Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/21

Rh her own, and has been thought by some to have sacrificed to her the only love ("in all good and honour" as his countrymen say) that he ever experienced. However that may be, all tradition and all recorded traits give her out as much more remarkable for cleverness than for amiability. A hackneyed anecdote represents his incurable distrust, and his at least affected contempt, of mankind as due to an occasion when, having been severely rebuked and punished for some childish fault, he overheard his parents laughing at his contrition and dismay. These things are very often forged or overvalued when true; but something external, and something more than that influence of friendship to which we shall come presently, is reasonably wanted to explain the difference between the Mérimée who almost unwillingly, but quite unmistakably, reveals himself in the Letters, and the Mérimée who played his part to the world.

The family was not rich, and though in his later years (whether by savings from his income as Senator, or in some other way) Mérimée appears to have accumulated some private fortune, he represents himself earlier as entirely dependent upon his stipend. He had studied law, probably never with any intention to practice, and after the Revolution of 1830, had various