do--perhaps more so than does the central motive, the outrageous
exploitation of the naive hero. For from the beginning of his career to
the end Daudet's eye, like that of a genuine but not supereminent poet,
was chiefly attracted by colour, movement, effective pose--in other
words, by the surfaces of things. One may almost say that he was more of
a landscape engineer than of an architect and builder, although one must
at once add that he could and did erect solid structures. But the
reader at least helps greatly to lay the foundations, for, to drop the
metaphor, Daudet relied largely on suggestion, contenting himself with
the belief that a capable imagination could fill up the gaps he left
in plot and character analysis. Thus, for example, he indicated and
suggested rather than detailed the way in which Hemerlingue finally
triumphed over the Nabob, Jansoulet. To use another figure, he drew the
spider, the fly, and a few strands of the web. The Balzac whose bust
looked satirically down upon the two adventurers in Pere la Chaise would
probably have given us the whole web. This is not quite to say that
Daudet is plausible, Balzac inevitable; but rather that we stroll
with the former master and follow submissively in the footsteps of the
latter. Yet a caveat is needed, for the intense interest we take in the
characters of a novel like _The Nabob_ scarcely suggests strolling.

For although Daudet, in spite of his abounding sympathy, which is one
reason of his great attractiveness, cannot fairly be said to be a great
character creator, he had sufficient flexibility and force of genius to
set in action interesting personages. Part of the early success of _The
Nabob_ was due to this fact, although the brilliant description of the
Second Empire and the introduction of exotic elements, the Tunisian and
Corsican episodes and characters, counted, probably, for not a little.
Readers insisted upon seeing in the book this person and that more or
less thinly disguised. The Irish adventurer-physician, Jenkins, was