PREFACE

The following sélections from tbe stories and letters of Prosper Mérimée are offered with a twofold purpose. First, to give in a number of short stories an idea of Mérimée's varied style. At présent he is best known to our schools by his Colomba. To judge his genius by tbis one taie is to judgc it too narrowly.

In the second place, ît has seemed a praiseworthy task to render more accessible to readers of French the romantic, powerful, and pathetic story of Carmen — to give the true story, that the perverted picture as seen in opéra and draina may not become our permanent impression of Mérimée's Carmen. Stage versions and adaptations minimize the misery, squalor, and tragedy of the gypsy girl's life and tbereby lose the tremendous force of Mérimée's story. To know both may be good, but to mistake one for the other is not As one critic has said, " Mérimée's Carmen is a gentleman's Carmen,"

As a préparation for Carmen, classes should read Les Bohémiens (p. 56), Les Voleurs des grands chemins (p. 62), and Les Courses de taureaux (p. 77), which assist to an understanding of the " local color " in the title story.

Tamango bas an interest to ail students who care to read about the negro slave trade. Vessels like Ledoux's V Espérance brought negro slaves to the shores of North America from 1619 to 1808, and even to the time of the Civil War; though importations after 1808 were illégal.

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