my son! " old Flaubert majestically
observed with a smile when the author presented him with a copy
of his book. As for George Sand, she felt so sick at heart and so
depressed when she had finished reading 'Jack,' that she could work
no more and had to remain idle for three or four days. A painful
book, indeed, a distressing book, but how fascinating! And is not its
wonderful influence over the readers exemplified in the most striking
manner by the fact that it had the power to unnerve and to incapaci-
tate for her daily task that most valiant of all intellectual laborers,
that hardest of hard workers, George Sand?
The lost ground, if there had been any lost at all, was soon
regained with 'Le Nabab' (The Nabob) and 'Les Rois en Exil' (Kings
in Exile). They took the reader to a higher sphere of emotion and
thought, showed us greater men fighting for greater things on a
wider theatre than the middle-class life in which Fromont and Risler
had moved.
At the same time they kept the balance more evenly
than 'Jack' had done between the two elements of human drama,
good and evil, hope and despair, laughter and tears. But a higher
triumph was to be achieved with 'Numa Roumestan,' which brought
Daudet's literary fame to its zenith.
## p. 4441 (#215) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
444I
'Tartarin' had not exhausted all that the author had to say of
meridional ways and manners. The Provençal character has its
dramatic as well as its comic aspect. In 'Numa Roumestan' we
have the farce and the tragedy blended together into a coherent
whole. We have a Tartarin whose power over man and woman is
not a mockery but a reality, who can win love and sympathy and
admiration, not in little Tarascon, mind you, but in Paris; who sends
joy abroad and creates torture at home; a charming companion, a
kind master, a subtle politician, a wonderful talker, but a light-
hearted and faithless husband, a genial liar, a smiling and good-
natured deceiver; the true image of the gifted adventurer who
periodically emerges from the South and goes northward finally to
conquer and govern the whole country.
As Zola has remarked, the author of 'Numa Roumestan' poured
himself out into that book with his double nature, North and South,
the rich sensuous imagination, the indolent easy-going optimism of
his native land, and the stern moral sensitiveness which was partly
characteristic of his own mind, partly acquired by painful and pro-
tracted experience. To depict his hero he had only to consult the
most intimate records of his own lifelong struggle. For he had been
trying desperately to evince Roumestan out of his own being. He
had fought and conquered, but only partially conquered. And on this
partial failure we must congratulate him and congratulate ourselves.
He said once that "Provençal landscape without sunshine is dull and
uninteresting. " The same may be said of his literary genius. It
wants sunshine, or else it loses half its loveliness and its irresistible
charm. Roumestan' is full of sunshine, and there is no other
among his books, except Tartarin,' where the bright and happy
light of the South plays more freely and more gracefully.
The novel is equally strong if you examine it from a different
standpoint. Nothing can be artistically better and more enchanting
than the Farandole scene, or more amusing than Roumestan's in-
trigue with the young opera singer; nothing can be more grand than
old Le Quesnoy's confession of sin and shame, or more affecting than
the closing scene where Rosalie is taught forgiveness by her dying
sister. Other parts in Daudet's work may sound hollow; 'Numa
Roumestan' will stand the most critical scrutiny as a drama, as a
work of art, as a faithful representation of life. Daudet's talents were
then at their best and united in happy combination for that splendid
effort which was not to be renewed.
In 'Sapho' Daudet described the modern courtesan, in 'L'Évan-
géliste' a desperate case of religious madness. In 'L'Immortel' he
gave vent to his feelings against the French Academy, which had 're-
pulsed him once and to which he turned his back forever in disgust.
## p. 4442 (#216) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4442
The angry writer pursued his enemy to death. In his unforgiving
mood, he was not satisfied before he had drowned the Academy
in the muddy waters of the Seine, with its unfortunate Secrétaire-
perpetuel, Astier-Réhu. The general verdict was that the vengeance
was altogether out of proportion to the offense; and that despite
all its brilliancy of wit and elaborate incisiveness of style, the satire
was really too violent and too personal to give real enjoyment to un-
biased and unprejudiced readers.
At different periods of his career Daudet had tried his hand as
a dramatist, but never succeeded in getting a firm foot on the
French stage. Play-goers still remember the signal failure of 'Lise
Tavernier,' the indifferent reception of 'L'Arlésienne,' or more re-
cently, of 'L'Obstacle. ' All his successful novels have been drama-
tized, but their popularity in that new form fell far short of the
common expectation. As an explanation of the fact various reasons
may be suggested. Daudet, I am inclined to think, is endowed with
real dramatic powers, not with scenic qualities; and from their con-
ventional point of view, old stagers will pronounce the construction
of his novels too weak for plays to be built upon them. Again, in
the play-house we miss the man who tells the story, the happy
presence - so unlike Flaubert's cheerless impassibility—the generous
anger, the hearty laugh, the delightful humor, that strange some-
thing which seems to appeal to every one of us in particular when
we read his novels. Dickens was once heard to say, on a pub-
lic occasion, that he owed his prodigious world-wide popularity to
this: that he was "so very human. " The words will apply with
equal felicity to Daudet's success. He never troubles to conceal
from his readers that he is a man. When the critic of the future
has to assign him a place and to compare his productions with the
writings of his great contemporary and fellow-worker Émile Zola, it
will occur to him that Daudet never had the steady-going indomi-
table energy, the ox-like patience, the large and comprehensive intel-
lect which are so characteristic in the master of Médan; that he
recoiled from assuming, like the author of Germinal' and 'Lourdes,'
a bold and definite position in the social and religious strife of our
days; that he never dreamt for a moment of taking the survey of a
whole society and covering the entire ground on which it stands with
his books.
Such a task-the critic will say - would have been uncongenial
to him. The scientist is careful to explain everything and to omit
nothing; he aims at completeness. But Daudet is an artist, not a
scientist. He is a poet in the primitive sense of the word, or, as he
styled himself in one of his books, a trouvère. » He has creative
power, but he has at the same time his share of the minor gift of
<<
## p. 4443 (#217) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4443
observation. He had to write for a public of strongly realistic tend-
encies, who understood and desired nothing better than the faithful,
accurate, almost scientific description of life. Daudet could supply
the demand, but as he was not born a realist, whatever social influ-
ences he had been subjected to, he remained free from the faults
and excesses of the school. He borrowed from it all that was good
and sound; he accepted realism as a practical method, not as an
ultimate result and a consummation. Again, he was preserved from
the danger of going down too deep and too low into the unclean
mysteries of modern humanity, not so much perhaps by moral deli-
cacy as by an artistic distaste for all that is repulsive and unseemly.
For those reasons, it would not be surprising if - when Death has
made him young again - Alphonse Daudet was destined to outlive
and outshine many who have enjoyed an equal or even greater
celebrity during this century. He will command an ever increasing
circle of admirers and friends, and generations yet unborn will grow
warm in his sunshine.
Augustin Filon
THE TWO TARTARINS
From Tartarin of Tarascon >
Α
NSWER me, you will say, how the mischief is it that Tartarin
of Tarascon never left Tarascon, with all this mania for
adventure, need of powerful sensations, and folly about
travel, rides, and journeys from the Pole to the Equator?
For that is a fact: up to the age of five-and-forty, the dread-
less Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room.
He had not even taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which
every sound Provençal makes upon coming of age. The most of
his knowledge included Beaucaire, and yet that's not far from
Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to go over. Unfortu-
nately, this rascally bridge has so often been blown away by
the gales, it is so long and frail, and the Rhône has such a
width at this spot that-well, faith! you understand! Tartarin
of Tarascon preferred terra firma.
