Cold as a
mountain
in its star-pitched tent
Stood high philosophy, less friend than foe;
Whom self-caged passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Stood high philosophy, less friend than foe;
Whom self-caged passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v17 - Mai to Mom
The green
drenched weeds lay all about in his path, bent thick, and the
forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a a
revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing
one of those little forest chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where
the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and
,
saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not
many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and
he shuddered. What was it ? He asked not. He was in other
hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He
felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With
shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him,
he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and
again.
When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world,
the small birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was
over all the hills. He was on the edge of the forest, entering a
plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky.
## p. 9934 (#342) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9934
AMINTA TAKES A MORNING SEA-SWIM: A MARINE DUET
From Lord Ormont and his Aminta. Copyright 1894, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
on a sea
A.
GLORIOUS morning of flushed open sky and sun
chased all small thoughts out of it. The breeze was from
the west; and the Susan, lightly laden, took the heave of
smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsy in the motion of her
speed. Foresail and aft were at their gentle strain; her shadow
rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of her
wake. Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above
the waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows. By
comparison she was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind
and wave beautiful.
They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls,
in obedience to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should
forbear from sneezing. Little Collett pointed to the roof of his
mother's house twenty paces rearward of a belt of tamarisks,
green amid the hollowed yellows of shore banks yet in shade,
crumbling to the sands. Weyburn was attracted by a diminutive
white tent of sentry-box shape; evidently a bather's, quite as evi.
dently a fair bather's. He would have to walk on some way for
his dip. He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the
water half-dressed never have more than half a bath.
His arms
and legs flung out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in
old Matey's well-remembered way.
Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to flap her
sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers. Turning from a
final cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied
one of those unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing
through the tent-slit. She stepped firmly, as into her element.
A plain look at her, and a curious look, and an intent look, fixed
her fast, and ran the shock on his heart before he knew of a
guess. She waded, she dipped; a head across the breast of the
waters was observed: this one of them could swim. She was
making for sea, a stone's throw off the direction of the boat.
Before his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them,
fiery envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting
at buttons. A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and
her head rose to see her world. She sank down the valley,
where another wave was mounding for its onward roll: a gentle
## p. 9935 (#343) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9935
scene of the Bárt éteóvra of Weyburn's favorite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him — it was she. How could it ever have
been any other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave
him the ropes, pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood
free of boots and socks, and singing out truly enough the words
of a popular cry, “White ducks want washing,” went over and in.
>
Aminta soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the
dive from the boat, and received an illumination. With a chuckle
of delighted surprise, like a blackbird startled, she pushed sea-
ward for joy of the effort, thinking she could exult in imagina-
tion of an escape up to the moment of capture, yielding then
only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.
The swim was a holiday; all was new - nothing came to her
as the same old thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-
mind — had left her earth-mind ashore. The swim, and Matey
Weyburn pursuing her, passed up out of happiness, through the
spheres of delirium, into the region where our life is as we
would have it be: a home holding the quiet of the heavens, if
but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.
He drew on her; but he was distant, and she waved an arm.
The shout of her glee sprang from her: "Matey! ” He waved:
she heard his voice. Was it her name? He was not so drunken
of the sea as she: he had not leapt out of bondage into buoyant
waters, into a youth without a blot, without an aim, satisfied in
tasting; the dream of the long felicity.
A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent ?
It relaxed her stroke of arms and legs. He had doubled the
salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled its gift of freedom. She
turned to float, gathering her knees for the funny sullen kick,
until she heard him near. At once her stroke was renewed vig-
orously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called, "Adieu,
Matey Weyburn!
Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able
to bring down on her; she swam bravely: and she was divine to
see as well as overtake.
Darting to the close parallel, he said, “What sea-nymph sang
me my name ? »
She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: "Ask mine! »
“ Browny! ”
(
## p. 9936 (#344) ###########################################
9936
GEORGE MEREDITH
>
They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-
flowers that spoke at ease.
“We've run rom school; we won't go back. ”
«We've a kingdom. ”
“Here's a big wave going to be a wall. ”
“Off he rolls. ”
“He's like the High Brent broad meadow under Elling
Wood. ”
“Don't let Miss Vincent hear you. ”
« They're not waves: they're sighs of the deep. ”
"A poet I swim with! He fell into the deep in his first of
May-morning ducks. We used to expect him. ”
“I never expected to owe them so much. "
Pride of the swimmer and the energy of her joy embraced
Aminta, that she might nerve all her powers to gain the half.
minute for speaking at her ease.
“Who'd have thought of a morning like this? You were
looked for last night. ”
“A lucky accident to our coach. I made friends with the
skipper of the yawl. ”
“I saw the boat. Who could have dreamed — ? Anything
may happen now. ”
For nothing further would astonish her, as he rightly under-
stood her; but he said, “You're prepared for the rites? Old
Triton is ready. ”
“Float, and tell me. ”
They spun about to lie on their backs. Her right hand, at
piano-work of the octave-shake, was touched and taken, and she
did not pull it away. Her eyelids fell.
«Old Triton waits. ”
“Why? ”
“We're going to him. ”
« Yes ? »
Customs of the sea. ”
« Tell me. ”
"He joins hands. We say, “Browny - Matey,' and it's done. ”
She splashed, crying "Swim," and after two strokes, You
want to beat me, Matey Weyburn. "
«How ? »
«Not fair! "
“Say what. ”
»
(
»
-
## p. 9937 (#345) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9937
»
“Take my breath. But, yes! we'll be happy in our own way.
We're sea-birds. We've said adieu to land. Not to one another.
We shall be friends?
"Always. ”
« This is going to last ? ”
«Ever so long. ”
They had a spell of steady swimming, companionship to inspirit
it. Browny was allowed place a little foremost, and she guessed
not wherefore, in her flattered emulation.
“I'm bound for France. ”
«Slue a point to the right: southeast by south. We shall hit
Dunquerque. ”
“I don't mean to be picked up by boats. ”
“We'll decline. ”
“You see I can swim. ”
I was sure of it. »
They stopped their talk — for the pleasure of the body to be
savored in the mind, they thought; and so took Nature's counsel
to rest their voices awhile.
Considering that she had not been used of late to long immer-
sions, and had not broken her fast, and had talked much for a
sea-nymph, Weyburn spied behind him on a shore seeming flat
down, far removed.
“France next time,” he said: “we'll face to the rear. ”
«Now? » said she, big with blissful conceit of her powers, and
incredulous of such a command from him.
“You may be feeling tired presently. "
The musical sincerity of her “Oh no, not I! ” sped through
his limbs: he had a willingness to go onward still some way.
But his words fastened the heavy land on her spirit, knocked
at the habit of obedience. Her stroke of the arms paused. She
inclined to his example, and he set it shoreward.
They swam silently, high, low, creatures of the smooth green
roller.
He heard the water-song of her swimming. She, though
breathing equably at the nostrils, lay deep. The water shocked
at her chin, and curled round the under lip. He had a faint
anxiety; and not so sensible of a weight in the sight of land as
she was, he chattered by snatches, rallied her, encouraged her
to continue sportive for this once, letting her feel it was but a
once and had its respected limit with him. So it was not out of
the world.
XVII-622
## p. 9938 (#346) ###########################################
9938
GEORGE MEREDITH
Ah, friend Matey! And that was right and good on land; but
rightness and goodness flung earth's shadow across her brilliancy
here, and any stress on “this once ” withdrew her liberty to revel
in it, putting an end to a perfect holiday; and silence, too, might
hint at fatigue. She began to think her muteness lost her the
bloom of the enchantment, robbing her of her heavenly frolic
lead, since friend Matey resolved to be as eminently good in salt
water as on land. Was he unaware that they were boy and girl
again ? — she washed pure of the intervening years, new born, by
blessing of the sea; worthy of him here! — that is, a swimmer
worthy of him, his comrade in salt water.
« You're satisfied I swim well ? ” she said.
