“Then he stood there, with his head resting against the wall, and
without speaking, he motioned to us with his hand:
“'That is all; go.’”
On rereading “The Last Class” for the dozenth time, I find that it
is surrounded with an emotional atmosphere which, textually, the
story does not contain. I think this must be the aura emanating from
the spirit of the story; for a great work of fiction is not only the
product of emotion, but it kindles emotion, because it is a creation,
an entity, a living being. Doubtless the contention could not be
demonstrated that, when properly received, a great work of fictional
art will arouse the same emotions in the reader as were first enkindled
in the breast of its author when the story was born. None the less, I
believe it to be true. What feelings, then, must Daudet have known when
he gave forth this little master-story! It must be these that I myself
feel, for I do not, by analysis, find them all present in the text,
even by suggestion. Happy artist, who can so project the creations of
his soul that they henceforth live and expand and communicate their
messages to multitudes to him unknown! So all great fiction is alive;
so lives the work of Alphonse Daudet.
The emotion in “The Siege of Berlin” is of a different type. It, too,
finds its _motif_ in the Franco-Prussian War; this time in the
Siege of Paris itself.
An invalided old cuirassier of the First Empire, Colonel Jouve, lies in
his room in the Champs-Élysées, fronting the Arc de Triomphe. Day by
day his grand-daughter brings to him news of the progress of the war.
So fully is his life wrapped up in the success of the French armies
that, in order to brighten his closing days, they tell him fictitious
stories of his compatriots’ success. But one day, when the enemy’s
lines have drawn close about the beleaguered capital and the end is
at hand, it becomes difficult to deceive the old soldier any longer.
Still, fresh victories are always supplied by the news-bureau of love,
and the old man can scarcely wait for the homecoming of the victorious
battalions. So when one day the sound of bugle and drum is heard, and
the tramp of marching feet beneath the windows of the upper room, you
can picture the delight of this old veteran. With a superhuman effort
he leaves his bed and looks out of the window--only to see the Prussian
troops instead of the cheering cohorts of his countrymen! And in this
last pang of disappointment, the old man dies.
Both of these stories end with the note of disappointment and
consequent sorrow. Poe has declared that the tone of beauty is sadness,
and surely there is a penetrating beauty as well as a thrill of
sublimity in the sadness of these wonderfully-wrought episodes. Here
may be seen the beginnings of the realistic method which Daudet later
adopted. Yet, as these stories both indicate, he still carried with
him the romanticism of his earlier inspirations, untouched by either
the too painful naturalism or the sentimentality of some of his later
stories.
In still greater contrast than either of these to the other is the
story of our present translation, “The Pope’s Mule.” Here are all
the joyous satire, the rollicking fun-making, and the picturesque
description, of this unexcelled interpreter of southern life. Daudet’s
wit and humor, characterization and description, local color,
kaleidoscopic pageantry, are at their best, with never a thought of
enforcing a moral or of sounding any emotion deeper than that of boyish
amusement. It is the creator of Tartarin who now writes, and not the
later master of the novelist’s art.
Notwithstanding the success of the fecund and versatile author of
_Sapho_, as a playwright, and his much wider vogue as a novelist,
I wonder if after all he did not love best his short-stories and prose
fantasies. In his greatest real novels, _Froment, Jr., and Risler,
Sr._; _Jack_; _The Nabob_; _Kings in Exile_; and _Numa Roumestan_,
the episode often occurs, of which literary form some
further words will be said in the treatment of Loti.
Such a temperament as Daudet’s, both introspective and finely sensitive
to the impressions of his surroundings, would naturally make much
of his fiction biographical, and even autobiographical. Indeed, a
close study of his works, read in the light of his life, shows how
he has woven into his stories many personal facts. In that exquisite
child-document _Little What’s-His-Name_, we have a rather full
record of his boyhood and entrance into Paris. _Jack_, also, is
full of his own early sorrows, while one character after another may
be traced to folk whom he knew. His mind, and his heart too, were
note-books on which he was always transcribing his impressions of life,
and--here is the vital thing, after all--recreating them for use in his
own inimitable way.
So Daudet was not an extreme realist--scarcely a typical realist
at all--for while he used the realistic method for observation and
faithful record, he no more got beyond sympathizing with his characters
than did Dickens, to whom more than to any other English-writing
novelist he must be compared. Daudet “belonged” to no school, expounded
no theories, stood for no reforms. He was just a kindly, humorous,
sympathetic, patiently exact maker of fascinating fictions, and as such
we shall love him quite in the proportion that we know him. Life, as he
saw it, was full of sadness, but that did not make him conclude it to
be not worth the living. Happily married, he knew the solaces of home
life. Unlike Maupassant, “What’s the use!” was far from being the heart
of his philosophy. Disenchanted with life he never was. A disheartening
view of sordidness, vice, and misery left him still with open eyes,
for he would not close them against truth; but it never prevented his
turning his gaze upon the beautiful, the humorous, and the good--a
lovable trio ever!--and finding in them some healing for his hurt.
THE POPE’S MULE
(_LA MULE DU PAPE_)