a stand against the storms which come howling from the depths of the
Atlantic.

Loti's novels are never complicated with a mass of incidents. The
characters are of humble station and their life is as simple as their
soul. _Aziyade_, _The Romance of a Spahi_, _An Iceland Fisherman_,
_Ramuntcho_, all present the story of a love and a separation. A
departure, or death itself, intervenes to put an end to the romance.
But the cause matters little; the separation is the same; the hearts are
broken; Nature survives; it covers over and absorbs the miserable ruins
which we leave behind us. No one better than Loti has ever brought out
the frailty of all things pertaining to us, for no one better than he
has made us realize the persistency of life and the indifference of
Nature.

This circumstance imparts to the reading of M. Loti's works a character
of peculiar sadness. The trend of his novels is not one that incites
curiosity; his heroes are simple, and the atmosphere in which they
live is foreign to us. What saddens us is not their history, but the
undefinable impression that our pleasures are nothing and that we are
but an accident. This is a thought common to the degree of triteness
among moralists and theologians; but as they present it, it fails to
move us. It troubles us as presented by M. Loti, because he has known
how to give it all the force of a sensation.

How has he accomplished this?

He writes with extreme simplicity, and is not averse to the use of
vague and indefinite expressions. And yet the wealth and precision of
Gautier's and Hugo's language fail to endow their landscapes with the