3. If possible, secure a copy of Voltaire’s “Zadig,” and write a short
paper on Zadig’s reasoning.
4. Does the introduction of an element of the supernatural increase or
lessen the interest of a story, for you?
5. Write about two-hundred words comparing (a) the work of Poe’s Dupin
with Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes; (b) with that of any other fictional
detective--Chesterton’s Father Brown, for example.
6. Explain what is meant by _inductive_ reasoning.
7. Select from some magazine (a) a good detective story, and (b) a good
story of the unexplained, or supernatural. (c) Discuss the relative
merits of each.
8. Do you prefer Jacobs as a writer of humorous stories of sea-faring
folk or as a writer of the weird?
9. Which of Poe’s stories do you like best, and why?
TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY
“The Horla,” Guy de Maupassant, translated in _Modern Ghosts_.
“The Lost Duchess,” Anonymous, in _The Lock and Key Library_.
“The Golden Ingot,” Fitz-James O’Brien, in _The Lock and Key Library_.
“The Gold Bug,” Edgar Allan Poe, in _Tales_.
“The Black Spaniel,” Robert Hichens, in volume of same title.
“The Upper Berth,” F. Marion Crawford, in _Short-Story Classics,
American_.
“The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” A. Conan Doyle, in _The Return of
Sherlock Holmes_.
“The Venus of Ille,” Prosper Mérimée, translated in _Little French
Masterpieces_.
“The Pavilion on the Links,” Robert Louis Stevenson, in _New Arabian
Nights_.
“The Damned Thing,” Ambrose Bierce, in _Short-Story Classics, American_.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Copyright, 1902, by Dodd, Mead & Co., in the collection of
short-stories, _The Lady of the Barge_. Used by permission.
III
STORIES OF EMOTION
_The Last Class._--ALPHONSE DAUDET
_Without Benefit of Clergy._--RUDYARD KIPLING
In painting we may represent any fine figure we please; but we
never can give it those enlivening touches which it may receive
from words. To represent an angel in a picture, you can only draw
a beautiful young man winged: but what painting can furnish out
any thing so grand as the addition of one word, “the angel of the
_Lord_?...” Now, as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned
countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of
the things about which they are exerted, so there are words, and
certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly devoted to
passionate subjects, and always used by those who are under the
influence of any passion, touch and move us more than those which
far more clearly and distinctly express the subject-matter. We
yield to sympathy what we refuse to description.--EDMUND BURKE, _On
the Sublime and Beautiful_.
STORIES OF EMOTION
Fictional plots deal with the inner man quite as often as with the
outer. Indeed, the action of the soul is more real, intense and
interesting than mere visible action could possibly be. For this
reason the master story-tellers nearly always interpret the inner
life--whether of thought, of emotion, or of decision--by displaying
the outer, instead of by merely analyzing and discussing the thoughts,
feelings and decisions of their characters. The more clearly this outer
action pictures the inner man, the more real does the character become
to us and the more perfectly do we grasp the whole story.
As a universal human experience, emotion[20] mingles with all
manifestations of life. In the short-story it finds various expression
in the hilarious fun of “Pigs is Pigs,” by Butler; the character humor
of Barrie’s “Thrums” stories; the mingled humor and pathos of Harte’s
“The Luck of Roaring Camp”; the patriotic sentiment of Daudet’s “The
Siege of Berlin”; the mystic sympathy of Kipling’s “They”; the idyllic
love of the Book of Ruth; the incomparable psychological insight of
Maupassant’s “A Coward”; the cold, revengeful jealousy of Balzac’s “La
Grande Bretêche”; the choking, supernatural terror of Poe’s “The Pit
and the Pendulum”; the tragic passion of Mérimée’s “Mateo Falcone,” and
all the myriad shades and combinations of shades which lie between.
Naturally, each story in this entire collection illustrates one or
another emotional phase, as even a cursory reading will make clear.
What, for example, could be more intense than the emotions of those
two parents, as depicted in “The Monkey’s Paw?” But for this group
two stories have been selected as being typical examples of emotional
expression, because in them human feeling predominates over all other
characteristics and really makes the story.
