Short stories
Letters from My Windmill
Lettres de mon moulin
Alphonse Daudet · 1869
Opening lines
Ce sont les lapins qui ont été étonnés!...
It was the rabbits who were astonished!...
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In a foreword, a deed of sale in due form makes the narrator the owner of an old abandoned windmill on a hill in Provence, near Fontvieille. From there he writes letters that are at once accounts and tales, by turns poetic and realistic. We meet an old miller and his secret, Monsieur Seguin's goat, the priest of Cucugnan, a chaplain's three low masses and the elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher.
Context
The first texts appeared as a serial in L'Événement in the summer of 1866, under the title Chroniques provençales; others were given to Le Figaro. Revised and expanded, they were collected in a volume by Hetzel in 1869 under the title Lettres de mon moulin, impressions et souvenirs. Several were written in collaboration with Paul Arène, though his share cannot be measured. The mill that serves as the setting is at Fontvieille, in the Bouches-du-Rhône.
Who it is for
About twenty stories of a few pages each, independent of one another, in limpid language; they can be read in any order.
Prizes and reception
The collection still attracts readers and visitors, was adapted for the screen in 1954, and Frederick Davies translated it into English for Penguin.
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