We are afraid we must make a clean breast of it: in our hero
there were two very distinct characters. Some Father of the
## p. 4444 (#218) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4444
Church has said: "I feel there are two men in me. " He would
have spoken truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in
his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses,
heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but,
worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated
hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which
material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through
twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and
forty-eight hours on a handful of rice.
a handful of rice. On the contrary, Tar-
tarin's body was a stout honest bully of a body, very fat, very
weighty, most sensual and fond of coddling, highly touchy, full of
low-class appetite and homely requirements—the short, paunchy
body on stumps of the immortal Sancho Panza.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you
will readily comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made!
what strife! what clapperclawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for
Lucian or Saint-Évremond to write, between the two Tartarins —
Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin! Quixote-Tartarin firing
up on the stories of Gustave Aimard, and shouting, "Up and at
'em! " and Sancho-Tartarin thinking only of the rheumatics
ahead, and murmuring, "I mean to stay at home. "
QUIXOTE-TARTARIN
THE DUET
[Highly excited]
Cover yourself with glory, Tar-
tarin.
[Still more excitedly]
Oh for the terrible double-bar-
reled rifle! Oh for bowie-
knives, lassos, and mocca-
sins!
[Above all self-control]
A battle-axe! fetch me a battle-
axe!
SANCHO-TARTARIN
[Quite calmly]
Tartarin, cover yourself with flan-
nel.
[Still more calmly]
Oh for the thick knitted waist-
coats! and warm knee-caps!
Oh for the welcome padded
caps with ear-flaps!
[Ringing up the maid]
Now then, Jeannette, do bring
up that chocolate!
Whereupon Jeannette would appear with an unusually good
cup of chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and
## p. 4445 (#219) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4445
with the play of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface,
and with succulent grilled steak flavored with anise-seed, which
would set Sancho-Tartarin off on the broad grin, and into a
laugh that drowned the shouts of Quixote-Tartarin.
Thus it came about that Tartarin of Tarascon never had left
Tarascon.
OF "MENTAL MIRAGE," AS DISTINGUISHED FROM LYING
From Tartarin of Tarascon
NDER
one conjunction of circumstances, Tartarin did how-
ever once almost start out upon a great voyage.
The three brothers Garcio-Camus, natives of Tarascon, es-
tablished in business at Shanghai, offered him the managership
of one of their branches there. This undoubtedly presented the
kind of life he hankered after. Plenty of active business, a whole
army of understrappers to order about, and connections with
Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia-in short, to be a merchant
prince.
In Tartarin's mouth, the title of Merchant Prince thundered
out as something stunning!
The house of Garcio-Camus had the further advantage of
sometimes being favored with a call from the Tartars. Then
the doors would be slammed shut, all the clerks flew to arms,
up ran the consular flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the
windows upon the Tartars.
I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin
clutched this proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not
see it in the same light, and as he was the stronger party,
it never came to anything. But in the town there was much
talk about it. Would he go or would he not? "I'll lay he
will "— and “I'll wager he won't! " It was the event of the
week. In the upshot, Tartarin did not depart, but the matter
redounded to his credit none the less. Going or not going to
Shanghai was all one to Tarascon. Tartarin's journey was so
much talked about that people got to believe he had done it
and returned, and at the club in the evening members would
actually ask for information on life at Shanghai, the manners
and customs and climate, about opium, and commerce.
## p. 4446 (#220) ###########################################
4446
ALPHONSE DAUDET
Deeply read up, Tartarin would graciously furnish the par-
ticulars desired, and in the end the good fellow was not
quite sure himself about not having gone to Shanghai; so that
after relating for the hundredth time how the Tartars came
down on the trading post, it would most naturally happen him
to add:
----
"Then I made my men take up arms and hoist the consular
flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars. "
On hearing this, the whole club would quiver.
"But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful
liar. "
"No, no, a thousand times over, no! Tartarin is no liar. ”
"But the man ought to know that he has never been to
Shanghai->
"Why, of course, he knows that; but still -»
"But still," you see mark that! It is high time for the law
to be laid down once for all on the reputation as drawers of the
long bow which Northerners fling at Southerners. There are no
Baron Munchausens in the South of France, neither at Nîmes nor
Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon. The Southerner does not de-
ceive, but is self-deceived. He does not always tell the cold-
drawn truth, but he believes he does. His falsehood is not
falsehood, but a kind of mental mirage.
Yes, purely mirage! The better to follow me, you should
actually follow me into the South, and you will see I am right.
You have only to look at that Lucifer's own country, where the
sun transmogrifies everything, and magnifies it beyond life-size.
The little hills of Provence are no bigger than the Butte Mont-
martre, but they will loom up like the Rocky Mountains; the
Square House at Nîmes-a mere model to put on your side-
board- will seem grander than St. Peter's. You will see. - in
brief, the only exaggerator in the South is Old Sol, for he does
enlarge everything he touches. What was Sparta in its days of
splendor? a pitiful hamlet. What was Athens? at the most, a
second-class town; and yet in history both appear to us as enor-
mous cities. This is a sample of what the sun can do.
――――――――――
_
Are you going to be astonished, after this, that the same sun
falling upon Tarascon should have made of an ex-captain in the
Army Clothing Factory, like Bravida, the "brave commandant »;
of a sprout, an Indian fig-tree; and of a man who had missed
going to Shanghai one who had been there?
## p. 4447 (#221) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4447
THE DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN
From 'Letters from My Windmill ›
little Dauphin is ill; the little Dauphin will die. In all
THE
Τ the churches of the kingdom the Holy Sacrament is laid
ready day and night, and tapers are burning, for the
recovery of the royal child. The streets of the old town are sad
and silent; the bells ring no more; the carriages are driven very
slow ly. The curious townspeople are gathered just outside the
palace, and are staring in through the grating of the gates at
the guards, with their golden helmets, who walk the court with
an important air. The entire castle is in a state of anxiety; the
chamberlains and major-domos go up and down the staircase,
and run through the marble halls. The galleries are filled with
pages and courtiers in silk clothing, who go from group to
group collecting later news in a low voice. On the large porches
can be seen the ladies of honor, bathed in tears, bowing their
heads
and wiping their eyes with pretty embroidered handker-
chiefs.
In the orangery is a numerous assembly of doctors in
long robes: one can see them through the panes gesticulating in
their long sleeves, and shaking their wigs knowingly. The little
Dauphin's tutor and squire are waiting before the door, anxious
for the decision of the faculty. Scullions pass by without salut-
ing them. The squire swears like a pagan; the tutor recites
verse s from Horace. And during this time down by the stables
can hear a long plaintive neighing. It is the Dauphin's
little sorrel pony, whom the grooms are neglecting, and who
calls sadly from his empty manger. And the King - where is his
Majesty the King?
The King has shut himself up in a room
remote part of the castle. Their Majesties do not like to
be seen weeping. But the Queen-that is different. Seated by
the little prince's pillow, her beautiful face bathed in tears, she
sobs bitterly before every one, just as a peasant mother would.
one
in a
In his lace crib is the little Dauphin, whiter than the cushions
on which he reposes, with closed eyelids. They think he is
sleeping; but no, the little Dauphin does not sleep. He turns
toward
his mother, and seeing that she weeps, he says to her,
"Madame my Queen, why do you weep? Do you think truly
that I
am going to die? " The Queen wishes to reply, but sobs
prevent her speaking.
"Pray do not cry, Madame my Queen.
## p. 4448 (#222) ###########################################
4448
ALPHONSE DAUDET
You forget that I am the Dauphin, and Dauphins cannot die
thus. " The Queen sobs more bitterly still, and the little Dauphin
begins to be frightened. "Hola! " he says, "I do not wish to
have Death come and take me; and I shall know how to prevent
his coming here. Bring forth forty lancers, our strongest, to
mount guard around our bed; a hundred cannon night and day;
torches lighted beneath our windows. And unhappy Death if he
dares to approach us then! " The Queen gives a sign to please
the royal child. Forthwith, one can hear heavy cannon being
rolled across the courtyard; and forty soldiers, halberds in hand,
come and range themselves around the room: they are veterans,
with gray moustaches. The little Dauphin claps his hands feebly
as he sees them, and recognizing one he calls him by name,
"Lorrain! Lorrain! " The old soldier takes a step towards the
bed. "I love you well, my good Lorrain. Let me see your big
sword. If Death comes to take me, we must kill him, must we
not? " Lorrain replies, "Yes, Monseigneur," as the big tears
run down his bronzed cheeks.
