The outward events of Mérimée's life may be simply and shortly narrated. At the age of twenty-two, after completing the legal studies which form part of the education of most well-to-do young Frenchmen, he made a brilliant _début_ as an author. During the following six years he led an independent life in the social circles belonging to the Liberal Opposition, dividing his time between literature and the pursuit of pleasure. In 1831, when his political friends came into power, he was appointed Inspector of Historical Monuments, as successor to Vitet, in whose footsteps he had already followed as an author. He fulfilled the duties of his office zealously and capably. Repeated tours in Spain and England, one in the East, and two in Greece, completed his peculiar training and enriched him with stores of impressions of foreign characters and customs. His extraordinary proficiency as a linguist enabled him to reap every advantage from his travels; he moved about in foreign countries like a native. It is especially unusual for a Frenchman to know as many languages as Mérimée did. He spoke English, Spanish (in all its dialects, including the gipsy language), Italian, modern Greek, and Russian, and had thoroughly studied the literatures of these languages, besides mastering those of ancient Greece and Rome. In his official capacity he published accounts of his travels in France, full of erudite detail; these and some studies on episodes in Roman history procured his election to the Académie des Inscriptions in 1841. In 1844 he was made a member of the Académie Française. Under the Second Empire, as an old friend of the Countess Montijo, he was on intimate terms with the Imperial family; and he and Octave Feuillet were long the only literary ornaments of the new court. In 1853 he was made a Senator. The appointment was beneath his dignity, and his acceptance of it injured his reputation, in spite of the fact that he almost never took part in the deliberations of the Chamber. During his last illness Mérimée heard of the fall of the Empire. He died at Cannes on the 23rd of September 1870.