eyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck,
have for us a fascination almost as great as they had for the gay and
audacious men and women who in them courted fortune and chased pleasure
from the morrow of the _Coup d'Etat_ to the eve of Sedan. A nearly
equal fascination is exerted upon us by a book which is the best sort of
historical novel, since it is the product of its author's observation,
not of his reading--a story that sets vividly before us the political
corruption, the financial recklessness, the social turmoil, the public
ostentation, the private squalor, that led to the downfall of an empire
and almost to that of a people.

Daudet drew on his experiences, and on the notes he was always
accumulating, more strenuously than he should have done. He assures
us that he laboured over _The Nabob_ for eight months, mainly in his
bed-room, sometimes working eighteen consecutive hours, often waking
from restless sleep with a sentence on his lips. Yet, such is the irony
of literary history, the novel is loosely enough put together to have
been written, one might suppose, in bursts of inspiration or else more
or less methodically--almost with the intention, as Mr. James has noted,
of including every striking phase of Parisian life. For it is a series
of brilliant, effective episodes and scenes, not a closely knit drama.
Jenkins's visit to Monpavon at his toilet, the _dejeuner_ at the
Nabob's, the inspection of the OEuvre de Bethleem--which would have
delighted Dickens--the collapse of the fetes of the Bey, the Nabob's
thrashing Moessard, the death of Mora, Felicia's attempt to escape the
funeral of the duke, the interview between the Nabob and Hemerlingue,
the baiting in the Chamber, the suicide of that supreme man of tone,
Monpavon, the Nabob's apoplectic seizure in the theatre--these and many
other scenes and episodes, together with descriptions and touches, stand
out in our memories more distinctly and impressively than the characters