DEAN'S WATCH ***




Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: Emile Erckmann]




                       [Illustration: Title page]


                          *ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN*

                         *Brigadier Frederick*

                                 *AND*

                           *The Dean's Watch*


                       TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

                      WITH A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
                    BY PROF. RICHARD BURTON, OF THE
                        UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

                      A FRONTISPIECE AND NUMEROUS
                          OTHER PORTRAITS WITH
                          DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY
                             OCTAVE UZANNE



                          P. F. COLLIER & SON
                                NEW YORK




                            COPYRIGHT, 1902
                        BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY




                          *ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN*


Fashions change in literature, but certain things abide.  There may be
disputes from generation to generation, even from decade to decade, as
to what is aesthetic, or what is beautiful; there is less as to what is
human.  The work of the French writers, whose duality is quite lost in
the long-time association of their names for the purposes of story
making, seems at the least to make this claim to outlast its authors: it
is delightfully saturated with humanity.

And this humanity is of the sort that, since it can be understood of all
men, is therefore very widely acceptable.  It is well to emphasize the
point in an attempt to explain the popularity of Erckmann-Chatrian,
immediate or remote.  There are other reasons, to be sure: but this one
is at the door, knocking to be heard.  But to speak of the essential
humanity of these books is not to deny or ignore their art; that they
have in abundance--quite as truly indeed as the work of your most
insistent advocate of "art for art"; but it is art for life's sake.  In
the best sense, the verisimilitude of the Erckmann-Chatrian stories is
admirable, impressive.  They are, as a rule, exquisitely in key.  They
produce a cumulative effect by steadily, unobtrusively clinging to a
single view-point, that of the speaker who is an eye-witness, and the
result is a double charm--that of reality and that of illusion.  One
sees life, not through the eyes of the authors, but through the eyes of
the characters; hence the frequent setting-forth of principles is
relieved from didacticism by the careful way in which the writers
refrain from expressing their own opinion. So artistic are they that
they even indulge in the delicate ruse of opposing the views which are
really their own, thereby producing a still stronger effect of
fair-mindedness and detachment.

Yet, as the world knows, in the most justly famed of their books, the
so-called National Novels, it is their purpose to preach against war;
they are early advocates of the principles of the Peace Congress at The
Hague, forerunners, in their own fashion, of the ideas expressed in art
and literature by later men like Tolstoy and Verestchagin.

The local colour--one still uses the phrase as convenient--is remarkable
for its sympathetic fidelity; the style well-nigh a model of prose whose
purpose it is to depict in homely yet picturesque terms the passage of
great events, seen by humble, it may be Philistine, folk, and hence not
seen _couleur de rose_.  When a heartfelt sympathy for average
human-kind rises to the surface of the author's feeling, some candid,
cordial phrase is ever found to express it.

The work of Erckmann-Chatrian, voluminous as it is, can be easily
classified: it mainly consists of the idyl and the picture of war;
_L'lllustre Docteur Matheus_, their first success, happily illustrates
the former _genre_; any one of the half dozen tales making up the
National Novel series may be taken to represent the latter.  Both veins
turned out to be gold mines, so rich were they in the free-milling ore
of popular favour.  Such stories as _L'Ami Fritz_ and _The Brigadier
Frederick_ are types of the two kinds of fiction which panned out most
richly also for the world.  In the idyl dealing with homely provincial
life--the life of their home province--these authors are, of a truth,
masters. The story is naught, the way of telling it, all that breeds
atmosphere and innuendo, is everything.  In _L'Ami Fritz_ the plot may
be told in a sentence: 'tis the wooing and winning of a country lass,
daughter of a farmer, by a well-to-do jovial bachelor of middle age in a
small town; _voila tout_; yet the tale makes not only delicious reading,
it leaves a permanent impression of pleasure--one is fain to re-read it.
It is rich in human nature, in a comfortable sense of the good things of
the earth; food and drink, soft beds, one's seat at the tavern, spring
sunlight, and the sound of a fiddle playing dance tunes at the fair:
and, on a higher plane, of the genial joys of comradeship and the stanch
belief in one's native land.  When the subtler passion of love comes in
upon this simple pastoral scene, the gradual discovery of Friend Fritz
that the sentiment he has always ridiculed has him at last in its
clutch, is portrayed with a sly unction, a kindly humour overlying an
unmistakable tenderness of heart, which give the tale great charm.
Sweetness and soundness are fundamentals of such literature.

This tale is a type of them all, though deservedly the best liked.  Love
of nature and of human nature, a knowledge of the little, significant
things that make up life, an exquisite realism along with a sort of
temperamental optimism which assumes good of men and women--these blend
in the provincial stories in such a way that one's sense of art is
charmed while in no less degree one's sense of life is quickened and
comforted.  Erckmann-Chatrian introduced to French readers the genuine
Alsatian, not the puppet of the vaudeville stage.  Their books are,
among other things, historical documents.  From their sketches and tales
better than in any other way one can gain an understanding of the
present German provinces of Alsace