down a little; not, indeed, to the dimensions of a very short
story, but to something like those of _Fortunio_ or of _Jettatura_. For
undoubtedly, while Gautier had an all but unsurpassed command of the
short story proper, a really long one was apt to develop some things in
him which, if they were not essentially faults, were not likely to
improve a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; the
want of _evolution_ of character--his character is not bad in itself,
but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic--naturally
shows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for it
longer and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter,
and shortest kind--the story which may run from ten to a hundred pages
with no meticulous limitations on either side--it seems to me that in
the French nineteenth century there are only three other persons who can
be in any way classed with him. One of these, his early contemporary,
Charles de Bernard, and another, who only became known after his death,
Guy de Maupassant, are to be treated in other chapters here. Moreover,
Bernard was slighter, though not so slight as he has sometimes been
thought; and Maupassant, though very far from slight, had a _lesion_ (as
his own school would say) which interfered with universality. The third
competitor, not yet named, who was Gautier's almost exact contemporary,
though he began a very little earlier and left off a little earlier too,
carried metal infinitely heavier than the pleasant author of _Le
Paratonnerre_, and though not free from partly disabling prejudices, had
more balance[219] than Maupassant. He had more head and less heart, more
prose logic and less poetical fancy, more actuality and less dream than
"Theo." But I at least can find no critical abacus on which, by totting
up the values of both, I can make one greatly outvalue the other. And to
the understanding I must have already spoken the name of Prosper
Merimee.[220]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Merimee.]

All the world knows _Carmen_, though it may be feared that the knowledge
has been conveyed to more people by the mixed and inferior medium of
the stage and music than by the pure literature of the original tale.
Yet it may be generously granted that the lower introduction may have
induced some to go on, or back, to the higher. Of the unfaulty
faultlessness of that original there has never been any denial