Henry Beyle (otherwise de Stendahl); a critical and biographical study aided by original documents and unpublished letters from the private papers of the family of Beyle

Front matter

P2 I

XilX

THE GIFT OF PRESIDENT WHITE

Chapter I

Grenoble, the Birthplace of Beyle — His Parentage and .Education — Barnave, Chepy, and the Revolutionary Period — Domestic Anxieties — Completes his Education — Goes to Paris at the close of 1799, 1

Chapter II

Paris in 1800 — Beyle's Connection with the Daru Family — Becomes Supernumerary Clerk in the War Office — Accompanies the Army to Italy during the Campaign of Marengo — Becomes an Officer of Dragoons — Quits the Army, and Returns to Paris, ... 8

Chapter III

1803 — Paris during the Consulate — Talma and the French Theatre — Beyle studies Declamation — His Correspondence with his Sister — Precocity of Beyle's Intellect — His Pecuniary Straits — Project of Marriage — His Studies of Parisian Society, . . . .15

Chapter IV

Paris in 1804 — Beyle's enthusiastic Admiration of Napoleon, and his Antipathy against Louis XIV. — The Coronation Period of Kapoleon I. — Engages his Sister to sketch Human Character at Grenoble — His Literary Projects and Studies, 23

Chapter V

Some Account of the Tender Attachments of Beyle — Rupture of Proposed Marriage — In 1805 he follows an Actress to Marseilles, and becomes a Clerk in a Counting-house there, . . . .29

Chapter VI

1806 — Re-enters the Public Service — Campaign of Jena — Residence in Berlin — Impressions of Iffland and the German Theatre — Makes the acquaintance of Ancillon — Is ordered to Brunswick as Receiver of Domain Revenues — Sends Wolfenbiittel Manuscripts to the Imperial Library of Paris — Preparations for his Sister's Marriage, . 39

CHAPTER Vn.

Brunswick in 1807-8 — Beyle Studies German — Berthier Visits Brunswick — Hunting-party at Salzdahlum — Pecuniary Difficulties of Beyle, senior — Youthful Recollections and Tender Attachments, 47

CHAPTER VIIL 1809 — Campaign against Austria — Goes by Strasburg to Bavaria- Impressions of an Army on its March — Nocturnal Adventures — French Army enters Austria, 60

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTEE IX.

Beyle's Residence in Vienna after the Battle of Wagram— Deatt of Haydn— Beyle is present at his Requiem — Beyle's Impressions of Vienna in 1809— A Trip to Hungary— The Emperor Francis, .

CHAPTER X.

X, Paris in 1810 — Gaiety of Society— Marriage of Napoleon with Maria- Louisa — Beyle's Mode of Existence — Paris Amateur Theatricals — Ballroom Fire, and Death of Princess Schwartzenherg, . . 69

CHAPTER XI. 1810 continued — Made Auditor of Council of State — Is Attached to the Household of Napoleon I. as Inspector of the Buildings and Furniture of the Crown — Plan of Prizes for Philosophical Essays — Official Inspection of Sevres — Impressions of Isabey thePainter — Inspection of Versailles and Trianon — Presentation to Maria-Louisa, 77

CHAPTER Xn. ^, 1811 — Beyle Pursues his Studies of French Society — Obtains Leave of "*— Absence from the Duke of Cadore — Revisits Italy — Interview with a Milanese Lady — Revives his Impressions of Italian Art — His Longing to be Established in Italy, ... . .84

CHAPTER Xin. 1812 — Beyle joins the Expedition to Russia — Beyle's Impressions of August Wilhelm Schlegel — Passage of the Niemeu — Commissariat Difficulties — Burning of Smolensko — Beyle's Disappointments and Hypochondria — Burning of Moscow — Retreat from Moscow, . 90

CHAPTEE XIV.

Arrival in Paris after Retreat from Moscow — Unsuccessful Efforts to ^

obtain Employment in Italy — Campaign of Liitzen and Bautzen

in 1813 — Adventures in Saxony — Controller of the Emperor's

Household in Silesia — Serious Illness — Convalescence in Dresden, 99

CHAPTER XV.

1813-14— Beyle goes on Sick-leave to Italy — His Social Relations in Milan — Crisis of the French Empire — Beyle's Mission to Grenoble — ProoeeJings onJ^h§.SjBiS4-EaiP.tior — Fall oi the Empire, . 105

CHAPTEE XVI. ^

1814 — Beyle Loses his Employments and Emoluments — Publishes his Lives of Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio — Motives for Retiring to Italy — Settles in Milan — His Reduced Circumstances — First, Impressions of Milan, . , . . , . . _ .111 CHAPTER XVII.

Residence in Milan in 1814-16— Theatre dellaScala — Beginning of the Career of Rossini — Literary Society of Milan — Monti, Manzoni, Grossi, and Silvio Pellico — Lord Byron's Residence in Milan- Recollections of Byron — Buratti, the Comic Poet of Venice . 116 CHAPTEE XVIH.

