in part on the sense as you read, hastily perhaps,
perhaps in need of patience, that you are dealing with a composition,
the full secret of which is only to be attained in the last paragraph,
that with the last word in mind you will retrace your steps, more than
once (it may be) noting then the minuter structure, also the natural or
wrought flowers by the way. Nowhere is such method better illustrated
than by another of Merimee's quintessential pieces, Arsene Guillotand
here for once with a conclusion ethically acceptable also. Merimee
loved surprises in human nature, but it is not often that he surprises
us by tenderness or generosity of character, as another master of
French fiction, M. Octave Feuillet, is apt to do; and the simple pathos
of Arsene Guillot gives it a unique place in Merimee's writings. It
may be said, indeed, that only an essentially pitiful nature could have
told the exquisitely cruel story of Matteo Falcone precisely as Merimee
has told it; and those who knew him testify abundantly to his own
capacity for generous friendship. He was no more wanting than others
in those natural sympathies (sending tears to the eyes at the sight of
suffering age or childhood) which happily are no extraordinary
component in men's natures. It was, perhaps, no fitting return for a
[34] friendship of over thirty years to publish posthumously those
Lettres a une Inconnue, which reveal that reserved, sensitive,
self-centred nature, a little pusillanimously in the power, at the
disposition of another. For just there lies the interest, the
psychological interest, of those letters. An amateur of power, of the
spectacle of power and force, followed minutely but without sensibility
on his part, with a kind of cynic pride rather for the mainspring of
his method, both of thought and expression, you find him here taken by
surprise at last, and somewhat humbled, by an unsuspected force of
affection in himself. His correspondent, unknown but for these letters
except just by name, figures in them as, in truth, a being only too
much like himself, seen from one side; reflects his taciturnity, his
touchiness, his incredulity except for self-torment. Agitated,
dissatisfied, he is wrestling in her with himself, his own difficult
qualities. He demands from her a freedom, a frankness, he would have
been the last to grant. It is by first thoughts, of course, that what
is forcible and effective in human nature, the force, therefore,