Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/47

Rh melodrama. It is the most Browningesque of Mérimée's things; and it exhibits the quality, which Browning so curiously lacks, of being able to combine the dramatic, if not the theatrical, presentation of different characters in the same work, without making all but one merely foils to that one.

On the whole, however, Le Ciel et L'Enfer, which I think has not been a general favourite, seems to me the very best of the tragic pieces. The priest and the lover, though very good, are here purposely subordinated to Doña Urraca, the heroine; and once more her changes of mood, far deeper and more serious than Mariquita's, are a triumph. Coquetry, devotion, love, furious and almost murderous jealousy, love again and quite murderous repentance of the former act, all these drive over the soul of the heroine, and the scene of the story, like squalls and sunbursts on a stormy day—as suddenly, as irresistibly, as naturally. If Mérimée had written nothing else, he would have handed in his diploma-piece as a master with this.

He would have handed it as surely, though in another kind, if he had written nothing but Le Carrosse du Saint Sacrement. Here all is sunny enough; the spiteful tittle-tattle (whether it was quite false witness, one may be permitted