Sand?

The lost ground, if there had been any lost at all, was soon regained
with 'Le Nabab' (The Nabob) and 'Les Rois en Exil' (Kings in Exile).
They took the reader to a higher sphere of emotion and thought, showed
us greater men fighting for greater things on a wider theatre than the
middle-class life in which Fromont and Risler had moved. At the same
time they kept the balance more evenly than 'Jack' had done between the
two elements of human drama, good and evil, hope and despair, laughter
and tears. But a higher triumph was to be achieved with 'Numa
Roumestan,' which brought Daudet's literary fame to its zenith.

'Tartarin' had not exhausted all that the author had to say of
meridional ways and manners. The Provencal character has its dramatic as
well as its comic aspect. In 'Numa Roumestan' we have the farce and the
tragedy blended together into a coherent whole. We have a Tartarin whose
power over man and woman is not a mockery but a reality, who can win
love and sympathy and admiration, not in little Tarascon, mind you, but
in Paris; who sends joy abroad and creates torture at home; a charming
companion, a kind master, a subtle politician, a wonderful talker, but a
light-hearted and faithless husband, a genial liar, a smiling and
good-natured deceiver; the true image of the gifted adventurer who
periodically emerges from the South and goes northward finally to
conquer and govern the whole country.

As Zola has remarked, the author of 'Numa Roumestan' poured himself out
into that book with his double nature, North and South, the rich
sensuous imagination, the indolent easy-going optimism of his native
land, and the stern moral sensitiveness which was partly characteristic
of his own mind, partly acquired by painful and protracted experience.
To depict his hero he had only to consult the most intimate records of
his own lifelong struggle. For he had been trying desperately to evince
Roumestan out of his own being. He had fought and conquered, but only
partially conquered. And on this partial failure we must congratulate
him and congratulate ourselves. He said once that "Provencal landscape
without sunshine is dull and uninteresting." The same may be said of his
literary genius. It wants sunshine, or else it loses half its loveliness
and its irresistible charm. 'Roumestan' is full of sunshine, and there
is no other among his books, except 'Tartarin,' where the bright and
happy light of the South plays more free