JACK BY ALPHONSE DAUDET TRANSLATED BY MARIAN MCINTYRE IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1900 42566.26.2.15 HARVARD Copyright, 1900, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. All rights reserved. University Press JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. INTRODUCTION. TOWARDS the end of 18681 Daudet first saw him - a shivering, round-shouldered, pathetic figure, whose ill-fitting coat covered but scantily the narrow chest racked by an ominous cough. In Paris, where the sight of wretchedness and want and disease is too familiar to arrest even a momentary attention, such a figure as this might have passed on unnoticed, lost in that great stream of human life that overflows the pavements of the mighty city. Clothed in picturesque rags, it might perhaps have served some artist in search of a model, but the novelist could scarcely have singled out so familiar a figure to be the hero of a novel. Had Daudet himself first met this unfortunate in the streets of Paris, it is doubtful whether Jack would have been written at all. But it was at Champrosay they met, Champrosay which plays no small part in Daudet's life, and is mentioned lovingly in connection with his labors. To what chance they owed their acquaintance we do not know, but for a time they were neighbors. We remember with what tireless patience that 1 Jack was first published in 1876. "double" of Daudet's attached itself to some obscure existence, following it up and down, penetrating its joys and sorrows, abstracting its secret. Like George Eliot, like Dickens, he delighted in being the historian of the humble. He has told us elsewhere the history of Little What's-His-Name. Quite another story that of his young companion, told to him in the forest of Sénart, afterwards retold to the world as Daudet alone could tell it - the story of Jack. His real name we do not know, for he had none this is the story of little No-name, the mere flyblow of chance, born of a father whose name even was not known of a mother known only too well, an origin clouded with doubt and shame. The jealous caprice of a lover of this woman had sentenced him to a life of physical labor for which he was unfitted; he had broken down under the strain, and, when Daudet first met him, had been sent to the country to rest for a while, and regain health. Even there he was pursued by thoughts of his mother, and when his exile grew unendurable, he would set out afoot, and walk the six leagues that separated him from her, for he adored this mother. A portion of his childhood had been spent in a wealthy pensionnat at Auteuil, and that early education, though it had not lasted long, had left an influence upon his character, and had given him tastes out of keeping with the squalid surroundings of his life. He loved to read, and as the doctor |