rascon_ need scarcely be considered--will prove, in
the lapse of years, to be the most solid foundation of that fame which
even envious Time will hardly begrudge Daudet. As for _Kings in Exile_,
it is difficult to see how even the art with which the tragedy of Queen
Frederique's life is unfolded or the growing power of characterization
displayed in her, in the loyal Merault, in the facile, decadent
Christian, can make up for the lack of broadly human appeal in the
general subject-matter of a book which was so sympathetically written
as to appeal alike to Legitimists and to Republicans. Good as _Kings
in Exile_ is, it is not so effective a book as _The Nabob_, nor such
a unique and marvellous work of art as _Numa Roumestan_, due allowance
being made for the intrusion of sentimentality into the latter. Daudet
thought _Numa_ the "least incomplete" of his works; it is certainly
inclusive enough, since some critics are struck by the tragic relations
subsisting between the virtuous discreet Northern wife and the peccable,
expansive Southern husband, while others see in the latter the hero of
a comedy of manners almost worthy of Moliere. If _Numa_ represents the
highest achievement of Daudet in dramatic fiction or else in the art
of characterization, _The Evangelist_ proved that his genius was not
at home in those fields. Instead of marking an ordered advance, this
overwrought study of Protestant bigotry marked not so much a halt, or a
retreat, as a violent swerving to one side. Yet in a way this swerving
into the devious orbit of the novel of intense purpose helped Daudet in
his progress towards naturalism, and imparted something of stability to
his methods of work. _Sapho_, which appeared next, was the first of his
novels that left little to be desired in the way of artistic unity and
cumulative power. If such a study of the _femme collante_, the mistress
who cannot be shaken off--or rather of the man whom she ruins, for it
is Gaussin, not Sapho, that is the main subject of Daudet's acute
analysis--was to be written at all, it had to be written with a resolute
art such as Daudet applied to it. It is not then surprising that
Continental critics rank _Sapho_ as its author's greatest production; it
is more in order to wonder what Daudet might not have done in this line
of work had his health remained unimpaired. The later novels, in which
he came near to joining forces with the naturalists and hence to losing
some of the vogue hi