Excerpt from L'arlesienne (the Girl of Arles) Cevennes Mountains, whence, at the time of the French Revolution, two brothers of that name descended to the city of Nismes. One of these, Claude, soon perished in the mas sacres of the Bagarre; the other, Jacques, escaped this fate almost by a miracle, and in time became a prosperous merchant. His son Vincent, the father of Alphonse Daudet, good Catholic and Roval ist, travelled through Normandy, Brittany, and La Vendee, with wagon-loads of goods from the pa ternal store, which he sold to the merchants of the provincial cities. In 1830 this far-travelled trader in silks married Adeline Reynaud, the daughter of a rich and power ful family from the mountains of l'ardeche, at that time prominent in the mercantile life of Nismes. The first son resulting from. This marriage was Henri Daudet, who died at the age of twenty-four, while holding a professorship; the second son was Ernest Daudet, whose charming book Mon Fr'ere et Moi gives so many interesting details of the family history; and the third son, born May 13, 1840, was Alphonse Daudet. The happy and prosper ous family dwelt in the old Sabran house, Opposite the Church of St. Charles, and near the'famous Enclos de Rey; and here the children en j oyed a thousand merry games, and developed amain. The story of his early life Alphonse has told with charming pathos in Le Petit Chose, much of which was written in 1866, in a great lonely country house, near the Rhone, amid mul berry and olive trees and vineyards, in the melancholy quiet of the great Southern plains. 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.