It was not until 1830 (after the publication of _Mateo Falcone_ and _The Taking of the Redoubt_) that Mérimée saw Spain with the eyes of his body, and became naturalised in that part of it, that, as he describes it, “was bounded on the north by a _gitana_ and on the south by a carbine,” whose patois he spoke fluently, in whose _ventas_ he was at home, where he confesses to have committed a thousand follies. In his letters addressed from Madrid and Valencia, during this first voyage to Spain, those who are curious about such questions can read the account of Mérimée’s introduction to Carmen,--that is, to José Maria, the contrabandist and bandit, and to the toreador. As for Carmen herself, “that servant of the devil,” as José Maria describes her only too well, although she does not figure in the letters, we may infer that she did in some of the “thousand follies.” The story was not, however, written until fifteen years later than this, after many subsequent visits to its birthplace. A postscriptum, dated 1842, is attached to the letters, giving an account of the death of the toreador and of José Maria. Mérimée had so long before this story proved himself the most exquisite master, in his day, of the art of simplicity and naturalness in writing, that he would seem to have left no farther room to himself for advance in perfection, no margin for additional praise for this his last story; and yet it has a quality of its own that distinguishes it from every preceding one. “Señor,” said José Maria, “one becomes a rascal without thinking of it; a pretty girl steals your wits, you fight for her, an accident happens, you have to live in the mountains, and from a smuggler you become a robber before you know it.” This is the simplicity and naturalness, not of Mérimée, but of José Maria himself; and the story that follows shows absolutely no other author than the condemned bandit. There is no consciousness in reading it of the perfection that mars the very perfection of _Colomba_, nor suspicion of premeditated pathos as in the supremely pathetic _Arsène Guillot_. Form and pathos are no more thought of by the author than by José Maria himself. And, therefore, as Taine says, “dissertations on primitive and savage instinct, learned essays like Schopenhauer’s on love and death, are not worth its hundred pages.” As if he himself recognised the finality of his art in this identity of it with nature, Mérimée laid aside his pen after writing it, and wrote no more stories for twenty years; in truth, wrote no more, for as his biographer Filon expresses it, when he took up his pen again, he found it irremediably rusted.