Prosper Mérimée

“ The ascent to the dramatic catastrophe of the story is so natural, easy, and pleasant (the preparations for a wedding and its celebration are of all pleasant things in the world what a reader loves most to dally with) ; the means employed by the writer are so natural—for there is not the faintest suggestion of or appeal to the morbid—that we arrive at the crisis well prepared to lose none of its weird and terrible intensity, and the thrill and the shudder that arise in us then are as real as Mérimée’s own physical tribute to the power of his imagination. ”

“ It was evident that something had happened to M. Alphonse. I ran to the bridal chamber; it was full of people. The first object that caught my eye was the young man, half dressed, lying across the bed, the framework of which was broken. He was livid and absolutely motionless. His mother was weeping and shrieking by his side. M. de Peyrehorade was bustling about, rubbing his temples with eau de cologne, or holding salts to his nose. Alas! his son had been dead a long while.
On a couch, at the other end of the room, was the bride, in frightful convulsions. ”

“ I had struck Garcia two or three times with my fist. Anger made him brave; he drew his knife and I mine. We both told Dancaïre to give us room and a fair field. He saw that there was no way of stopping us, and he walked away. Garcia was bent double, like a cat on the point of springing at a mouse. He held his hat in his left hand to parry, his knife forward. That is the Andalusian guard. I took my stand Navarrese fashion, straight in front of him, with the left arm raised, the left leg forward, and the knife along the right thigh. I felt stronger than a giant. ”

“ Imagine a small, but sturdily built man, with curly hair as black as jet, aquiline nose, thin lips, large bright eyes, and a complexion of the hue of a boot-flap. His skill in marksmanship was considered extraordinary, even in his country, where there are so many good shots. For example, Mateo would never fire at a wild sheep with buckshot; but he would bring one down at a hundred and twenty yards with a bullet in the head or the shoulder, as he pleased. ”

“ A chef-d’œuvre of Myron, monsieur!”
“Chef-d’œuvre! chef-d’œuvre! a pretty chef-d’œuvre she made! to break a man’s leg!”
“Look you, my wife,” said M. de Peyrehorade in a determined tone, extending his right leg encased in a stocking of Chinese silk, in her direction, “if my Venus had broken this leg, I should not regret it.”
“Gracious Heaven! how can you say that, Peyrehorade? Luckily the man is getting better. Still, I can’t make up my mind to look at the statue that causes such accidents as that. Poor Jean Coll!” ”

“ I please myself in imagining goblins and fairies. I make my own hair stand on end by relating ghost stories to myself. But, notwithstanding the physical effect I experience, I am not prevented from not believing in ghosts; on this point my incredulity is so great that even if I were to see a ghost, I would not believe in it any the more.”
The old mediæval legend was exhumed by Mérimée, as he unearthed the bronze statue of the maleficent Venus, in the little village under the shadow of the Canigou,—in all its beauty and terror, in all its ferocity, one might say, of pagan Christian. ”

“ I sat up, and fancied that I recognised Antonio. Surprised to find him outside of the stable at that time of night, I rose and walked toward him. He had halted, having seen me first.
“Where is he?” he asked in a whisper.
“In the venta; he is asleep; he has no fear of fleas. Why are you taking that horse away?”
I noticed then that to avoid making any noise on leaving the shed, Antonio had carefully wrapped the animal’s feet in the remnants of an old blanket.
“Speak lower, in God’s name!” said Antonio. “Don’t you know who that man is? He’s José Navarro, the most celebrated bandit in Andalusia. ”

“ I admired the perfect naturalness of all her replies; and her good-humoured air, which however was not [Pg 217] exempt from a slight tinge of mischief, reminded me, in spite of myself, of my host’s Venus. As I made this comparison mentally, I asked myself whether the superiority in the matter of beauty which I could not choose but accord to the statue, did not consist in large measure in her tigress-like expression; for energy, even in evil passions, always arouses in us a certain surprise and a sort of involuntary admiration. ”

