ith Musset that his glass was his own,
and had no reason to concede its smallness.

As we have seen, the production of _Fromont jeune et Risler aine_
marked the beginning of Daudet's more than twenty years of successful
novel-writing. His first elaborate study of Parisian life, while it
indicated no advance of the art of fiction, deserved its popularity
because, in spite of the many criticisms to which it was open, it was a
thoroughly readable and often a moving book. One character, Delobelle,
the played-out actor who is still a hero to his pathetic wife and
daughter, was constructed on effective lines--was a personage worthy of
Dickens. The vile heroine, Sidonie, was bad enough to excite disgusted
interest, but, as Mr. Henry James pointed out later, she was not
effective to the extent her creator doubtless hoped. She paled beside
Valerie Marneffe, though, to be sure, Daudet knew better than to attempt
to depict any such queen of vice. Yet, after all, it is mainly the
compelling power of vile heroines that makes them tolerable, and neither
Sidonie nor the web of intrigue she wove can fairly be said to be
characterized by extraordinary strength. But the public was and is
interested greatly by the novel, and Daudet deserved the fame and money
it brought him. His next book, _Jack_, was not so popular. Still, it
showed artistic improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that bias
towards the sentimental, which was to be Daudet's besetting weakness,
was too plainly visible. Its author took to his heart a book which the
general reader found too long and perhaps overpathetic. Some of us,
while recognising its faults, will share in part Daudet's predilection
for it--not so much because of the strong and early study made of the
artisan class, or of the mordantly satirical exposure of D'Argenton
and his literary "dead-beats" (_rates_), or of any other of the special
features of a story that is crowded with them, as because the ill-fated
hero, the product of genuine emotions on Daudet's part, excites cognate
and equally genuine emotions in us. We cannot watch the throbbing
engines of a great steamship without seeing Jack at work among them. But
the fine, pathetic _Jack_ brings us to the finer, more pathetic _Nabob_.

Whether _The Nabob_ is Daudet's greatest novel is a question that may be
postponed, but it may be safely asserted that there are good reasons why
it should have been chosen to represent Daudet in the present series