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There was in him something of the Parisian Street gamin and something of the Oriental woman." 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.
Mistral said that the real Tartarin lived at Nîmes, eighteen miles from Tarascon, to the west of the Rhone, and was no other than Raynaud, Daudet's own cousin. Raynaud recognized himself in Tartarin and became very angry with Daudet; the reconciliation between the cousins was not effected till toward the end of the novelist's life."
Daudet himself confessed that the work had been written too soon and with too little reflection. "I wish I had waited," he said; "something good might have been written on my youth". "Tartarin de Tarascon" was written in 1869. Success and happiness had crowned Daudet's efforts.
The story of the composition of "Les Rois en exil" is an interesting study of Daudet's methods, his inexorable insistence on truth, even to the most minute details. As usual, the characters are sharply contrasted.
If a true child of the south, such as Tartarin or Bompard, were placed in a position of trust, he would not prove equal to the occasion and the result would be a Numa Roumestan. That is Daudet's verdict, and certainly his decision is not flattering to the south.
Daudet's is a microscopic, notebook realism quite different from the universal verity of Balzac, but there are many pages prompted by an exquisite sympathy or a violent passion in which the indomitable personality of the author breaks through the impassiveness imposed by the accepted masters of the craft. Sadness is the prevailing tone in his work, the sort of sadness that proceeds from pity.
After a hard struggle he was forced to give up his business at Nîmes and moved to Lyons . 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.
Of all the characters that appear in Daudet's novels it is perhaps Frédérique whose appeal to the reader is strongest, and Frédérique is almost entirely the product of the author's imagination.
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