[Transcriber's note: Chapter Nos. have been added for both this shortened and the full editions of "Le Petit Chose" to 'Notes' as an aid to finding lines of text. Andrew Hodson [email protected]]

Siepmann’s Advanced ƒrench Series

LE PETIT CHOSE

(HISTOIRE D’UN ENFANT)

ALPHONSE DAUDET

PART I—LE PETIT CHOSE EN PROVINCE

ADAPTED AND EDITED BY

S. TINDALL, M.A.

ASSISTANT MASTER OF BRADFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1921

COPYRIGHT

First Edition April 1911

PREFATORY NOTE

In this volume appear two new appendices, which will also be added to all others of our Series: (1) Questionnaires, which are not meant to usurp the teacher’s freedom in viva voce practice of the language, but to select for attention certain questions, so that their answers may be carefully prepared by the pupils after the portions of the text to which they refer have been read through.  If this is done the viva voce practice will gain in definiteness and precision without in the least preventing spontaneous questions being asked ad libitum (2) Sujets de Rédaction, which are intended to offer something better than the usual subjects set for “Free Composition,” and have the supreme advantage of being connected with the work in hand.  Sufficient guidance is given to enable every pupil to deal with the topic in a sensible manner; but at the same time there remains ample scope for the exercise of ingenuity and imagination, and the effort of composition cannot fail to test and to cultivate a faculty for giving expression to whatever knowledge the pupil has gathered in his reading.  Whether these subjects are to be handled viva voce or in writing must be left to the decision of the teacher.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION . . . . . ix

TEXT . . . . . . 1

NOTES . . . . . . 105

APPENDICES BY THE GENERAL EDITORS—

     I. WORDS AND PHRASES FOR VIVA VOCE DRILL . . . . . 133

    II. QUESTIONNAIRE . . . . 142

   III. SENTENCES ON SYNTAX AND IDIOMS FOR VIVA VOCE PRACTICE . . . 156

    IV. PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION INTO FRENCH 169

     V. SUJETS DE RÉDACTION . . . 177

INTRODUCTION

Alphonse Daudet was born at Nîmes on May 13, 1840.  The Daudets were of lowly origin.  Alphonse’s grandfather, a simple peasant, had in 1789 settled at Nîmes as a weaver.  His business prospered so much that he died leaving a small fortune; Vincent Daudet, his fourth son, and a young man of great ambition, was determined to rise out of the class in which he was born and acquire for himself and family a high social status.  In 1830 he married, greatly against the wishes of her parents, Adeline Reynaud, whose father owned the largest silk manufactory in the town.

His affairs were fairly flourishing when he was suddenly ruined by the Revolution of 1848.  Unable to meet his liabilities, he sold his business and removed to Lyons with his wife and children.  He was, however, anxious that his sons, of whom Alphonse was the third, should have the best education his scanty means would allow, and Alphonse and his elder brother Ernest—the “mère Jacques” of Le Petit Chose and his lifelong companion—were first sent to the monastic school of St. Pierre, and then to the Lyons Lycée.

Young Alphonse, who from his birth had been rather delicate, was not a model boy.  He loved to play truant, and it was only through his brother Ernest, who, to get him out of many a scrape, wrote notes to his teacher signed in his father’s name, that he escaped punishment.  But he showed signs of great promise.  He learned his lessons in half the time that his school-fellows did, was always at the top of his class, and was gifted with a marvellous power of observation.  He composed several poems—amongst others La Vierge à la Crèche and Les Petits Enfants,—also a novel, all of which were declared by his master to have been amazing productions for a boy of his age.

But Fortune did not smile on the Daudet family at Lyons any more than at Nîmes.  After ten years of hard and bitter struggles, the home was broken up.  M. Daudet became traveller for a firm of wine-merchants in the North, his wife and daughter remained in the South.  Ernest—who had on leaving school acted as bookkeeper to his father, then as a receiver of pledges in a pawnbroker’s shop, and lastly as a clerk in a forwarding office—went to Paris to try his fortune in the world of letters, whilst Alphonse was sent as an usher to a college at Alais, for his father was unable to pay the fees for his final school examination.

The year that he spent at Alais was the unhappiest in his life.  His small stature, his youth—he was now only fifteen years old—his “gauche” appearance, were not calculated to inspire the boys with any respect for him.  They played him all sorts of tricks, and the masters refused to uphold his authority.  Often, in order to escape his tormentors, he would rush up to his bed-room and there give vent to his despair by shedding floods of tears, lying awake at night and biting the bedclothes to choke his sobs.  Yet, brave philosopher that he was, Le Petit Chose never lost heart.  The dream of his life was to retrieve the family fortunes, a dream which one day was to be fully realized.  At last, however, at the end of his tether, he wrote to Ernest telling him all his troubles, and great was his joy when he received a letter back, asking him to come at once to Paris.

On a cold, grey, foggy November morning Alphonse Daudet arrived in Paris, with only two francs in his pocket.  His railway fare had been lent him by one of the masters at Alais, and he had had nothing to eat or drink on the journey, which had taken forty-eight hours, except a little brandy and water kindly offered by some sailors who travelled with him.  He had not dared to spend the little he had left after buying his ticket, for he thought it better to go without food than reach Paris penniless.  His brother met him and took him to his lodgings in the “Quartier Latin.”

Ernest, who had come to Paris with introductions, had obtained a post on the staff of an Orleanist newspaper, Le Spectateur, at a salary of £2 a week.  In his Trente ans de Paris and Souvenirs d’un homme de lettres, Le Petit Chose graphically tells us how, when his brother was at work, he wandered through the second-hand bookshops, where he was allowed to look through the new books on condition that he did not cut the leaves, and how one day, after fruitless interviews with publishers, when loitering along the banks of the Seine, he made the acquaintance of an editor, who became interested in him and agreed to publish his first little volume of charming poems, Les Amoureuses (1858).  Thus at the age of eighteen did Daudet make his debut in the literary world.  The