Egoists

inutes without making love; granting, of course, that the woman is pretty and pleasing. This idea Stendhal had imbibed when a soldier in the Napoleonic campaign. It was hussar t

beloved by Goethe-omitting Frederike Brion. True to the compass of Teutonic sentimentality, Goethe's mother heads the list. Then follow the names of Cornelia, K?tchen Sch?nkopf, Lotte Buff, Lili Sch?nemann, Corona Schr?ter, Frau von Stein, Christiane Vulpius-later Frau von Goethe-Bettina von Arnim, Minna Herzlieb, and Marianne v. Willemer; with their respective birth and death dates. Several other nam

e. Jules, and la petite P. The number he loved without consolation was still larger. Despite his hussar man?uvres, Stendhal was easily rebuffed. It is odd that Goethe's and Stendhal's fair ones, upon whom they poured poems and novels, did not die-that is, immediately-on being deserted. Goethe relieved the pain of many partings by writing a poem or a play and seeking fresh faces. Stendhal did the same-substituting a novel or a study or innumerable letters for poems and plays. He believed that one nail drove out another; which is very soothing to masculine vanity. But did any woman break her heart because of his fickleness? Frau von Stein of all the women loved by Goethe probably took his defection seriously. She didn't kill herself, howev

not spared others. What can the critics, who recently blamed George Moore for his plain speech in his memoirs, say to Stendhal's journals and La Vie de Henri Brulard? Many of the names were at first given with initials or asterisks;

mental epicurean, he is the artistic descendant of Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, both by tradition and temperament. Stendhal fell into the mistake of the metaphysician in setting up numerous categorical traps to snare his subject. They are artificial, and yet bear a resemblance to certain Schopenhauerian theories. Both men practised what they did not preach. "Beauty is a promise of happiness," wrote Stendhal, and it was so effective that Baudelaire rewrote it with a slight variation. The "crystallisation" formula of Stendhal occurred to him while down in a salt mine near Salzburg. He saw an elm twig covered with sparkling salt crystals, and he

e lady's fortune-whoever she might have been-and the world's good luck that he never was married. As a husband he would have been a glorious failure. Mélanie Guilbert-Louason was an actress in Paris, who, after keeping him on tenter-hooks of jealousy, accepted his addresses. He couldn't marry her, because the allowance made by his father did not suffice for himself; besides, she had a daughter by a former marriage. He confesses that lack of money was the chief reason for his timidity with women; a millionaire, he might have been a conquering and detestable hero. Like Frédéric Moreau in L'Education Sentimentale, Stendhal always fea

ishing for want of love!" He thought doubtless of Métilde, wife of General Dembowsky, who from 1818 to 1824 (let us not concern ourselves if these dates coincide with or overlap other love-affairs; Stendhal was very versatile) neither encouraged nor discouraged at Milan the ardent exile. So infatuated was he that he neglected his chances with the actress Viganò, and also with the Countess Kassera. Madame Dembowsky, who afterward did not prove so cruel to the conspirator Ugo Foscolo, allowed Stendhal the inestimable privilege of kissing her hand. He sighed like a schoolboy and trailed after the heartless one from Milan to Florence, from Florence to Rome. The gossip that he was the lover in Paris of the singer

ge, lorsqu'il n'y a pas d'amour, est

lamer dans la pudeur, c'est de