Daudet’s was the scintillant, flamelike vitality that makes its possessor the youngest in whatever company he may find himself. Anatole France writes of him that he believes no human creature ever loved nature and art with a more ardent and more generous affection, or enjoyed the universe with more delight, more force, and more tenderness. Even in old age and suffering, he brought merriment with him when he limped into the big room that Edmond de Goncourt called his “grenier,” and kept for talk and friendship. If the room had been sad or silent, it woke to laughter when this invalid came in and began to speak. Men felt themselves more alive in his presence. This vitality is different from the physical and mental momentum of a Balzac. It is a lambent flame rather than a conflagration; light without heat. It scorched no one, not even Daudet himself, who made it into a public entertainer. He could use it at will; it did not impel him into a restless activity. I can imagine that indolent people felt ill at ease with Balzac in the room, as if from a fear that he might go off like a dynamite bomb. Daudet’s vitality was gentle, and insinuated itself into his listeners’ veins, so that when they left they had the pleasant sensation of having themselves been more than usually vivacious. “I have missed my vocation,” he said; “I should have been a merchant of happiness.” It was a vocation that he had not missed. A merchant of happiness was precisely what he was, since one kind of happiness is a childish enjoyment of everything that may occur. Children run about all day, without forethought, and play at being all sorts of things, and chatter and fall asleep, still chattering, in the middle of a sentence. They wake next morning to perform a variation ever so blithe on yesterday’s performance. Daudet lived just so, and was able to share his life with other people.