Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/48

xl to entertain the shadow of a doubt) of the secretary Martinez only gives the slight touch of dark needed to set off the brightness. The Viceroy, who allows himself to be fooled without being, in more than the very least degree, a fool, and who is wise enough not to quarrel with his own happiness; the Bishop, as wise in his generation yet not other than a very respectable child of light for all that; all the minor characters are capital. But the heroine, La Périchole, is something better. She is not only Mérimée's most amiable heroine, but what I trust I may be permitted to call, in deliberate flouting of a pedant objection, his "nicest." From the point of view of strict morality, she may need a little absolution; but there is not a drop of bad blood in her, and she is as far from being silly as she is from being disagreeable. Her donation is not only a stroke of genius as getting herself, the Viceroy, and others, out of a very awkward situation with flying colours, but it is also something better. His Excellency Don Andres de Ribera was most sincerely to be congratulated, even if he did share the subject of congratulation with a rather uncertain number of others. And this most fascinating