Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/46

xxxviii power of attention is very feeble, rather fascinating; and the way in which the author manages not merely to paint manners but to insinuate character, is very masterly.

But the little group of short pieces in the form to which I have referred above—Une Femme est un Diable, L'Occasion, Le Ciel et L'Enfer, Le Carrosse du Saint Sacrement, supply the main justification of the arrangement; and they are so good in themselves that, with the one exception also hinted (as to which I am not quite sure) they could not possibly have been told as well narratively. Three of the four are tragical; only one comic; but the mastery in either direction is practically indifferent.

Une Femme est un Diable is perhaps the weakest; it probably owes something to Lewis's Monk, a very dangerous pattern, and the characters of the three inquisitors are somewhat conventional. But Mariquita, part victim, part almost unintentional temptress, is altogether admirable, and her various moods display a power of realisation and expression which the greatest masters of fiction have not surpassed. The pendant, for it is almost a pendant, L'Occasion, deserves at least the same praise and perhaps something higher still; for this is pure tragedy while the other is only