At this moment the chaplain approaches the little Dauphin,
and talks to him for some time in a low tone, showing him a
crucifix. The little Dauphin listens with an astonished air; then
suddenly interrupting, "I understand well what you say, Mon-
sieur l'Abbé; but after all, could not my little friend Beppo die
in my place, if we should give him a great deal of money? »
The chaplain continues talking to him in a low voice, and
the little Dauphin looks more and more astonished. When the
chaplain has finished, the little Dauphin resumes, with a heavy
sigh, "All that you tell me is very sad, Monsieur l'Abbé, but
one thing consoles me: up there, in the paradise of stars, I shall
still be the Dauphin. I know that our good God is my cousin,
and would not fail to treat me according to my rank. " Then he
adds, turning to his mother, "Have my finest garments brought
-my ermine cloak and velvet slippers. I wish to array myself
for the angels, and enter paradise dressed as a Dauphin. "
A third time the chaplain bends over the little prince, and
talks a long time in whispering tones. The royal child inter-
rupts him in anger, in the midst of his discourse, and cries,
Then it is no use to be Dauphin,- it is nothing at all; >> and
not wishing to hear more, he turns toward the wall weeping.
<<
Translation of Mary Corey.
1
## p. 4449 (#223) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
JACK IS INVITED TO TAKE UP A "PROFESSION »
From 'Jack'
4449
"D°
o you hear, Jack? " resumed D'Argenton, with flashing eyes
and outstretched arm. "In four years you will be a
good workman; that is to say, the noblest, grandest thing
that can exist in this world of slavery and servitude. In four
years you will be that sacred, venerated thing, a good work-
man! "
VIII-279
Yes, indeed he heard it! "a good workman. " Only he was
bewildered and was trying to understand.
The child had seen workmen in Paris. There were some
who lived in the Passage des Douze Maisons, and not far from
the Gymnase there was a factory, from which he often watched
them as they left work at about six o'clock; a crowd of dirty-
looking men with their blouses all stained with oil, and their
rough hands blackened and deformed by work.
The idea that he would have to wear a blouse struck him at
once. He remembered the tone of contempt with which his
mother would say: "Those are workmen, men in blouses, "— the
care she took in the streets to avoid the contact of their soiled
garments. Labassindre's fine speeches on the duties and in-
fluence of the workingman in the nineteenth century attenuated
and contradicted, it is true, these vague impressions. But what
he did understand, and that most clearly and bitterly, was that
he must go away, leave the forest whose tree-tops he saw from
the window, leave the Rivalses, leave his mother, his mother
whom he had recovered at the cost of so much pain, and whom
he loved so tenderly.
What on earth was she doing at that window all this time,
seeming so indifferent to all that was going on around her?
Within the last few minutes, however, she had lost her immov-
able indifference. A convulsive shudder seemed to shake her
from head to foot, and the hand she held over her eyes closed
over them as if she were hiding tears. Was it then so sad a
sight that she beheld yonder in the country, on the far horizon
where the sun sets, and where so many dreams, so many illu-
sions, so many loves and passions sink and disappear, never to
return?
## p. 4450 (#224) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4450
"Then I shall have to go away? " inquired the child in a
smothered voice, and the automatic air of one who lets his
thought speak, the one thought that absorbed him.
At this artless question all the members of the tribunal
looked at each other with a smile of pity; but over there at the
window a great sob was heard.
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4427
of many climates in the same country: he seldom exercises each
selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds
a long and a short-beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not
exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar
manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same
climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to struggle
for the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals,
but protects during each varying season, as far as lies in his
power, all his productions. He often begins his selection by some
half-monstrous form; or at least by some modification prominent
enough to catch the eye or to be plainly useful to him. Under
Nature, the slightest differences of structure or constitution may
well turn the nicely balanced scale in the struggle for life, and
so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of
man! How short his time, and consequently how poor will be
his results, compared with those accumulated by Nature during
whole geological periods! Can we wonder then that Nature's
productions should be far "truer" in character than man's pro-
ductions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most
complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of
far higher workmanship?
It may metaphorically be said that Natural Selection is daily
and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest varia-
tions; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all
that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and
wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic
being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
We see nothing of these slow changes in progress until the hand
of time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is
our view into long-past geological ages, that we see only that the
forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.
In order that any great amount of modification should be
effected in a species, a variety when once formed must again,
perhaps after a long interval of time, vary or present individual
differences of the same favorable nature as before; and these
must be again preserved, and so onward step by step. Seeing
that individual differences of the same kind perpetually recur,
this can hardly be considered as an unwarrantable assumption.
But whether it is true, we can judge only by seeing how far the
hypothesis accords with and explains the general phenomena of
nature. On the other hand, the ordinary belief that the amount
## p. 4428 (#198) ###########################################
4428
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
of possible variation is a strictly limited quantity, is likewise a
simple assumption.
Although Natural Selection can act only through and for the
good of each being, yet characters and structures, which we are
apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted
on. When we see leaf-eating insects green, and bark-feeders
mottled gray; the Alpine ptarmigan white in winter, the red
grouse the color of heather,- we must believe that these tints
are of service to these birds and insects in preserving them from
danger. Grouse, if not destroyed at some period of their lives,
would increase in countless numbers; they are known to suffer
largely from birds of prey; and hawks are guided by eyesight to
their prey - so much so, that on parts of the Continent persons
are warned not to keep white pigeons, as being the most liable
to destruction. Hence Natural Selection might be effective in
giving the proper color to each kind of grouse, and in keeping
that color, when once acquired, true and constant.
Nor ought
we to think that the occasional destruction of an animal of any
particular color would produce little effect: we should remember
how essential it is in a flock of white sheep to destroy a lamb
with the faintest trace of black. We have seen how the color
of hogs which feed on the "paint-root" in Virginia, determines
whether they shall live or die. In plants, the down on the
fruit and the color of the flesh are considered by botanists as
characters of the most trifling importance; yet we hear from
an excellent horticulturist, Downing, that in the United States
smooth-skinned fruits suffer far more from a beetle, a curculio,
than those with down; that purple plums suffer far more from a
certain disease than yellow plums; whereas another disease attacks
yellow-fleshed peaches far more than those with other colored
flesh. If with all the aids of art, these slight differences make a
great difference in cultivating the several varieties, assuredly, in
a state of nature, where the trees would have to struggle with
other trees and with a host of enemies, such differences would
effectually settle which variety, whether a smooth or downy, a
yellow or a purple-fleshed fruit, should succeed.
In looking at many small points of difference between species,
which, as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, seem quite
unimportant, we must not forget that climate, food, etc. , have no
doubt produced some direct effect. It is also necessary to bear
in mind that owing to the law of correlation, when one part
----
## p. 4429 (#199) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4429
varies, and the variations are accumulated through Natural
Selection, other modifications, often of the most unexpected
nature, will ensue.
As we see that those variations which under domestication
appear at any particular period of life, tend to reappear in the
offspring at the same period; -for instance, in the shape, size,
and flavor of the seeds of the many varieties of our culinary and
agricultural plants; in the caterpillar and cocoon stages of the
varieties of the silkworm; in the eggs of poultry, and in the
color of the down of their chickens; in the horns of our sheep and
cattle when nearly adult; so in a state of nature Natural
Selection will be enabled to act on and modify organic beings at
any age, by the accumulation of variations profitable at that age,
and by their inheritance at a corresponding age.
