In form our author’s books are varied, following rarely any preconceived plan, we may well suppose--only this, that the literary wanderer with his new book every year takes us by the hand and shows us the intimacies of his own life-experiences, discloses the little-known beauties and sadnesses he has uncovered everywhere, and turns into simple yet exquisitely wrought fictions the poignant truths that have entered his own heart. Not one novel, technically considered, did he write, but sketches strung like pearls upon a thread: vivid impressions of home and foreign life, longer or shorter stories of simple folk whose days dawned to labor and were twilit with weariness, colorful pictures of men and women living under eastern skies--and beneath and about all, the many-spirited sea. It would require a volume to deal adequately with Loti’s many books; but one point invites mention: each new annual volume for a score of years discloses his life in some new land, or in the Brittany of his affection. His first volume, _Aziyadé_ (1879), is the record of his love for a beautiful Circassian slave while he sojourned in Turkey--the record, too, of how she died of grief after his departure. _Rarahu_--later issued as _Le Mariage de Loti_--recounts his loves in Tahiti, and much of charm and beauty besides. _Le Roman d’un Spahi_ transports us to the Sahara and Senegal, _Fleurs d’ennui_ to Montenegro, _Madame Chrysanthème_ to Japan, _Au Maroc_ to Fez and Tangier, and _Le désert_, and _Jérusalem_, and _La Galilée_, to Palestine. I name these volumes not to attempt a catalogue of Loti’s works, but to show how world-broad were the scenes he chose for his impressionistic brush. Naturally, all of the foregoing works are more or less oriental in tone, and the moral code revealed is not that of “the most approved families.” But three masterpieces there are which breathe a more wholesome air--though heavy, each one, with the tragedy of life. _Mon frère Yves_ is the plotless account of “a splendid Breton sailor and the author, his officer.” They enjoy “a sort of companionship which finds its analogy--in a way--in the friendly relations formerly [held] between young master and slave in our Southern States.” No picture of the robust rollicking sailor--superstitious, drink-loving, adventurous, warm-hearted--could be more real, none more pathetic, and none more rich in fragments of narrative. In _Le livre de la pitié et de la mort_ eleven stories are brought together to harmonize with the saddening title--“The Book of Pity and of Death!” One of these, “The Sorrow of an Old Convict” is an impressionistic tale of an old highwayman who is being shipped away to exile. His only solace is a caged bird with a broken wing, and when one day the door is opened the little bird falls into the sea. That is all--but to read it is to feel with Yves the heart-break of that bereft old man.