It is wise, moreover, in addressing posterity to choose interesting subjects and to treat them in an interesting way. Interesting subjects: that would exclude events essentially tame or commonplace, characters essentially colourless or ordinary. To treat these in an interesting way: which means situations and passions of sufficient vitality, after the lapse of a century, to have them serve actual conditions. The types chosen by Mérimée were sincere, strong, and original. We may compare them to medallions of durable metal, in bold relief, set in an appropriate frame and amid harmonious surroundings; an officer’s first battle, a Corsican vendetta, a slave-trader’s last voyage, a slip from the path of integrity, the sacrifice of a son by his father, a secret tragedy in a modern salon. Like the novels of Bandello and the Italian fiction-writers, almost all his tales are sanguinary, and are painful, besides, from the cold-bloodedness of the recital, the accuracy of the action, and the skilful convergence of details. Far better, each one is, in its little setting, a record of human nature, a record, complete and of far-reaching import, to which a philosopher, a moralist, may return year after year without exhausting its interest. Multitudes of dissertations on primitive and savage instinct, wise treatises, like those of Schopenhauer, on the metaphysics of love and of death, can not be compared in value to the hundred pages of _Carmen_. The wax taper of _Arsène Guillot_ summarises many volumes concerning the religion of the common people and of the inmost feelings of courtesans. I know of no more scathing sermon against the blunders of credulity or of imagination than _The Double Mistake_, and _The Etruscan Vase_. In the year 2000 _The Game of Backgammon_ will be read again, probably, to learn what it costs to cheat.