If it profit a
plant to have its seeds more and more widely disseminated by
the wind, I can see no greater difficulty in this being effected
through Natural Selection, than in the cotton-planter increasing
and improving by selection the down in the pods on his cotton-
trees. Natural Selection may modify and adapt the larva of an
insect to a score of contingencies wholly different from those
which concern the mature insect; and these modifications may
effect, through correlation, the structure of the adult. So, con-
versely, modifications in the adult may affect the structure of the
larva; but in all cases Natural Selection will insure that they
shall not be injurious: for if they were so, the species would
become extinct.
Natural Selection will modify the structure of the young in
relation to the parent, and of the parent in relation to the
young. In social animals it will adapt the structure of each
individual for the benefit of the whole community, if the com-
munity profits by the selected change. What Natural Selection
cannot do, is to modify the structure of one species, without
giving it any advantage, for the good of another species; and
though statements to this effect may be found in works of nat-
ural history, I cannot find one case which will bear investigation.
A structure used only once in an animal's life, if of high import-
ance to it, might be modified to any extent by Natural Selection;
for instance, the great jaws possessed by certain insects, used
exclusively for opening the cocoon, or the hard tip to the beak
of unhatched birds, used for breaking the eggs. It has been
asserted that of the best short-beaked tumbler-pigeons a greater
## p. 4430 (#200) ###########################################
4430
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
number perish in the egg than are able to get out of it; so that
fanciers assist in the act of hatching. Now if Nature had
to make the beak of a full-grown pigeon very short for the
bird's own advantage, the process of modification would be very
slow, and there would be simultaneously the most rigorous selec-
tion of all the young birds within the egg, which had the most
powerful and hardest beaks, for all with weak beaks would inev-
itably perish; or more delicate and more easily broken shells
might be selected, the thickness of the shell being known to
vary like every other structure.
It may be well here to remark that with all beings there
must be much fortuitous destruction, which can have little or no
influence on the course of Natural Selection. For instance, a vast
number of eggs or seeds are annually devoured, and these could
be modified through Natural Selection only if they varied in
some manner which protected them from their enemies. Yet
many of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed,
have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions of life
than any of those which happened to survive. So again a vast
number of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be
the best adapted to their conditions, must be annually destroyed
by accidental causes, which would not be in the least degree miti-
gated by certain changes of structure or constitution which would
in other ways be beneficial to the species. But let the destruc-
tion of the adults be ever so heavy, if the number which can
exist in any district be not wholly kept down by such causes,
or again, let the destruction of eggs or seeds be so great that
only a hundredth or a thousandth part are developed, yet of
those which do survive, the best adapted individuals, supposing
that there is any variability in a favorable direction, will tend
to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less well
adapted. If the numbers be wholly kept down by the causes
just indicated, as will often have been the case, Natural Selection
will be powerless in certain beneficial directions; but this is no
valid objection to its efficiency at other times and in other ways;
for we are far from having any reason to suppose that many
species ever undergo modification and improvement at the same
time in the same area.
-----
―――
## p. 4431 (#201) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
443I
PROGRESSIVE CHANGE COMPARED WITH INDEPENDENT
CREATION
From the Origin of Species >
A
UTHORS of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied
with the view that each species has been independently
created. To my mind it accords better with what we know
of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the pro-
duction and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the
world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of an individual. When I view
all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants
of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of
the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become
ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not
one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant
futurity. And of the species now living, very few will transmit
progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in
which all organic beings are grouped shows that the greater
number of species in each genus, and all the species in many
genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct.
We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell
that it will be the common and widely spread species, belonging
to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will
ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As
all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those
which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain
that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been
broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.
Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of
great length. And as Natural Selection works solely by and for
the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments
will tend to progress towards perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes,
with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling
through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately
constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent
upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced
by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest
## p. 4432 (#202) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4432
sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance, which is
almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and
direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse:
a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life,
and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence
of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus
from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted
object which we are capable of conceiving,- namely, the produc-
tion of the higher animals,- directly follows. There is grandeur
in this view of life, with its several powers, having been origi
nally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and
that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endiess forms most
beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
CREATIVE DESIGN
From The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication >
S
SOME authors have declared that natural selection explains
nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual
difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage
utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been
raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were
used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, etc. ; and if the use
of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would
be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear
to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment
could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the
objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not
the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each
being.
The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our
precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct;
for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all
obeying natural laws: on the nature of the rock, on the lines of
deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which
depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly
on the storm or earthquake which throws down the fragments.
But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put,
their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we
## p. 4433 (#203) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4433
are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I
aware that I am traveling beyond my proper province. An
omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which
results from the laws imposed by him. But can it be reasonably
maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the
words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock
should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his
edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of
each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can
it be maintained with any greater probability that he specially
ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable
variations in our domestic animals and plants; many of these
variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far
more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did he ordain
that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in
order that the, fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fan-
tail breeds? Did he cause the frame and mental qualities of the
dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomi-
table ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's
brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case,—if
we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were
intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance,
that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed,—
no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that varia-
tions, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws,
which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the
formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world,
man included, were intentionally and specially guided. How-
ever much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa
Gray in his belief that "variation has been led along certain
beneficial lines," like a stream «< along definite and useful lines of
irrigation. " If we
assume that each particular variation was
from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity
of organization which leads to many injurious deviations of
structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which
inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and as a conse-
quence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest,- must
appear to us superfluous laws of Nature. On the other hand, an
omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and fore-
sees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a diffi-
culty as insoluble as is that of free-will and predestination.
VIII-278
## p. 4434 (#204) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4434
THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES
From The Descent of Man'
THE
HE main conclusion arrived at in this work-namely, that
man is descended from some lowly organized form-will, I
regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But
there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barba-
rians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of
Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by
me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind - Such were
our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed
with paint. . They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild
animals, lived on what they could catch; they had no government,
and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe.
He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much
shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more
humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part, I would
as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved
his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or
from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, car-
ried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of as-
tonished dogs, -as from a savage who delights to torture his
enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without
remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is
haunted by the grossest superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen,
though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the
organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of
having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a
still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here
concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our
reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the
best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to
me, that Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which
feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not
only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his
godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and
constitution of the solar system, with all these exalted powers,
Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his
lowly origin.
-
## p. 4434 (#205) ###########################################
ST
ゴー
10
10
30
177
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## p. 4434 (#206) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET.
## p. 4434 (#207) ###########################################
J
not c.
5131
## p. 4434 (#208) ###########################################
1
1
1
గృతమే.
## p. 4435 (#209) ###########################################
4435
ALPHONSE DAUDET
(1840-)
BY AUGUSTIN FILON
ORTY years have now elapsed since a lad of seventeen, shiv-
ering under his light summer dress in a cold misty morn-
ing, was waiting, with an empty stomach, for the opening
of a « dairy
» in the Quartier Latin. Young as he was, he looked
still younger: a pale, eager, intellectual face, with flashing eyes, del-
icately
carved features, and a virgin forest of dark hair falling low
on his brow. He had been an usher for a twelvemonth at a small
college in the South of France, and he had just arrived in Paris
after a two-days' journey in a third-class railway carriage, during
which time he had tasted no food and no drink except a few drops
of brandy from the flask of some charitable sailors. And there he
was, with two francs left in his pocket, and an unlimited supply of
courage, cheerfulness, and ambition, fully determined to make the
whole world familiar with the obscure name of Alphonse Daudet.