“The Last Class,” which is here presented in a translation by the
editor of this volume, is rich in local color, in impressionism, and in
character drawing, but as an unaffected picture of patriotic feeling
it is unsurpassed in the literature of the short-story. There is not a
single jarring emotional tone, not the slightest exaggeration of true
emotional values. With singular repression, Daudet secures his effects
by suggesting rather than fully expressing the profound feelings of the
school-master, his pupils, and the visitors; and when the majestically
simple climax is reached, we have accepted the reality of it all and
have received a single effective and lasting impression.
“Without Benefit of Clergy,” the second specimen, is left for the
reader to analyze and discuss. Surely this most sadly touching of all
love-stories presents the poignant pity, the inevitable disaster, the
final heart-break of unsanctified love, as never before or since in
the pages of fiction.
DAUDET AND HIS WRITINGS
Alphonse Daudet was born at Nîmes, France, May 13, 1840. Here and at
Lyons he received his education. At the age of seventeen he and his
brother Ernest went to Paris, where Alphonse published his first long
poem two years later. This began his literary success. From 1860 to
1865 he served as secretary in the Cabinet of the Duke de Morny, and at
the early age of twenty-five was decorated with the Cross of the Legion
of Honor. He was profoundly impressed by the memories of his early life
and frequently revisited his native Provence. The South-of-France tone
is distinguishable in much of his work, just as the powerful feelings
called forth by the Franco-Prussian war find expression in other of his
writings. He died in Paris, December 16, 1897.
Alphonse Daudet was a dramatist, poet, novelist, and short-story
writer. _The Nabob_, _Sappho_, _Jack_, _Kings in Exile_, _Numa
Roumestan_, _Fromont and Risler_, _The Evangelist_, and the “Tartarin”
books are his best known novels. Among his best short-stories are “The
Pope’s Mule,” “The Death of the Dauphin,” “The Three Low Masses,”
“The Elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher,” “Old Folks,” and “Master
Cornille’s Secret”--all from the collection, _Letters from My Mill_.
The following little masterpieces are from his _Monday Tales_: “The
Game of Billiards,” “The Child Spy,” “The Little Pies,” “Mothers,”
“The Siege of Berlin,” and “The Last Class.”
At the close of the Franco-Prussian war, in 1871, France was forced to
cede to Germany almost all of Alsace, about nine thousand square miles
of territory, in addition to an indemnity of one billion dollars. “The
Last Class” was held, therefore, about 1872, and the story was first
published in 1873.
* * * * *
Daudet’s literary genius sounded every note, from farce, delicate
humor, and satire, to poetic pathos, dramatic action, character
analysis, and social criticism. He resembled Dickens in his humor,
but displayed more emotional tenderness, and, in his later work,
more satire, than did the English writer. Though he may be called
the literary descendant of Balzac, whose novels systematically
depicted French society in all its phases, Daudet was less a social
philosopher and more a man expressing his own personality through his
work. Comparing him with Maupassant, we find his stories less perfect
in form, but far richer in human feeling. Though at times he dealt
with subjects which English readers consider broad, his sympathy
unmistakably appears to be with his nobler characters.
When only ten years of age, I was already haunted at times by the
desire to lose my own personality, and incarnate myself in other
beings; the mania was already laying hold of me for observing and
analyzing, and my chief amusement during my walks was to pick out
some passerby, and to follow him all over Lyons, through all his
idle strollings or busy occupations, striving to identify myself
with his life, and to enter into his innermost thoughts.--ALPHONSE
DAUDET, _Thirty Years of Paris_.
Daudet expresses many things; but he most frequently expresses
himself--his own temper in the presence of life, his own feeling on
a thousand occasions.--HENRY JAMES, _Partial Portraits_.
Life, as he knows it, is sad, full of disappointment, bitterness,
and suffering; and yet the conclusion he draws from experience is
that this life, with all its sadness, is well worth living.--RENÉ
DOUMIC, _Contemporary French Novelists_.
The short stories are Daudet at his best, a style tense, virile,
full of suppressed energy.... There is a nobler strain in these
stories than speaks from the pages of _Le Petit Chose_ [“Little
What’s-His-Name”],--the ring of passionate patriotism, no longer
the voice of Provence, or of Paris, but the voice of France....
The touching story, _La Dernière Classe_, might have come from the
lips of an Alsatian, so true is it to the spirit of Alsace during
those sorrowful days that followed the Franco-Prussian War.--MARION
MCINTYRE, Introduction to _Works_.
