The writer of the present paper, while engaged recently in editing Tartarin sur les Alpes, was particularly struck by the recurrence of rain, the continual drip from sky and mountainside that accompanies Tartarin in all his adventures. The dampness in the book seemed almost an obsession, as if Daudet had deliberately let loose floods that gushed and gurgled through his pages. Through what a wealth of humid detail, what sprinkles and splashes, wettings and soakings, the author delights in dragging his hero! Upon reflection, Daudet's other works somehow began to seem reminiscently full of weather. Pages resplendent with Midi sunshine mingled in memory with northern damp and fog. The writer was thereupon moved to re-examine the works of Daudet from this point of view. The results of that study, set forth in the following pages, seem to justify fully the impression with which it began; namely, that it is not so much as an author full of meridional sunlight that Daudet should be known, but rather as worker in moisture, a dabbler in damp, a keen observer of the vagaries of mist and rain.