We
all know how well he has succeeded in winning for himself a
foremost place in the ranks of French contemporary literature, and
indeed of literature in general. There is no doubt that he was
admirably equipped for the great struggle on which he was about to
enter;
but it may be also remarked that he had not to fight it out
alone and with his own solitary resources, but found at the very out-
set useful and strong auxiliaries. He was to have a powerful though
somewhat selfish and indolent patron in the famous Duke of Morny,
who admitted him among his secretaries before he was twenty years
old. Then he had the good fortune to attract the attention and to
take the fancy of Villemessant, the editor of the Figaro, who at first
sight gave him a place in his nursery of young talents. He had a
kind and devoted brother, who cheerfully shared with him the little
money he had to live upon, and thus saved him from the unspeak-
able miseries which would inevitably attend a literary début at such
an early age
and under such inauspicious circumstances. Later on,
he was still more fortunate in securing a loving and intelligent wife,
who was to be to him, in the words of the holy Scriptures,
panion of his rank," a wife who was not only to become a help and
a comfort, but a literary adviser, a moral guide, and a second con-
science far more strict and exacting than his own; a wife who taught
«< a com-
## p. 4436 (#210) ###########################################
4436
ALPHONSE DAUDET
him how to direct and husband his precious faculties,- how to turn
them to the noblest use and highest ends.
But before that was to come, the first thing was to find a pub-
lisher; and after long looking in vain for one throughout the whole
city, he at last discovered the man he wanted, at his door, in the
close vicinity of that Hôtel du Sinat, in the Rue de Tournon, where
the two brothers Daudet had taken up their abode. That publisher
was Jules Tardieu, himself an author of some merit (under the trans-
parent pseudonym of J. T. de St. Germain): a mild, quiet humorist
of the optimistic school, a Topffer on a small scale and with reduced
proportions.
And thus it happened that a few months after the lad's arrival in
Paris an elegant booklet, with the attractive title 'Les Amoureuses'
(Women in Love) printed in red letters on its snow-white cover,
made its appearance under the galeries de l'Odéon, where in the ab-
sence of political emotions, the youth of the Quartier was eagerly
looking for literary novelties, and where Daudet himself had been
wandering often, in the hope of an occasional acquaintance with the
great critics and journalists of the day who made the galeries their
favorite resort.
I have read that the book was a failure; that the young author
was unable to pay the printer, and was accordingly served with
stamped paper at the official residence of Morny, where he was then
acting as secretary; that the duke, far from showing any displeasure
at the occurrence, was delighted to find his secretary in hot water
with the bailiffs, and that he arranged the matter in the most
paternal spirit. This may be a pretty little story, but I fear it is a
"legend. " I cannot reconcile it with the fact that four years after the
first publication, the same publisher gave the public another edition
of 'Les Amoureuses,' and that the young poet dedicated it to him as
a token of respect and gratitude. The truth is that Daudet's little
volume not only did not pass unnoticed, but received a good deal of
attention, chiefly from the young men. Many thought that a new
Musset was born in their midst, only a few months after the real
one had been laid down to his last sleep in the Père Lachaise, under
the trembling shadow of his favorite willow-tree. Young Daudet al-
luded to the unfortunate poet-
་
«<
-
mort de dégoût, de tristesse, et d'absinthe; »
and he tried to imitate the half cynical, half nostalgic skepticism
which had made the author of 'Les Nuits' so powerful over the
minds of the new generation and so dear to their hearts.
But it did not seem perfectly genuine. When Daudet said,
"My heart is old," no one believed it, and he did not believe it
## p. 4437 (#211) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4437
himself, for he entitled the piece Fanfaronnade'; and in fact it was
nothing more than a fanfaronnade. The book was full of the fresh-
ness, buoyancy, and frolicsome petulance of youth. Here and there
a few reminiscences might be traced to the earliest poets of the
sixteenth century, more particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of
the expiring romanticism lingered in 'Les Amoureuses' with a
much more substantial admixture of the spirit of an age which made
pleasure-hunting its paramount occupation. The precocious child
could modulate the 'Romance à Madame' as well as the page of
Beaumarchais, if not better; but he could also laugh it down in
Gavroche's sneering way; he could intersperse a song of love with
the irony of the boulevard or the more genial humor of his native
South. He was at his best in the tale of Les Prunes'.
"Si vous voulez savoir comment
Nous nous aimâmes pour des prunes >>>
That exquisite little piece survived long the youthful volume of 'Les
Amoureuses. ' In those days, when Coquelin's monologues and saynètes
were yet unknown, the brothers Lionnet, then in the height of their
vogue, delighted the drawing-rooms with the miniature masterpiece.
Still, those who had prophesied the advent of a new poet were
doomed to disappointment. Every one knows what Sainte-Beuve once
said about the short-lived existence, in most of us, of a poet whom
the real man is to survive. Shall we say that this was the case with
Daudet, who never, as far as the world knows, wrote verses after
twenty-five? No; the poet was not to die in him, but lived on and
lives still to this day. Only he has always written in prose.
After his successful début, Daudet felt his way in different direc-
tions. In collaboration with M. Ernest Lepine, who has since made
a reputation under the name of Quatrelles, he had a drama, 'The
Last Idol,' performed at the Odéon theatre, at that same Odéon
which in his first days of Paris seems to have been the centre of his
life and of his ambitions. But he more frequently appeared before
the public as a journalist and a humorist, a writer of light articles
and short stories. Nothing can give a more true, more vivacious, and
on the whole more favorable impression of the Daudet of the period
than the 'Lettres de Mon Moulin' (Letters from My Windmill).
They owe their title to an old deserted windmill where Alphonse
Daudet seems to have lived some time in complete seclusion, forget-
ting, or trying to forget, the excitement of Parisian life. The
preface, most curiously disguised under the form of a mock contract
which is supposed to transfer the ownership from the old proprietor
to the poet, and professes to give the état de lieux or description of
the place, is an amusing parody of legal jargon. The next chapter
## p. 4438 (#212) ###########################################
4438
ALPHONSE DAUDET
describes the installation of the new master in the same happy vein,
with all the odd circumstances attending it.
Throughout the rest of the volume, Daudet disappears and re-
appears, as his fancy prompts him to do. Now he lets himself be
carried back to past memories and distant places; now he gives us a
mediæval tale or a domestic drama of to-day compressed into a few
brief pages, or a picture of rural life, or a glimpse of that literary
hell from which he had just escaped and to which he was soon to
return. He changed his tone and his subject with amazing versatil-
ity, from the bitterest satire to idyllic sweetness, or to a pleasant
kind of clever naïveté which is truly his own. We see him musing
among the firs and the pine-trees of his native Provence, or riding
on the top of the diligence under the scorching sun and listening, in
a Sterne-like fashion, to the conversation which took place between
the facetious baker and the unhappy knife-grinder, or chatting
familiarly with Frederic Mistral, who takes him into the confidence
of his poetical dreams. Then, again, we see him sitting down at
the table of an Algerian sheik; or wandering on the gloomy rocks.
where the Semillante was lost, and trying to revive the awful
tragedy of her last minutes; or shut up in a solitary light-house with
the keepers for weeks and weeks together, content with the society
and with the fare of those poor, rough, uncultivated men, cut off
from the whole world, alone with the stormy winds and his stormy
thoughts. Wherever his morbid restlessness takes him, whatever
part he chooses to assume, whether he wants to move us to laughter
or to tears, we can but follow him fascinated and spell-bound, and
in harmony with his moods. Daudet when he wrote those letters
was already a perfect master of all the resources of the language.
What he had seen or felt, he could make us see and feel. He could
make old words new with the freshness, ardor, and sincerity of the
personal impressions which he was pouring into them unceasingly.
The Letters from My Mill' had been scattered here and there
through different newspapers, and at different times. They were re-
printed in the form of a book in 1868. The year before he had given
to the public 'Le Petit Chose' (A Little Chap), which is better
known, I believe, to the English-speaking races under the rather mis-
leading title of 'My Brother Jack. ' 'Le Petit Chose' was a commer-
cial success, but it is doubtful whether it will rank as high among
Daudet's productions as the 'Lettres de Mon Moulin. ' He began to
compose it in February 1866, during one of those misanthropic fits to
which he was subject at periodical intervals, and which either par-
alyzed altogether, or quickened into fever, his creative faculties. He
finished the work two years later in a very different mood, imme-
diately after his marriage. As might have been expected, the two
## p. 4439 (#213) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4439
parts are very dissimilar, and it must be confessed greatly unequal.