Daudet’s two main series of stories (_Letters from My Mill_ and
_Monday Tales_) contain between sixty and seventy pieces.... They
represent Daudet the poet, with his exquisite fancy, his winning
charm, his subtle, indescribable style, his susceptibility to all
that is lovely and joyous in nature and in human life; in short,
in his sunny, mercurial Provençal temperament.... But there was
another Daudet more or less superimposed upon this sunny, poetic
Daudet, true child of Provence. Upon few Frenchmen of a generation
ago did the terrible years of the Franco-Prussian War and the
Commune produce a more sobering impression. The romanticist and
poet deepened into a realistic observer of human life in all its
phases.--W. P. TRENT, Introduction to the volume on Daudet, in
_Little French Masterpieces_.
The charm reflected in his works lay in the man himself, and
earned for him a host of friends and an unclouded domestic life--it
lay in his open, sunny, inconsequent, southern nature, with his
quick sympathies, his irony at once forcible and delicate, his
ready tears. It lay in the spontaneousness of his talent, in his
Provençal gift of improvisation.... And it lay, too, in what was
an essential characteristic of his nature, his rapid alternation
of mood. Take even the slightest of his _Contes_ [stories]....
Within a few pages he is in turn sad, gay, sentimental, ironical,
pathetic, and one mood glides into the next without jar or
friction.--V. M. CRAWFORD, _Studies in Foreign Literature_.
His stories first of all amuse, excite, distress himself....
He never could, indeed, look on them disinterestedly, either
while they were making or when they were made. He made them with
actual tears and laughter; and they are read with actual tears
and laughter by the crowd.... But he had no philosophy behind
his fantastic and yet only too probable creations. Caring, as he
thought, supremely for life, he cared really for that surprising,
bewildering pantomime which life seems to be to those who watch its
coloured movement, its flickering lights, its changing costumes,
its powdered faces, without looking through the eyes into the
hearts of the dancers. He wrote from the very midst of the human
comedy; and it is from this that he seems at times to have caught
the bodily warmth and the taste of the tears and the very ring of
the laughter of men and women....--ARTHUR SYMONS, _Studies in Prose
and Verse_.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON DAUDET
_Chats about Books_, Mayo W. Hazeltine (1883); _French Fiction of
To-day_, M. S. Van de Velde (1891); _Alphonse Daudet; a Biographical
and Critical Study_, R. H. Sherard (1894); _The Literary Movement
in France_, Georges Pellissier (1897); _Literary Likings_, Richard
Burton (1898); _The Historical Novel_, Brander Matthews (1901); _French
Profiles_, Edmund W. Gosse (1905); _Short-Story Masterpieces_, J. Berg
Esenwein (1912).
THE LAST CLASS
(La Dernière Classe)
THE STORY OF A LITTLE ALSATIAN
BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
_Translation by The Editor_
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION plunges us at once into the action. There is
one main incident throughout. The narrator is immediately seen to be a
child, and surmised to be a boy.]
That morning I was very late for school, so I was terribly afraid of
a scolding--particularly since Master Hamel had said that he would
examine us on participles, and I knew not the first word about them!
For a little while I thought of playing truant and wandering the fields.
2. The day was so warm, so clear!
[Sidenote: Setting. Note how the rural community is suggested.]
3. I could hear the blackbirds whistling on the border of the wood; and
back of the sawmill, in the Rippert field, the Prussian soldiers were
drilling. All of this was much more tempting to me than participial
rules--but I was strong enough to resist and away to school I ran, as
fast as I could.
[Sidenote: Small municipalities have mayors, in France.]
[Sidenote: The tone is struck here. Forecast of crisis.]
[Sidenote: Franco-Prussian War.]
4. As I passed by the mayor’s office, I observed that a number of
people were assembled before the little board on which notices were
generally posted. For two years every piece of bad news had come
from that board--defeats in battle, conscriptions, orders from
headquarters--and, without stopping, I wondered:
[Sidenote: Forecasts a crisis.]
5. “What can it be this time!”
[Sidenote: Note the Prussian name. Alsace was a border province.]
6. Just then, as I was running across the square, Wachter the
blacksmith, who with his apprentice stood reading the placard, called
after me:
[Sidenote: Hint of crisis to come. CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]
7. “You needn’t hurry so fast, my lad, you’ll get to school soon
enough!”
[Sidenote: The school was held in the master’s house.]
