A History of the French Novel. Volume 2. To the Close of the 19th Century

137

This bad bloodedness, or κακοηθεια, 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 Mérimée (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 forçat 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 Eugène 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: for me, I must confess, they definitely get in the way of the interest. For essays, "good": for novels, "no."