tion of a friend like Edmond de Goncourt
(who seems to have acted on the theory that it is the whole duty of man
to take notes of the talk of his fellows for prompt publication). Yet
we have ample material to enable us to trace Daudet's heredity, and to
estimate the influence of his environment in the days of his youth, and
to allow for the effect which certain of his own physical peculiarities
must have had upon his exercise of his art. His near-sightedness, for
example,--would not Sainte-Beuve have seized upon this as significant?
Would he not have seen in this a possible source of Daudet's mastery of
description? And the spasms of pain borne bravely and uncomplainingly,
the long agony of his later years, what mark has this left on his work,
how far is it responsible for a modification of his attitude,--for the
change from the careless gaiety of "Tartarin of Tarascon" to the sombre
satire of "Port-Tarascon"? What caused the joyous story-teller of the
"Letters from my Mill" to develop into the bitter iconoclast of the
"Immortal."

These questions are insistent; and yet, after all, what matters the
answer to any of them? The fact remains that Daudet had his share of
that incommunicable quality which we are agreed to call genius. This
once admitted, we may do our best to weigh it and to resolve it into
its elements, it is at bottom the vital spark that resists all
examination, however scientific we may seek to be. We can test for this
and for that, but in the final analysis genius is inexplicable. It is
what it is, because it is. It might have been different, no doubt, but
it is not. It is its own excuse for being; and, for all that we can say
to the contrary, it is its own cause, sufficient unto itself. Even if
we had Sainte-Beuve's scalpel, we could not surprise the secret.

Yet an inquiry into the successive stages of Daudet's career, a
consideration of his ancestry, of his parentage, of his birth, of the
circumstances of his boyhood, of his youthful adventures,--these things
are interesting in themselves and they are not without instruction.
They reveal to us the reasons for the transformation that goes so far
to explain Daudet's peculiar position,--the transformation of a young
Provencal poet into a brilliant Parisian veritist. Daudet was a
Provencal who became a Parisian,--and in this translation we may find
the key to his character as a writer of fiction.

He was from Provence as Maupassant was from Normandy; an