getting journalistic work."

Indeed, it seems to have been more or less of an accident that M. Daudet
did not devote himself entirely to poetry; and probably the very poverty
which seemed so bitter to him during his youth obliged him to try what
he could do in the way of story-writing, that branch of literature being
supposed by the French to be the best from a pecuniary point of view. So
remarkable were his verses felt to be by the critics of the day, that
one of them wrote, "When dying, Alfred de Musset left his two pens as a
last legacy to our literature--Feuillet has taken that of prose; into
Daudet's hand has slipped that of verse."

But some years passed before the poet-journalist became the novelist; at
one time he dreamed of being a great dramatist, and before he was
five-and-twenty several of his plays had been produced at leading Paris
theatres. Fortune smiled upon him, and he was appointed to be one of the
Duc de Morny's secretaries, a post he held four years, and which
supplied him with much valuable material for several of his later
novels, notably _Les Rois en Exile_, _Le Nabab_, and _Numa Romestan_,
for during this period he was brought into close and intimate contact
with all the noteworthy personages of the Third Empire, making at the
same time the acquaintance of most of the literary lions of the
day--Flaubert, with whom he became very intimate; Edmond and Jules de
Goncourt, the two gifted brothers who may be said to have founded the
realistic school of fiction years before Emile Zola came forward as the
apostle of realism; Tourguenieff, the two Dumas, and many others who
welcomed enthusiastically the young Southern poet into their midst.

[Illustration: THE TUILERIES STONE.]

The first page of _Le Petit Chose_ was written in the February of 1866,
and was finished during the author's honeymoon, but it was with _Fromont
Jeune et Risler Aine_, published six years later, that he made his first
real success as a novelist, the work being crowned by the French
Academy, and arousing a veritable enthusiasm both at home and abroad.

Alphonse Daudet is not a quick worker; he often allows several years to
elapse between his novels, and refuses to bind himself down to any
especial date. _Tartarin de Tarascon_ was, however, an exception to this
rule, for the author wrote it for Messrs. Guillaume, the well-known art
publishers, who, wishing to popularise an improved style of
illustration, offered M. Daudet 150,0