“ Mateo Falcone
As you leave Porto Vecchio and journey north-west, towards the interior of the island, you find that the ground rises rather rapidly; and after a three hours’ jaunt along winding paths, obstructed by huge boulders, and sometimes interrupted by ravines, you find yourself on the edge of a very extensive maquis. The maquis is the home of the Corsican shepherd and of all those who are at odds with the law. You must know that the Corsican farmer, to save himself the trouble of fertilising his land, sets fire to a certain amount of woodland. ”

“ We had reached Puygarrig, and the procession was about to start for the mayor’s office, when M. Alphonse put his hand to his forehead and whispered to me:
“What a fool I am! I have forgotten the ring! It is on the Venus’s finger, the devil take her! For Heaven’s sake, don’t tell my mother. Perhaps she will not notice anything.”
“You might send some one to get it,” I said.
“No, no! my servant stayed at Ille, and I don’t trust these people here. Twelve hundred francs’ worth of diamonds! that might be too much of a temptation for more than one of them. ”

“ I have observed, however, among Spanish gypsies, a strange horror at the thought of touching a dead body. There are few of them whom money could hire to carry a corpse to the cemetery.
I have said that most gypsy women dabble in fortune-telling. They are very skillful at it. But another thing that is a source of very great profit to them is the sale of charms and love-philtres. Not only do they keep frogs’ feet to fix fickle hearts, or powdered lodestone to force the unfeeling to love; but at need they make potent conjurations which compel the devil to lend them his aid. ”

“ You are like the dwarf who thinks he’s tall when he can spit a long way. You don’t love me—be off!’
“When she said ‘be off!’ I could not go. I promised to leave Gibraltar, to return to my comrades and wait for the Englishman; she, on her side, promised to be ill until it was time to leave Gibraltar for Ronda. I stayed at Gibraltar two more days. She had the audacity to come to see me at my inn, in disguise. I left the city; I, too, had my plan. I returned to our rendezvous, knowing the place and hour when the Englishman and Carmen were to pass. I found Dancaïre and Garcia waiting for me. ”

“ As one does not go to another for words to describe what one sees oneself, so we need no interpreter of our sensations when we read The Taking of the Redoubt. It is for us alone, as Mérimée seems to tell us, to read it or not to read it, to see what took place or not see it.
In the list of Mérimée’s stories Mateo Falcone stands immediately before The Taking of the Redoubt. ”

“ I believe that it was made to fasten something to—a bracelet, perhaps, which this Myron presented to Venus as an expiatory offering.—Myron was an unsuccessful lover; Venus was irritated with him and he appeased her by consecrating a gold bracelet to her. Observe that fecit is very often used in the sense of consecravit; they are synonymous terms. I could show you more than one example of what I say if I had Gruter or Orellius at hand. It would be quite natural for a lover to see Venus in a dream and to fancy that she ordered him to give a gold bracelet to her statue. ”

“ I had no doubt that I had fallen in with a smuggler, perhaps a highwayman; but what did it matter to me? I was sufficiently acquainted with the Spanish character to be very sure that I had nothing to fear from a man who had broken bread and smoked with me. His very presence was a certain protection against any unpleasant meetings. Furthermore, I was very glad to know what manner of man a brigand is. One does not see them every day, and there is a certain charm in finding oneself in the company of a dangerous individual, especially when one finds him to be gentle and tame. ”

“ My host, greatly surprised not to find him superintending the harnessing of the new calèche, was much more surprised when he saw him drenched with perspiration, and with his racquet in his hand. M. Alphonse ran to the house, washed his face and hands, resumed his new coat and his patent-leather boots, and five minutes later we were driving rapidly toward Puygarrig. All the tennis players of the town and a great number of spectators followed us with joyous shouts. The stout horses that drew us could hardly keep in advance of those dauntless Catalans. ”

“ They insulted me because I don’t belong in this land of thieves and dealers in rotten oranges; and those hussies all leagued against me, because I told them that all their Seville jacques [12] with their knives, wouldn’t frighten one of our boys with his blue cap and his maquila. Comrade, my friend, won’t you do anything for a countrywoman?’
“She lied, señor, she always lied. I doubt whether that girl ever said a true word in her life; but when she spoke, I believed her; it was too much for me. She murdered the Basque language, yet I believed that she was a Navarrese. ”

“ In Germany, the gypsy women are often very pretty; beauty is very rare among the gitanas of Spain. When they are very young, they may pass for rather attractive ugly women; but when they have once become mothers, they are repulsive. The uncleanliness of both sexes is beyond belief, and one who has never seen the hair of a gypsy matron would find it hard to form an idea of it, even by imagining it as like the coarsest, greasiest, dustiest horsehair. In some large cities of Andalusia, some of the girls who are a little more attractive than the rest take more care of their persons. ”

“ There was no more doubt in my mind; it was a gift from Carmen. To people of her race freedom is everything, and they would set fire to a city to save themselves from a day in prison. However, she was a shrewd minx, and with that loaf one could snap one’s fingers at jailers. In an hour’s time the stoutest bar could be sawed through with the little file; and with the two piastres I could exchange my uniform for a civilian’s coat at the first old clo’-man’s. ”

“ Farewell to the uniform of a quartermaster, which I fancied that I had already won!
“My first days in prison passed dismally enough. When I enlisted I had imagined that I should at least become an officer. Longa and Mina, countrymen of mine, are captains-general; Chapalangarra, who, like Mina, is a negro and is a refugee in your country—Chapalangarra was a colonel, and I have played tennis twenty times with his brother, who was a poor devil like myself. Now I said to myself: ‘All the time that you have served without punishment is time thrown away. ”

“ There is always a throng of idlers, about sunset, on the quay that borders the right bank of the Guadalquivir at Cordova. There one inhales the emanations from a tannery which still maintains the ancient celebrity of the district for the manufacture of leather; but, on the other hand, one enjoys a spectacle that has its merits. A few minutes before the Angelus, a great number of women assemble on the river bank, below the quay, which is quite high. No man would dare to join that group. ”

“ Only a man who had made up his mind to die would have dared to utter the word traitor as applying to Falcone. A quick thrust of the stiletto, which would not have needed to be repeated, would have paid for the insult instantly. But Mateo made no [Pg 174] other movement than to put his hand to his forehead, like a man utterly crushed.
Fortunato had gone into the house when he saw his father coming. He soon reappeared with a mug of milk, which he handed to Gianetto with downcast eyes.
“Away from me!” shouted the outlaw in a voice of thunder. ”

“ Mademoiselle de Puygarrig—I should say M. Alphonse’s widow—had recovered her senses. She had even talked with the king’s attorney from Perpignan, then on circuit at Ille, and that magistrate had taken her deposition. He desired mine also. I told him what I knew and made no secret of my suspicions of the Aragonese muleteer. He ordered that he should be arrested immediately.
“Did you learn anything from Madame Alphonse?” I asked the king’s attorney, when my deposition was written out and signed.
“That unfortunate young woman has gone mad,” he replied, with a sad smile. “Mad! absolutely mad! ”

“ To-day, the gypsies have almost as many different dialects as there are bands of their race living apart from one another. Everywhere they speak the language of the country in which they live more readily than their own, which they seldom use except as a means of speaking freely before strangers. If we compare the dialect of the gypsies of Germany with that of the Spaniards, who have had no communication with the former for centuries, we discover a very great number of words common to the two ”

“ I had always suspected the geographers of not knowing what they were talking about when they placed the battle-field of Munda in the country of the Bastuli-Pœni, near the modern Monda, some two leagues north of Marbella. According to my own conjectures concerning the text of the anonymous author of the Bellum Hispaniense, and in view of certain information collected in the Duke of Ossuna’s excellent library, I believed that we should seek in the vicinity of Montilla the memorable spot where for the last time Cæsar played double or quits against the champions of the republic. ”

“ M. de Peyrehorade hovered about me, gave me advice, and repeated his Phœnician etymologies; then he arranged some Bengal roses on the pedestal of the statue, and in a tragi-comic tone addressed supplications to it for the welfare of the couple who were to live under his roof. About nine o’clock he returned to the house to dress, and at the same time M. Alphonse appeared, encased in a tightly fitting new coat, white gloves, patent-leather shoes, and carved buttons, with a rose in his buttonhole.
“Will you paint my wife’s portrait?” he asked, leaning over my drawing; “she is pretty, too.” ”