Robert Helmont is a novella by French author Alphonse Daudet

Alphonse Daudet

Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.- Early life :Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer — a man dogged through life by misfortune...

. It is partly based on Daudet's actual experiences during the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

 of 1870-71, as described in the Preface. The book was originally published by Dentu in the 1873 Musel Universel but received little notice. It was re-published in 1891 with illustrations by "Picard and Montégut". The forest Sénart

Sénart

Sénart is a new town in southern Île-de-France, covering parts of the departments of Seine-et-Marne and Essonne....

 is the same described in his novel Jack and contains some of the same characters.

Robert Helmont breaks his leg on the day of the start of the war. Unable to flee to Paris ahead of the advancing "Saxons", he decides to hide in an hermitage

Hermitage (religious retreat)

Although today's meaning is usually a place where a hermit lives in seclusion from the world, hermitage was more commonly used to mean a settlement where a person or a group of people lived religiously, in seclusion.-Western Christian Tradition:...

 deep in the Sénart woods. For the next 5 months he has a series of adventures, as told by Daudet in colorful and naturalistic prose. Historically accurate details about costume, architecture, food and mannerisms provide an excellent painting of the time. Hot air balloons, messenger pigeons and late night cut-throat murders lend the novel an air of high adventure, mixed with a love of nature and solitude.

External links

• Robert Helmont at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
  (scanned books original editions color illustrated)