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Mis à jour: 20 mai 2025
He was truly so by nature, he is so in the "Lettres de mon moulin" and in all his work before the war, but his pessimism is unquestionable in the great novels. Surely nature did not intend Daudet to become a pessimist; he loved mankind, he had many devoted friends and no enemies. He carried happiness wherever he went. The attic of Auteuil, the rendezvous of the Goncourt group, is dark and gloomy.
The wreck of the Empire brought to his mind a vision of the dethroned monarchs whom he had seen spending their exile in Paris: the Duke of Brunswick, the blind King of Hanover and the devoted Princess Frederica, Queen Isabella of Spain, and others. "This is the work which cost me most effort," Daudet says, and the reason is not far to seek.
The Bohemia of Paris, a glimpse of the country, and especially the life of the artisan, fill "Jack" . Daudet had known the real Jack at Champrosay in 1868. In the novel Jack is the illegitimate son of Ida de Barency, a shallow demi-mondaine who is passionately devoted to the boy but brings to him nothing but misfortune.
Outside the main current of the plot Daudet sketches one of the little dramas of humble life of which he was so fond: the story of Delobelle, an impoverished actor who lives for his art while his devoted wife and daughter Désirée patiently ply the needle to earn bread. Daudet up to this time had been recognized as the greatest of French short-story writers.
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