ries_ their favorite resort.

I have read that the book was a failure; that the young author was
unable to pay the printer, and was accordingly served with stamped paper
at the official residence of Morny, where he was then acting as
secretary; that the duke, far from showing any displeasure at the
occurrence, was delighted to find his secretary in hot water with the
bailiffs, and that he arranged the matter in the most paternal spirit.
This may be a pretty little story, but I fear it is a "legend." I cannot
reconcile it with the fact that four years after the first publication,
the same publisher gave the public another edition of 'Les Amoureuses'
and that the young poet dedicated it to him as a token of respect and
gratitude. The truth is that Daudet's little volume not only did not
pass unnoticed, but received a good deal of attention, chiefly from the
young men. Many thought that a new Musset was born in their midst, only
a few months after the real one had been laid down to his last sleep in
the Pere Lachaise, under the trembling shadow of his favorite
willow-tree. Young Daudet alluded to the unfortunate poet--

"... mort de degout, de tristesse, et d'absinthe;"--

and he tried to imitate the half cynical, half nostalgic skepticism
which had made the author of 'Les Nuits' so powerful over the minds of
the new generation and so dear to their hearts.

But it did not seem perfectly genuine. When Daudet said, "My heart is
old," no one believed it, and he did not believe it himself, for he
entitled the piece 'Fanfaronnade'; and in fact it was nothing more than
a fanfaronnade. The book was full of the freshness, buoyancy, and
frolicsome petulance of youth. Here and there a few reminiscences might
be traced to the earliest poets of the sixteenth century, more
particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of the expiring romanticism
lingered in 'Les Amoureuses' with a much more substantial admixture of
the spirit of an age which made pleasure-hunting its paramount
occupation. The precocious child could modulate the 'Romance a Madame'
as well as the page of Beaumarchais, if not better; but he could also
laugh it down in Gavroche's sneering way; he could intersperse a song of
love with the irony of the boulevard or the more genial humor of his
native South. He was at his best in the tale of 'Les Prunes'--

"Si vous voulez savoir comment
Nous nous aimames pour des prunes"--

That exquisite little piece survived