It is likely that a majority of these friends were won by the two great Tartarin books and by the chief novels, _Fromont_, _Jack_, _The Nabob_, _Kings in Exile_, and _Numa_, aided by the artistic sketches and short stories contained in _Letters from my Mill_ and _Monday Tales (Contes du Lundi)_. The strong but overwrought _Evangelist_, _Sapho_--which of course belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not from the insular point of view--and the books of Daudet’s decadence, _The Immortal_, and the rest, cost him few friendships, but scarcely gained him many. His delightful essays in autobiography, whether in fiction, _Le Petit Chose (Little What’s-his-Name)_, or in _Thirty Years of Paris_ and _Souvenirs of a Man of Letters_, doubtless sealed more friendships than they made; but they can be almost as safely recommended as the more notable novels to readers who have yet to make Daudet’s acquaintance. For the man and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style, and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny Provencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a year of wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitable journey to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and the beginning of a life of Bohemian nonchalance, to which we Anglo-Saxons have little that is comparable outside the career of Oliver Goldsmith. But poor Goldsmith had his pride wounded by the editorial tyranny of a Mrs. Griffiths. Daudet, by a merely pretty poem about a youth and maiden making love under a plum-tree, won the protection of the Empress Eugenie, and through her of the Duke de Morny, the prop of the Second Empire. His life now reads like a fairy-tale inserted by some jocular elf into that book of dolors entitled _The Lives of Men of Genius_. A _protege_ of a potentate not usually lavish of his favours, and a valetudinarian, he is allowed to flit to Algiers and Corsica, to enjoy his beloved Provence in company with Mistral, to write for the theatres, and to continue to play the Bohemian. Then the death of Morny seems to turn the idyl into a tragedy, but only for a moment. Daudet’s delicate, nervous beauty made his friend Zola think of an Arabian horse, but the poet had also the spirit of such a high-bred steed. Years of conscientious literary labour followed, cheered by marriage with a woman of genius capable of supplementing him in his weakest points, and then the war with Prussia and its attendant horrors gave him the larger and deeper view of life and the intensified patriotism--in short, the final stimulus he needed. From the date of his first great success--_Fromont, Jr., and Risler, Sr._--glory and wealth flowed in upon him, while envy scarcely touched him, so unspoiled was he and so continuously and eminently lovable. One seemed to see in his career a reflection of his luminous nature, a revised myth of the golden touch, a new version of