deep and affectionate interest. It is not
difficult to see that the satire in the "Tartarin" series is not unkind,
nor is it untrue. Daudet approved of the Felibrige movement, though what
he himself wrote in Provencal is insignificant. He believed that the
national literature could be best vivified by those who most loved their
homes, that the best originality could thus be attained. He has
said:[17]--

"The imagination of the southerners differs from that of the northerners
in that it does not mingle the different elements and forms in
literature, and remains lucid in its outbreaks. In our most complex
natures you never encounter the entanglement of directions, relations,
and figures that characterizes a Carlyle, a Browning, or a Poe. For this
reason the man of the north always finds fault with the man of the south
for his lack of depth and darkness.

"If we consider the most violent of human passions, love, we see that
the southerner makes it the great affair of his life, but does not allow
himself to become disorganized. He likes the talk that goes with it, its
lightness, its change. He hates the slavery of it. It furnishes a
pretext for serenades, fine speeches, light scoffing, caresses. He finds
it difficult to comprehend the joining together of love and death, which
lies in the northern nature, and casts a shade of melancholy upon these
brief delights."

Daudet notes the ease with which the southerner is carried away and
duped by the mirage of his own fancy, his semi-sincerity in excitement
and enthusiasm. He admired the natural eloquence of his Provencals. He
found a justification for their exaggerations.

"Is it right to accuse a man of lying, who is intoxicated with his own
eloquence, who, without evil intent, or love of deceit, or any instinct
of scheming or false trading, seeks to embellish his own life, and other
people's, with stories he knows to be illusions, but which he wishes
were true? Is Don Quixote a liar? Are all the poets deceivers who aim to
free us from realities, to go soaring off into space? After all, among
southerners, there is no deception. Each one, within himself, restores
things to their proper proportions."

Daudet had Mistral's love of the sunshine. He needed it to inspire him.
He believed it explained the southern nature.

Concerning the absence of metaphysics in the race he says:--

"These reasonings may culminate in a state of mind such as we see
extolled in Buddhism, a color