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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. For the man and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style, and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction.
In the second place, we must bravely realize that the morality of a work of fiction has little or no dependence on the subject that it treats. It is utterly unjust to the novelist to decide, as many unreasonable readers do, that such a book as Daudet's "Sapho" must be of necessity immoral because it exhibits immoral characters in a series of immoral acts.
In fact, it is easy to agree with those critics who think that Daudet's kindly nature caused him to soften many features of Morny's unlovely character. Mora does not, indeed, win our love or our esteem, but we confess him to have been in every respect an exceptional man, and there is not a page in which he appears that is not intensely interesting.
That this faculty for putting people under obligation is more the man than a method, however, is shown in one of Daudet's delightful little sketches, the story of a head clerk in a French Government bureau who, on getting a fine promotion, wrote home to his father describing his new chief's homely appearance with light-hearted raillery.
That reminds me, do read Leon Daudet's "Fantomes et Vivantes" the first volumes of his memoirs. He is a terrible example of "Le fils a papa." I don't know why it is that a vicious writer, absolutely lacking in reverence, can hold one's attention so much better than a kindly one can.
In the triangular space left blank the title of the periodical and the publisher's imprint were tastefully lettered so as to be partly covered by the background of color. "It's like some of those Tartarin books of Daudet's," said Beacon, looking at it with more interest than he suffered to be seen. "But it's a book, not a magazine."
But the public was and is interested greatly by the novel, and Daudet deserved the fame and money it brought him. His next book, Jack, was not so popular. Still, it showed artistic improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that bias towards the sentimental, which was to be Daudet's besetting weakness, was too plainly visible.
It is true that Daudet's stories do not attain the tremendous impressiveness that Balzac's occasionally do, as, for example, in La Grande Breteche, nor has his clear-cut art the almost disconcerting firmness, the surgeon-like quality of Maupassant's; but the author of the ironical Elixir of Father Gaucher and of the pathetic Last Class, to name no others, could certainly claim with Musset that his glass was his own, and had no reason to concede its smallness.
Perhaps there is more than a hint of ingratitude in Daudet's later disgust with the inherent limitations of the drama, a disgust more forcibly phrased by his friends, Zola and Goncourt and Flaubert, realists all of them, eager to capture the theater also and to rule it in their own way.
When the door had closed, Madeline heaved a deep sigh, and was for some minutes in a brown, if not a black, study. Then she shivered a little, sighed again, and again took up the volume she had been reading. It was Daudet's "Les Femmes d'Artistes." Not long after, all the Denyers were reunited in their sitting-room. Mrs. Denyer had brought up an open letter.
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