The Immortal

‘L’Immortel’ is the last noted work of the late distinguished French critic, dramatist, and novelist, Alphonse Daudet. It professes to be a description of mœurs parisiennes, but is really a satire on the pretensions of the French Academy; its title, ‘The Immortal,’ being the epithet popularly applied to the forty members of that exclusive and self-perpetuating body. Daudet himself, although his novel ‘Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné’ was crowned by the Academy with the Jouy prize, was never elected to its membership; and with the brothers Goncourt, Zola, and others, he formed a rival literary clique. The satirical thrusts in ‘The Immortal’ were keenly felt and resented by the Academicians.