CROWNED BY THE FRENCH ACADEMY Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist and playwright. His father was a silk manufacturer who suffered reverses and lost his property. Daudet took a post as a schoolteacher at Ales, Gard, but found it intolerable, and moved to Paris to live with his brother, Ernest, who was working as a journalist. Daudet wrote poetry and several plays, and secured employment as a secretary to Morny, a Minister of Napoleon III. Tartarin of Tarascon is a tale of the adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France. The book spawned two sequels: Tartarin sur les Alpes