“It would go hard with me if we raced a long race. ”
"I really was out for France. ”
“I was ordered to keep you for England. ”
She gave him Browny's eyes.
« We've turned our backs on Triton. ”
“The ceremony was performed. ”
«When? ”
«The minute I spoke of it and you splashed. ”
“Matey! Matey Weyburn! »
“Browny Farrell! >>
"O Matey! she's gone! ”
She's here. "
« Try to beguile me, then, that our holiday's not over. You
won't forget this hour ? ”
“No time of mine on earth will live so brightly for me. ”
“I have never had one like it. I could go under and be
happy; go to old Triton and wait for you; teach him to speak
your proper Christian name. He hasn't heard it yet — heard
Matey'— never yet has been taught Matthew. ) »
"Aminta ! »
"O my friend! my dear! ” she cried, in the voice of the
wounded, like a welling of her blood, “my strength will leave
me. I may play — not you: you play with a weak vessel. Swim,
and be quiet. How far do you count it ? »
"Under a quarter of a mile. ”
"Don't imagine me tired. ”
"If you are, hold on to me. ”
Matey, I'm for a dive. ”
He went after the ball of silver and bubbles, and they came
up together. There is no history of events below the surface,
(
)
## p. 9939 (#347) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9939
She shook off her briny blindness, and settled to the full
sweep of the arms, quite silent now. Some emotion, or exhaus-
tion from the strain of the swimmer's breath in speech, stopped
her playfulness. The pleasure she still knew was a recollection
of the outward swim, when she had been privileged to cast
away sex with the push from earth, as few men will believe
that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and
ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant
them their one short holiday truce.
But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her
when there was yet a space of salt water between her and shore;
and she smiled at times, that he might not think she was look-
ing grave.
They touched the sand at the first draw of the ebb; and this
being earth, Matey addressed himself to the guardian and ab-
solving genii of matter-of-fact by saying, “Did you inquire about
the tides ? »
Her head shook, stunned with what had passed. She waded
to shore, after motioning for him to swim on.
Men, in the comparison beside their fair fellows, are so little
sensationally complex, that his one feeling now as to what had
passed, was relief at the idea of his presence having been a war-
rantable protectorship. Aminta's return from sea-nymph to the
state of woman crossed annihilation on the way back to senti-
ence, and picked-up meaningless pebbles and shells of life, be-
tween the sea's verge and her tent's shelter: hardly her own life
her understanding yet, except for the hammer Memory became
to strike her insensible, at here and there a recollected word or
nakedness of her soul. What had she done, what revealed, to
shiver at for the remainder of her days!
He swam along the shore to where the boat was paddled,
spying at her bare feet on the sand, her woman's form. He
waved, and the figure in the striped tunic and trousers waved
her response, apparently the same person he had quitted.
Dry and clad, and decently formal under the transformation,
they met at Mrs. Collett's breakfast table; and in each hung the
doubt whether land was the dream, or sea.
## p. 9940 (#348) ###########################################
9940
GEORGE MEREDITH
FROM MODERY LOVE)
A
LL other joys of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip;
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship.
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
The coming minute mock the one that went.
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent
Stood high philosophy, less friend than foe;
Whom self-caged passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Not till the fire is dying in the grate
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
Oh, Wisdom never comes when it is gold,
And the great price we pay for it full worth;
We have it only when we are half earth:
Little avails that coinage to the old!
EVENING
W"
E SAW the swallows gathering in the sky,
And in the osier-isle we heard their noise.
We had not to look back on summer joys,
Or forward to a summer of bright dye;
But in the largeness of the evening earth
Our spirits grew as we went side by side.
The hour became her husband and my bride.
Love that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth!
The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud
In multitudinous chatterings as the flood
Full brown came from the West, and like pale blood
Expanded to the upper crimson cloud.
Love, that had robbed us of immortal things,
This little moment mercifully gave,
Where I have seen across the twilight wave
The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.
## p. 9941 (#349) ###########################################
9941
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
(1803-1870)
BY GRACE KING
Kne of the magisterial critics of Mérimée's day, passing judg-
ment upon his writings, dismisses personal details about the
author with the remark: "As for the biography of Prosper
Mérimée, it is like the history of a happy people,- it does not exist.
One knows only that he was educated in a college of Paris, that he
has studied law, that he has been received as a lawyer, that he has
never pleaded; and the papers have taken
pains to inform us that he is to-day secre-
tary to M. le Comte d'Argout. Those who
know him familiarly see in him nothing
more than a man of very simple manners,
with a solid education, reading Italian and
modern Greek with ease, and speaking Eng-
lish and Spanish with remarkable purity. ”
This was written in 1832, when Mérimée
in his thirtieth year had attained celebrity
not only in the literary world of Paris, but
in the world of literary Europe, as the
author of the Theatre de Clara Gazul);
"La Guzla'; 'La Chronique de Charles IX. '; PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
(Mateo Falcone); Tamango'; 'La Partie
de Tric-Trac'; 'Le Vase Etrusque); La Double Méprise); “La Vision
de Charles XI. ': most of which Taine pronounced masterpieces of
fiction, destined to immortality as classics.
No tribute could have been better devised to please Mérimée, and
praise his writings, than this one to the impersonality of his art, and
the dispensation of it from any obligation to its author. “We should
write and speak,” he held, so that no one would notice, at least
immediately, that we were writing or speaking differently from any
one else. ” But as that most impersonal of modern critics, Walter
Pater, keenly observes: “Mérimée's superb self-effacement, his imper-
sonality, is itself but an effective personal trait, and transferred to
art, becomes a markedly peculiar quality of literary beauty. ” And
he pronounces in a sentence the judgment of Mérimée's literary pos-
terity upon him: "For in truth this creature who had no
care for
half-lights, and like his creations, had no atmosphere about him,
## p. 9942 (#350) ###########################################
9942
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
-
an
-
gifted as he was with pure mind, with the quality which secures
flawless literary structures, — had on the other hand nothing of what
we call soul in literature. ”
And the brilliant young secretary and successful author, whose
happiness furnishes presumptive evidence against a biography, was no
more relieved from the fact of it than the hypothetical happy people
of their history. With that unfaltering rectification of contempo-
raneous values which time and the gravitation to truth bring about,
Mérimée's position in regard to his works is quite the reverse of
what he contemplated and aimed for. Of the published volumes of
his writings, the many containing his artistic works could be better
spared than the few containing his letters. And of his letters, that
volume will longest carry his name into the future which contains
his most intimate, most confidential, least meditated, in short most
genuinely personal and most artistically perfect revelations,— his
Lettres à une Inconnue) (Letters to an Unknown Woman).
Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris in 1803, of parentage that
made his vocation, it would seem, mandatory. His father was
artist of note, a pupil of David's, and long secretary of the École des
Beaux-Arts. His mother was also, and in a double measure, an artist.
Her talent was for portraits of children, whose quiet sittings she
secured by her other talent of relating stories,- a gift inherited from
her grandmother, Madame de Beaumont, a charming writer of child-
ren's stories, and the author of the famous and entrancing Beauty
and the Beast. ' At twenty, having finished his collegiate studies,
Mérimée, in obedience to the will of his parents, began to fit himself
for the legal profession. Following his own tastes, however, he had
already sought and gained admission into the salons of the men of
letters, and was already under his first and only literary influence,-
that of Henri Beyle, the progenitor of modern French realism. It
was in one of these salons that he, not yet twenty-one, read his first
composition, a drama, Cromwell); an effort inspired by Shakespeare
and composed according to the doctrines of Beyle. It was never
published. Shortly afterwards, in the same place and to the same
audience, he read aloud his second attempt, The Spaniards in Den-
mark); and Heaven and Hell, a little dramatic scene which met
with spontaneous applause, and was praised as extremely witty and
still more undevout. Successive readings followed in successive even-
ings, under the encouragement of applause; and the collection, by a
last stroke of audacious wit, in which author and audience collab-
orated, was published as the “Théâtre de Clara Gazul' (an imaginary
Spanish actress), with the portrait of Mérimée, in low-necked dress
and mantilla, for frontispiece.
