Such a temperament as Daudet’s, both introspective and finely sensitive to the impressions of his surroundings, would naturally make much of his fiction biographical, and even autobiographical. Indeed, a close study of his works, read in the light of his life, shows how he has woven into his stories many personal facts. In that exquisite child-document _Little What’s-His-Name_, we have a rather full record of his boyhood and entrance into Paris. _Jack_, also, is full of his own early sorrows, while one character after another may be traced to folk whom he knew. His mind, and his heart too, were note-books on which he was always transcribing his impressions of life, and--here is the vital thing, after all--recreating them for use in his own inimitable way. So Daudet was not an extreme realist--scarcely a typical realist at all--for while he used the realistic method for observation and faithful record, he no more got beyond sympathizing with his characters than did Dickens, to whom more than to any other English-writing novelist he must be compared. Daudet “belonged” to no school, expounded no theories, stood for no reforms. He was just a kindly, humorous, sympathetic, patiently exact maker of fascinating fictions, and as such we shall love him quite in the proportion that we know him. Life, as he saw it, was full of sadness, but that did not make him conclude it to be not worth the living. Happily married, he knew the solaces of home life. Unlike Maupassant, “What’s the use!” was far from being the heart of his philosophy. Disenchanted with life he never was. A disheartening view of sordidness, vice, and misery left him still with open eyes, for he would not close them against truth; but it never prevented his turning his gaze upon the beautiful, the humorous, and the good--a lovable trio ever!--and finding in them some healing for his hurt. THE POPE’S MULE (_LA MULE DU PAPE_) By Alphonse Daudet _Done into English by the Editor_ Of all the pretty sayings, proverbs, or adages with which our Provence peasants embroider their discourse, I know none more picturesque or singular than this: within fifteen leagues around about my mill, whenever a person speaks of a spiteful, vindictive man, he says, “That man there--look out for him! He is like the Pope’s mule, who kept her kick in waiting for seven years.” I hunted diligently for a long time to find out whence that proverb could have come, what was that papal mule, and that kick reserved throughout seven years. No one here has been able to inform me on this subject, not even Francet Mamaï, my fife player, though he has all the Provençal legends at his fingers’ ends. Francet thinks with me that it must be founded upon some old tradition of Provence; yet he has never heard it referred to except in this proverb.