eans of a letter she proves to Fromont that
she has corrupted his much-loved younger brother. Fromont hangs himself.

Outside the main current of the plot Daudet sketches one of the little
dramas of humble life of which he was so fond: the story of Delobelle, an
impoverished actor who lives for his art while his devoted wife and
daughter Desiree patiently ply the needle to earn bread.

Daudet up to this time had been recognized as the greatest of French
short-story writers. The success of "Fromont jeune et Risler aine" was
immediate, and in his succeeding novels he confirmed more and more surely
his right to a place in the front rank of French novelists.

From this story of the life of the _petite bourgeoisie_ he turns to a
wider field. The Bohemia of Paris, a glimpse of the country, and
especially the life of the artisan, fill "Jack" (1876). Daudet had known
the real Jack at Champrosay in 1868. In the novel Jack is the illegitimate
son of Ida de Barency, a shallow demi-mondaine who is passionately devoted
to the boy but brings to him nothing but misfortune. Jack begins his
suffering in a wretched school where his mother has placed him after the
Jesuits had refused to receive him. This school is supported by the
tuition fees of boys from tropical countries, _petits pays chauds_, as
Moronval, the villainous director, calls them. The teachers belong to that
class of _rates_, artistic and literary failures, whom Daudet learned to
know well during his first years in Paris. One of these _rates_ captivates
Ida de Barency, and Jack's life of misery continues. Despite his physical
unfitness, he is sent to labor in the shipbuilding yards at Indret,
suffers tortures in the stoking room of an ocean steamer, is wrecked, and
returns to France in a piteous condition. His love for Cecile,
granddaughter of a gentle country doctor, is rapidly making a man of him,
when his mother enters again into his life and the poor boy dies miserably
in a hospital, killed by despair rather than by disease.

This is perhaps the most powerful of Daudet's novels; it is certainly the
most harrowing. The tragedy of the whole is only slightly relieved by the
interweaving of the romance of good Belisaire, the hawker, one of Jack's
few friends.

"Le Nabab" (1878) is concerned with politics, the richer bourgeoisie, and
the aristocracy. Jansoulet, the "nabob," returns from Tunis with a large
fortune and immediately becomes the prey of parasites. He is made