The strong individuality of Mérimée's art is as easily discernible
to-day, under the thin disguise of his pseudonym, as his features
1
## p. 9943 (#351) ###########################################
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
9943
under his travesty: his clear, cold, impartial realism, unflinching wit,
and a trait attributed also to his mother— his invincible irreligion.
The success of the mystification was immediate and effective. His
next adventure was of the same kind: the publication of 'La Guzla,'
a collection of prose ballads, pseudo-translations from the Dalmatian
folk-songs, with prefatory notices, appendices, and biographical sketch
of the author, the bard Magdanovitch, accompanied by a dissertation
on vampires and the evil eye. The intrinsic beauty of the ballads,
the barbaric strength of the imagination, in the musical rhythm of
French prose, contributed to render the mystification one of the most
perfect in literary history. Goethe wrote an article upon it, Push-
kin made translations from it, and German scholars rejoiced in print
to find in it some long-lost Illyrian metrical measure. This success
disgusted Mérimée with “local color,” — the shibboleth of the young
French Romantic school,— seeing, as he said, how easy it was to fab-
ricate it.
The Famille Carvajal, a continuation of the Spanish vein,- a
weird, grewsome, and pitiless tale,— and “Le Jacquerie,' a dramatic
historical recital in the Shakespearean vein, followed. His next
venture was in historical fiction : (The Chronicle of Charles IX. ,' an
evident inspiration from Walter Scott. From an English point of
view, it is the masterpiece of French fiction in historical domain; and
one, with a few reservations, not unworthy the hand of “Waverley »
himself.
In 1830 came the visit to Spain, related in his published letters,
and the forming of the friendship with the Countess of Montijo which
led to a correspondence, of which the fragments published are war-
rant that it will prove in the future an invaluable guide to the social,
literary, and political history of Paris during the yet controverted
period of the Empire. Always sensitive to feminine influence, if not
to local color, it is to the Countess of Montijo that Mérimée owes the
Spanish inspiration, as it may well be called, which bore fruit in his
incomparable relation of Carmen. ' And while a guest of his friend,
listening to her charming tales of the Alhambra and the Generalife,
Mérimée formed his historical friendship with the Empress Eugénie,
then a little girl playing around her mother's knee.
Appointed inspector-general of the historical monuments of France,
Mérimée threw his archæological erudition into diligent performance
of official duties. His reports, written with minute and even pedan-
tic conscientiousness, bear out Faguet's assertion that — archæologist,
traveler, art critic, historian, and philologist, man of the world and
senator, and competent and sure
as each
he would and should
have belonged to four academies; it was only his discretion that re-
stricted him to two,— the Académie Française and Académie des
Inscriptions. As a compatriot states, it was the inspector-general that
u
## p. 9944 (#352) ###########################################
9944
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
related to him two of his most perfect stories, the Venus d'Ille?
and 'Colomba,' while it was the philologist who found the episode of
Carmen. '
It was at this point of his life, at the meridian of age and success,
that he received his first letter from the Inconnue, a graceful tribute
from the graceful pen of a woman, who yielded to an impulse to
express her admiration, yet guarded her identity beyond possibility
of discovery. The correspondence ensued that a posthumous publi-
cation under the editorship of H. Taine has revealed to the public.
In it, for one who knows how to read the letters, as Taine says,
Mérimée shows himself gracious, tender, delicate, truly in love, and a
poet. After nine years of expostulation and entreaty he obtained an
interview; and his mysterious friend proved to be a Mademoiselle
Jenny Dacquin, the daughter of a notary of Boulogne. The friend-
ship that ensued waxed into love through the thirty succeeding years,
and waned again into a friendship that ended only with Mérimée's
life; his last letter to the Inconnue, a few lines, was written two
hours before he died.
Mérimée's (Studies in the History of Rome,' his "Social War,' and
Catiline,' were to have been followed and closed by a study of
Cæsar. Circumstances, however, adjourned the task, which was after-
wards ceded to an illustrious competitor, or collaborator,-- Napoleon
III. In 1844 he was elected to the French Academy. On the follow-
ing day he published Arsène Guillot. ) Had the publication preceded
the election, the result might have been different; for repentant
Academicians pronounced immoral the tale which Anglo-Saxon critics
have generally selected as the most simple, most pathetic, and only
human one the author ever wrote.
In 1852, the little girl whose growth and development Mérimée
had watched with tenderest interest became Empress of the French.
He was appointed life senator in the reconstructed government; and
became one of the most familiar members of the new and brilliant
court at the Tuileries, and always a conspicuous one. His pleased,
tender, sad, gay, and always frank and critical commentary of the
court and its circles, forms the interest of his weekly bulletins to
the Countess of Montijo. His conversational charm, his wit, and his
ever ready response to demands upon his artistic and historical lore,
in questions of etiquette, costumes, and precedent; his versatility as
dramatist and actor, and his genius for friendship with women,-
made him not only a favorite, but a spoiled favorite, in the royal cir-
cle. His coldness, reserve, cynicism, frank speech, and independent
political opinions saved him from even a suspicion of being a courtier.
He nevertheless lost none of his diligence in literature.
period of his edition of Henri Beyle and of Brantôme, of numerous
miscellaneous articles in reviews, and of those excursions into Russian
It was the
## p. 9945 (#353) ###########################################
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
9945
literature — critical dissertations upon Gogol, Pushkin, and Tourgué-
nieff — which may be considered the pioneer of that advance into
Russian literature which has resulted in throwing it open to, and
making it one with, the literature of Europe.
To this period also belongs his friendship with Panizzi, the ad-
ministrator of the British Museum; and the voluminous correspond-
ence in which he reveals himself in all the fineness and breadth of
his culture,- as Taine puts it, the possessor of six languages with
their literature and history, man of the world and politician, as well
as philosopher, artist, and historian.
So shrewd an observer of men and politics could not be unpre-
pared for the catastrophe of 1870. He had never been free from
vague apprehensions, and the acute presentiment overshadows the
gayety in his letters. In addition he was growing old, and infirm
health drove him during the winter months into annual exile at
Cannes. It was there that, in a crisis of his malady, the journals, in
anticipation of the end, published his death, and M. Guizot in conse-
quence made official announcement of it at the Academy. Mérimée
lived, however, to return to Paris, and suffer through to the end of
the tragedy. He dragged himself to the Tuileries, had a last inter-
view with his mistress, sat for the last time in his seat in the Senate,
and voted for adjournment to a morrow which never came. Four
days afterwards he departed for Cannes, where a fortnight later he
died. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery.
“A gallant man and a gentleman,” says Faguet, «he has had the reward
he would have wished. He has been discreetly and intimately enjoyed by
delicate tastes. He has not been brutally balloted about in the tumult of scho-
lastic discussions. He has not been attacked by any one, nor praised with
loud cries, nor admired with great reinforcement of adjectives.
His
glory is of the good ore, as are his character, his mind, and his style.
He has entered posterity as one enters a parlor, without discussion and with-
out disturbance; received with the greatest pleasure, without vain effusion, he
installed himself comfortably in a good place, from which he will never be
moved. . . . It was his rare talent to give us those limpid, rapid, full
tales, that one reads in an hour, re-reads in a day, which fill the memory and
occupy the thoughts forever. »
Grace Krug
## p. 9946 (#354) ###########################################
9946
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
FROM CARSÈNE GUILLOT)
T"
he last mass had just come to an end at St. Roch's, and the
beadle was going his rounds, closing the deserted chapels.
