"In history," says Mérimée, in the preface to his _Chronique du Règne de Charles IX._, "I care only for anecdotes." It was the anecdote which he cared for also in fiction, and with him, as with Stendhal, from whom he got the word and perhaps some of his taste for the thing, the anecdote was a somewhat more formal variety of what was afterwards to be called the document. Mérimée as a writer stands somewhere between Choderlos de Laclos or Crébillon fils, and the generation of "Realists" which was to follow him. He has the naïve immorality, the deliberate frivolity of the eighteenth century; but he is frivolous with the gravity of a scholar. Genuinely interested in those questions which women discuss among themselves, he knew how to work artistically upon his own interest, giving it an ironical turn, which saves it from the criticism of his intelligence. And in those anecdotes, to which he reduces history, and out of which he makes the more living history of his fiction, he finds as much of the soul of great passions and profound emotions as he cares to consider. The document is not yet crude fact, as with the Realists; it is fact chosen carefully for its significance, and arranged just so much as it needs in order to seem as well as be significant. "Dans chaque anecdote pouvant servir à porter la lumière dans quelque coin du coeur," says Mérimée, speaking of Stendhal (he might be speaking for himself), "il retenait toujours ce qu'il appelait le _trait_, c'est à dire le mot ou l'action qui révèle la passion." It was for this word or action in which passion reveals itself that Mérimée was always a seeker: how often and how absolutely he found it, the tales which follow may be left to prove for themselves. ARTHUR SYMONS. "THE ABBÉ AUBAIN" was published in _Le Constitutionnel_, February 24, 1846; "Mateo Falcone" and "The Vision of Charles XI" in the _Revue de Paris_, May and July, 1829; "How we Stormed the Fort" in the _Revue française_, September-October, 1829; "Tamango" in the _Revue de Paris_, October, 1829; "The Game of Backgammon" and "The Etruscan Vase" in the _Revue de Paris_, June and January, 1830, respectively; "The Venus of Ille" in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, May 15, 1837; "Lokis" in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, September 15, 1869; "The Blue Chamber," dated Biarritz, September, 1866, in _L'Indépendance belge_, September 6-7, 1871; "The 'Viccolo' of Madam Lucrezia," dated April 27, 1846, in _Dernières Nouvelles_, 1873; and "Djoumane" in _Le Moniteur Universel_, July 9-12, 1873. A.R.W. PROSPER MÉRIMÉE Born at Paris, September 28th, 1803 Died at Cannes, September 23rd, 1870 THE ABBÉ AUBAIN _It were idle to say how the following letters came into our possession. They seem to us curious, moral and instructive. We publish them without any change other than the suppression of certain proper names, and a few passages which have no connection with the incident in the life of the Abbé Aubain._ THE ABBÉ AUBAIN