'Le Petit Chose' has reminded more than one reader of 'David Cop-
perfield'; and it cannot be denied that the two works bear some
resemblance both as regards manner and matter. But though Dick-
ens was then widely read and much admired in France, plagiarism is
out of the question. If there is a little of Dickens about 'Le Petit
Chose,' there is a great deal more of Daudet himself in it. Young
Eyssette, the hero of the novel, starts in life as Daudet had done
and at the same period of life, in the quality of an usher at a small
provincial college. Whether we take it as a fiction, with its innumer-
able bits of delicate humor, lovely descriptions of places and glimpses
of characters in humble life, or whether we accept it as an autobi-
ography which is likely to bring us into closer acquaintance with the
inner soul of a great man, the first part is delightful reading. But
we lose sight of him through all the adventures, at once wild and
commonplace, which are crowding in the second part, to culminate
into the most unconvincing dénouement. Even when speaking of
himself, Daudet is sometimes at a disadvantage, perhaps because, as
he justly observed, "it is too early at twenty-five to comment upon
one's own past career. " Only the old man is able to look at his
former self through the distance of years and to see it as it stood
once, in its true light and with its real proportions.
'Tartarin of Tarascon' saw the light for the first time in 1872.
Strange to say, the readers of the Petit Moniteur, to whom it was
first offered in a serial form, did not like it. In consequence of their
marked disapproval, the publication had to be abandoned and was
then resumed through the columns of another newspaper. This time
the mistake was entirely on the side of the public. For-apart from
the fact that the immortal Tartarin was not yet Tartarin, but
answered to the much less typical name of Chapatin-the general
outlines of the character were already visible in all their distinctness
from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chap-
ters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed
with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve
and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,›
'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I
know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and
so well sustained a joke. How is it then that we never grow tired
of Tartarin? It is probably because beneath the surface of Daudet's
playful absurdity there underlies rich substratum of good common-
sense and keen observation. Since 'Don Quixote' was written, no
caricature has ever been more human or more true than Tartarin.
Frenchmen are not, as is frequently asserted by their Anglo-Saxon
critics, totally unfit to appreciate humor, when it is mingled with the
## p. 4440 (#214) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4440
study of man's nature and seasoned with that high-spiced irony of
which they have been so fond at all times, from the days of Villon
to those of Rochefort. Still, Daudet would never have acquired such
a complete mastery over the general public in his own country, if
he had not been able to gratify their taste for that graphic and
faithful description of manners and characters, which in other centu-
ries put the moralists into fashion. Realism never disappears alto-
gether from French literature: it was at that moment all-powerful.
Zola was coming to the front with the first volumes of the well-
known 'Rougon-Macquart,' and Daudet in 1874 entered on the same
path, though in a different spirit, with 'Fromont Jeune et Risler
Aîné. ' The success was immediate and immense. The French bour-
geoisie accepted it at once as a true picture of its vices and its
virtues. The novel might, it is true, savor a little of Parisian cock-
neyism. Fastidious critics might discover in it some mixture of
weak sentimentalism, or a few traces of Dickensian affectation and
cheap tricks in story-telling. Young men of the new social school
might take exception to that old-fashioned democracy which had its
apotheosis in Risler senior. Despite all those objections, it was pro-
nounced a masterpiece of legitimate pathos and sound observation.
Even the minor characters were judged striking, and Delobelle's
name, for instance, occurs at once to our mind whenever we try to
realize the image of the modern cabotin.
'Jack,' which came next, exceeded the usual length of French
novels. "Too much paper, my son! " old Flaubert majestically
observed with a smile when the author presented him with a copy
of his book. As for George Sand, she felt so sick at heart and so
depressed when she had finished reading 'Jack,' that she could work
no more and had to remain idle for three or four days. A painful
book, indeed, a distressing book, but how fascinating! And is not its
wonderful influence over the readers exemplified in the most striking
manner by the fact that it had the power to unnerve and to incapaci-
tate for her daily task that most valiant of all intellectual laborers,
that hardest of hard workers, George Sand?
The lost ground, if there had been any lost at all, was soon
regained with 'Le Nabab' (The Nabob) and 'Les Rois en Exil' (Kings
in Exile). They took the reader to a higher sphere of emotion and
thought, showed us greater men fighting for greater things on a
wider theatre than the middle-class life in which Fromont and Risler
had moved.
At the same time they kept the balance more evenly
than 'Jack' had done between the two elements of human drama,
good and evil, hope and despair, laughter and tears. But a higher
triumph was to be achieved with 'Numa Roumestan,' which brought
Daudet's literary fame to its zenith.
## p. 4441 (#215) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
444I
'Tartarin' had not exhausted all that the author had to say of
meridional ways and manners. The Provençal character has its
dramatic as well as its comic aspect. In 'Numa Roumestan' we
have the farce and the tragedy blended together into a coherent
whole. We have a Tartarin whose power over man and woman is
not a mockery but a reality, who can win love and sympathy and
admiration, not in little Tarascon, mind you, but in Paris; who sends
joy abroad and creates torture at home; a charming companion, a
kind master, a subtle politician, a wonderful talker, but a light-
hearted and faithless husband, a genial liar, a smiling and good-
natured deceiver; the true image of the gifted adventurer who
periodically emerges from the South and goes northward finally to
conquer and govern the whole country.
As Zola has remarked, the author of 'Numa Roumestan' poured
himself out into that book with his double nature, North and South,
the rich sensuous imagination, the indolent easy-going optimism of
his native land, and the stern moral sensitiveness which was partly
characteristic of his own mind, partly acquired by painful and pro-
tracted experience. To depict his hero he had only to consult the
most intimate records of his own lifelong struggle. For he had been
trying desperately to evince Roumestan out of his own being. He
had fought and conquered, but only partially conquered. And on this
partial failure we must congratulate him and congratulate ourselves.
He said once that "Provençal landscape without sunshine is dull and
uninteresting. " The same may be said of his literary genius. It
wants sunshine, or else it loses half its loveliness and its irresistible
charm. Roumestan' is full of sunshine, and there is no other
among his books, except Tartarin,' where the bright and happy
light of the South plays more freely and more gracefully.
The novel is equally strong if you examine it from a different
standpoint. Nothing can be artistically better and more enchanting
than the Farandole scene, or more amusing than Roumestan's in-
trigue with the young opera singer; nothing can be more grand than
old Le Quesnoy's confession of sin and shame, or more affecting than
the closing scene where Rosalie is taught forgiveness by her dying
sister. Other parts in Daudet's work may sound hollow; 'Numa
Roumestan' will stand the most critical scrutiny as a drama, as a
work of art, as a faithful representation of life. Daudet's talents were
then at their best and united in happy combination for that splendid
effort which was not to be renewed.
In 'Sapho' Daudet described the modern courtesan, in 'L'Évan-
géliste' a desperate case of religious madness. In 'L'Immortel' he
gave vent to his feelings against the French Academy, which had 're-
pulsed him once and to which he turned his back forever in disgust.
## p. 4442 (#216) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4442
The angry writer pursued his enemy to death. In his unforgiving
mood, he was not satisfied before he had drowned the Academy
in the muddy waters of the Seine, with its unfortunate Secrétaire-
perpetuel, Astier-Réhu. The general verdict was that the vengeance
was altogether out of proportion to the offense; and that despite
all its brilliancy of wit and elaborate incisiveness of style, the satire
was really too violent and too personal to give real enjoyment to un-
biased and unprejudiced readers.
