matter of fact being, that his own character, a regiment of dragoons as quartermaster; tendencies, and aspirations had been invaria- and, in the course of a month, received a bly opposed to the plans, wishes, and modes commission as sub-lieutenant. of thinking of his family. They were clearly wrong in endeavoring to force him into uncongenial paths of study; nor was he likely to be cured of his inborn wilfulness, or his morbid sensibility, by harsh treatment. On the establishment of the Ecole Centrale, in 1795, they had no alternative but to send him there; and such was his quickness or diligence, that when the day arrived for the examination in "grammaire générale," not one of the pupils His life in a provincial town differed widely could compete with him, and he received all from that of the brilliant staff-officer, which, the prizes that had been proposed. divided between Brescia and Bergamo, with During the four following years he sus-frequent excursions to Milan and the Isles, tained his reputation by carrying off all the and thickly sown, says his biographer, with first prizes in all the courses that he attended; various and romantic sensations, realized his and at the end of that time, in 1798, he con- conceptions of perfect happiness. So soon as centrated his energies on mathematics for the treaty of Amiens afforded him an honor(according to M. Colomb) the strange reasonable pretext for quitting an inactive and unthat he had a horror of hypocrisy, and rightly exciting course of life in the army, he flung judged that in mathematics it was impossible. up his commission, very much to the disgust A more intelligible and more likely motive of his patrons, and went to reside with his was his laudable ambition to be admitted into parents at Grenoble. Of course this experithe Polytechnic School, for which he was ment failed, but he made himself sufficiently about to become a candidate after much anx-disagreeable to extort an allowance of 150 ious preparation, when a sudden change took francs a month from his father with leave to place in his prospects; and we find him in live at Paris, where, in June, 1807, he took 1800, at the age of seventeen, a supernumer-up his elevated abode (au cinquième) in the ary in the ministry of war. He was indebted Rue d'Angivilliers, and without seeking for for this employment to the Daru family, which introductions or aiming at immediate distincwas distantly related to his own; and when, tion, calmly and resolutely set about educatearly in the same year, the two brothers Daru ing himself anew. Montesquieu, Montaigne, were despatched to Italy on public duty of Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, Say, J. J. Rousan administrative kind, they invited Beyle to seau, were his favorite authors. He also rejoin them there on the chance of some fit- made a careful study of Alfieri's tragedies; ting occupation for him turning up. He made and out of his five francs a day he contrived the journey from Geneva to Milan on horse- to pay masters in English and fencing. He back, following so close on the traces of the got on tolerably well in English, although his invading army, that he had to run the gaunt- instructor was an Irishman with a touch of let before the fort of Bard, which, overlooked the brogue; but his skill with the foil was from its insignificance, had well-nigh frustrated of so equivocal a description, that Renouvier, the most brilliant of Napoleon's early cam- the director of the Salle Fabien, is reported paigns at starting. Our young adventurer to have given him nearly the same advice entered Milan at the beginning of June, 1800; which was addressed to a British peer by a and, on the 14th of that month, had the good celebrated French fencing master, when his fortune to be present, as an amateur, at the lordship was settling account with him at the battle of Marengo. An armistice having been conclusion of a long series of lessons at a signed the next day, he took advantage of it napoleon per hour: Milord, je vous conto visit, in company with a son of General seille décidément d'abandonner les armes." Melas, the Boromean Isles and the other re- Beyle's figure was ill adapted for active markable objects in the vicinity. Hurried exercises; but his nerves, which grew tremuaway, we suppose, by the military spirit lous at the slightest touch of emotion, were which animated all around him, Beyle entered firm as steel in the presence of danger; his He served for about half a year as aide-de-camp to General Michaud, and received the most flattering certificate of courage and conduct; but before the expiration of a year (on September 17th, 1801) he was ordered to rejoin his regiment, then in garrison at Savigliano, in Piedmont, in consequence of a regulation forbidding any officer under the rank of lieutenant to be employed as aide-de-camp. - eye was good, and he attained to such profi- | Daru (the father) procured for Beyle the ciency with the pistol as to be able once, when place of intendent of the domains of the Emanxious to display his skill, to bring down a peror in Brunswick, which he held two years, bird upon the wing at forty yards' distance. profiting by his residence in the Duchy to The reputation thus acquired (perhaps by a study the German language and philosophy. happy accident) was far from useless for a Here, again, he gave signal proof of both man of his character, who was then daily moral and physical courage. He put down liable to be called to account for the indis- an insurrection in a town, the garrison of creet indulgence of his peculiar humor. To- which had just quitted it, by the bold