He was about drawing the grating of one of these aristo-
cratic sanctuaries, where certain devotees purchase the permission
to pray to God apart and distinguished from the rest of the faith-
ful, when he remarked a woman still remaining in it, absorbed
seemingly in meditation, her head bent over the back of her
chair. It is Madame de Piennes,” he said to himself, stopping
at the entrance of the chapel. Madame de Piennes was well
known by the beadle. At that period a woman of the world,
young, rich, pretty, who rendered the blessed bread, who gave
the altar clothes, who gave much in charity through the media-
tion of her curate, had some merit for being devout when she
did not have some employé of the government for a husband,
when she was not an attachée of Madame la Dauphine, and when
she had nothing to gain but her salvation by frequenting the
church. The beadle wished heartily to go to dinner, for people
of his kind dine at one o'clock; but he dared not trouble the de-
votions of a person so well considered in the parish of St. Roch.
He moved away, therefore, making his slipper-shod feet resound
against the marble floor, not without hope that, the round of the
church made, he would find the chapel empty.
He was already on the other side of the choir, when a young
woman entered the church, and walked along one of the side
aisles, looking with curiosity about her. She was about twenty-
five years old, but one had to observe her with much attention
not to think her older. Although very brilliant, her black eyes
were sunken, and surrounded by a bluish shadow; her dead-white
complexion and her colorless lips indicated suffering; and yet a
certain air of audacity and gayety in her glance contrasted with
her sickly appearance. Her rose-colored capôte, ornamented with
artificial flowers, would have better suited an evening negligé.
Under a long cashmere shawl, of which the practiced eye of a
woman would have divined that she was not the first proprietor,
was hidden a gown of calico, at twenty cents a yard, and a little
worn. Finally, only a man would have admired her foot, clothed
as it was in common stockings and prunella shoes, very much
the worse for wear of the street. You remember, madam, that
asphalt was not invented yet.
## p. 9947 (#355) ###########################################
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
9947
This woman, whose social position you have guessed, ap-
proached the chapel, in which Madame de Piennes still lingered;
and after having observed her for a moment with a restless,
embarrassed air, she accosted her when she saw her arise and
on the point of leaving. "Could you inform me, madam," she
asked in a low voice and with a timid smile,-"could you inform
me to whom I should go for a candle ? » Such language was too
strange to the ears of Madame de Piennes for her to understand
it at once. She had the question repeated. “Yes, I should like
to burn a candle to St. Roch, but I do not know whom to give
the money to. ”
Madame de Piennes was too enlightened in her piety for
participation in these popular superstitions, Nevertheless she
respected them; for there is something touching in every form
of adoration, however gross it may be. Supposing that the mat-
ter was a vow, or something of the kind, and too charitable to
draw from the costume of the young woman of the rose-colored
bonnet the conclusions that you perhaps have not feared to
form, she showed her the beadle approaching. The unknown one
thanked her, and ran towards the man, who appeared to under-
stand her at a word. While Madame de Piennes was taking up
her prayer-book and rearranging her veil, she saw the lady of the
candle draw out a little purse from her pocket, take from a
quantity of small-change a five-franc piece, and hand it to the
beadle, giving him at the same time, in a low voice, some long
instructions and recommendations, to which he listened with a
smile.
Both left the church at the same time; but, the lady of the
candic walking very fast, Madame de Piennes soon lost sight of
her, although she followed in the same direction. At the corner
of the street she lived in, she met her again. Under her tem-
porary cashmere the unknown was trying to conceal a loaf of
bread bought in a neighboring shop. On recognizing Madame
de Piennes she bent her head, could not suppress a smile, and
hastened her step. Her smile seemed to say: "Well, what of
“,
it? I am poor.
Laugh at me if you will. I know very well
that one does not go to buy bread in a rose-colored capôte and
cashmere shawl. ” The mixture of false shame, resignation, and
good-humor did not escape Madame de Piennes. She thought,
not without sadness, of the probable position of the young
woman. “,
"Her piety,” she said to herself, is more meritorious
## p. 9948 (#356) ###########################################
9948
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
>
than mine. Assuredly her offering of a five-franc piece is a
much greater sacrifice than what I give to the poor out of my
superfluity, without the imposition of a single privation. ” She
then recalled the widow's mite, more acceptable to God than
the gaudy charities of the rich. “I do not do enough good,”
she thought; "I do not do all that I might. While mentally
addressing these reproaches to herself, she entered her house.
The candle, the loaf of bread, and above all the offering of an
only five-franc piece, engraved upon the memory of Madame de
Piennes the figure of the young woman, whom she regarded
as a model of piety. She met her rather often afterwards, in
the street, near the church, but never at service. Every time
the unknown passed her she bent her head and smiled slightly.
The smile by its humility pleased Madame de Piennes. She
would have liked to find an occasion to serve the poor girl, who
had first interested her, but who now excited her pity; for she
remarked that the rose-colored capôte had faded and the cash-
mere shawl had disappeared. No doubt it had returned to the
second-hand dealer. It was evident that St. Roch was not pay-
ing back a hundredfold the offering made him.
One day Madame de Piennes saw enter St. Roch a bier, fol.
lowed by a man rather poorly dressed and with no crape on
his hat. For more than a month she had not met the young
woman of the candle, and the idea came to her that this was
her funeral. Nothing was more probable, she was so pale and
thin the last time Madame de Piennes saw her. The beadle.
questioned, interrogated in his turn the man following the bier.
He replied that he was the concierge of a house, Rue Louis-
le-Grand, and that one of his tenants dying,-a Madame Guillot,
who had no friends nor relations, only a daughter,- he, the con-
cierge, out of pure kindness of heart, was going to the funeral
of a person who was nothing whatever to him. Immediately
Madame de Piennes imagined that her unknown one had died
in misery, leaving a little girl without help; and she promised
herself to make inquiries, by means of an ecclesiastic whom she
ordinarily employed for her good deeds.
Two days following, a cart athwart the street stopped her
carriage for a few seconds, as she was leaving her door. Look
ing out of the window absent-mindedly, she saw standing against
a wall the young girl whom she believed dead. She recognized
her without difficulty, although paler and thinner than ever,
## p. 9949 (#357) ###########################################
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
9949
The groups
dressed in mourning, but shabbily, without gloves or a hat. Her
expression was strange. Instead of her habitual smile, her fea-
tures were all contracted; her great black eyes were haggard;
she turned them towards Madame de Piennes, but without recog-
nizing her, for she saw nothing. In her whole countenance was
to be read, not grief, but furious determination. The image of
the young girl and her desperate expression pursued Madame de
Piennes for several hours.
On her return she saw a great crowd in the street. All the
porters' wives were at their doors, telling their neighbors some
tale that was being listened to with vivid interest.
were particularly crowded before a house near to the one in
which Madame de Piennes lived. All eyes were turned towards
an open window in the third story, and in each little circle
one or two arms were raised to point it out to the attention of
the public; then all of a sudden the arms would fall towards
the ground, and all eyes would follow the movement. Some
extraordinary event had happened.
"Ah, madame! ” said Mademoiselle Josephine, as she unfast-
ened the shawl of Madame de Piennes, “My blood is all fro-
zen! Never have I seen anything so terrible that is, I did not
see, though I ran to the spot the moment after. But all the
same- »
>>>
“What has happened ? Speak quickly, Mademoiselle. ”
“Well, madame -- three doors from here, a poor young girl
threw herself out of the window, not three minutes ago; if
madame had arrived a moment earlier, she could have heard
the thud. ”
"Ah, heaven! And the unfortunate thing has killed herself! »
"Madame, it gave one the horrors to look at it. Baptiste,
who has been in the wars, said he had never seen anything like
it. From the third story, madame! ”
« Did the blow kill her ? »
Oh, madame! she was still moving, she talked even. I want
them to finish me! ' she was saying. But her bones were in a
jelly. Madame may imagine what a terrible fall it was. ”
But the unhappy creature! Did some one go to her relief;
was a physician sent for - a priest ? »
"A priest, madame knows that as well as I. But if I were a
priest - A wretched creature, so abandoned as to kill herself!
And besides, she had no behavior, – that is easily seen. She
## p. 9950 (#358) ###########################################
9950
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
(
a
belonged to the Opera, so they told me: all those girls end
badly. She put herself in the window; she tied her skirts with
a pink ribbon, and — flop! ”
"It is the poor young girl in mourning! ” cried Madame de
Piennes, speaking to herself.
