[1] _Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie_, ii 159. Eugène de Mirécourt: _Mérimée_, 25. [2] A reproduction of the portrait is to be found in Maurice Tourneux's _Prosper Mérimée: ses portraits, ses dessins, sa bibliothèque_. XXII BEYLE AND MÉRIMÉE Thus prepared, Mérimée, at the age of eighteen, made the acquaintance of Henri Beyle, who was twenty years his senior. They met at the house of the famous singer, Madame Pasta, who had left Milan and taken up her residence in Paris. It was inevitable that Beyle should exercise considerable influence over a kindred spirit so much his junior. Direct proof of this influence can hardly be given, for, before he met Beyle, Mérimée had written nothing; but, if we compare the works of the two authors, the resemblance between some of their peculiarities is striking; and the comparison is further instructive because it serves to throw Mérimée's own special characteristics into strong relief. I consider it impossible that Mérimée can have influenced Beyle, unless, indeed, we reckon as influence the communication of general information; for Beyle is undoubtedly indebted to Mérimée for many of the observations on the subject of art in his _Mémoires d'un Touriste_. Of the two minds Beyle's was obviously the first matured; therefore, when the younger of the two friends begins his biographical notice of the elder with the assertion that, in spite of their friendship, they had hardly had two ideas in common in the course of their lives, this obvious exaggeration may reasonably be attributed to the writer's anxiety to prevent his readers from applying certain of his remarks on Beyle to himself.