t first its color is green.
When it reaches the air it becomes hard and red. It is half a foot in
length. He who carries it will never be afraid of lightning or tempest.
The field in which it is placed will be very fertile, and rendered safe
from hail or any other kind of storm. It drives away evil spirits, and
gives a good beginning to all undertakings and brings them to a
good end.

MARIE-HENRI BEYLE (STENDHAL)

(1783-1842)

BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER

Marie-Henri Beyle, French novelist and man of letters, who is better
known under his bizarre pseudonym of Stendhal, is a somewhat unusual
figure among French writers. He was curiously misappreciated by his own
generation, whose literary movements he in turn confessedly ignored. He
is recognized to-day as an important link in the development of modern
fiction, and is even discussed concurrently with Balzac, in the same way
that we speak of Dickens and Thackeray, Emerson and Lowell.

[Illustration: HENRI BEYLE]

There is nothing dramatic in Stendhal's life, which, viewed impartially,
is a simple and somewhat pathetic record of failure and disillusion. He
was six years older than Balzac, having been born January 23d, 1783, in
the small town of Grenoble, in Dauphine, which, with its narrow
prejudices and petty formalism, seemed to him in after years "the
souvenir of an abominable indigestion." He early developed an abnormal
sensibility, which would have met with ready response had his mother
lived, but which a keen dread of ridicule taught him to hide from an
unsympathetic father and a still more unkind aunt,--later his
step-mother, Seraphie Gagnon. He seemed predestined to be
misunderstood--even his school companions finding him odd, and often
amusing themselves at his expense. Thus he grew up with a sense of
isolation in his own home, and when, in 1800, he had the opportunity of
going to some distant relatives in Paris, the Daru family, he seized it
eagerly. The following year he accompanied the younger Darus to Italy,
and was present at the battle of Marengo. This was the turning-point of
Stendhal's career. He was dazzled by Napoleon's successes, and
fascinated with the beauty and gayety of Milan, where he found himself
for the first time in a congenial atmosphere, and among companions
animated by a common cause. His consequent sense of freedom and
exaltation knew no bounds. Henceforth Napoleon was to be his hero, and
Italy the land of his election; two lif