FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON MÉRIMÉE
Miscellaneous Studies, Walter Pater (1895); Modern French Literature, Benjamin W. Wells (1896); Contes et Nouvelles, by Prosper Mérimée, edited by J. E. Michell (1907); A Century of French Fiction, Benjamin W. Wells (1898); Prosper Mérimée, Arthur Symonds, in A Century of French Romance, edited by Edmund W. Gosse (1901); Six Masters in Disillusion, Algar Therold (1909).
MATEO FALCONE
BY PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
Translation by The Editor
Note: The technical terms used in the marginal notes explanatory of the short-stories throughout this work follow the terminology used and treated fully in the present author’s Writing the Short-Story.
A story of local-color because the Corsican customs determine the destinies of the characters. It is equally a character-study and a psychological study. Note how characters harmonize with setting, throughout.
As one comes out of Porto-Vecchio, and turns northwest toward the center of the island, the ground is seen to rise quite rapidly, and after three hours’ walk by tortuous paths, blocked by large masses of rocks, and sometimes cut by ravines, the traveler finds himself on the edge of a very extensive maquis. This bush is the home of the Corsican shepherds, and of whomsoever has come into conflict with the law. It is well known that the Corsican laborer, to spare himself the trouble of fertilizing his lands, sets fire to a certain stretch of forest; so much the worse if the flames spread further than is needed;Setting is minutely given, yet not diffusely. whatever happens, he is sure to have a good harvest by sowing upon this ground, enriched by the ashes of the very trees which it grows. When the corn is plucked, he leaves the straw, because it is too much trouble to gather it. The roots, which have remained in the ground without being harmed, sprout in the following spring into very thick shoots, which in a few years attain a height of seven or eight feet. This sort of underwood it is that they call maquis. It is composed of different kinds of trees and shrubs, all mixed and tangled, just as they were planted by God. Only with the hatchet in hand can a man open a passage, and there are maquis so dense and so tufted that even the wild sheep can not penetrate them.
One of Mérimée’s deft personal touches, as though he were telling the story to Corsicans.
2. If you have killed a man, go into the maquis of Porto-Vecchio, and with a good gun and powder and ball, you will live there in safety. Do not forget a brown cloak with a Why “brown”? hood, which serves as a coverlet and a mattress. The shepherds will give you milk, The vendetta. See Mérimée’s novelette Colomba.cheese, and chestnuts, and you will have nothing to fear from justice, nor from the relatives of the dead man, unless it be when you have to go down into the town to renew your munitions.