se and keen observation. Since 'Don
Quixote' was written, no caricature has ever been more human or more
true than Tartarin.

Frenchmen are not, as is frequently asserted by their Anglo-Saxon
critics, totally unfit to appreciate humor, when it is mingled with the
study of man's nature and seasoned with that high-spiced irony of which
they have been so fond at all times, from the days of Villon to those of
Rochefort. Still, Daudet would never have acquired such a complete
mastery over the general public in his own country, if he had not been
able to gratify their taste for that graphic and faithful description of
manners and characters, which in other centuries put the moralists into
fashion. Realism never disappears altogether from French literature: it
was at that moment all-powerful. Zola was coming to the front with the
first volumes of the well-known 'Rougon-Macquart' and Daudet in 1874
entered on the same path, though in a different spirit, with 'Fromont
Jeune et Risler Aine.' The success was immediate and immense. The French
_bourgeoisie_ accepted it at once as a true picture of its vices and its
virtues. The novel might, it is true, savor a little of Parisian
cockneyism. Fastidious critics might discover in it some mixture of weak
sentimentalism, or a few traces of Dickensian affectation and cheap
tricks in story-telling. Young men of the new social school might take
exception to that old-fashioned democracy which had its apotheosis in
Risler senior. Despite all those objections, it was pronounced a
masterpiece of legitimate pathos and sound observation. Even the minor
characters were judged striking, and Delobelle's name, for instance,
occurs at once to our mind whenever we try to realize the image of the
modern _cabotin_.

'Jack,' which came next, exceeded the usual length of French novels.
"Too much paper, my son!" old Flaubert majestically observed with a
smile when the author presented him with a copy of his book. As for
George Sand, she felt so sick at heart and so depressed when she had
finished reading 'Jack,' that she could work no more and had to remain
idle for three or four days. A painful book, indeed, a distressing book,
but how fascinating! And is not its wonderful influence over the readers
exemplified in the most striking manner by the fact that it had the
power to unnerve and to incapacitate for her daily task that most
valiant of all intellectual laborers, that hardest of hard workers,
George