Daudet occasionally permits himself an underplot; but he acts always on
the principle he once formulated to his son: "every book is an
organism; if it has not its organs in place, it dies, and its corpse is
a scandal." Sometimes, as in "Fromont and Risler," he starts at the
moment when the plot thickens, returning soon to make clear the
antecedents of the characters first shown in action; and sometimes, as
in "Sapho," he begins right at the beginning and goes straight through
to the end. But, whatever his method, there is never any doubt as to
the theme; and the essential unity is always apparent. This severity of
design in no way limits the variety of the successive acts of his
drama.

While a novel of Balzac's is often no more than an analysis of
character, and while a novel of Zola's is a massive epic of human
endeavor, a novel of Daudet's is a gallery of pictures, brushed in with
the sweep and certainty of a master-hand,--portraits, landscapes with
figures, marines, battlepieces pieces, bits of _genre_, views of Paris.
And the views of Paris outnumber the others, and almost outvalue them
also. Mr. Henry James has noted that "The Nabob" is "full of episodes
which are above all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The
author has drawn up a list of the Parisian solemnities, and painted the
portrait, or given a summary, of each of them. The opening day at the
Salon, a funeral at Pere la Chaise, a debate in the Chamber of
Deputies, the _premiere_ of a new play at a favorite theatre, furnish
him with so many opportunities for his gymnastics of observation." And
"The Nabob" is only a little more richly decorated than the "Immortal,"
and "Numa Roumestan," and "Kings in Exile."

These pictures, these carefully wrought masterpieces of rendering are
not lugged in, each for its own sake; they are not outside of the
narrative; they are actually part of the substance of the story. Daudet
excels in describing, and every artist is prone to abound in the sense
of his superiority. As the French saying puts it, a man has always the
defects of his qualities; yet Daudet rarely obtrudes his descriptions,
and he generally uses them to explain character and to set off or bring
out the moods of his personages. They are so swift that I am tempted to
call them flash-lights; but photographic is just what they are not, for
they are artistic in their vigorous suppression of the unessentials;
they are never gray or cold or hard; they vib