expedi wards the conclusion of his career he writes: [ent of arming the invalid soldiers left behind "I ought to have been killed a dozen times in a hospital, and suddenly leading them for epigrams or mots piquants that cannot be against the crowd. An instance of his enforgotten; and yet I have received only three ergy as an administrator is thus related by M. wounds, two of which are of little conse- Merimée : quence, those in the hand and the left foot." One of his maxims was, to catch at the first occasion for a duel on entering life; and his receipt for a first duel, which he pronounced infallible, runs thus: "Whilst your adversary is taking his aim, look at a tree, and begin counting the leaves. One pre-occupation will distract from another of a graver kind. Whilst taking aim yourself, recite two Latin verses; this will prevent you from firing too quickly, and neutralize that five per cent. of emotion which has sent so many balls twenty feet above the mark.” According to his wonted mode of showing himself worse than he was, he affected to despise the enthusiasm that made the men of his epoch do such great things. 'We had the sacred fire,' he observed, and I among the rest, though unworthy. I had been sent to Brunswick, to levy an extraordinary contribution of five millions. I raised seven millions, and I narrowly escaped being torn in pieces by the populace, who were exasperated at the excess of my zeal. The Emperor inquired the name of the auditor who had so acted, and said “C'est bien. It would have been difficult to discover another auditor similarly circumstanced, who would have refrained from putting into his About this time (1803), Beyle formed the own pocket one, at least, of the two extra curious project of writing a comedy, in one millions; and it is far from clear that the act and in prose, to confute the critical can- Emperor would have trusted or respected him ons of the celebrated Geoffroy. It was to be less on that account, so long as the imperial called " Quelle Horreur! Ou l'ami du des- demands were fully answered. Napoleon potisme pervertisseur de l'opinion publique." commonly knew to a fraction the amount of He worked at it, from time to time, for ten or the illicit gains of his functionaries, as the twelve years; and then definitively abandoned famous contractor Ouvrard discovered to his it. In 1805 he renewed the experiment of cost. This man was once foolish enough to domestic life at Grenoble, which this time bet that Mademoiselle Georges would sup was curiously and characteristically inter- with him instead of keeping her known enrupted. He fell in love with an actress;gagement to sup, on a specified night, at the and, on her leaving Grenoble on a professional Tuileries. He overcame her scruples by a engagement for Marseilles, he pretended a bribe of 200,000 francs, and won his wager. sudden inclination for commerce, and became The day following, he was ordered to attend clerk to a Marseilles firm of dealers in colo- the Emperor, and was thus quietly addressed : nial produce, with whom he remained a year," M. Ouvrard, you have gained five millions when the lady married a rich Russian mag- by your contracts for the supply of the army nate, and Beyle returned to Paris. Having in Spain: you will pay two into the imperial contracted a fixed taste for intellectual pur- treasury without delay." This state of things suits, he was with difficulty persuaded by and tone of feeling must be kept in mind in his friends, the Darus, to attach himself appreciating a man like Beyle, who, after once more to their fortunes. He complied, dealing with millions in times of commotion however, and rejoined them in Germany, and confusion, died in exile because he could where he was present, as a non-combatant, never muster capital enough to secure an at the battle of Jena, and witnessed the tri- annuity of £160 a year. umphant entry of Napoleon into Berlin in 1806. A few days after this event, Count In his capacity of auditor he was attached to the grand army during the invasion of At Russia, and had his full share of the glories, [self out for office under the restored monarchy, dangers, and privations of the retreat. He although a fair opening was managed for him was among the few, says M. Merimée, who, by his friends. on this trying occasion, never forfeited the respect of others. One day, not far from the Beresina, Beyle presented himself, shaved and carefully dressed, before his chief. "You have shaved as usual, I see," observed M. Daru; 66 you are a brave man (un homme de cœur)." In a letter from Moscow he has given one of the most graphic and picturesque accounts we are acquainted with of the fire. It concludes thus: "We left the city lighted up by the finest conflagration in the world, forming an immense pyramid, which, like the prayers of the faithful, had its base on earth and its summit in heaven. The moon appeared above this atmosphere of flame and smoke. It was an imposing spectacle, but one ought to have been alone, or surrounded by men of mind, to enjoy it. That which has spoilt the Russian campaign for me, is to have made it with people who would have commonplaced the Coliseum and the Bay of Naples." He said he had not suffered so very much from hunger during the retreat, but found it impossible to recall to memory how he had procured food, or what he had eaten, with the exception of a lump of tallow, for which he had paid twenty francs, and which he always recollected with delight. Before setting out on this expedition he deemed it prudent to take especial precautions against the want of ready money. His sister replaced all the