Excerpt from Memories of a Man of Letters, Artists Wives, Etc IN the introduction to T lu'rty Years in Paris, I attempted to present a hasty sketch of Alphonse Daudet's literary work, as represented by his pub lished books, down to the appearance of yack in 1876, that being the last Of his books whose history is printed in that volume. He tells us that he was already at work on T he Nabob, when a chance suggestion from Gustave Droz led him to lay it aside for the moment and set about writing a novel founded upon the story of his unhappy friend Raoul. On that day, he says, in the history of yack, laying aside T lze Nabob, which was already in process Of construction, I started 0 upon this fresh scent with a feverish haste, a trembling at the ends of the fingers, which seizes me at the beginning and end of all my books. And in the youmal des Goncourt, under date of Sunday, March 21, 1876, Edmond de Goncourt writes During our long walk I talked with Daudet of the novel he has in his head, in which he intends to introduce Morny incidentally. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.