Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/59

Rh is almost as much as to say it has the easy mastery, the almost bewildering completeness and satisfaction of this master. But it displays these traits with an admixture of condescension to the weaker vessels and brethren,—to those who want something of impropriety in subject, something of conventional satire in treatment. Mérimée did sometimes condescend; and he has so condescended here. But he has not condescended very far and therefore, naturally, some say that he has not condescended far enough,—that Arsène is but a bread-and-butter Magdalen; Madame de Piennes a weakling "beautiful-soul-with-temptations"; Max a wishy-washy Don Juan. I do not agree with them, but I venture to take their grumbles as evidence that Mérimée has not gained very much by his condescension. I doubt whether anybody ever does. Tu contra audentior ito is the motto in art almost more than anywhere else. Not that I want him to be Zolaesque, which indeed he could never have been, being an artist first and last of all. But his business was not with the peculiar mixture of satire and sentiment which constitutes the appeal here.

L'Abbé Aubain, on the other hand, is a thoroughly delightful thing, and as masterly in reality as it is slight in appearance. Its interest