At different periods of his career Daudet had tried his hand as
a dramatist, but never succeeded in getting a firm foot on the
French stage. Play-goers still remember the signal failure of 'Lise
Tavernier,' the indifferent reception of 'L'Arlésienne,' or more re-
cently, of 'L'Obstacle. ' All his successful novels have been drama-
tized, but their popularity in that new form fell far short of the
common expectation. As an explanation of the fact various reasons
may be suggested. Daudet, I am inclined to think, is endowed with
real dramatic powers, not with scenic qualities; and from their con-
ventional point of view, old stagers will pronounce the construction
of his novels too weak for plays to be built upon them. Again, in
the play-house we miss the man who tells the story, the happy
presence - so unlike Flaubert's cheerless impassibility—the generous
anger, the hearty laugh, the delightful humor, that strange some-
thing which seems to appeal to every one of us in particular when
we read his novels. Dickens was once heard to say, on a pub-
lic occasion, that he owed his prodigious world-wide popularity to
this: that he was "so very human. " The words will apply with
equal felicity to Daudet's success. He never troubles to conceal
from his readers that he is a man. When the critic of the future
has to assign him a place and to compare his productions with the
writings of his great contemporary and fellow-worker Émile Zola, it
will occur to him that Daudet never had the steady-going indomi-
table energy, the ox-like patience, the large and comprehensive intel-
lect which are so characteristic in the master of Médan; that he
recoiled from assuming, like the author of Germinal' and 'Lourdes,'
a bold and definite position in the social and religious strife of our
days; that he never dreamt for a moment of taking the survey of a
whole society and covering the entire ground on which it stands with
his books.
Such a task-the critic will say - would have been uncongenial
to him. The scientist is careful to explain everything and to omit
nothing; he aims at completeness. But Daudet is an artist, not a
scientist. He is a poet in the primitive sense of the word, or, as he
styled himself in one of his books, a trouvère. » He has creative
power, but he has at the same time his share of the minor gift of
<<
## p. 4443 (#217) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4443
observation. He had to write for a public of strongly realistic tend-
encies, who understood and desired nothing better than the faithful,
accurate, almost scientific description of life. Daudet could supply
the demand, but as he was not born a realist, whatever social influ-
ences he had been subjected to, he remained free from the faults
and excesses of the school. He borrowed from it all that was good
and sound; he accepted realism as a practical method, not as an
ultimate result and a consummation. Again, he was preserved from
the danger of going down too deep and too low into the unclean
mysteries of modern humanity, not so much perhaps by moral deli-
cacy as by an artistic distaste for all that is repulsive and unseemly.
For those reasons, it would not be surprising if - when Death has
made him young again - Alphonse Daudet was destined to outlive
and outshine many who have enjoyed an equal or even greater
celebrity during this century. He will command an ever increasing
circle of admirers and friends, and generations yet unborn will grow
warm in his sunshine.
Augustin Filon
THE TWO TARTARINS
From Tartarin of Tarascon >
Α
NSWER me, you will say, how the mischief is it that Tartarin
of Tarascon never left Tarascon, with all this mania for
adventure, need of powerful sensations, and folly about
travel, rides, and journeys from the Pole to the Equator?
For that is a fact: up to the age of five-and-forty, the dread-
less Tarasconian had never once slept outside his own room.
He had not even taken that obligatory trip to Marseilles which
every sound Provençal makes upon coming of age. The most of
his knowledge included Beaucaire, and yet that's not far from
Tarascon, there being merely the bridge to go over. Unfortu-
nately, this rascally bridge has so often been blown away by
the gales, it is so long and frail, and the Rhône has such a
width at this spot that-well, faith! you understand! Tartarin
of Tarascon preferred terra firma.
We are afraid we must make a clean breast of it: in our hero
there were two very distinct characters. Some Father of the
## p. 4444 (#218) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4444
Church has said: "I feel there are two men in me. " He would
have spoken truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in
his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses,
heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but,
worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated
hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which
material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through
twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and
forty-eight hours on a handful of rice.
a handful of rice. On the contrary, Tar-
tarin's body was a stout honest bully of a body, very fat, very
weighty, most sensual and fond of coddling, highly touchy, full of
low-class appetite and homely requirements—the short, paunchy
body on stumps of the immortal Sancho Panza.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you
will readily comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made!
what strife! what clapperclawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for
Lucian or Saint-Évremond to write, between the two Tartarins —
Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin! Quixote-Tartarin firing
up on the stories of Gustave Aimard, and shouting, "Up and at
'em! " and Sancho-Tartarin thinking only of the rheumatics
ahead, and murmuring, "I mean to stay at home. "
QUIXOTE-TARTARIN
THE DUET
[Highly excited]
Cover yourself with glory, Tar-
tarin.
[Still more excitedly]
Oh for the terrible double-bar-
reled rifle! Oh for bowie-
knives, lassos, and mocca-
sins!
[Above all self-control]
A battle-axe! fetch me a battle-
axe!
SANCHO-TARTARIN
[Quite calmly]
Tartarin, cover yourself with flan-
nel.
[Still more calmly]
Oh for the thick knitted waist-
coats! and warm knee-caps!
Oh for the welcome padded
caps with ear-flaps!
[Ringing up the maid]
Now then, Jeannette, do bring
up that chocolate!
Whereupon Jeannette would appear with an unusually good
cup of chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and
## p. 4445 (#219) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4445
with the play of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface,
and with succulent grilled steak flavored with anise-seed, which
would set Sancho-Tartarin off on the broad grin, and into a
laugh that drowned the shouts of Quixote-Tartarin.
Thus it came about that Tartarin of Tarascon never had left
Tarascon.
OF "MENTAL MIRAGE," AS DISTINGUISHED FROM LYING
From Tartarin of Tarascon
NDER
one conjunction of circumstances, Tartarin did how-
ever once almost start out upon a great voyage.
The three brothers Garcio-Camus, natives of Tarascon, es-
tablished in business at Shanghai, offered him the managership
of one of their branches there. This undoubtedly presented the
kind of life he hankered after. Plenty of active business, a whole
army of understrappers to order about, and connections with
Russia, Persia, Turkey in Asia-in short, to be a merchant
prince.
In Tartarin's mouth, the title of Merchant Prince thundered
out as something stunning!
The house of Garcio-Camus had the further advantage of
sometimes being favored with a call from the Tartars. Then
the doors would be slammed shut, all the clerks flew to arms,
up ran the consular flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the
windows upon the Tartars.
I need not tell you with what enthusiasm Quixote-Tartarin
clutched this proposition; sad to say, Sancho-Tartarin did not
see it in the same light, and as he was the stronger party,
it never came to anything. But in the town there was much
talk about it. Would he go or would he not? "I'll lay he
will "— and “I'll wager he won't! " It was the event of the
week. In the upshot, Tartarin did not depart, but the matter
redounded to his credit none the less. Going or not going to
Shanghai was all one to Tarascon. Tartarin's journey was so
much talked about that people got to believe he had done it
and returned, and at the club in the evening members would
actually ask for information on life at Shanghai, the manners
and customs and climate, about opium, and commerce.
## p. 4446 (#220) ###########################################
4446
ALPHONSE DAUDET
Deeply read up, Tartarin would graciously furnish the par-
ticulars desired, and in the end the good fellow was not
quite sure himself about not having gone to Shanghai; so that
after relating for the hundredth time how the Tartars came
down on the trading post, it would most naturally happen him
to add:
----
"Then I made my men take up arms and hoist the consular
flag, and zizz! phit! bang! out of the windows upon the Tartars. "
On hearing this, the whole club would quiver.
"But according to that, this Tartarin of yours is an awful
liar. "
"No, no, a thousand times over, no! Tartarin is no liar. ”
"But the man ought to know that he has never been to
Shanghai->
"Why, of course, he knows that; but still -»
"But still," you see mark that! It is high time for the law
to be laid down once for all on the reputation as drawers of the
long bow which Northerners fling at Southerners. There are no
Baron Munchausens in the South of France, neither at Nîmes nor
Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon. The Southerner does not de-
ceive, but is self-deceived. He does not always tell the cold-
drawn truth, but he believes he does. His falsehood is not
falsehood, but a kind of mental mirage.
