Daudet and his Anglo-Saxon readers certainly were. Whether it was that
some of us saw in him that hitherto unguessed-at phenomenon, a French
Dickens--not an imitator, indeed, but a kindred spirit--or that others
found in him a refined, a volatilized "Mark Twain," with a flavour of
Cervantes, or that still others welcomed him as a writer of naturalistic
fiction that did not revolt, or finally that most of us enjoyed him
because whatever he wrote was as steeped in the radiance of his own
exquisitely charming personality as a picture of Corot's is in the light
of the sun itself--whatever may have been the reason, Alphonse Daudet
could count before he died thousands of genuine friends in England and
America who were loyal to him in spite of the declining power shown in
his latest books, in spite even of the strain which _Sapho_ laid upon
their Puritan consciences.

It is likely that a majority of these friends were won by the two great
Tartarin books and by the chief novels, _Fromont_, _Jack_, _The Nabob_,
_Kings in Exile_, and _Numa_, aided by the artistic sketches and short
stories contained in _Letters from my Mill_ and _Monday Tales (Contes
du Lundi)_. The strong but overwrought _Evangelist_, _Sapho_--which of
course belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not from
the insular point of view--and the books of Daudet's decadence, _The
Immortal_, and the rest, cost him few friendships, but scarcely gained
him many. His delightful essays in autobiography, whether in fiction,
_Le Petit Chose (Little What's-his-Name)_, or in _Thirty Years of Paris_
and _Souvenirs of a Man of Letters_, doubtless sealed more friendships
than they made; but they can be almost as safely recommended as the more
notable novels to readers who have yet to make Daudet's acquaintance.

For the man and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style,
and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny