measurement in an instant, but she seems quite unconscious of him as she piously addresses the ladies, and says, "The Mother Superior is disengaged, mesdames." It is the Mother Superior's duty to be disengaged on occasions like the present; but leaving her to welcome her visitors in her sanctum, shift we the scene a moment to a parlor dedicated to St. Cecilia, where a young lady in blue merino is practising at the piano under the eye of a bald music-master and of Sister Vigilante, one of the Sœurs Institutrices. She is singing the romance of "Le Roi de Thule: " Il é-était un roi-oi de Thu-u-ule A qui son é-é-épou-ouse fidè-e-le Thus warbles this proper young person from a carefully expunged version, for Gérard de Nerval's popular romance does not, one is sorry to say, attribute the gift of the gold cup to his Majesty's faithful wife. The bald music-master beats time with wrinkled forefinger. Sister Vigilante nods her head as if she were asleep, though she is wide awake, depend upon it; and the young lady's notes rise from octave to octave into a final bravura and staccato shriek of the most artistic sort imaginable. She is a most promising young pupil, aged eighteen or so, with a cherry bow on her blue merino to denote that she has reached the highest form in the convent school, and a few modest trinkets, which further indicate her position, and suggest that her school-days may soon be over. The music-master compliments her on her progress, Sister Vigilante adds her own tribute to the enjoyment she has derived, and while these pleasant things are in process of exchange a new sister appears, announcIng demurely that Mlle. Berthe de Réséda is wanted in the parlor. Hereon Mile. Berthe blushes. If there were a looking glass in St. Cecilia's roon, she would glance towards it, and she actually does dart round her one of those mechanical looks peculiar to young ladies who are wanted. But mirrors are scarce in the convent, so Mlle. Berthe follows the sister in silence, and tries to seem as unsuspecting as Sister Opportune did in the yard - as unsuspecting as if she had not been warned of this visit days beforehand, and as if her chestnut hair, her new cherry bow, her little trinkets, etc., had not all been arranged to shine at their best with a special view to it. This, indeed, is to be a rather important visit, and it may be as well to state at once that M. de Sangbleu has simply come to see his future wife, and that Mlle. Berthe is going into the parlor to be introduced for the first time to her future husband. It has all been settled in advance. Mme. de Réséda, being the cousin of a marriageable orphan niece, had, of course with the assistance of her experienced mother, Mme. d'Intriguières, cast about for a suitable husband, and had set eyes on M. de Sangbleu. There was 200,000f. a year on one side, a dowry of 1,000,000f. down on the other; and the blue blood and Catholic principles of the two young people combined with the foregoing conditions to make a suitable match in every way. This had been admitted by M. de Sangbleu when the subject was first broached to him diplomatically over a teacup, and he lent a willing ear to the proposal; but as marriage is a business matter with those who take a well-bred view of life, he naturally abstained from committing himself until he had spoken to his lawyer. On his side, the lawyer would offer no opinion until he had seen the lawyer of the other family; and these two guileless hearts went over each other's title-deeds, stocks, shares, and leases, like men who profoundly mistrust one another, and are persuaded there must be some piece of chicanery at work under all this. But there was no chicanery. The title-deeds proved genuine and the shares good, so that M. de Sangbleu's lawyer- though convinced that his client could pick up something better by waiting at last gave his consent to the alliance. Romantic preliminaries being thus concluded, nothing remained but to make the young contracting parties known to each other, and hence this visit to the convent. But it need scarcely be said that the visit is only a form of consecration to what has been honorably decided on; and that if M. de Sangbleu, after being presented to Mile. Berthe, were to sing out, like M. Gil-perez in some Palais Royal piece: "Je n'en veux pas; tout est rompu!" he would expose himself to the odium of all right-thinking minds. It must be remembered that we are treating here of people who cultivate all the graces of life, and make up for the occasional suspiciousness of their respective lawyers by delicacy the most chivalrous where they themselves are concerned. In a country less observant of such delicacies than France, it might be a trying moment to a man waiting in a convent parlor to see a young person whom he will be bound to worship and cherish to the end of his or her days; but M. de Sangbleu does not appear to find it trying. He knows that Mlle. Berthe has been religiously trained; she has been described to him as amiable and accomplished- -a most eligible duchess, in short; and if he stipulated for more than this he would be exceeding that discretion which it is most necessary to observe when dealing with grave affairs. But it is gratifying to state that his discretion is rewarded, for when Mlle. Berthe comes into the room he finds her, if not pretty, at least nice-looking and graceful--just the young lady to improve vastly under Mr. Girth the milliner's skilful hands, and to blaze with a charming lustre in the Sangbleu family jewels. So it is a pretty sight enough to see the young Duke and Mlle. Berthe salute each other decorously under the eyes of the excellent Mother Superior of the Colombes. These marriages, contracted as it were within convent walls, under the maternal wing of the church, and in all the innocency of love at first sight - for of the transactions between the lawyers the church takes no accountare just the marriages which the good mother likes to smile on. They are fashionable, fitting marriages, too, such as were usual in past centuries; and, though it cannot be contended that Frenchmen of past centuries had much reason to congratulate themselves on marrying young ladies who were always new to the world, and pined to navigate among its reefs and eddies immediately the honeymoon was over, yet the contrary rule would necessarily hold good in the present age, for our morals have greatly improved, as everybody is aware. "I cannot express to you, madame, what a comfort your sweet niece has been to us all," says the good mother, addressing the venerable Mme. d'Intriguières, and speaking as if M. de Sangbleu were miles away, and not intended to hear anything of this mystery; "nothing can be more edifying than her docility of temper and her devotion to her studies. You were taking your drawing lesson, were you not, my child!" Music, ma mère," replies truthful Mlle. Berthe. "Ah, yes, music. Yet her proficiency with her pencil and needle is equally remarkable. Have you not some of your work and drawings here to show your aunt, my child?" And it turns out by the merest hazard that there is a basketful of Mlle. Berthe's embroidery in a corner of the Mother Superior's room; also an album of her sketches filled with cows, which are handed round and admired with emotion. One of these days it may become the usage for persons desirous of showing off the attainments of a maiden, to beg her to sit down and add up a washing bill, sew on a shirt button, and carve a fowl without splashing any gravy out of the dish; but we have not come to that yet, and it is something for the present to got a set of animals that do look nearly like cows, and a few collarettes almost as good as those that can be had in a shop for 20 sous. de Sangbleu, indeed, would be content with less than that, for he will never require his wife to draw him a cow; and so, by way of getting an insight into her actual tastes, asks her if she likes the country. M. "I adore it, Monsieur le Duc," is her cheerful answer. "And Paris is a nice place too," continues the Duke, thoughtfully. Yes, I think it the most lovable of towns," replies the young lady; and surely all the elements of connubial bliss are summed up in these two answers, which prove an accommodating and thankful spirit. At all events, M. de Sangbleu is satisfied, and his parting words at the end of the hour's visit are as good as an acceptance and an offer. He bows and says, "I hope I shall have the pleasure to see you again, mademoiselle." After this, his line of conduct is dictated to him by established precedents. He will call ceremoniously on that tranquil nobleman, Count Réséda, and crave permission to pay his addresses to Mlle. Berthe, and the Count, obeying his wife's instructions, will declare himself honored. The next step will be to remove Mlle. Berthe from her convent, and bring her to her cousin's house, where M. de Sangbleu will be admitted to the privilege of sending her a bouquet every morning and of paying her a visit every afternoon. This is courting selon les règles; and the period of it should be about a month, at the end of which time the Duke would formally propose to Mlle. Berthe herself, be accepted, let us trust, and have the banns put up at the mairie (there are no special licenses in France), so that, providing Mr. Girth has got the trousseau ready, the contract might be signed in pomp and the marriage be solemnized about a month after Easter. There can be no essential departure from this programme, if everything is to be done conformably to the best traditions. But now that we have made so sure of Mlle. Berthe's submissiveness to her aunt's and cousin's projects, it may be as well to inquire, if only for gallantry's sake, what she in her heart thinks of the whole proceeding; but it would be of little use undergoing a ten years' education in such a moral convent as that of the Colombes, if one came out therefrom with wild notions about free selections in matrimony; and the truth is, Mlle. Berthe has seen so many of her schoolfellows go forth without regret, nay, with rejoicing, to marry elderly gentlemen, and vow to love them, that a suitor who is at once rich, ducal, young, and pleasing comes upon her with the freshness of something almost too novel and too good to be true. If she harbored any doubts as to her being a lucky girl, the rather acidulated congratulations of her most affectionate friends in the cherry bows and merino dresses ought to enlighten her; but she has no doubts and requires no enlightening. She feels inwardly very proud of her "pretender," for such is the name which the French give to gentlemen in M. de Sangbleu's interesting predicament. She is grateful to him, too, for his preference; and from pride and gratitude to love the bridge is so narrow that Mlle. Berthe may safely be trusted to trip over it, if only her bridegroom will beckon to her smilingly and stretch her a helping hand. That he will do this we may be certain, and therefore, since he has been taught to look upon marriage as a business matter, he will be like a man who succeeds in business. But it seems there are some who fail. THE COLLEGE-LIFE OF MAITRE NABLOT. BY ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. CHAPTER THE NINTH. THAT year I got a little study to myself, looking out, like all the others, upon the inner court; it was an old monk's cell, whitewashed, furnished with a small bed, a chair, and a deal table. I was now sixteen, and was placed in the class of the older boys. I was more comfortable now; I could work a little independently at nights, and study my lessons with more care. All this was satisfactory. Moreover, I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a professor worthy of that name, for all the rest at our college were mere routine men, who carried on their trade of teaching just as shoes and stockings are made, working always on the same lasts, and by the same patterns - a work which does not require much thought. Since my arrival at Saarstadt I had frequently seen Monsieur Perrot crossing the court to his class-room, morning and evening, with a limping step, and his hat thrown back. He had nothing of the elegant demeanor of Monsieur Gradus, none of the majestic conceit of Monsieur Laperche. He was lame in both his legs, and had to walk with the help of a stick, sometimes in a rather laughable fashion, as he was hastening along to keep to his time. His shoulders were unequal, his lips thick, his forehead high and bald. Brass spectacles sat loosely upon his round and flattened nose; all his misshapen clothes seemed tossed on him with a pitchfork, and hung uneasily upon him. In fact, you could hardly set your eyes on a more unfashionable man. But Monsieur Perrot had that which was altogether wanting in his colleagues. He was an excellent Greek, Latin, and French scholar. He was a well-lettered man in the full meaning of the word; and more than this, he possessed the rare talent for communicating both his knowledge and his love of learning to his pupils, whom he loved sincerely and unaffectedly in proportion as he found in them the love of study and amiable natural dispositions. I shall never forget his first lecture in rhetoric that term, and my astonishment when, instead of beginning at once to correct the bad grammar in our holiday exercises, he quietly bundled all that heap of exercises into his hinder pockets, saying to us, "Ah! that will do. That's ancient history by this time. Let us come to something more modern." There were fifteen of us seated there in the long and still half-deserted class-room; our backs were to the windows at the end of the room, and he sat before us upon a chair which he had placed not far from the stove. First he took off one of his boots, which seemed to trouble him, rubbed the place, put on his boot again in a dreamy way, and then commenced: "Gentlemen, you will take notes of my lectures. You will write out an abridgment of my course. This is the only effectual way to impress things upon your memory. You will leave wide margins in your note-books, and in these margins you will briefly set down the headings of the chapters, with short hints referring to the matter contained opposite. Running your eye down these headings, you will get at a glance a clear idea of the subject-matter of the chapter before you; and if this is not always sufficient to recall the details to your mind why, then you will carefully re-peruse that portion of the text. "Use your time, gentlemen, to the best advantage. As for me, I will spare no pains to form a good rhetoric class. And rhetoric, or composition, remember, will always be useful to you, into whatever profession you may by and by enter. For though there are not many who leave this college who are destined to become authors, poets, and professional men of letters, yet you will always find it useful to be able to take an enlightened view of any literary work. This will contribute, in the first place, to the development of your intelligence, and in the next, to your appreciation of the more serious and durable enjoyments of our life." Such were the opening observations of this good and sensible man made with a simplicity which took me by surprise; for until that time I had never met with any professors but bunglers and helpless imbeciles, puffed up with conceit of their grammatical knowledge, whilst Monsieur Perrot spoke of the straightforward reading of Greek and Latin authors as a very simple thing. To me this seemed an impossible feat, being stiffly crusted over with the hard shells left upon me by four primers, which, far from helping me in any difficulty whatever, confounded me more and more. But I soon learnt to acknowledge that under a real master difficulties vanish away like smoke. That year of composition, and the following year of philosophy, were the only good time I had during my college-life. It was a period of awakening, after a long and dismal nightmare. It was the season in which a world of new and beautiful ideas seemed to burst into life in my mind. Mental health returned; my nausea and disgust departed; for I had now a master who loved me, and I felt it and knew it. What had I wanted all the previous time but a little affection, a little visible interest, to give myself wholly to my work with all my heart? But until then I had only met with cold, grasping creatures, flatterers to the rich, and hard upon the poor. Yes, this is but too true. Even now my indignation has scarcely cooled, after a lapse of four-and-thirty years. I tingle to this day to the very tips of my fingers. Monsieur Perrot was really fond of his pupils. In the depth of those severe winters, in the play-hour, when the wind was howling through the long cloisters, and the snow accumulating against the frosted panes, and everybody was shivering along the corridors, he would come stumbling along in the evening upon his poor weak legs; he would prop himself up on a couple of big boys, and stir up the spirits of us all, singing like one of us boys that popular old glee, " Frère Jacques, dormez-vous?" or else "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre! mironton, mironton, mirontain-e," and soon the old convent was in a roar of merriment, and we laughed as happy boys alone can laugh, till old Vandenberg's bell sent us all off to bed. At class-time we discoursed on the orations, the speeches of Athens and of Rome. We compared Demosthenes the thunderer, with Cicero the pathetic; the funeral oration spoken by Pericles in Thucydides' history over the warriors who fell in the Peloponnesian war, with that delivered by Bossuet over the great Condé. We debated, we almost fought, so great was our excitement, so deep our interest in the utterances of those giants of old. Now it was Masse, now Scheffler, or Nablot, who maintained from the desk the superiority of this or that masterpiece against the attack of his comrades. Monsieur Perrot, seated in the midst, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and his nose snuffing the battle, stimulated and excited first one, then the other; and when by chance one of us made a palpable hit, struck out a novel argument, or threw out a crushing reply, he would spring from his seat in a laughable tumult of enthusiasm, and hobble along, limping and stumbling against the desks, and uttering exclamations of delight. At last, when the bell gave the signal to finish and close the discussion, our good master summed up, and all the class became unanimous in their praises of those ancients, and agreed that they at least knew well the art of writing and of speaking. The climaxes of Demosthenes, and the perorations of Cicero, especially won our approbation, and we felt we should have been happy to have been allowed to be present at those great assemblies, where the whole body of citizens were listening from one end of the vast open space to the other, crowding even the terraced roofs to listen to the formidable orators standing face to face in mortal conflict on the war with Philip, or discussing the agrarian laws, the arrest of the Gracchi, and other stirring controversies upon the great events of antiquity. The second part of our rhetoric course, after Easter, was more interesting still, consisting now of lectures on the drama. Now Monsieur Perrot introduced us to the Greek theatre, which was far more grand and imposing than ours, being laid under the open sky, with all the advantages of the accompaniments of natural scenery, during the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, or the Panathenæa, and in presence of the multitudes who had met together from the Ionian Islands, from Crete, and the Asiatic colonies. Before these vast assemblies were given representations of the Baccha, the Supplices, Edipus Rex, or Hecuba, amidst the applause of the enraptured multitude. The voice of the actors was carried to a greater distance by great mouths of bronze. The choruses, composed of women in white robes of linen, sang between the parts, of hope, of enthusiasm, of fear; and sometimes they chanted invocations to the infernal gods, or to fate. The play was acted out in the presence of all those thousands from all parts of Greece, and the deep interest of the crowd was in itself an important part of the scene. As for the comedies, they were played with a less imposing show in the agora or market-place, where the spectators laughed at their ease. There, too, Socrates showed himself in public, amongst the tradesmen's stalls. Sometimes he would address himself to a shoemaker, sometimes to a fishmonger, sometimes to a market-keeper, raising a laugh at their expense. He was a formidable rival to the comedians, Monsieur Perrot informed us, on account of which the writers of comedies conspired against him: the sophist Anytus, the public orator Lycon, the wretched poet Melitus, men with whom a poet of Aristophanes' genius should never have leagued himself. At the same time we learnt the laws of the Greek accents, hexameters and iambics, Greek dialects; and all these without any extraordinary difficulty, because now we had a master who taught nothing but what he knew himself. We still had time to read a few passages of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, the History of Masinissa from Polybius, and the opening chapters of the Annals of Tacitus. Well, we made rapid progress; and, strangest of all, instead of being the last in the class, as under my late masters, I was now at its head. It is true that Monsieur Perrot now and then had to find fault with me for an occasional barbarism in words or solecism in language in my Latin exercises; there were false quantities in the verses which I compounded with liberal subsidies from my dictionary and my Gradus ad Parnassum. But he always maintained that I had a better knowledge of the language than any of my schoolfellows; and as for French, I will say nothing upon that secre. They all held me to be a young Cicero. I am thankful to say I had the good sense not to believe them! Now, about that time, Monsieur Perrot, who was very fond of reading our modern authors, having one day accidentally left behind him in the schoolroom a small volume bound in red morocco, I read it by the light of my lamp. It was "Les Orientales" of Victor Hugo, with his odes and ballads, which fairly drove me into a frenzy of enthusiasm. I had never seen anything like this before. That vivid and luminous style in painting the scenes of Eastern life, the originality of that brilliant writer's genius, the picturesque descriptions of life in the Middle Ages, astonished and delighted me. All that I had read until then seemed dim and insipid in comparison, and the next day I was seen running through the corridors, and crying that Racine, Boileau, Corneille, and even Lafontaine were wretched poets; that they never had true poetic inspiration, and that they must be pulled down from their eminence. The little book passed from hand to hand, and my schoo:fellows all voted by acclamation that I was right. A couple of days after, Monsieur Perrot, having long searched in vain for his "Orientales," remembered that he had left it in the class-room, and addressing himself first to me, "Monsieur Nablot," said he, " have you perchance found a little book of mine, bound in red morocco?" I turned very red, for just now it was in other hands, I did not know whose. "Here it is," cried Scheffler; "Monsieur Nablot lent it me." "Thank you," said Monsieur Perrot, receiving it back again. "I am glad you have read nearly all your authors now; for after reading this, you will write nothing naturally again. Down to the year's end you will see nothing but giaours glittering with jewels and decapitated heads stuck upon the tops of minarets, talking to each other like philosophers in arm chairs. I know all about it," he cried; "I am quite distressed at my own carelessness. I suppose you have read the book, Monsieur Nablot, and all you others? "Where is the sense of it all? Did he get his style from the Greeks? Did he get it from the Romans? Has it any correspondence with the genius of the French people? What school does he belong to? Tell me that! Tell me if you can." As we made no reply, he cried, "He has it straight from the barbarous nations - from the Moors, the Arabs- nay, from the Germans too, for it is so muddy! Can even I tell what school of thought and composition it belongs to? It is all mad stuff! You can't reduce it to any known rule. It is not poetry. It is painting and what sort of painting? Red upon white white upon red; no delicate hues no shading; sharp lines which pain the eyes, like the shrill horns at the fair which deafen your ears! Antithesis upon antithesis adjective upon adjective. Everything is for effect - everything! It is a mere play of imagination. There is no excuse for him. He is a young man-his health is good-he moves in the best society - he has been through college. I positively cannot understand it." And stopping short, "Monsieur Nablot, you find all that very fine?" Yes, sir." 66 "And you, Masse Scheffler - all of you?" 66 Yes, sir, very fine." Then Monsieur Perrot, in high indignation, cried, "You are all apes, every one of you. What was the use of my teaching you the rules of Aristotle and Quintilian? Do you really admire all that rubbish, Monsieur Nablot?" He fixed his large, eager eyes upon me. "Yes, sir," I replied, with some feeling. Why?" 66 "It is quite new to me. It is dazzling." (To be continued. PROSPER MÉRIMÉE AS A NOVELIST. As our readers know, a great stir was made in Paris recently by the appearance of two thick volumes of letters which Prosper Mérimée had written to an unknown lady. Who the unknown lady was, even the publishers could not tell, and many were the guesses at those Paris dinnertables which Mérimée had often brightened by his cynical and brilliant wit. But Mérimée himself had filled so high a position in the Academy, and some of his attachments were said to have been so romantic, that the gayest and most gossiping city in the world could speak of nothing else than the mysterious letters, for more than the nine days allotted to the scrutiny of mystery or scandal. Yet no one seems to have been able to lift the veil. Just when the curiosity was subsiding, it was again quickened by the report that the letters which the "Inconnue " herself had written to Mérimée were about to be printed, and M. Michel Levy, the publisher, felt it needful to deny the report, in the name of the lady herself. Thus the gossip of Paris has taken a new start. We shall make no attempt to solve a mystery which is infinitely unimportant. The lady had a sufficient reason for hiding her name in the fact that she published the letters at all; for she has grossly betrayed the sanctities of private friendship. Written with the careless ease of confidence, Mérimée's epistles give such glimpses of his own character, and speak so freely of other people, that a man who was a paragon of reserve would have felt outraged if he had known that the loose epistolary talk of thirty years would be told to Paris a couple of seasons after he was dead. Flung off from the point of the pen, the writing could not possess the polish and the exquisite fitness of phrase which a consummate literary artist gave to all his handiwork. It is, in truth, so loose and pointless in comparison with Colomba" and "Carmen," that Mérimée's æsthetic conscience would have smitten him with shame if he had learned that it was to be published; such shame as common men would feel if they were to be convicted of burglary or murder, for to Mérimée a bad phrase was more disgraceful than a bad deed. That fact will explain why the French speak of Mérimée with what may seem an unmeasured admiration. Here he has been read by students, and some of his novels are sought at libraries; but that is all. He is less known, for example, than Edmond About, who, as Edmond About himself would cheerfully admit, is incomparably inferior to Mérimée in originality of conception, in dramatic power, and even in the art of writing classic French. He is not so well known as Prévost-Paradol, whose considerable ability and whose command of Orleanist sources of admiration have given him a fame which puzzles those who merely read his books. It is less surprising that in England Mérimée should not be so well known as Balzac, Victor Hugo, and George Sand, for even his most fervent devotees would scarcely contend that he was the equal in genius of those great writers. But French critics seem to agree in believing that no writer of his time bids fairer to be read as well as remembered in the future. Such is the verdict which M. Taine gives in his calm and judicial preface to the "Lettres à une Inconnue," and it is based on the fact that Mérimée's tastes and powers make him essentially a classic. His writing has no tinge of what is merely local or temporary, and he carefully avoided all those arts which give popularity at the expense of future fame. Mérimée knew that he could gain crowds of readers by writing in a loud and lurid style. Again he saw that temptation of dwelling, even in works of art, on the philosophical ideas which may be floating about the air. Thackeray does so, and gives us the philosophy of cynicism. Balzac does so, and we get such a philosophy as Solomon might have penned after seeing the French Revolution, ruining himself on the Stock Exchange, living in Parisian cafés for twenty years, and, on the morrow of a night's debauch, writing under the stimulus of a tremendous headache. George Eliot does so, and her fine narrative or pungent dialogue is stopped to let us hear a little diluted Comtism, lifted above dogmatism by the sense of mystery which lives even in those religious natures that choke themselves with propositions. But Mérimée saw that nothing is so fleeting as the fashions of philosophy. Ideas which seem grand to us will seem commonplace to our children. Speculations which set us reflecting will appear too absurd to merit a glance fifty or even twenty years hence. Therefore, Mérimée, although one of the most richly cultivated and keenest minds of the day, rigorously stripped his stores of all "thinking." All his pains, all his skill, all his art would no doubt have left a poor result, if he had not been a born writer of romance; but that he was in a high degree. His imagination was vivid, and his genius was so essentially dramatic that it almost seemed easier for him to sink his identity than to keep it. His feelings, his thoughts, his knowledge of details, all naturally turn themselves into the form either of dialogue — in which there is not a trace of Mérimée himself or of direct narrative, in which there is not a trace of the acute and sceptical scholar. It is true that he has written no fiction of the highest order, and that only the blind idolatry of the Academy can give him a place beside novelists of first-rate natural power. It is also true that he has created no great character, such as those to which even lesser men than Shakespeare have given a more real existence than all save a few historic figures. Mérimée could not do that, because he lacked breadth of sympathy, and the power of seeing what is really grand, and the vigor of faculty which can carve out heroic proportions. Hence, in spite of what the Academy may say, he belongs to the second class of novelists. But it would not be easy to name any one of that class who is clearly his superior. Few are equal to him in native power, and he stands first of all in the consummate art with which he uses his materials. The list of these works is small. We need not specify the historical studies into which he put the results of his great scholarship; for they seem to be written on the principle that the hues of romance should be banished from history, that it should be a chain of facts and arguments, as plainly stated as the records of a merchant's invoice, and in fact, that it should be as dull as an old almanac Thus Mérimée the historian is as different from Mérimée the novelist as Hallam is from Hawthorne; and five hundred years hence a keen critic might ridicule the idea that the two Mérimées were the same man. Mérimée will be remembered on account of his dramas and his novels alone, and the series is not long. First comes a collection of short Spanish dramas, which he wrote when he was a young man, and which he pretended to be translations from the writings of a gifted Spanish lady named Clara Gazul. He coolly gave a short and circumstantial account of her life, every word, of course, being a pure invention. "Clara Gazul" was taken for a reality, however; her genius was gravely discussed by the critics, and a Spaniard, ashamed to confess any ignorance of so gifted a country-woman, declared that, although the French translation of the dramas was good, it was far inferior to the original. Mérimée afterwards manufactured an Hungarian bard, songs and all. The deception made dupes of the German as well as the French critics, and set them wondering why so brilliant a writer had never been heard of beyond Hungary. Mérimée was so skilled a literary forger that he is said, when a raw youth, to have played a practical joke on Cuvier, by manufacturing for him an original letter of Robespierre, which delighted that hunter of autographs as well as truth. The deception was not found out until a rival collector held the wonderful autograph up to the light, and saw that the water-mark on the paper bore a date later than that of Robespierre's death. Mérimée's elaborate hoaxes respecting the Spanish dramatist and the Hungarian bard were made with a keener eye for the truth of local details. They are so full of local color, that they seemed to betray a leaning towards the Romantic school, and in truth they gave it a strong push forward in France. But Mérimée's heart and intellect, as we have said, went wholly to the less colored classic style, and he had caught the devices of the Romantic school so easily, that he held it cheap. His opinions" are seen in his series of short stories, and particularly in "Carmen" and " Colomba." The one story pictures the gypsies and smugglers of Spain; the other, the banditti of Corsica and the effects of the bloodfeud. Although a polished Parisian, Mérimée was strangely fond of mixing with outcasts, and he found a particularly strong attraction in the Spanish gypsies. He liked to visit their tents, to sit at their fires, to hear their stories, to tell them stories out of his own head; and we may be sure that so wonderful a romancer beat them at their own trade. This pastime was the easier to him because he was a master, not only of pure Spanish, but of Spanish patois, and because he had a considerable acquaintance even with the dialect which the gypsies use when talking to each other. "Carmen" is the result of the experience which he gained from contact with his wild friends. But it is more than a picture of gypsy life; it is also a picture of the social effects which spring from the tribal instinct. He wanted to show how immense is its force, both for good and evil; how overmastering is its influence on the members of a rypsy band; how it can make a person act at one time like a hero, and at another like a fiend; and how the absolute devotion and self-sacrifice of the martyr may be seen in a Spanish gypsy, who, although a smuggler, a liar, a thief, a murderer, and a hired cut-throat, will yet die for his gang. Mérimée does not indeed state such a proposition, or even hint it, but he brings it out with ghastly