He is--to say once more what has already been said in these pages more than once--he is a lover of romance with an unfaltering respect for reality. We all meet with strange experiences once in our lives, with "things you could put in a story," as the phrase is; but we none of us have hairbreadth escapes every morning before breakfast. The romantic is as natural as anything else; it is the excess of the romantic which is in bad taste. It is the piling up of the agony which is disgusting. It is the accumulation upon one impossible hero of many exceptional adventures which is untrue and therefore immoral. Daudet's most individual peculiarity was his skill in seizing the romantic aspects of the commonplace. In one of his talks with his son he said that a novelist must beware of an excess of lyric enthusiasm; he himself sought for emotion, and emotion escaped when human proportions were exceeded. Balance, order, reserve, symmetry, sobriety,--these are the qualities he was ever praising. The real, the truthful, the sincere,--this is what he sought always to attain. Daudet may lack the poignant intensity of Balzac, the lyric sweep of Hugo, the immense architectural strength of M. Zola, the implacable disinterestedness of Flaubert, the marvellous concentration of Maupassant, but he has more humor than any of them and more charm,--more sympathy than any but Hugo, and more sincerity than any but Flaubert. His is perhaps a rarer combination than any of theirs,--the gift of story-telling, the power of character-drawing, the grasp of emotional situation, the faculty of analysis, the feeling for form, the sense of style, an unfailing and humane interest in his fellow-men, and an irresistible desire to tell the truth about life as he saw it with his own eyes. BRANDER MATTHEWS. Columbia University, in the City of New York. CONTENTS Page I. DR. JENKINS' PATIENTS 7 II. A BREAKFAST ON PLACE VENDOME 37 III. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--A CASUAL GLANCE AT THE "CAISSE TERRITORIALE" 63 IV. A DEBUT IN SOCIETY 77 V. THE JOYEUSE FAMILY 103 VI. FELICIA RUYS 128 VII. JANSOULET AT HOME 156 VIII. THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM 172 IX. GRANDMAMMA 193 X. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--THE SERVANTS 216 XI. THE FETES IN HONOR OF THE BEY 238 XII. A CORSICAN ELECTION 272 ILLUSTRATIONS "'Take away your flowers, my dear'" _Frontispiece_ In Felicia's Studio _Page_ 26 "'His Excellency, the Duc de Mora!'" " 88 From drawings by Lucius Rossi. THE NABOB.