Letters from My Windmill

Daudet left Paris for an abandoned windmill in Provence, or said he did, and sent back these sketches of the south: a goat who fights the wolf all night rather than go home, a priest who rushes three Christmas masses, a mule with a very long memory, the mail coach, the lighthouse keepers, the flocks coming down from the hills. Some pieces are folktale, some are reportage, some are plain jokes, and the tone slides from broad comedy into real grief without warning. Published in 1869, the collection turned Provence into literature and is still where most French readers first meet Daudet. Free to read here as a PDF and EPUB edition.