FRANÇOIS COPPÉE.
FROM THE FRENCH
Ten Tales
By
Translated by Walter Learned,with fifty pen-and-ink drawings byAlbert E. Sterner, and an introductionby Brander Matthews
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1891
Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
Contents
ixINTRODUCTION.
The conte is a form of fiction in which theFrench have always delighted and in whichthey have always excelled, from the days ofthe jongleurs and the trouvères, past the periodsof La Fontaine and Voltaire, down tothe present. The conte is a tale, somethingmore than a sketch, it may be, and somethingless than a short story. In verse it is at timesbut a mere rhymed anecdote, or it may attainalmost to the direct swiftness of a ballad.The Canterbury Tales are contes, mostof them, if not all; and so are some of theTales of a Wayside Inn. The free-and-easytales of Prior were written in imitationof the French conte en vers; and that,likewise, was the model of more than one ofthe lively narrative poems of Mr. AustinDobson.
xNo one has succeeded more abundantlyin the conte en vers than M. Coppée. Wherewas there ever anything better of its kindthan L’Enfant de la Balle?—that gentleportrait of the Infant Phenomenon, framedin a chain of occasional gibes at the sordidways of theatrical managers and at their hostilitytowards poetic plays. Where is thereanything of a more simple pathos thanL’Épave?—that story of a sailor’s sonwhom the widowed mother strives vainly tokeep from the cruel waves that killed hisfather. (It is worthy of a parenthesis thatalthough the ship M. Coppée loves best isthat which sails the blue shield of the Cityof Paris, he knows the sea also, and he depictssailors with affectionate fidelity.) Butwhether at the sea-side by chance, or moreoften in the streets of the city, the poet seeksout for the subject of his story some incidentof daily occurrence made significant by hisinterpretation; he chooses some charactercommon-place enough, but made firmer by