Yes, purely mirage! The better to follow me, you should
actually follow me into the South, and you will see I am right.
You have only to look at that Lucifer's own country, where the
sun transmogrifies everything, and magnifies it beyond life-size.
The little hills of Provence are no bigger than the Butte Mont-
martre, but they will loom up like the Rocky Mountains; the
Square House at Nîmes-a mere model to put on your side-
board- will seem grander than St. Peter's. You will see. - in
brief, the only exaggerator in the South is Old Sol, for he does
enlarge everything he touches. What was Sparta in its days of
splendor? a pitiful hamlet. What was Athens? at the most, a
second-class town; and yet in history both appear to us as enor-
mous cities. This is a sample of what the sun can do.
――――――――――
_
Are you going to be astonished, after this, that the same sun
falling upon Tarascon should have made of an ex-captain in the
Army Clothing Factory, like Bravida, the "brave commandant »;
of a sprout, an Indian fig-tree; and of a man who had missed
going to Shanghai one who had been there?
## p. 4447 (#221) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4447
THE DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN
From 'Letters from My Windmill ›
little Dauphin is ill; the little Dauphin will die. In all
THE
Τ the churches of the kingdom the Holy Sacrament is laid
ready day and night, and tapers are burning, for the
recovery of the royal child. The streets of the old town are sad
and silent; the bells ring no more; the carriages are driven very
slow ly. The curious townspeople are gathered just outside the
palace, and are staring in through the grating of the gates at
the guards, with their golden helmets, who walk the court with
an important air. The entire castle is in a state of anxiety; the
chamberlains and major-domos go up and down the staircase,
and run through the marble halls. The galleries are filled with
pages and courtiers in silk clothing, who go from group to
group collecting later news in a low voice. On the large porches
can be seen the ladies of honor, bathed in tears, bowing their
heads
and wiping their eyes with pretty embroidered handker-
chiefs.
In the orangery is a numerous assembly of doctors in
long robes: one can see them through the panes gesticulating in
their long sleeves, and shaking their wigs knowingly. The little
Dauphin's tutor and squire are waiting before the door, anxious
for the decision of the faculty. Scullions pass by without salut-
ing them. The squire swears like a pagan; the tutor recites
verse s from Horace. And during this time down by the stables
can hear a long plaintive neighing. It is the Dauphin's
little sorrel pony, whom the grooms are neglecting, and who
calls sadly from his empty manger. And the King - where is his
Majesty the King?
The King has shut himself up in a room
remote part of the castle. Their Majesties do not like to
be seen weeping. But the Queen-that is different. Seated by
the little prince's pillow, her beautiful face bathed in tears, she
sobs bitterly before every one, just as a peasant mother would.
one
in a
In his lace crib is the little Dauphin, whiter than the cushions
on which he reposes, with closed eyelids. They think he is
sleeping; but no, the little Dauphin does not sleep. He turns
toward
his mother, and seeing that she weeps, he says to her,
"Madame my Queen, why do you weep? Do you think truly
that I
am going to die? " The Queen wishes to reply, but sobs
prevent her speaking.
"Pray do not cry, Madame my Queen.
## p. 4448 (#222) ###########################################
4448
ALPHONSE DAUDET
You forget that I am the Dauphin, and Dauphins cannot die
thus. " The Queen sobs more bitterly still, and the little Dauphin
begins to be frightened. "Hola! " he says, "I do not wish to
have Death come and take me; and I shall know how to prevent
his coming here. Bring forth forty lancers, our strongest, to
mount guard around our bed; a hundred cannon night and day;
torches lighted beneath our windows. And unhappy Death if he
dares to approach us then! " The Queen gives a sign to please
the royal child. Forthwith, one can hear heavy cannon being
rolled across the courtyard; and forty soldiers, halberds in hand,
come and range themselves around the room: they are veterans,
with gray moustaches. The little Dauphin claps his hands feebly
as he sees them, and recognizing one he calls him by name,
"Lorrain! Lorrain! " The old soldier takes a step towards the
bed. "I love you well, my good Lorrain. Let me see your big
sword. If Death comes to take me, we must kill him, must we
not? " Lorrain replies, "Yes, Monseigneur," as the big tears
run down his bronzed cheeks.
At this moment the chaplain approaches the little Dauphin,
and talks to him for some time in a low tone, showing him a
crucifix. The little Dauphin listens with an astonished air; then
suddenly interrupting, "I understand well what you say, Mon-
sieur l'Abbé; but after all, could not my little friend Beppo die
in my place, if we should give him a great deal of money? »
The chaplain continues talking to him in a low voice, and
the little Dauphin looks more and more astonished. When the
chaplain has finished, the little Dauphin resumes, with a heavy
sigh, "All that you tell me is very sad, Monsieur l'Abbé, but
one thing consoles me: up there, in the paradise of stars, I shall
still be the Dauphin. I know that our good God is my cousin,
and would not fail to treat me according to my rank. " Then he
adds, turning to his mother, "Have my finest garments brought
-my ermine cloak and velvet slippers. I wish to array myself
for the angels, and enter paradise dressed as a Dauphin. "
A third time the chaplain bends over the little prince, and
talks a long time in whispering tones. The royal child inter-
rupts him in anger, in the midst of his discourse, and cries,
Then it is no use to be Dauphin,- it is nothing at all; >> and
not wishing to hear more, he turns toward the wall weeping.
<<
Translation of Mary Corey.
1
## p. 4449 (#223) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
JACK IS INVITED TO TAKE UP A "PROFESSION »
From 'Jack'
4449
"D°
o you hear, Jack? " resumed D'Argenton, with flashing eyes
and outstretched arm. "In four years you will be a
good workman; that is to say, the noblest, grandest thing
that can exist in this world of slavery and servitude. In four
years you will be that sacred, venerated thing, a good work-
man! "
VIII-279
Yes, indeed he heard it! "a good workman. " Only he was
bewildered and was trying to understand.
The child had seen workmen in Paris. There were some
who lived in the Passage des Douze Maisons, and not far from
the Gymnase there was a factory, from which he often watched
them as they left work at about six o'clock; a crowd of dirty-
looking men with their blouses all stained with oil, and their
rough hands blackened and deformed by work.
The idea that he would have to wear a blouse struck him at
once. He remembered the tone of contempt with which his
mother would say: "Those are workmen, men in blouses, "— the
care she took in the streets to avoid the contact of their soiled
garments. Labassindre's fine speeches on the duties and in-
fluence of the workingman in the nineteenth century attenuated
and contradicted, it is true, these vague impressions. But what
he did understand, and that most clearly and bitterly, was that
he must go away, leave the forest whose tree-tops he saw from
the window, leave the Rivalses, leave his mother, his mother
whom he had recovered at the cost of so much pain, and whom
he loved so tenderly.
What on earth was she doing at that window all this time,
seeming so indifferent to all that was going on around her?
Within the last few minutes, however, she had lost her immov-
able indifference. A convulsive shudder seemed to shake her
from head to foot, and the hand she held over her eyes closed
over them as if she were hiding tears. Was it then so sad a
sight that she beheld yonder in the country, on the far horizon
where the sun sets, and where so many dreams, so many illu-
sions, so many loves and passions sink and disappear, never to
return?
## p. 4450 (#224) ###########################################
ALPHONSE DAUDET
4450
"Then I shall have to go away? " inquired the child in a
smothered voice, and the automatic air of one who lets his
thought speak, the one thought that absorbed him.
At this artless question all the members of the tribunal
looked at each other with a smile of pity; but over there at the
window a great sob was heard.