“Yes, madame: her mother died three or four days ago. It
must have turned her head. And with that, her lover perhaps
had left her in the lurch. And then rent day came
and no
money. And that kind doesn't know how to work.
drenched weeds lay all about in his path, bent thick, and the
forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a a
revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing
one of those little forest chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where
the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and
,
saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not
many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and
he shuddered. What was it ? He asked not. He was in other
hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He
felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With
shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him,
he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and
again.
When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world,
the small birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was
over all the hills. He was on the edge of the forest, entering a
plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky.
## p. 9934 (#342) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9934
AMINTA TAKES A MORNING SEA-SWIM: A MARINE DUET
From Lord Ormont and his Aminta. Copyright 1894, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
on a sea
A.
GLORIOUS morning of flushed open sky and sun
chased all small thoughts out of it. The breeze was from
the west; and the Susan, lightly laden, took the heave of
smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsy in the motion of her
speed. Foresail and aft were at their gentle strain; her shadow
rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of her
wake. Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above
the waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows. By
comparison she was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind
and wave beautiful.
They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls,
in obedience to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should
forbear from sneezing. Little Collett pointed to the roof of his
mother's house twenty paces rearward of a belt of tamarisks,
green amid the hollowed yellows of shore banks yet in shade,
crumbling to the sands. Weyburn was attracted by a diminutive
white tent of sentry-box shape; evidently a bather's, quite as evi.
dently a fair bather's. He would have to walk on some way for
his dip. He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the
water half-dressed never have more than half a bath.
His arms
and legs flung out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in
old Matey's well-remembered way.
Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to flap her
sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers. Turning from a
final cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied
one of those unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing
through the tent-slit. She stepped firmly, as into her element.
A plain look at her, and a curious look, and an intent look, fixed
her fast, and ran the shock on his heart before he knew of a
guess. She waded, she dipped; a head across the breast of the
waters was observed: this one of them could swim. She was
making for sea, a stone's throw off the direction of the boat.
Before his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them,
fiery envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting
at buttons. A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and
her head rose to see her world. She sank down the valley,
where another wave was mounding for its onward roll: a gentle
## p. 9935 (#343) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9935
scene of the Bárt éteóvra of Weyburn's favorite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him — it was she. How could it ever have
been any other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave
him the ropes, pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood
free of boots and socks, and singing out truly enough the words
of a popular cry, “White ducks want washing,” went over and in.
>
Aminta soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the
dive from the boat, and received an illumination. With a chuckle
of delighted surprise, like a blackbird startled, she pushed sea-
ward for joy of the effort, thinking she could exult in imagina-
tion of an escape up to the moment of capture, yielding then
only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.
The swim was a holiday; all was new - nothing came to her
as the same old thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-
mind — had left her earth-mind ashore. The swim, and Matey
Weyburn pursuing her, passed up out of happiness, through the
spheres of delirium, into the region where our life is as we
would have it be: a home holding the quiet of the heavens, if
but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.
He drew on her; but he was distant, and she waved an arm.
The shout of her glee sprang from her: "Matey! ” He waved:
she heard his voice. Was it her name? He was not so drunken
of the sea as she: he had not leapt out of bondage into buoyant
waters, into a youth without a blot, without an aim, satisfied in
tasting; the dream of the long felicity.
A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent ?
It relaxed her stroke of arms and legs. He had doubled the
salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled its gift of freedom. She
turned to float, gathering her knees for the funny sullen kick,
until she heard him near. At once her stroke was renewed vig-
orously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called, "Adieu,
Matey Weyburn!
Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able
to bring down on her; she swam bravely: and she was divine to
see as well as overtake.
Darting to the close parallel, he said, “What sea-nymph sang
me my name ? »
She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: "Ask mine! »
“ Browny! ”
(
## p. 9936 (#344) ###########################################
9936
GEORGE MEREDITH
>
They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-
flowers that spoke at ease.
“We've run rom school; we won't go back. ”
«We've a kingdom. ”
“Here's a big wave going to be a wall. ”
“Off he rolls. ”
“He's like the High Brent broad meadow under Elling
Wood. ”
“Don't let Miss Vincent hear you. ”
« They're not waves: they're sighs of the deep. ”
"A poet I swim with! He fell into the deep in his first of
May-morning ducks. We used to expect him. ”
“I never expected to owe them so much. "
Pride of the swimmer and the energy of her joy embraced
Aminta, that she might nerve all her powers to gain the half.
minute for speaking at her ease.
“Who'd have thought of a morning like this? You were
looked for last night. ”
“A lucky accident to our coach. I made friends with the
skipper of the yawl. ”
“I saw the boat. Who could have dreamed — ? Anything
may happen now. ”
For nothing further would astonish her, as he rightly under-
stood her; but he said, “You're prepared for the rites? Old
Triton is ready. ”
“Float, and tell me. ”
They spun about to lie on their backs. Her right hand, at
piano-work of the octave-shake, was touched and taken, and she
did not pull it away. Her eyelids fell.
«Old Triton waits. ”
“Why? ”
“We're going to him. ”
« Yes ? »
Customs of the sea. ”
« Tell me. ”
"He joins hands. We say, “Browny - Matey,' and it's done. ”
She splashed, crying "Swim," and after two strokes, You
want to beat me, Matey Weyburn. "
«How ? »
«Not fair! "
“Say what. ”
»
(
»
-
## p. 9937 (#345) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9937
»
“Take my breath. But, yes! we'll be happy in our own way.
We're sea-birds. We've said adieu to land. Not to one another.
We shall be friends?
"Always. ”
« This is going to last ? ”
«Ever so long. ”
They had a spell of steady swimming, companionship to inspirit
it. Browny was allowed place a little foremost, and she guessed
not wherefore, in her flattered emulation.
“I'm bound for France. ”
«Slue a point to the right: southeast by south. We shall hit
Dunquerque. ”
“I don't mean to be picked up by boats. ”
“We'll decline. ”
“You see I can swim. ”
I was sure of it. »
They stopped their talk — for the pleasure of the body to be
savored in the mind, they thought; and so took Nature's counsel
to rest their voices awhile.
Considering that she had not been used of late to long immer-
sions, and had not broken her fast, and had talked much for a
sea-nymph, Weyburn spied behind him on a shore seeming flat
down, far removed.
“France next time,” he said: “we'll face to the rear. ”
«Now? » said she, big with blissful conceit of her powers, and
incredulous of such a command from him.
“You may be feeling tired presently. "
The musical sincerity of her “Oh no, not I! ” sped through
his limbs: he had a willingness to go onward still some way.
But his words fastened the heavy land on her spirit, knocked
at the habit of obedience. Her stroke of the arms paused. She
inclined to his example, and he set it shoreward.
They swam silently, high, low, creatures of the smooth green
roller.
He heard the water-song of her swimming. She, though
breathing equably at the nostrils, lay deep. The water shocked
at her chin, and curled round the under lip. He had a faint
anxiety; and not so sensible of a weight in the sight of land as
she was, he chattered by snatches, rallied her, encouraged her
to continue sportive for this once, letting her feel it was but a
once and had its respected limit with him. So it was not out of
the world.
XVII-622
## p. 9938 (#346) ###########################################
9938
GEORGE MEREDITH
Ah, friend Matey! And that was right and good on land; but
rightness and goodness flung earth's shadow across her brilliancy
here, and any stress on “this once ” withdrew her liberty to revel
in it, putting an end to a perfect holiday; and silence, too, might
hint at fatigue. She began to think her muteness lost her the
bloom of the enchantment, robbing her of her heavenly frolic
lead, since friend Matey resolved to be as eminently good in salt
water as on land. Was he unaware that they were boy and girl
again ? — she washed pure of the intervening years, new born, by
blessing of the sea; worthy of him here! — that is, a swimmer
worthy of him, his comrade in salt water.
« You're satisfied I swim well ? ” she said.
