The proportion of the whole is good, and in the humble opinion of the present critic it is by far Chateaubriand's best thing in all perhaps but mere writing. And even in this it is bad to beat, in him or out of him. The small space forbids mere surplusage of description, and the plot--as all plots should do, but, alas! as few succeed in doing--acts as a bellows to kindle the flame and intensify the heat of something far better than description itself--passionate character. There are many fine things--mixed, no doubt, with others not so fine--in the tempestuous scene of the death of Atala, which should have been the conclusion of the story. But this, in its own way, seems to me little short of magnificent: "I implored you to fly; and yet I knew I should die if you were not with me. I longed for the shadow of the forest; and yet I feared to be with you in a desert place. Ah! if the cost had only been that of quitting parents, friends, country! if--terrible as it is to say it--there had been nothing at stake but the loss of my own soul.[23] But, O my mother! thy shade was always there--thy shade reproaching me with the torments it would suffer. I heard thy complaints; I saw the flames of Hell ready to consume thee. My nights were dry places full of ghosts; my days were desolate; the dew of the evening dried up as it touched my burning skin. I opened my lips to the breeze; and the breeze, instead of cooling me, was itself set aglow by the fire of my breath. What torment, Chactas! to see you always near me, far from all other humankind in the deepest solitude, and yet to feel that between us there was an insuperable barrier! To pass my life at your feet, to serve you as a slave, to bring you food and lay your couch in some secret corner of the universe, would have been for me supremest happiness; and this happiness was within my touch, yet I could not enjoy it. Of what plans did I not dream? What vision did not arise from this sad heart? Sometimes, as I gazed on you, I went so far as to form desires as mad as they were guilty: sometimes I could have wished that there were no living creatures on earth but you and me; sometimes, feeling that there was a divinity mocking my wicked transports, I could have wished that divinity annihilated, if only, locked in your arms, I might have sunk from abyss to abyss with the ruins of God and of the world. Even now--shall I say it?--even now, when eternity waits to engulf me, when I am about to appear before the inexorable Judge--at the very moment when my mother may be rejoicing to see my virginity devour my life--even now, by a terrible contradiction, I carry with me the regret that I have not been yours!"