Tartarin de Tarascon. Alphonse Daudet
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de Tarascon serait-il un imposteur? Le mirage.
VIII. La ménagerie Mitaine. Un lion de l'Atlas à Tarascon. Terrible et
solennelle entrevue!
IX. Singuliers effets du mirage.
X. Avant le départ.
XI. Des coups d'épée, messieurs, des coups d'épée, mais pas de coups
d'épingle!
XII. De ce qui fut dit dans la petite maison du baobab.
XIII. Le départ.
XIV. Le port de Marseille. Embarque! embarque!
DEUXIÈME ÉPISODE CHEZ LES TEURS
I. La traversée. Les cinq positions de la chechia. Le soir du
troisième jour. Miséricorde!
II. Aux armes! aux armes!
III. Invocation à Cervantes. Débarquement. Où sont les Teurs? Pas de
Teurs.
Désillusion.
IV. Le premier affût.
V. Pan! Pan!
VI. Arrivée de la femelle. Terrible combat. Le Rendez-vous des Lapins.
VII. Histoire d'un omnibus, d'une Mauresque et d'un chapelet de fleurs
de Jasmin.
VIII. Lions de l'Atlas, dormez!
IX. Le prince Grégory du Monténégro.
X. Dis-moi le nom de ton père, et je te dirai le nom de cette fleur.
XI. Sidi Tart'ri ben Tart'ri.
XII. On nous écrit de Tarascon.
TROISIÈME ÉPISODE: CHEZ LES LIONS
I. Les diligences déportées.
II. Où l'on voit passer un petit monsieur.
III. Un couvent de lions.
IV. La caravane en marche.
V. L'affût du soir dans un bois de lauriers-roses.
VI. Enfin!
VII. Catastrophes sur catastrophes.
VIII. Tarascon! Tarascon!
NOTES
EXERCISES
INTRODUCTION
ALPHONSE DAUDET
(Nîmes, May 13, 1840; Paris, December 16, 1897)
Alphonse Daudet was born in the ancient Provençal city of Nîmes, near the Rhône, May 13, 1840. In this same year Émile Zola, destined like Daudet to pass his youth in Provence, was born at Paris.
As a resuit of the commercial upheaval which attended the revolution of 1848, Daudet's father, a wealthy silk manufacturer, was ruined. After a hard struggle he was forced to give up his business at Nîmes and moved to Lyons (1849). He was not successful here, and finally, in 1856, the family was broken up. The sons now had to shift for themselves.
These first sixteen years of Alphonse Daudet's life were far from unhappy. He had found delight in exploring the abandoned factory at Nîmes. His school days at Lyons were equally agreeable to the young vagabond. His studies occupied him little; he loved to wander through the streets of the great city, finding everywhere food for fanciful speculation. He would follow a person he did not know, scrutinizing his every movement, and striving to lose his own identity in that of the other, to live the other's life. His frequent days of truancy he spent in these idle rambles, or in drifting down the river. Literary ambition had already seized him; he had written a novel (of which no trace remains) and numerous verses. Notwithstanding his lack of application to study, he had succeeded in completing the course of the lycée.
In 1856 when it became certain that the father could no longer care for the family, the mother and daughter took refuge in the home of relatives; Ernest, the older of the two surviving sons, sought his fortune in the literary circles of Paris; and Alphonse accepted a position as "master of the study hall" (maître d'études, pion) at the college of Alais in the Cévennes. The boy was too young, too delicate, and too sensitive to be able to endure the mental suffering and humiliation to which he was subjected at the hands of the bullies of this school.[1] After a year of martyrdom he set out on his terrible journey to Paris. Here he was welcomed by his brother Ernest.
[Footnote 1: See "Le Petit Chose," "Little What's-His-Name."]
The two brothers had always felt and always continued to feel the closest sympathy for each other. Ernest believed in Alphonse's genius more than in his own, and bestowed on his younger brother the motherly devotion which Alphonse so gratefully and tenderly acknowledges in "Le Petit Chose," his romantic autobiography, where Ernest appears as "ma mère Jacques."
The first years in Paris were the darkest in the brothers' lives. They could earn scarcely enough to satisfy their most pressing needs, but both were happy, since they were in Paris. Before Alphonse's arrival Ernest had secured regular employment on a newspaper. Alphonse was longing for recognition as a poet, but to earn his living he was forced to turn to prose. His contributions to Le Figaro and other newspapers soon made him known. He wrote little and carefully, nor did he forget his literary ideals even when poverty might have excused hurried productions in the style best calculated to sell. His literary conscience was as strong under the trying circumstances of his début as later when success brought independence.[2]
[Footnote 2: See E. Daudet, "Mon Frère et moi," pp. 151-152. Daudet frequently says of himself that he was by nature an improviser, that the labor of meticulous composition to which he forced himself was a torture, yet he remained always true to his ideal.]
During this period he lived among the Bohemians of the Parisian world of letters; but, though he shared their joys and sorrows, he seems to have emerged unscathed from the dangers of such an existence. Zola met Daudet at this time and has left us an attractive picture of him: "He was in the employ of a successful newspaper, he used to bring in his article, receive his remuneration, and disappear with the nonchalance of a young god, sunk in poetry, far from the petty cares of this world. He was living, I think, outside of the city, in a remote corner with other poets, a band of joyous Bohemians. He was beautiful, with the delicate, nervous beauty of an Arabian horse, an ample mane, a silky divided beard, large eyes, a thin nose, a passionate mouth, and, to crown all that, a certain flash of light, a breath of tender voluptuousness, which bathed his whole face in a smile that was both roguish and sensual. There was in him something of the Parisian Street gamin and something of the Oriental woman."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Les Romanciers naturalistes," pp. 256-257.]
Daudet's first volume was a collection of verse, "Les Amoureuses" (1858, published by Tardieu, a Provençal). These simple poems are charming in their freshness and naïveté, and established Daudet's reputation as a writer of light verse. The whole volume, and especially "Les Prunes," attracted the attention of the Empress Eugénie. At her solicitation Daudet was made one of the secretaries of the powerful Duke of Morny, president of the corps législatif (1860). His duties were purely nominal. He now had money enough to keep the wolf from his door and was free to devote himself to literature.
It was at this time that the stage began to attract him. His first play, "La Dernière Idole," was produced at the Odéon in 1862. Almost every other year between 1862 and 1892 a new play, on untried themes, or adapted from one of his novels and usually written in collaboration, appeared at a Parisian theater. Of all these only one, "L'Arlésienne" (1872), is worthy of its author.
Already in 1859, as a result of the suffering of the preceding years and lack of precautions, his health had begun to fail. He spent the winters of 1861-1864 in Algeria, Corsica, and Provence. These voyages were of vital importance in his development. He learned something