vividness by the sheer power of story-telling. Carmen, a gypsy woman, is a paragon of fascinating wickedness, and she drags down to ruin a stupid, good-natured fellow, who styles himself Don José. For her he spoils his prospects of rising as a soldier, stabs one of his officers in a fit of wild passion, and deserts. For her he becomes a smuggler and an outlaw. For her he quarrels with one of his companions, challenges him to fight, and kills him. She hangs on him with the weight of a millstone, and all the time she is a brilliant, laughing, sneering devil. There is no crime that she is not ready to prompt or commit, none but one, and that is treachery to her tribe, and to her tribal oaths. Don José, on the other hand, is infatuated in his devotion until she gives him cause for jealousy, and then he strikes her. That blow destroys her love for him, and frees her from the duty of following him wherever he goes. But it does not free her from the duty of waiting to be killed, if it should be his sovereign will to take her life, and she obeys that savage code of wifely duty with a savage stoicism. Don José commands her to go with him to America, in order that they may there begin a new life; but she refuses, with the quiet resolution of one for whom death has no fears. Don José then goes to a hermit, and pays the holy man to say a mass for a soul that is about to pass away. Returning to the spot at which he left Carmen, he finds her sitting there awaiting doom. They journey together for a time in silence, until, drawing his sword, Don José bids her choose whether she will go with him or die. She calmly says that she chooses to die, and he strikes her dead. Then he gives himself up to the first body of gendarmes that he meets, and while lying in jail, on the eve of execution, he tells the story to Mérimée. It is a terrible picture of a being who seems absolutely devoid of moral sense, and yet is capable of as intense devotion to an ideal as the loftiest notes of the moral sense can prescribe; a mysteriously mutilated being, defying all the precepts of the moral law as it is understood in churches and interpreted in senates, yet capable, when her profound tribal instincts are moved by intense emotion, of calmly waiting for the sternest fate that the gods can bring; a being guided purely by a mysterious instinct, built up by centuries of transmitted qualities, and brought to a climax in one hour of tremendous agony, which seems to scorch away with its heat a whole life of crime, and leave a certain memory of good. The character is not one of those that are remembered by the mob of readers, yet there are few more powerful conceptions in the literature of our time, and we know of none in which the materials have been employel with more dramatic vividness. We need say less about "Colomba," because the story is better known in England. It is a Corsican tale of two families, who are the lords of their native village, and who have been at feud with each other for generations. At the end of the war which was cut short by Waterloo, the head of one is a colonel and the other a lawyer. They quarrel as their fathers and grandfathers have done before them, and the colonel is shot by an unknown hand. Suspicion falls on the lawyer, and to Colomba, the daughter of the murdered man, the suspicion is a certainty. She is beautiful, gentle, and womanly; but she is a Corsican, and the first duty of a Corsican is revenge. So she flings her whole heart into the task of vengeance, and she thinks it must be executed by her brother, a soldier in the French army. But he has learned soft European ways during his campaign in Europe; he looks with disgust on the savagery of the Corsican blood-feud, which exacts life for life, and he turns away with terror from the fierce promptings of his beautiful sister. The Barriccini family are guilty, for all that. The young man turns away the more emphatically, because his clear intellect tells him that Colomba's belief in the guilt of their thereditary foe rests on insufficient evidence. Yet the fates fight against him; for the quarrel between the two families deepens, and the two sons of the lawyer lie in wait to shoot him. They fire, and wound him; he fires, and kills both. Thus blood is washed out by blood. The story is told with wonderful force, simplicity, and vividness. So far, indeed, it is Mérimée's masterpiece. But the tale draws a further intensity from its revelation of the savage instinct of revenge striking clean through the mass of civilized ideas of duty, like a piece of primary rock pushing its way into the daylight through soil and foliage. Colomba represents the old wild instincts of tribal days warring with the instincts which have been generated by the teaching of Christianity and the relations of civilized society. Most of Mérimée's other tales are like "Colomba" and "Carmen," in so far as they picture with consummate artistic simplicity elementary feelings which may take new forms in different ages and different men, but which never die. They reveal nothing of Mérimée as a man. But the |