Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/60

lii is that of pure irony, though irony of the lightest and most delicate nature; and as all the great masters of irony know how to do, it is left by its author to make or miss its own way. If they duly receive new writings in Elysium and converse about them, I know what Lucian and Rabelais and Swift and Fielding (Thackeray was alive) said when they had read this little sketch of the romance conjured up by the lady, and the sober and solid benefit received by the unsuspecting and prosaic priest. In Il Viccolo di Madama Lucrezia (written in 1846, but not published till posthumously), the appeals are more complex, and perhaps for that reason, I do not know that it has ever become a great favourite. The suggested supernatural, neither frankly "occultist," nor explained away fully in the Mrs. Radcliffe manner, appears in it, and this is an element which always commends itself very differently to different persons. I think very highly of it myself, and in connection with it, I may mention the remarkable Djoûmane which also appeared with the Dernières Nouvelles, after being published in the Moniteur, and the exact date of which is unknown. It is one of the best dream