Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/54

xlvi comedy with tragedy, of incident and suggestion, is unrivalled, or rivalled only by the other mixture of the voluptuous and the terrible. To call it, as it has been called, "a materialistic myth" is at least to suggest a gross misunderstanding. It is a resurrection of the flesh and blood from which all true myths have been originated.

For two great favourites with some good judges, Tamango and La Partie de Tric-Trac, I care less, though they would certainly make the fortune of any other tale-teller. But who shall overpraise Les Ames du Purgatoire? I know no story of any writer to the style of which one of the hack words of criticism "limpid" applies so absolutely; and once more it has one of those extraordinary blends, antithesis, antinomies, which give such a savour to those who can savour them in literature. Mérimée is given out—perhaps gave himself out—as a professed unbeliever to an extent rather endangering his general reputation for restraint and "good form." Yet the religious tone which this story requires is infused neither in the least insufficiently nor with that ostentatious excess which is often visible in similar cases. And what is even more wonderful, it is kept in harmony with plenty of satiric touches; while the