has been
explained, may "force the _consigne_" here, is that Beyle in his youth,
and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the
very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat for" Madame de
Merteuil.

[137] This bad bloodedness, or [Greek: kakoetheia], of Beyle's heroes is
really curious. It would have qualified them later to be Temperance
fanatics or Trade Union demagogues. The special difference of all three
is an intense dislike of somebody else "having something."

[138] In that merry and wise book _Clarissa Furiosa_.

[139] She keeps the anniversary of his execution, and imitates
Marguerite in procuring and treasuring, at the end of the story,
Julien's severed head. (It may be well to note that Dumas had not yet
written _La Reine Margot_.)

[140] In proper duel, of course; not as he shot his mistress.

[141] Its great defect is the utter absence of any poetical element.
But, as Merimee (than whom there could hardly be, in this case, a critic
more competent or more friendly) said, poetry was, to Beyle, _lettre
close_.

[142] It seems curiously enough, that Beyle did mean to make the book
_gai_. It is a a very odd kind of gaiety!

[143] This attraction of the _forcat_ is one of the most curious
features in all French Romanticism. It was perhaps partly one of the
general results of the Revolutionary insanity earlier, partly a symptom
or sequel of Byronism. But the way it raged not only among folks like
Eugene Sue, but among men and women of great talent and sometimes
genius--George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo--the last and greatest
carrying it on for nearly two generations--is a real curiousity of
literature. (The later and different crime-novel of Gaboriau & Co. will
be dealt with in its place.)

[144] _V. sup._ vol. i. p. 39.

[145] A pseudonymous person has "reconstituted" the story under the
title of _Lucien Leeuwen_ (the hero's name). But some not inconsiderable
experience of reconstitutions of this kind determined me to waste no
further portion of my waning life on any one of them.

[146] It may be desirable to glance at Beyle's avowed or obvious
"intentions" in most if not all his novels--in the _Chartreuse_ to
differentiate Italian from French character, in _Le Rouge et le Noir_ to
embody the Macchiavellian-Napoleonic principle which has been of late so
tediously phrased (after the Germans) as "will to" something and the
like. These intentions may interest some: