sensitiveness to external influences which has distinguished him ever
since. He was first taught at a school in Rochefort, but at the age
of seventeen, being destined for the navy, he entered the great French
naval school, Le Borda, and has gradually risen in his profession.
His pseudonym is said to have had reference to his extreme shyness and
reserve in early life, which made his comrades call him after "le Loti,"
an Indian flower which loves to blush unseen. He was never given to
books or study (when he was received at the French Academy, he had
the courage to say, "Loti ne sait pas lire"), and it was not until his
thirtieth year that he was persuaded to write down and publish certain
curious experiences at Constantinople, in "Aziyade," a book which,
like so many of Loti's, seems half a romance, half an autobiography.
He proceeded to the South Seas, and, on leaving Tahiti, published the
Polynesian idyl, originally called "Raharu," which was reprinted as "Le
Mariage de Loti" (1880), and which first introduced to the wider public
an author of remarkable originality and charm. Loti now became extremely
prolific, and in a succession of volumes chronicled old exotic memories
or manipulated the journal of new travels. "Le Roman d'un Spahi," a
record of the melancholy adventures of a soldier in Senegambia, belongs
to 1881. In 1882 Loti issued a collection of short studies under the
general title of "Fleurs d'Ennui." In 1883 he achieved the widest
celebrity, for not only did he publish "Mon Frere Yves," a novel
describing the life of a French bluejacket in all parts of the
world--perhaps, on the whole, to this day his most characteristic
production--but he was involved in a public discussion in a manner
which did him great credit. While taking part as a naval officer in
the Tonquin war, Loti had exposed in a Parisian newspaper a series of
scandals which succeeded on the capture of Hue, and, being recalled, he
was now suspended from the service for more than a year. He continued
for some time nearly silent, but in 1886, he published a novel of life