8. I thought he was making game of me, and I kept right on, reaching
Master Hamel’s little yard quite out of breath.
[Sidenote: Unusual air depicted by contrast.]
[Sidenote: The story proper begins.]
[Sidenote: An old custom.]
9. Ordinarily, as school was opening, the uproar was so great that it
could be heard clear out on the street--desk-lids opening and shutting,
lessons droned aloud in unison, pupils holding their ears shut to learn
their lessons easier, while the master’s great ferrule beat upon the
desks:
10. “A little quietness!”
[Sidenote: Contrast.]
11. I had counted on all this noise to enable me to reach my seat
unnoticed; but on that particular day everything was as quiet as a
Sabbath morning. Through the open window I saw my schoolmates already
ranged in their places, and Master Hamel pacing to and fro, his
formidable iron ferrule under his arm. In the midst of that complete
silence I had to open the door and go in! You can well imagine whether
I blushed and was afraid!
[Sidenote: Contrast.]
12. But, quite to the contrary, Master Hamel looked at me with no sign
of anger, and then very gently said:
[Sidenote: Evidently a small school.]
13. “Go directly to your seat, my little Frantz--we were about to begin
without you.”
[Sidenote: At which others were also seated.]
[Sidenote: All the contrasts prepare us for the crisis.]
[Sidenote: Prussian name.]
[Sidenote: Dazed.]
14. Immediately I stepped over the bench and sat down at my desk. Only
then, when I had partly gotten over my fright, did I observe that our
master was wearing his handsome blue riding-coat, his plaited ruff,
and his black silk embroidered breeches--worn only on inspection
days or when prizes were awarded. Furthermore, there was something
extraordinary, something solemn, about the whole school. But what
astounded me more than anything else was to see a number of people from
the village sitting, as silent as we, on the usually empty benches at
the back of the room: old Father Hauser with his three-cornered hat,
the ex-mayor, the former postman, besides a number of others. All
seemed cast down, and Father Hauser had brought with him an old primer,
with chewed up leaves, which he held wide-open up-side-down on his
knees, and lying on it his huge spectacles.
15. While I was marvelling at all this, Master Hamel had mounted his
platform, and in the same gentle and serious voice with which he had
greeted me, he said to us:
[Sidenote: FOUNDATION OF CLIMAX. Summary of the theme. Compare with
Longfellow’s _Evangeline_.]
[Sidenote: This law went into effect July 1, 1870.]
16. “My children, this is the last day that I shall keep school. The
order has come from Berlin that nothing but German shall be taught in
the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The new school-master will arrive
to-morrow. This is the last class in French--I beg of you to be very
attentive!”
17. His simple words overwhelmed me. This, then, was the notice they
had posted at the mayor’s office. Oh, the scoundrels!
[Sidenote: The crisis becomes personal.]
18. My last lesson in French!
[Sidenote: Scarcely a paragraph but appeals to emotion in some form.]
[Sidenote: The _Saar_ flows northward into the _Moselle_.]
19. And I was scarcely able to write! Then I was never to learn! I
must stop short just where I was! How angry with myself it made me to
remember the time I had frittered away, and the lessons I had missed
while hunting birds’ nests or sliding on the Saar! My books now seemed
to me like old comrades from whom it broke my heart to part, and only a
moment since I had found them--my grammar, my sacred history--so dull,
and so heavy to carry! It was just the same when I thought of Master
Hamel. He was going away. I should never see him again--the thought
made me forget all his punishments and strokes with the ferrule.
[Sidenote: Shift to interest in the Master.]
[Sidenote: Now to the villagers.]
[Sidenote: Age indicated, thus adding to the pathos.]
[Sidenote: THESE ARE THE KEY WORDS.]
20. Poor old man! So it was in honor of that last lesson in French that
he had donned his Sunday best--and now I understood why those old folks
from the village were seated at the back of the room. It seemed to say
they regretted that they had not visited the school oftener. Besides,
it was a sort of way of thanking our teacher for his forty years of
devoted service, and of showing their love for the fatherland which was
passing away.
[Sidenote: Note how Daudet arouses our sympathies by avoiding
generalities and centering our interest upon persons.]
21. Just at this point in my reflections I heard my name called--it was
my turn to recite. Oh, I would have given anything to be able to recite
without a slip, in a strong, clear voice, that celebrated rule about
participles; but at the very first words I grew confused and I only
stood there at my bench swaying back and forward, my heart swelling,
not daring to lift my head. At length I heard Master Hamel saying to me:
[Sidenote: Ordinary rebuke is swallowed up in the great common sorrow.]
