Thus ends the wild play _L'Occasion_. The wittiest criticism passed on these dramas, and the style in general, is contained in a sentence in Alfred de Musset's _Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet_: "Souvient l'Espagne, avec ses Castillans, qui se coupent la gorge comme on boit un verre d'eau, ses Andalouses qui font plus vite encore un petit métier moins dépeuplant, ses taureaux, ses toréadors, matadors, &c." It was not in Mérimée's works alone that the Spain of the young Romantic School (to which De Musset himself contributed the pale-faced, brown-necked Andalusian beauty) was so passionate and hasty. But no one took such delight in it all as he. And the themes he chose in his old age are in complete accordance with this taste of his youth. His last tale, _Lokis_, is the story of a young Lithuanian count of mysterious descent, who from time to time is possessed by, or at least feels that he possesses, the instincts of a wild animal. He goes mad on his wedding-night and kills his bride by biting her throat. The count's character is drawn with delicate skill; the progress of his mental derangement is indicated by a few slight but graphic touches; and Mérimée has evidently enjoyed contrasting this wild young Lithuanian nobleman with a peculiarly worthy and dull German professor (the German of French fiction prior to 1870), a guest in the count's house, who writes every evening to his _fiancée_, Fräulein Weber, and communicates the horrible catastrophe to the reader in one of his letters. But the impression left by this vampire tale is one of disgust mingled with horror. The masterly treatment, the perfect style, the refined manner in which the loathsome subject is dealt with, remind us of the white kid gloves of the headsman. The story is only of interest to us as a proof of the strength retained by one of its author's original tendencies.