Letters to an Unknown

I met Mérimée frequently in society. He was a tall man, erect in his bearing, pale, and, excepting his smile, had the appearance of an Englishman; he had, at all events, that cold, distant manner which forbids in advance any attempt at familiarity. Merely to see him one was impressed by his callousness, either natural or acquired, by his self-control, by his determined self-repression. On ceremonious occasions, especially, the immobility of his countenance was conspicuously...
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I met Mérimée frequently in society. He was a tall man, erect in his bearing, pale, and, excepting his smile, had the appearance of an Englishman; he had, at all events, that cold, distant manner which forbids in advance any attempt at familiarity. Merely to see him one was impressed by his callousness, either natural or acquired, by his self-control, by his determined self-repression. On ceremonious occasions, especially, the immobility of his countenance was conspicuously manifest.Even in the society of his intimate friends, and when relating a witty anecdote, his voice retained its habitual calmness and tranquillity, with never an outburst, never a sign of enthusiasm. The drollest details he described in the most precise language, in the tone of a man asking for a cup of tea. All evidences of sensibility he had mastered until it seemed a quality absent from his nature. Not that it was so-quite the contrary; but race-horses there are so well trained that, once under their master's hand, they never so much as make a sudden start.His training, it must be said, had begun early. When ten or eleven years old, I imagine, having committed some impropriety, he was scolded severely and sent from the room. Weeping and in great distress, he was just closing the door when he heard laughter within the room, and some one said: "Poor child! he believes we are really angry with him!" Intolerable to him was the idea of being a dupe, and he resolved thereupon to overcome a sensitiveness which had caused him such humiliation. He kept his word. "Remember to mistrust," such was his motto.To guard against every manifestation of pleasure, never to abandon himself unreservedly to the expression of emotion, to be tricked neither by others nor by himself, in his conduct and his writings to have in view the constant presence of an unsympathetic, mocking spectator; to be himself that spectator-these are the most distinguishing characteristics of his nature, of which every phase of his life, of his work, and of his talent bears the imprint.H. Taine