Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/49

Rh Camilla—light-footed as her Virgilian namesake, light-hearted as anyone, quite arguably not too light in other acceptations of the word—may introduce a slight protest in passing against the theory of Mérimée's "wicked heroine" which makes a great figure in some criticisms of him.

Of course the not-quite-good heroine has great accommodations and great temptations for the novelist and the poet. It is only a Shakespeare who can make Miranda and Imogen absolutely fascinating; and perhaps even in him there are some of us who prefer Cleopatra to either. Mérimée's pessimism, some unfortunate and not quite blameless experiences of his, his other experiences, blameless but still unfortunate, of a mother who though virtuous was "hard," added to the natural tendency of the artist to make use of the most effective materials, have all no doubt had some influence on his practice. But it is quite unfair to take Carmen, who is probably his best known heroine, as his typical one. Colomba's eccentric ideas on the subject of murder were in the circumstances no blight on her general character, which is both stainless and amiable; anybody who could be quite certain of the absence of awkward points in his genealogy would be a fool not to marry Colomba if she would have him. La Périchole, as we have seen, if not