[Sidenote: Daudet here teaches all France a lesson--and all nations as
well.]
22. “My little Frantz, I shall not scold you; you are punished enough,
I think. It is so with all of us; every day we reassure ourselves:
‘Bah! I have plenty of time. To-morrow I shall learn.’ Then you see
what happens. Alas! it has ever been the great misfortune of our
Alsace to defer its lessons until the morrow. And now these people are
justified in saying to us, ‘What, you pretend to be French, and you are
able neither to speak nor to write your language!’ But in all this you
are not the most guilty one, my poor Frantz--we are all worthy of a
full measure of self-reproach.
[Sidenote: Note M. Hamel’s simple sincerity.]
23. “Your parents have not taken enough care to see that you got an
education. They preferred to save a few more sous by putting you to
work in the fields or in the factories. And I--have I nothing for
which to blame myself? Have I not frequently sent you to water my
garden instead of keeping you at your books? Or have I ever hesitated
to dismiss school when I wanted to go trout-fishing?”
24. So Master Hamel, passing from one theme to another, began to speak
to us about our French language. He said that it was the most beautiful
language in the whole world--the most clear, the most substantial; that
we must ever cherish it among ourselves, and never forget it, for when
a nation falls into bondage, just so long as it clings to its language,
it holds the key of its prison.[21]
[Sidenote: The attention follows the lead of the emotions.]
[Sidenote: So does the teacher’s skill.]
25. Then he took a grammar and read us our lesson. I was astonished
to see how readily I understood! Everything he said seemed to me so
easy--so very easy. I believe that never before had I listened so
attentively, and that he, in turn, had never explained things with such
infinite patience. It almost seemed as though the poor fellow wished to
impart all his knowledge to us before he left us--to drive it all into
our heads with one blow.
[Sidenote: A proof of unusual absorption.]
[Sidenote: Note the pathos of the appeal.]
26. The lesson ended, we went on to the exercises in penmanship. For
that day Master Hamel had gotten ready some entirely new copies on
which he had written in a neat, round hand: “France, Alsace, France,
Alsace.” The slips of paper looked like tiny flags, waving all
about the room and hanging from the rods of our desks. You should
have seen how diligently everyone worked, and how quiet it was! Only
the scratching of the pens over the paper could be heard. Once some
beetles flew in, but nobody paid any attention to them--not even the
very smallest chaps, who were struggling to draw their oblique lines
with a will and an application as sincere as though even the lines
themselves were French.... Pigeons cooed in low tones on the roof of
the schoolhouse, and as I listened to them I thought to myself:
27. “I wonder if they are going to make them coo in German too!”
[Sidenote: A picture. All of these contributory pictures stand in lieu
of contributory incidents. The whole is highly unified.]
[Sidenote: The lad reasons as a lad--to him the pathos is not for
himself but for the old man.]
28. Now and then, as I lifted my eyes from my task, I saw Master Hamel
seated motionless in his chair, and staring at things about him as
though in that look he would carry away with him the whole of his
little schoolhouse. Think of it! For forty years he had occupied that
same place, his yard in front of him, and his school always unchanged.
Only the benches and desks were rubbed by use until they were polished;
the walnuts in the yard had grown large, and the hop-vine he himself
had planted now hung in festoons from the windows clear to the roof.
How heartbreaking it must have been for that poor man to leave all
this--to hear his sister moving to and fro in the room overhead as
she packed their trunks! Next day they were going away--to leave the
fatherland forever.
29. All the same, he had the courage to keep the school to the very
closing minute. The writing over, we had our lesson in history. Then
the little ones sang in unison their _ba, be, bi, bo, bu_. Yonder, at
the back of the room, old Father Hauser was holding his spelling-book
with both hands, and with the aid of his great spectacles he spelled
out the letters--one could see that even he too was applying himself.
Emotion shook his voice, and to hear him was so droll that we all
wanted to laugh--and to cry. Ah! I shall always remember that last
class.
[Sidenote: PREPARATION FOR CLIMAX.]
[Sidenote: FORMAL CRISIS--the end approaches.]
[Sidenote: Note the force of this.]
[Sidenote: Moral qualities affect the physical.]