buttons of a surtout by gold pieces of twenty and forty francs, covered with cloth. On his return she asked if this expedient had answered. He had never once thought of it since his departure. By dint of taxing his memory, he recalled a vague impression of having given the old surtout to the waiter of an inn near Wilna, with the gold buttons sewed up as at Paris. This incident, observes M. Colomb, is truly illustrative, for Beyle was excessively given to precaution, without a parallel for forgetfulness, and reckless to the last degree. In August, 1814, he left Paris for Milan, where he resided till 1821, with the exception of visits to Paris and London in 1817. Milan he enjoyed in perfection the precise kind of life which suited him. The opera was a never-failing source of enjoyment; and there was no department of the fine arts from which he could not draw both instruction and amusement at will. The cosmopolite character of his taste may be inferred from the manner in which he speaks in a letter, dated October, 1818, of Vigano, the composer of ballets: 66 Fi, l'horreur! Every man who has an immense success in his own country is remarkable in the eyes of a philosopher. Vigano, I repeat, has had this success. For example, 4000 francs a year has been usually paid to the composers of ballets; he has 44,000 for 1819. A Parisian will exclaim, He may speak in good faith; only I shall add aside, so much the worse for him. If Vigano discovers the art of writing gestures and groups, I maintain that, in 1860, Therefore, I have a right to call him a great he will be more spoken of than Madame de Staël. man, or at least, a very remarkable man, and superior, like Rossina or Canova, to all that you have at Paris in the fine arts or literature." In another letter, in which he repeats and justifies this opinion, he says, "I pass my evenings with Rossini and Monti: all things considered, I prefer extraordinary men to ordinary ones.' Amongst the extraordinary men with whom he associated on familiar terms at Milan was Lord Byron, who thus alludes to the circumstance in a letter to Beyle in 1823 : "You have done me too much honor by what you have been so good as to say of me in your work; but that which has caused me as much pleasure as the praise is to learn at last (by accident) that I am indebted for it to one whose esteem I was really ambitious to obtain. So many changes have taken place since this epoch in our Milan circle, that I hardly dare revive the memHe abided faithfully by the declining for-ory of it. Death, exile, and Austrian pristunes of Napoleon, and did good service in the crisis of 1814; but he was destined never to enjoy the reward of his devotion; and when the crash came, he bore his ruin with so philosophical an air, that many superficial observers openly accused him of ingratitude and tergiversation. The best answer to such charges was his refusal to apply or lay him ons, have separated those we loved. Poor Pellico! I hope that in his cruel solitude his Muse consoles him sometimes, to charm us once again when her poet shall be restored again with herself to liberty." Beyle's account of their introduction and dinner with Monti is quoted in Moore's "Life of Byron." In March, 1818, he writes thus to a friend who was anxious that he should | little inventions were but jokes; he never derived become a candidate for office : any advantage from them beyond a little amusement." "Without hating any one, I have always been exquisitely abhorred by half of my official relations, &c. &c. To conclude, I like Italy. I pass from seven o'clock to midnight every evening in listening to music; the climate does the rest. Do you know that during the last six weeks we have been at 14° of Reaumur? Do you know that at Venice one lives like a gentleman for nine lire a day, and that the Venetian lira is fifty centimes? I shall live a year or two longer at Milan, then as much at Venice, and then, in 1821, pressed by misfortune, I shall go to Cularo; I shall sell the apartment, for which I was offered 10,000 francs this year, and I shall try my fortune at Paris." This excuse might have been partially admissible if, in the aristocratic society of Milan, he had given himself out for an ex-corporal and the son of a tailor; but the assumption of a superior grade and higher birth savors strongly of a censurable amount of petty vanity; and such tricks were the height of folly in a town like Milan, where both the governing and the governed were naturally prone to suspect treachery. Whilst he was yet hesitating what course to pursue, the police settled the matter by summarily ordering him to leave the Austrian territory, upon the gratuitous supposition that he was affiliated to the sect of Carbonari. From 1821 to 1830, he resided at Paris, where he was an established member of the circles which comprised the leading notabilities of the period, male and female, political, social, literary, and artistical. By a strange coincidence of untoward events, which could not have been so much as guessed when this plan of life was sketched, he was eventually compelled to adhere to it. His father died in the course of the following year (June, 1819), and left him less than half of the 100,000 francs on which he had calculated; and in July, 1820, he writes to announce" the greatest misfortune that could "It is from this epoch," says M. Colomb, happen to him,' "the hardest blow he "that his reputation as homme d'esprit, and had ever received in his life." A report had conteur agréable (both these terms are untransgot about, and was generally credited at Mi- with a sustained interest—to that