Nor, oddly enough, did Mérimée. People who assign to him the rôle of pioneer in the short story, on account of his extraordinary narrative conciseness, appear to forget that his typical tales--_Carmen_, _Colomba_,[33] _Arsène Guillot_, are too long for the form; and that many of his shorter pieces--_L’enlèvement de la redoute_, _Tamango_, _La vision de Charles XI._, are deliberately composed as descriptive anecdotes. Mérimée’s compactness consists rather in reducing to a _nouvelle_ what most writers would have made a _roman_ than in focusing on a single situation in a _conte_. _Carmen_, though compact in its main structure, has a long prelude. Beyond question the method is well adapted; but it shows no tendency to short story. And the habit is equally marked in _Le vase étrusque_, with its superfluous characters. Evidently his artistic bent, like Hawthorne’s, like Nodier’s, was not in that direction. All the more striking, therefore, is his single experiment. _La Vénus d’Ille_ (1837) is definitely and perfectly a short story. Giving the antecedent action and the key in skilful opening dialogue, it proceeds by a series of increasingly stronger premonitions to a seizing climax. Like Poe, Mérimée intensifies a mood till it can receive whatever he chooses, but not at all in Poe’s way. Instead, the mystery and horror are accentuated by a tone of worldly-wise skepticism. Less compressed, too, than Poe, he can be more “natural.” Withal he keeps the same perfection of grading. Strange that a man who did this once should never have done it again. But the single achievement was marked enough to compel imitation. [Sidenote: Balzac.]