s; and, long as it is, there is
stuff in it for a much longer--indeed preferably for two or three. It is
not only a _roman passionnel_, as Beyle understood passion, not only a
collection of Parisian and Provincial scenes, but a romance of secret
diplomacy, and one of Seminarist life, with constant side-excursions of
Voltairianism, in religion, of the revolutionary element in politics
which Voltaire did not ostensibly favour, however much he may have been
responsible for it, of private cynicism, and above all and most
consistently of all, of that psychological realism, which is perhaps a
more different thing from psychological reality than our clever ones for
two generations have been willing to admit, or, perhaps, able to
perceive.

That--to adopt a division which foolish folk have sneered at directly
and indirectly, but which is valuable and almost necessary in the case
of second-class literature--it is rather an unpleasant than a pleasant
book, must be pretty well apparent from what has been already said of
its author and itself. That it is a powerful one follows almost in the
same way. But what has to be said, for the first, if not also the last,
time in reference to Beyle's fiction, is that it is interesting.

[Sidenote: Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole.]

The interest depends almost entirely--I really do not think it would be
rash to say entirely--upon the hero and one of the heroines. The other
personages are dramatically and psychologically competent, but Beyle
has--perhaps save in one or two cases intentionally--made them something
of _comparses_ or "supers." There may be two opinions about the other
heroine, Madame de Renal, Julien Sorel's first and last love, his victim
in two senses and directly the cause of his death, though he was not
directly the cause of hers. She seems to me merely what the French call
a _femmelette_, feebly amorous, feebly fond of her children, feebly
estranged from and unfaithful to her husband, feebly though fatally
jealous of and a traitress to her lover--feebly everything. Shakespeare
or Miss Austen[134] could have made such a character interesting, Beyle
could not. Nor do the other "seconds"--Julien's brutal peasant father
and brothers, the notables of Verrieres, the husband, M. de Renal
(himself a _gentillatre_, as well as a man of business, a bully, and a
blockhead), and the hero's just failure of a father-in-law, the Marquis
de la Mole--seem to me to come up to the mark. B