multitude of latable) dates. Society listened with pleasurelan, that he was a secret agent of the French anecdotes which his vast memory and his lively Government. "It has been circulating for imagination produced under a graceful, colored, six months. I observed that many persons original form. People recognized in the narra tried to avoid saluting me: I cared little and observed with acuteness. Across the protor the man who had studied and seen much, about this, when the kind Plana wrote me found changes undergone by the salon life since the letter which I enclose. I am not angry 1789, he recalled attention, in a limited degree, with him; yet here is a terrible blow. For, to the taste which reigned at that time amongst after all, what is this Frenchman doing here? those who guided it; he succeeded in generalizing the conversation, a difficult and almost Milanese simplicity will never be able to com-disused thing in our days, when, if three people prehend my philosophic life, and that I live here, on five thousand francs, better than at Paris on twelve thousand." He had partly himself to blame for this disagreeable position; for he was very fond of mystifying people by playing tricks with his name, or by adopting odd names and signatures, as well as by giving counterfeit, shifting, and contradictory descriptions of his birth, rank, and profession. "When," says M. Colomb," he had to give are gathered together, there are two conversations proceeding simultaneously without any connection; when routs resemble public places esprit is consumed as at a costume ball, comopen to all comers, and where about as much posed of persons who see each other for the first time. Beyle's agreeability frequently enabled him to triumph over all the dissolvents which tend to destroy French society." And a very great triumph it was, if we consider the period and the angry passions contrived to amalgamate by the introduction which then divided the company that he thus his address to a tailor or bootmaker, it was rarely that he gave his real name. This led to of well-chosen topics, by his felicitous mode quid pro quos which amused him. Thus, he was of treating them, by his varied knowledge, inquired for by turns under the names of Bel, his lively fancy, and his tact. The reason Beil, Bell, Lebel, &c. As to his profession, it depended on the caprice of the moment. At Milan he gave himself out for a superior officer of dragoons who had obtained his discharge in 1814, and son of a general of artillery. All these why M. Colomb is obliged to go back to a period antecedent to 1789 for his model of drawing-room life, is, that the French thenceforth ceased to be the gay, laughing, pleasure seeking nation of which we have read or heard their vanity, of parade their tiresomeness. traditionally. Serious practical politics are a He insisted on anecdotes, facts, and incidents, sad drawback to lively and clever conversation, in contradistinction to the vague, the declamnot merely because any dull fellow can bawl atory, and the abstract style of conversation, out the commonplaces of his party, but be--that trick of phrasemaking, as he termed cause the easy interchange of mind is impeded, it, which (in common with Byron) he deand our thoughts are constantly reverting, in our own despite, to the absorbing and beaten questions of the hour. But the buoyant spirits and elastic energies of a rising generation cannot be kept down. The struggle of a new school of authors or artists with a declining or superannuated one, affords ample scope for the display of wit, taste, and acquire- In an existence like Beyle's, as in a Remment; and the contest between classicism and brandt picture, the bright parts stand out in romanticism, which raged furiously during broad contrast to the surrounding intensity the last years of the Restoration, was admi-of shaderably adapted to the genius of a Beyle. There can hardly be a fairer test of the position held by a man in his own country than the contemporary impression of an enlightened foreigner. In her "France in 1829-30," Lady Morgan describes "the brilliant Beyle" as the central figure of a group of notabilities at her hotel; and his nom de guerre figures thus with her ladyship's name in one of Viennet's versified epistles: "Stendhal, Morgan, Schlegel, ne vous effrayez pas, Muses, ce sont des noms fameux dans nos climats, 66 tected and detested in "Corinne." Madame 66 - Dearly bought the hidden treasure Hearts that vibrate sweetest pleasure What "My sensibility," he writes shortly before Chefs de la Propagande, ardens missionaires, tères." It is elsewhere recorded of him, that, besides talking well himself, he contributed largely to the social pleasures of the circles in which he mixed, by leading others to talk, and by bringing persons of congenial minds together. "A party of eight or ten agreeable persons," he writes, "where the conversation is gay and anecdotic, and where weak punch is handed round at half-past twelve, is the place in the world where I enjoy myself most. There, in my element, I infinitely prefer hearing others talk to talking myself. I readily sink back into the silence of happiness; and if I talk, it is only to pay my ticket of admission." He named half-past twelve at night because the steady, regular, formal people are wont to retire before that time, and the field is pretty sure to be left free to those who live for intellectual intercourse, and love it for its own sake, instead of hurrying to crowd after crowd to proclaim their importance, gratify neglected a dying mother to indulge in pathos hardly wonder that the prospect of an inde- |
