The Nabob

Paris of the Second Empire seen from the waiting rooms: a returned millionaire from Tunis with more money than footing, the doctor who lives off him, the deputies, a charity that is a swindle, and the Duc de Mora with his hand on all of it. Daudet had been secretary to a real duke and wrote from the antechamber. Contemporary readers identified every original. Sixty plates of Tissot and Renoir, from the gallery of HMS Calcutta to the yellow fields at Gennevilliers, hold the light and leisure of the world Daudet's fortune-hunters move through.