FROMONT AND RISLER

By Alphonse Daudet

With a Preface by LECONTE DE LISLE, of the French Academy

CONTENTS

ALPHONSE DAUDET

FROMONT AND RISLER


BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I. A WEDDING-PARTY AT THE CAFE VEFOUR

CHAPTER II. LITTLE CHEBE'S STORY

CHAPTER III. THE FALSE PEARLS

CHAPTER IV. THE GLOW-WORMS OF SAVIGNY

CHAPTER V. HOW LITTLE CHEBE'S STORY ENDED

CHAPTER VI. NOON—THE MARAIS IS BREAKFASTING

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER VII. THE TRUE PEARL AND THE FALSE

CHAPTER VIII. THE BREWERY ON THE RUE BLONDEL

CHAPTER IX. AT SAVIGNY

CHAPTER X. SIGISMOND PLANUS TREMBLES FOR HIS CASH-BOX

CHAPTER XI. THE INVENTORY

CHAPTER XII. A LETTER

CHAPTER XIII. THE JUDGE

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XIV. EXPLANATION

CHAPTER XV. POOR LITTLE MAM'ZELLE ZIZI

CHAPTER XVI. THE WAITING-ROOM

CHAPTER XVII. AN ITEM OF NEWS

CHAPTER XVIII. SHE PROMISED NOT TO TRY AGAIN

CHAPTER XIX. APPROACHING CLOUDS

CHAPTER XX. REVELATIONS

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XXI. THE DAY OF RECKONING

CHAPTER XXII. THE NEW EMPLOYEE OF THE HOUSE OF FROMONT

CHAPTER XXIII. CAFE CHANTANT

CHAPTER XXIV. SIDONIE'S VENGEANCE

ALPHONSE DAUDET

Nominally Daudet, with the Goncourts and Zola, formed a trio representing Naturalism in fiction. He adopted the watchwords of that school, and by private friendship, no less than by a common profession of faith, was one of them. 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. All that can be observed—the individual picture, scene, character—Daudet will render with wonderful accuracy, and all his novels, especially those written after 1870, show an increasing firmness of touch, limpidity of style, and wise simplicity in the use of the sources of pathetic emotion, such as befit the cautious Naturalist. Daudet wrote stories, but he had to be listened to. Feverish as his method of writing was—true to his Southern character he took endless pains to write well, revising every manuscript three times over from beginning to end. He wrote from the very midst of the human comedy; and it is from this that he seems at times to have caught the bodily warmth and the taste of the tears and the very ring of the laughter of men and women. In the earlier novels, perhaps, the transitions from episode to episode or from scene to scene are often abrupt, suggesting the manner of the Goncourts. But to Zola he forms an instructive contrast, of the same school, but not of the same family. Zola is methodical, Daudet spontaneous. Zola works with documents, Daudet from the living fact. Zola is objective, Daudet with equal scope and fearlessness shows more personal feeling and hence more delicacy. And in style also Zola is vast, architectural; Daudet slight, rapid, subtle, lively, suggestive. And finally, in their philosophy of life, Zola may inspire a hate of vice and wrong, but Daudet