Fortunately for the spontaneity of the novel, many authors are more concerned for the vividness of their narration than for mere technical form. Hence they feel free to introduce incidents which are related more or less loosely to the plot, and serve rather as auxiliaries than as vital parts of the action. The purpose may be to develop a tone, suggest an atmosphere, illustrate certain traits of character, or, it may be, to amplify an organic part of the plot. This narrative by-path, this illuminating side-light, we technically call an episode. It was most in vogue among the early English novelists; Defoe, Richardson, Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith followed it so habitually that all of their novels are episodic in form. But even in the more highly organized French romances of plot--_Les Miserables_ and _Les Mystères de Paris_, for example--we find frequent episodes. This tendency is naturally more marked in the tale and in the prolonged sketch than in the closely plotted novel. Indeed, it is only in the very _long_ plot-novel that the episode can find room, since the prosperity of the short plot-novel lies largely in the close and rapid sequence of its incidents. Even though “The Marriage to the Sea”--as I have ventured to entitle this climacteric close of _An Iceland Fisherman_--is an essential plot incident, and therefore an organic part of the whole, still, considered solely for its own sake, it is easily detachable. So we may regard it as _almost_ a typical specimen of the episode; that is to say, we need only have some slight prior knowledge of the setting and the relation of the characters to invest it with the completeness and unity of a perfect short-story. True, the crisis has occurred--unknown to the fisherman’s wife--before this episode begins, but that could scarcely have been arranged more artistically, with regard to suspense, had Loti purposed to use the episode as a separate story. Here we have the carefully laid groundwork of tone, environment, and characters. Here, too, are the breathless expectancy, the increasing suspense (which constitutes the complication), two false anticipations of a happy dénouement, and then the actual dénouement, with the artistic close. _An Iceland Fisherman_ is Pierre Loti’s most perfect work, and it is gratifying to note that it is also his most popular, as witness some three hundred and fifty French editions, and an unknown number of translations. In form, it is less a typical novel than a brilliant impressionistic tale. A major episode is the story of Sylvestre, which, woven closely in its earlier part with the life of Yann and his sweetheart Gaud, at length diverges, when the fisherboy passes into the navy, fights a good fight in Cochin-China, and dies amid pathetic circumstances in far-off Singapore.