themselves.

But Daudet did not whisper; he spoke loudly, with animation, with a clear
felicity of tone--as a bird sings. He saw life around him with extreme
clearness, and he felt it as it is--thinner than air and more elusive
than a flash of lightning. He hastened to offer it his compassion, his
indignation, his wonder, his sympathy, without giving a moment of thought
to the momentous issues that are supposed to lurk in the logic of such
sentiments. He tolerated the little foibles, the small ruffianisms, the
grave mistakes; the only thing he distinctly would not forgive was
hardness of heart. This unpractical attitude would have been fatal to a
better man, but his readers have forgiven him. Withal he is chivalrous
to exiled queens and deformed sempstresses, he is pityingly tender to
broken-down actors, to ruined gentlemen, to stupid Academicians; he is
glad of the joys of the commonplace people in a commonplace way--and he
never makes a secret of all this. No, the man was not an artist. What
if his creations are illumined by the sunshine of his temperament so
vividly that they stand before us infinitely more real than the dingy
illusions surrounding our everyday existence? The misguided man is for
ever pottering amongst them, lifting up his voice, dotting his i's in the
wrong places. He takes Tartarin by the arm, he does not conceal his
interest in the Nabob's cheques, his sympathy for an honest Academician
_plus bete que nature_, his hate for an architect _plus mauvais que la
gale_; he is in the thick of it all. He feels with the Duc de Mora and
with Felicia Ruys--and he lets you see it. He does not sit on a pedestal
in the hieratic and imbecile pose of some cheap god whose greatness
consists in being too stupid to care. He cares immensely for his Nabobs,
his kings, his book-keepers, his Colettes, and his Saphos. He vibrates
together with his universe, and with lamentable simplicity follows M. de
Montpavon on that last walk along the Boulevards.