“It would go hard with me if we raced a long race. ”
"I really was out for France. ”
“I was ordered to keep you for England. ”
She gave him Browny's eyes.
« We've turned our backs on Triton. ”
“The ceremony was performed. ”
«When? ”
«The minute I spoke of it and you splashed. ”
“Matey! Matey Weyburn! »
“Browny Farrell! >>
"O Matey! she's gone! ”
She's here. "
« Try to beguile me, then, that our holiday's not over. You
won't forget this hour ? ”
“No time of mine on earth will live so brightly for me. ”
“I have never had one like it. I could go under and be
happy; go to old Triton and wait for you; teach him to speak
your proper Christian name. He hasn't heard it yet — heard
Matey'— never yet has been taught Matthew. ) »
"Aminta ! »
"O my friend! my dear! ” she cried, in the voice of the
wounded, like a welling of her blood, “my strength will leave
me. I may play — not you: you play with a weak vessel. Swim,
and be quiet. How far do you count it ? »
"Under a quarter of a mile. ”
"Don't imagine me tired. ”
"If you are, hold on to me. ”
Matey, I'm for a dive. ”
He went after the ball of silver and bubbles, and they came
up together. There is no history of events below the surface,
(
)
## p. 9939 (#347) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9939
She shook off her briny blindness, and settled to the full
sweep of the arms, quite silent now. Some emotion, or exhaus-
tion from the strain of the swimmer's breath in speech, stopped
her playfulness. The pleasure she still knew was a recollection
of the outward swim, when she had been privileged to cast
away sex with the push from earth, as few men will believe
that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and
ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant
them their one short holiday truce.
But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her
when there was yet a space of salt water between her and shore;
and she smiled at times, that he might not think she was look-
ing grave.
They touched the sand at the first draw of the ebb; and this
being earth, Matey addressed himself to the guardian and ab-
solving genii of matter-of-fact by saying, “Did you inquire about
the tides ? »
Her head shook, stunned with what had passed. She waded
to shore, after motioning for him to swim on.
Men, in the comparison beside their fair fellows, are so little
sensationally complex, that his one feeling now as to what had
passed, was relief at the idea of his presence having been a war-
rantable protectorship. Aminta's return from sea-nymph to the
state of woman crossed annihilation on the way back to senti-
ence, and picked-up meaningless pebbles and shells of life, be-
tween the sea's verge and her tent's shelter: hardly her own life
her understanding yet, except for the hammer Memory became
to strike her insensible, at here and there a recollected word or
nakedness of her soul. What had she done, what revealed, to
shiver at for the remainder of her days!
He swam along the shore to where the boat was paddled,
spying at her bare feet on the sand, her woman's form. He
waved, and the figure in the striped tunic and trousers waved
her response, apparently the same person he had quitted.
Dry and clad, and decently formal under the transformation,
they met at Mrs. Collett's breakfast table; and in each hung the
doubt whether land was the dream, or sea.
## p. 9940 (#348) ###########################################
9940
GEORGE MEREDITH
FROM MODERY LOVE)
A
LL other joys of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip;
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship.
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
The coming minute mock the one that went.
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent
Stood high philosophy, less friend than foe;
Whom self-caged passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Not till the fire is dying in the grate
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
Oh, Wisdom never comes when it is gold,
And the great price we pay for it full worth;
We have it only when we are half earth:
Little avails that coinage to the old!
EVENING
W"
E SAW the swallows gathering in the sky,
And in the osier-isle we heard their noise.
We had not to look back on summer joys,
Or forward to a summer of bright dye;
But in the largeness of the evening earth
Our spirits grew as we went side by side.
The hour became her husband and my bride.
Love that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth!
The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud
In multitudinous chatterings as the flood
Full brown came from the West, and like pale blood
Expanded to the upper crimson cloud.
Love, that had robbed us of immortal things,
This little moment mercifully gave,
Where I have seen across the twilight wave
The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.
## p. 9941 (#349) ###########################################
9941
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
(1803-1870)
BY GRACE KING
Kne of the magisterial critics of Mérimée's day, passing judg-
ment upon his writings, dismisses personal details about the
author with the remark: "As for the biography of Prosper
Mérimée, it is like the history of a happy people,- it does not exist.
One knows only that he was educated in a college of Paris, that he
has studied law, that he has been received as a lawyer, that he has
never pleaded; and the papers have taken
pains to inform us that he is to-day secre-
tary to M. le Comte d'Argout. Those who
know him familiarly see in him nothing
more than a man of very simple manners,
with a solid education, reading Italian and
modern Greek with ease, and speaking Eng-
lish and Spanish with remarkable purity. ”
This was written in 1832, when Mérimée
in his thirtieth year had attained celebrity
not only in the literary world of Paris, but
in the world of literary Europe, as the
author of the Theatre de Clara Gazul);
"La Guzla'; 'La Chronique de Charles IX. '; PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
(Mateo Falcone); Tamango'; 'La Partie
de Tric-Trac'; 'Le Vase Etrusque); La Double Méprise); “La Vision
de Charles XI. ': most of which Taine pronounced masterpieces of
fiction, destined to immortality as classics.
No tribute could have been better devised to please Mérimée, and
praise his writings, than this one to the impersonality of his art, and
the dispensation of it from any obligation to its author. “We should
write and speak,” he held, so that no one would notice, at least
immediately, that we were writing or speaking differently from any
one else. ” But as that most impersonal of modern critics, Walter
Pater, keenly observes: “Mérimée's superb self-effacement, his imper-
sonality, is itself but an effective personal trait, and transferred to
art, becomes a markedly peculiar quality of literary beauty. ” And
he pronounces in a sentence the judgment of Mérimée's literary pos-
terity upon him: "For in truth this creature who had no
care for
half-lights, and like his creations, had no atmosphere about him,
## p. 9942 (#350) ###########################################
9942
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
-
an
-
gifted as he was with pure mind, with the quality which secures
flawless literary structures, — had on the other hand nothing of what
we call soul in literature. ”
And the brilliant young secretary and successful author, whose
happiness furnishes presumptive evidence against a biography, was no
more relieved from the fact of it than the hypothetical happy people
of their history. With that unfaltering rectification of contempo-
raneous values which time and the gravitation to truth bring about,
Mérimée's position in regard to his works is quite the reverse of
what he contemplated and aimed for. Of the published volumes of
his writings, the many containing his artistic works could be better
spared than the few containing his letters. And of his letters, that
volume will longest carry his name into the future which contains
his most intimate, most confidential, least meditated, in short most
genuinely personal and most artistically perfect revelations,— his
Lettres à une Inconnue) (Letters to an Unknown Woman).
Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris in 1803, of parentage that
made his vocation, it would seem, mandatory. His father was
artist of note, a pupil of David's, and long secretary of the École des
Beaux-Arts. His mother was also, and in a double measure, an artist.
Her talent was for portraits of children, whose quiet sittings she
secured by her other talent of relating stories,- a gift inherited from
her grandmother, Madame de Beaumont, a charming writer of child-
ren's stories, and the author of the famous and entrancing Beauty
and the Beast. ' At twenty, having finished his collegiate studies,
Mérimée, in obedience to the will of his parents, began to fit himself
for the legal profession. Following his own tastes, however, he had
already sought and gained admission into the salons of the men of
letters, and was already under his first and only literary influence,-
that of Henri Beyle, the progenitor of modern French realism. It
was in one of these salons that he, not yet twenty-one, read his first
composition, a drama, Cromwell); an effort inspired by Shakespeare
and composed according to the doctrines of Beyle. It was never
published. Shortly afterwards, in the same place and to the same
audience, he read aloud his second attempt, The Spaniards in Den-
mark); and Heaven and Hell, a little dramatic scene which met
with spontaneous applause, and was praised as extremely witty and
still more undevout. Successive readings followed in successive even-
ings, under the encouragement of applause; and the collection, by a
last stroke of audacious wit, in which author and audience collab-
orated, was published as the “Théâtre de Clara Gazul' (an imaginary
Spanish actress), with the portrait of Mérimée, in low-necked dress
and mantilla, for frontispiece.
The strong individuality of Mérimée's art is as easily discernible
to-day, under the thin disguise of his pseudonym, as his features
1
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9943
under his travesty: his clear, cold, impartial realism, unflinching wit,
and a trait attributed also to his mother— his invincible irreligion.
The success of the mystification was immediate and effective. His
next adventure was of the same kind: the publication of 'La Guzla,'
a collection of prose ballads, pseudo-translations from the Dalmatian
folk-songs, with prefatory notices, appendices, and biographical sketch
of the author, the bard Magdanovitch, accompanied by a dissertation
on vampires and the evil eye. The intrinsic beauty of the ballads,
the barbaric strength of the imagination, in the musical rhythm of
French prose, contributed to render the mystification one of the most
perfect in literary history. Goethe wrote an article upon it, Push-
kin made translations from it, and German scholars rejoiced in print
to find in it some long-lost Illyrian metrical measure. This success
disgusted Mérimée with “local color,” — the shibboleth of the young
French Romantic school,— seeing, as he said, how easy it was to fab-
ricate it.
The Famille Carvajal, a continuation of the Spanish vein,- a
weird, grewsome, and pitiless tale,— and “Le Jacquerie,' a dramatic
historical recital in the Shakespearean vein, followed. His next
venture was in historical fiction : (The Chronicle of Charles IX. ,' an
evident inspiration from Walter Scott. From an English point of
view, it is the masterpiece of French fiction in historical domain; and
one, with a few reservations, not unworthy the hand of “Waverley »
himself.
In 1830 came the visit to Spain, related in his published letters,
and the forming of the friendship with the Countess of Montijo which
led to a correspondence, of which the fragments published are war-
rant that it will prove in the future an invaluable guide to the social,
literary, and political history of Paris during the yet controverted
period of the Empire. Always sensitive to feminine influence, if not
to local color, it is to the Countess of Montijo that Mérimée owes the
Spanish inspiration, as it may well be called, which bore fruit in his
incomparable relation of Carmen. ' And while a guest of his friend,
listening to her charming tales of the Alhambra and the Generalife,
Mérimée formed his historical friendship with the Empress Eugénie,
then a little girl playing around her mother's knee.
Appointed inspector-general of the historical monuments of France,
Mérimée threw his archæological erudition into diligent performance
of official duties. His reports, written with minute and even pedan-
tic conscientiousness, bear out Faguet's assertion that — archæologist,
traveler, art critic, historian, and philologist, man of the world and
senator, and competent and sure
as each
he would and should
have belonged to four academies; it was only his discretion that re-
stricted him to two,— the Académie Française and Académie des
Inscriptions. As a compatriot states, it was the inspector-general that
u
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PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
related to him two of his most perfect stories, the Venus d'Ille?
and 'Colomba,' while it was the philologist who found the episode of
Carmen. '
It was at this point of his life, at the meridian of age and success,
that he received his first letter from the Inconnue, a graceful tribute
from the graceful pen of a woman, who yielded to an impulse to
express her admiration, yet guarded her identity beyond possibility
of discovery. The correspondence ensued that a posthumous publi-
cation under the editorship of H. Taine has revealed to the public.
In it, for one who knows how to read the letters, as Taine says,
Mérimée shows himself gracious, tender, delicate, truly in love, and a
poet. After nine years of expostulation and entreaty he obtained an
interview; and his mysterious friend proved to be a Mademoiselle
Jenny Dacquin, the daughter of a notary of Boulogne. The friend-
ship that ensued waxed into love through the thirty succeeding years,
and waned again into a friendship that ended only with Mérimée's
life; his last letter to the Inconnue, a few lines, was written two
hours before he died.
Mérimée's (Studies in the History of Rome,' his "Social War,' and
Catiline,' were to have been followed and closed by a study of
Cæsar. Circumstances, however, adjourned the task, which was after-
wards ceded to an illustrious competitor, or collaborator,-- Napoleon
III. In 1844 he was elected to the French Academy. On the follow-
ing day he published Arsène Guillot. ) Had the publication preceded
the election, the result might have been different; for repentant
Academicians pronounced immoral the tale which Anglo-Saxon critics
have generally selected as the most simple, most pathetic, and only
human one the author ever wrote.
In 1852, the little girl whose growth and development Mérimée
had watched with tenderest interest became Empress of the French.
He was appointed life senator in the reconstructed government; and
became one of the most familiar members of the new and brilliant
court at the Tuileries, and always a conspicuous one. His pleased,
tender, sad, gay, and always frank and critical commentary of the
court and its circles, forms the interest of his weekly bulletins to
the Countess of Montijo. His conversational charm, his wit, and his
ever ready response to demands upon his artistic and historical lore,
in questions of etiquette, costumes, and precedent; his versatility as
dramatist and actor, and his genius for friendship with women,-
made him not only a favorite, but a spoiled favorite, in the royal cir-
cle. His coldness, reserve, cynicism, frank speech, and independent
political opinions saved him from even a suspicion of being a courtier.
He nevertheless lost none of his diligence in literature.
period of his edition of Henri Beyle and of Brantôme, of numerous
miscellaneous articles in reviews, and of those excursions into Russian
It was the
## p. 9945 (#353) ###########################################
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9945
literature — critical dissertations upon Gogol, Pushkin, and Tourgué-
nieff — which may be considered the pioneer of that advance into
Russian literature which has resulted in throwing it open to, and
making it one with, the literature of Europe.
To this period also belongs his friendship with Panizzi, the ad-
ministrator of the British Museum; and the voluminous correspond-
ence in which he reveals himself in all the fineness and breadth of
his culture,- as Taine puts it, the possessor of six languages with
their literature and history, man of the world and politician, as well
as philosopher, artist, and historian.
So shrewd an observer of men and politics could not be unpre-
pared for the catastrophe of 1870. He had never been free from
vague apprehensions, and the acute presentiment overshadows the
gayety in his letters. In addition he was growing old, and infirm
health drove him during the winter months into annual exile at
Cannes. It was there that, in a crisis of his malady, the journals, in
anticipation of the end, published his death, and M. Guizot in conse-
quence made official announcement of it at the Academy. Mérimée
lived, however, to return to Paris, and suffer through to the end of
the tragedy. He dragged himself to the Tuileries, had a last inter-
view with his mistress, sat for the last time in his seat in the Senate,
and voted for adjournment to a morrow which never came. Four
days afterwards he departed for Cannes, where a fortnight later he
died. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery.
“A gallant man and a gentleman,” says Faguet, «he has had the reward
he would have wished. He has been discreetly and intimately enjoyed by
delicate tastes. He has not been brutally balloted about in the tumult of scho-
lastic discussions. He has not been attacked by any one, nor praised with
loud cries, nor admired with great reinforcement of adjectives.
His
glory is of the good ore, as are his character, his mind, and his style.
He has entered posterity as one enters a parlor, without discussion and with-
out disturbance; received with the greatest pleasure, without vain effusion, he
installed himself comfortably in a good place, from which he will never be
moved. . . . It was his rare talent to give us those limpid, rapid, full
tales, that one reads in an hour, re-reads in a day, which fill the memory and
occupy the thoughts forever. »
Grace Krug
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FROM CARSÈNE GUILLOT)
T"
he last mass had just come to an end at St. Roch's, and the
beadle was going his rounds, closing the deserted chapels.
He was about drawing the grating of one of these aristo-
cratic sanctuaries, where certain devotees purchase the permission
to pray to God apart and distinguished from the rest of the faith-
ful, when he remarked a woman still remaining in it, absorbed
seemingly in meditation, her head bent over the back of her
chair. It is Madame de Piennes,” he said to himself, stopping
at the entrance of the chapel. Madame de Piennes was well
known by the beadle. At that period a woman of the world,
young, rich, pretty, who rendered the blessed bread, who gave
the altar clothes, who gave much in charity through the media-
tion of her curate, had some merit for being devout when she
did not have some employé of the government for a husband,
when she was not an attachée of Madame la Dauphine, and when
she had nothing to gain but her salvation by frequenting the
church. The beadle wished heartily to go to dinner, for people
of his kind dine at one o'clock; but he dared not trouble the de-
votions of a person so well considered in the parish of St. Roch.
