Egoists

by the Frenchman from Grenoble. But what a literary and artistic gold-mine his letters, papers, manuscripts of unfinished novels have proved to men like Casimir Stryienski and the rest.

s, streets, inhabitants. References to Ancona, to the author's second sojourn in Milan, and to his numerous lady-loves-each one of whom he lashed himself into believing unique-are therein. He placed Mozart and Cimarosa above all other composers, and Shakespeare above Racine. Naturally the man who loved Mozart was bound to adore Raphael and Correggio. Lo

im as an old gentleman of exceeding but capricious esprit. He roamed among the picture galleries, exclaiming joyously before some old Greek marble or knitting his brows in the Sistine Chapel. Raphael was more to his taste than Michaelangelo, as might have been expected from one who went wild over the ballets Viganò. Another anecdote is one that reveals the malicious, almost simian trickiness of Beyle-Stendhal. An English lady, a traveller bent on taking notes for a book about Paris, was shown around the city by Stendhal. Seriously, and with his usual courtesy, he gave her an enormous amount of misinformation, misnaming public buildings, churches, the Louvre, its pictures, and nicknaming well-k

tcher. It depicts the new world-city of Eleutheropolis-a Paris raised to the seventh heaven of cosmopolitanism-with Stendhal set in its midst. Rops was evidently contented to take the little pot-bellied caricature of Henri Monnier, which Monnier declared was not exaggerated, and put it on a pedestal. In his familiar and amusing manner the illustrator shows us multitudes from every quarter of the globe travelling by ever

ought of Stendhal. There are shocking passages and witty. An atheist, more because of political reasons than religious, Stendhal relates a story about the death of God from heart disease. Sin

despite his clairvoyant prediction. He disliked Hugo, ignored Berlioz, and had no opinion at all on the genius of Delacroix. The painters of 1830, that we knew half a century later as the Barbizon school, he never mentions. We may imagine him abusing the impressionists in his choleric vein. His appreciations of art, while sound-who dare flout Raphael and Correggio?-are narrow. The immense claims made continually by the Stendhalians for their master are balked by evidences of a provincial spirit. Yes; he, the first of the cosmopolitans, the indefatigable globe-trotter, keenest of observers of the human heart, man without a country-he has said, "My country is where there are most people like me"-was often as blindly prejudiced as a dweller in an obscure hamlet. An

risoners; with whom, as French Consul, I cannot possibly seek friendship." To kill the ennui of his existence he either slipped into Rome for a week or else wrote reams of "copy," most of which he never saw in print. Among certain intellectual circles in Paris he was known and applauded as a man

believers of the fold that even such evidences of plagiarism do not disconcert them. The cribbing occurs in the general reflections devoted to the Renaissanc

and upon poets and painters. Adoring Raphael as much as he did Napoleon and Byron, he declared that Raphael failed in chiaroscuro and vaunted the superiority of Correggio in this particular. But he did not deign to mention Rembrandt. Nothing Germanic or Northern pleased him. He was a Latin among Latins, and his passion for Italy and the Italians was not assumed. He had asked of his executor that he be buried in the little Protestant cemetery at Rome. Then he changed his mind and ordered that the cemetery of Andilly, near Montmorency, be his last resting-place. But the fat

ds, or a maker of images. Not poetic, yet he did not fail to value Dante and Angelo. Virile, cynical, sensual, the greatest master of psychology of his age, he believed in action rather than thought. Literature he pretended to detest. Not a spinner of cobwebs, he left no definite system; it remained for Taine to gather together the loose

ouring and voluptuous design, was his favourite painter. He was complex, but he was not morbid. The artistic progenitor of a long line of analysts, supermen, criminals, and ?sthetic ninn

ysages.... Les paysages étaient comme un archet qui jouait sur mon ame"? He meant his nerves, not his soul. Spiritual overtones are not sounded in his work. A materialist (a singularly unhappy home and maladroit education are to blame for much of his errors in after life), he was, at least, no hypocrite. He loved beautiful art, women, landscapes, brave feats. He confesses, in a letter to Colomb, dated November 25, 1817, to planning a Histor