and striking reality.

Hence also one of the peculiar characteristics of Loti's workers. He
loves to paint simple souls, hearts close to Nature, whose primitive
passions are singularly similar to those of animals. He is happy in the
isles of the Pacific or on the borders of Senegal; and when he shifts
his scenes into old Europe it is never with men and women of the world
that he entertains us.

What we call a man of the world is the same everywhere; he is moulded
by the society of men, but Nature and the universe have no place in
his life and thought. M. Paul Bourget's heroes might live without
distinction in Newport or in Monte Carlo; they take root nowhere, but
live in the large cities, in winter resorts and in drawing-rooms as
transient visitors in temporary abiding-places.

Loti seeks his heroes and his heroines among those antique races of
Europe which have survived all conquests, and which have preserved,
with their native tongue, the individuality of their character. He met
Ramuntcho in the Basque country, but dearer than all to him is Brittany:
here it was that he met his Iceland fishermen.

The Breton soul bears an imprint of Armorica's primitive soil: it is
melancholy and noble. There is an undefinable charm about those arid
lands and those sod-flanked hills of granite, whose sole horizon is the
far-stretching sea. Europe ends here, and beyond remains only the broad
expanse of the ocean. The poor people who dwell here are silent and
tenacious: their heart is full of tenderness and of dreams. Yann, the
Iceland fisherman, and his sweetheart, Gaud of Paimpol, can only live
here, in the small houses of Brittany, where people huddle together in