The critical temperament is above everything truthful; and Mérimée was remarkably so. His natural audacity, moreover, impelled him to say exactly what he thought, regardless of conventionalities. One sees from his letters how frank he was by nature, how inclined to speak the undisguised truth, and how impatient of conventional falsehoods and even of alleviating or embellishing circumlocutions. This is especially noticeable in the first volume of _Lettres à une inconnue_. Even in these love-letters Mérimée is almost rude when it seems to him that the object of his affections has expressed some merely conventional opinion. Though his fear of ridicule and his ever-increasing scepticism did not dispose him to knight-errantry or lead him to court martyrdom, he nevertheless, in his fiftieth year, committed a chivalrous folly of which most men of the world would only be capable in their extreme youth. When his friend, the notorious Libri, was found guilty of having abused his position as public librarian to the extent of appropriating and selling a number of valuable books belonging to the nation, Mérimée, unable to believe Libri capable of such an action, undertook his rehabilitation with an ardour worthy of a better cause, and attacked the committee of investigation and the judges in an article in the _Revue des deux Mondes_ (April 15, 1852), the sparkling wit of which recalls Paul Louis Courier's pamphlets. A professed Don Quixote could not have acted more foolishly; nor is the case much altered if what the initiated maintain is true, namely, that his ardour was inspired rather by Madame Libri than by her husband. Under the Empire, and even as a courtier, Mérimée preserved his freedom of speech. I am not referring to the fact that he, as a rule, spoke disparagingly of Napoleon III., which is not particularly to his credit, seeing that he accepted office under that prince's government; but even in conversation with members of the Imperial family he combined frankness with courtesy. Writing in July 1859, he tells that the Empress had asked him in Spanish what he thought of the speech made by the Emperor on his return from Italy. "In order," he writes, "to be both straightforward and courtier-like, I answered, '_Muy necesario!_' (Very necessary)."