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He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth to Bossuet, but Legrand is not that kind of Burgundian. Several critics pretend to see in his work the characteristics of his native Côte d'Or; that, however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately. Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet's country; he is exuberant as he is astute.
It is curious to note that in "Sir Launcelot Greaves," we find a character, Ferret, who frankly poses as a strugforlifeur. M. Daudet's strugforlifeur had heard of Darwin. Mr. Ferret had read Hobbes, learned that man was in a state of nature, and inferred that we ought to prey upon each other, as a pike eats trout.
But the students of the future, while recognizing an obvious affinity between the other two, may be puzzled to find Daudet's name conjoined with theirs. Decidedly, Daudet belonged to the Realistic School. But, above all, he was an impressionist.
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.
There were some dozen other passengers in the car a lady with three children, a group of school-teachers, a couple of drummers, a stout gentleman with whiskers, and a well-dressed young man in a plaid travelling cap, whom Annixter had observed before supper time reading Daudet's "Tartarin" in the French. But by nine o'clock, all these people were in their berths.
Instead of dropping out limp and disheartened, we should train "struggle-for-lifeurs," in Daudet's phrase, and that betimes, so that the young come back to it not too late for securing the best benefits, after having wasted the years best fitted for it in profitless studies or in the hard school of failure.
All who have read Alphonse Daudet's charming little story, La derniere lecon de Francais, will be able to realize the painfulness of the truth, somewhat rudely brought home to French parents. Their children must henceforth receive a German education, or none at all, for this is what the law amounts to in the great majority of cases.
And, in their turn, these plays and their fellows supplied a pattern to the novelist to Daudet especially. A certain lack of largeness, a certain artificiality of action in Daudet's 'Fromont jeune et Risler aîné, is probably to be ascribed to the fact that the story was first conceived in the form of a play, altho it was actually written as a novel.
Ah, I should like to polish up my French a little. Would you mind my asking you to read a bit with me, some little thing of Daudet's if you care for him, in the original? An hour, now and then, perhaps " Mamie appeared in the doorway and Eugene rose swiftly. "I have been trying to persuade Miss Tabor," he explained, with something too much of laughter, "to play again.
She will raise up the fallen one, set him on his feet, make him happy.... It is not Ivanov she loves, but this task. Argenton in Daudet's book says, "Life is not a novel." Sasha does not know this. She does not know that for Ivanov love is only a fresh complication, an extra stab in the back. And what comes of it?
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