He moved away, therefore, making his slipper-shod feet resound
against the marble floor, not without hope that, the round of the
church made, he would find the chapel empty.
He was already on the other side of the choir, when a young
woman entered the church, and walked along one of the side
aisles, looking with curiosity about her. She was about twenty-
five years old, but one had to observe her with much attention
not to think her older. Although very brilliant, her black eyes
were sunken, and surrounded by a bluish shadow; her dead-white
complexion and her colorless lips indicated suffering; and yet a
certain air of audacity and gayety in her glance contrasted with
her sickly appearance. Her rose-colored capôte, ornamented with
artificial flowers, would have better suited an evening negligé.
Under a long cashmere shawl, of which the practiced eye of a
woman would have divined that she was not the first proprietor,
was hidden a gown of calico, at twenty cents a yard, and a little
worn. Finally, only a man would have admired her foot, clothed
as it was in common stockings and prunella shoes, very much
the worse for wear of the street. You remember, madam, that
asphalt was not invented yet.
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This woman, whose social position you have guessed, ap-
proached the chapel, in which Madame de Piennes still lingered;
and after having observed her for a moment with a restless,
embarrassed air, she accosted her when she saw her arise and
on the point of leaving. "Could you inform me, madam," she
asked in a low voice and with a timid smile,-"could you inform
me to whom I should go for a candle ? » Such language was too
strange to the ears of Madame de Piennes for her to understand
it at once. She had the question repeated. “Yes, I should like
to burn a candle to St. Roch, but I do not know whom to give
the money to. ”
Madame de Piennes was too enlightened in her piety for
participation in these popular superstitions, Nevertheless she
respected them; for there is something touching in every form
of adoration, however gross it may be. Supposing that the mat-
ter was a vow, or something of the kind, and too charitable to
draw from the costume of the young woman of the rose-colored
bonnet the conclusions that you perhaps have not feared to
form, she showed her the beadle approaching. The unknown one
thanked her, and ran towards the man, who appeared to under-
stand her at a word. While Madame de Piennes was taking up
her prayer-book and rearranging her veil, she saw the lady of the
candle draw out a little purse from her pocket, take from a
quantity of small-change a five-franc piece, and hand it to the
beadle, giving him at the same time, in a low voice, some long
instructions and recommendations, to which he listened with a
smile.
Both left the church at the same time; but, the lady of the
candic walking very fast, Madame de Piennes soon lost sight of
her, although she followed in the same direction. At the corner
of the street she lived in, she met her again. Under her tem-
porary cashmere the unknown was trying to conceal a loaf of
bread bought in a neighboring shop. On recognizing Madame
de Piennes she bent her head, could not suppress a smile, and
hastened her step. Her smile seemed to say: "Well, what of
“,
it? I am poor.
Laugh at me if you will. I know very well
that one does not go to buy bread in a rose-colored capôte and
cashmere shawl. ” The mixture of false shame, resignation, and
good-humor did not escape Madame de Piennes. She thought,
not without sadness, of the probable position of the young
woman. “,
"Her piety,” she said to herself, is more meritorious
## p. 9948 (#356) ###########################################
9948
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
>
than mine. Assuredly her offering of a five-franc piece is a
much greater sacrifice than what I give to the poor out of my
superfluity, without the imposition of a single privation. ” She
then recalled the widow's mite, more acceptable to God than
the gaudy charities of the rich. “I do not do enough good,”
she thought; "I do not do all that I might. While mentally
addressing these reproaches to herself, she entered her house.
The candle, the loaf of bread, and above all the offering of an
only five-franc piece, engraved upon the memory of Madame de
Piennes the figure of the young woman, whom she regarded
as a model of piety. She met her rather often afterwards, in
the street, near the church, but never at service. Every time
the unknown passed her she bent her head and smiled slightly.
The smile by its humility pleased Madame de Piennes. She
would have liked to find an occasion to serve the poor girl, who
had first interested her, but who now excited her pity; for she
remarked that the rose-colored capôte had faded and the cash-
mere shawl had disappeared. No doubt it had returned to the
second-hand dealer. It was evident that St. Roch was not pay-
ing back a hundredfold the offering made him.
One day Madame de Piennes saw enter St. Roch a bier, fol.
lowed by a man rather poorly dressed and with no crape on
his hat. For more than a month she had not met the young
woman of the candle, and the idea came to her that this was
her funeral. Nothing was more probable, she was so pale and
thin the last time Madame de Piennes saw her. The beadle.
questioned, interrogated in his turn the man following the bier.
He replied that he was the concierge of a house, Rue Louis-
le-Grand, and that one of his tenants dying,-a Madame Guillot,
who had no friends nor relations, only a daughter,- he, the con-
cierge, out of pure kindness of heart, was going to the funeral
of a person who was nothing whatever to him. Immediately
Madame de Piennes imagined that her unknown one had died
in misery, leaving a little girl without help; and she promised
herself to make inquiries, by means of an ecclesiastic whom she
ordinarily employed for her good deeds.
Two days following, a cart athwart the street stopped her
carriage for a few seconds, as she was leaving her door. Look
ing out of the window absent-mindedly, she saw standing against
a wall the young girl whom she believed dead. She recognized
her without difficulty, although paler and thinner than ever,
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9949
The groups
dressed in mourning, but shabbily, without gloves or a hat. Her
expression was strange. Instead of her habitual smile, her fea-
tures were all contracted; her great black eyes were haggard;
she turned them towards Madame de Piennes, but without recog-
nizing her, for she saw nothing. In her whole countenance was
to be read, not grief, but furious determination. The image of
the young girl and her desperate expression pursued Madame de
Piennes for several hours.
On her return she saw a great crowd in the street. All the
porters' wives were at their doors, telling their neighbors some
tale that was being listened to with vivid interest.
were particularly crowded before a house near to the one in
which Madame de Piennes lived. All eyes were turned towards
an open window in the third story, and in each little circle
one or two arms were raised to point it out to the attention of
the public; then all of a sudden the arms would fall towards
the ground, and all eyes would follow the movement. Some
extraordinary event had happened.
"Ah, madame! ” said Mademoiselle Josephine, as she unfast-
ened the shawl of Madame de Piennes, “My blood is all fro-
zen! Never have I seen anything so terrible that is, I did not
see, though I ran to the spot the moment after. But all the
same- »
>>>
“What has happened ? Speak quickly, Mademoiselle. ”
“Well, madame -- three doors from here, a poor young girl
threw herself out of the window, not three minutes ago; if
madame had arrived a moment earlier, she could have heard
the thud. ”
"Ah, heaven! And the unfortunate thing has killed herself! »
"Madame, it gave one the horrors to look at it. Baptiste,
who has been in the wars, said he had never seen anything like
it. From the third story, madame! ”
« Did the blow kill her ? »
Oh, madame! she was still moving, she talked even. I want
them to finish me! ' she was saying. But her bones were in a
jelly. Madame may imagine what a terrible fall it was. ”
But the unhappy creature! Did some one go to her relief;
was a physician sent for - a priest ? »
"A priest, madame knows that as well as I. But if I were a
priest - A wretched creature, so abandoned as to kill herself!
And besides, she had no behavior, – that is easily seen. She
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(
a
belonged to the Opera, so they told me: all those girls end
badly. She put herself in the window; she tied her skirts with
a pink ribbon, and — flop! ”
"It is the poor young girl in mourning! ” cried Madame de
Piennes, speaking to herself.
“Yes, madame: her mother died three or four days ago. It
must have turned her head. And with that, her lover perhaps
had left her in the lurch. And then rent day came
and no
money. And that kind doesn't know how to work.