Tour through Italy— Correggio-Bologna— Goes by Florence and Rome

to Naples — Meeting with Rossini — Henry Brougham, . .126

CONTENTS, xi

PAQE

CHAPTER XIX. 1817 — Returns to Paris — Publishes " Rome, Naples, et Florence" — Publishes "Histoire de la Peiuture en Italie" — Criticism of Edinburgh Reiiiew and of Journal desDebais — Returns to Milan, 132

CHAPTER XX. 1819-20— Death of Beyle's Father— Musical Society in Milan— Beyle Revisits Bologna — Queen Caroline and her Scandals — Beyle calumniously represented as a Spy — Meyerbeer — Mercadante — Count Gallenberg — Lord Byron — Count Guiccioli, . . . 139

CHAPTER XXI. 1821 — Beyle's Admiration of Sir Walter Soott as a Writer — His unjust Judgment of Soott as a Man from Ignorance of Scottish Feeling — A Letter of Byron to Beyle vindicating the Character of Scott — Beyle Expelled from Milan by the Austrian Authorities, lid

CHAPTER XXII. 1821-22 — Beyle Returns to Paris — The Literary Drawing-rooms of the

Resto~ration — Beyle's Dislike of Madame de Stael's Writings, and ^ Admiration of Benjamin Constant — Count Daru during the Restoration — Beyle visits London — Projects a Literary Journal in Paris — Publication of tBe 1' Amour," . . . . 154

CHAPTER XXIII. 1823— Publication of "Racine et Shakespeare" — English Actors in Paris — De Jouy, Author of the " Eremite de la Chauss^e d'Antin " — Victor Hugo in the Bud — Lamartine — Chateaubriand, . .161

CHAPTER XXIV. 1823-24 — Beyle goes to Rome — Mathieu de Montmorency — BeylePublishes his ' ' Life of Rossini " — Rossini's Personal Impressions of Beyle — Beyle seeks Employment as a Fine-Art Critic, . . 167

CHAPTER XXV. ^^824— Classicists and Roman ticists— Beyle's Opinions of Louis David — Of Eugtoe DelsCcroix— CJT Sir Thomas Lawrence — Of Constable — Of Leopold Robert — OfChantrey — Of Horace Vernet, . .176

CHAPTER XX VL ~~1825-26 — Beyle Writes a Pamphlet against the Material Tendencies of the Age — Is Lampooned in Satirical Verses — His Relations with Paul Louis Courier — Revisits England— Publishes his Novel of "Armance" — It is badly received by the Press, . . , 182

CHAPTER X5VII.

Beyle Revisits Rome — His Acquaintance with Canova — la taken for a Different Person — Roman Society — Cardinal Cousalvi — The Dimidoff Amateur Theatricals — Torlonia the Banker, . . .189

CHAPTER XXVIII. 1828-29 — Sketches of Charles X., of the Duke and Duchess d'Angbuleme, and of the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe — Fur-

Nniahes Notes on Roman Cardinals for Charles X. — Hypochondria ■^Meditates Suicide — Publishes hia " Promenades in Rome," . 194 xii CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTEE XXIX.

Revolution of 1830— Beyle'B Friends in Power— He is named French

Consul at Trieste— Publishes the Novel " Le Rouge ^t le Noir 1

—Beyle's Analysis of the Novel-reading Public in Frafloe— Critical'

^ Examination of "Le Rouge etleNoir," . ■ j ■ • 1»9

CHAPTEE XXX.

Beyle leaves Paris for the Consulate of Trieste— His Dislike of his New Post — Visits Venice, and Acquaintance with the Comic Poet Burrati-«-The Austrian Government refuses Beyle the Exequatur, 2(JS

CHAPTEE XXXI. 1831-33 — Beyle is named French Consul at Civita Vecchia — Period^ of Beyle's Life — Account of the Impression which Beyle made on the Population of Civita Vecchia — He suffers from Malaria — Carnival in Naples — " Chroniques ItaKennes," .... 212

CHAPTEE XXXH. 1834^35 — Letter from Beyle to the Son of Lafayette on the Death of his Father — Eelieves his Ennui by Excavation of Tombs — Finds a Bust of Tiberius — His Health Dechnes — Sufferings from Gravel, 219 CHAPTEE XXXIIL 1835-36 — Frequent" Absences from his Post noticed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs — Explanations of hj^ Frequent Visits to Rome and Albano — Italian Energy — Beyle's projected Autobiography, 225

CHAPTER XXXIV. 1836-37— Beyle Returns to Paris on Sick-Leave — ^Description of the Person and Habits of Beyle at this Period from Contemporary Testimony — Ducoin — Rochas — Charles Monselet — Arnould Fr^my — Remain Colomb— Ary Scheffer and Horace Temet, , 231

CHAPTER XXXV. 1837-38 — Tour through France — Normandy — Brittany — Marseilles — Lyons Gastronomy— Bordeaux and its Wines — Tours and B^ranger — Publishes the " M^moires d'un Touriste," . . . 236

CHAPTER XXXVL 1838 — Beyle Publishes the " Chartreuse de Parme " — It is most Favourably Reviewed by Balzac — Balzac's Personal Relations with Beyle — Beyle's warm Acknowledgments of Balzac's Eulogies, . 240

CHAPTER XXXVII.

1839 — Returns to Civita Vecchia — The Duke de Bordeaux in Rome

Exasperated by the Egyptian Question of 1840 — Has an Apoplectic Fit in 1841 — Becomes an Invalid — Goes to Rome for Medical Treatment — Returns to Paris — His Death and Burial, . . 248

CHAPTER XXXVin.

The Wills of Beyle — Posthumous Anecdotes, 252

Ckitioal Examination of Beyle's Pkikcipal Works, . . 255 Appendix, 319

(OTHERWISE DB STENDAHL).

CH AFTER I.

Grenoble, the Birthplace of Beyle — His Parentage and Education — Barnave, Chepy, and the Revolutionary Period — Domestic Anxieties — Completes his Education — Goes to Paris at the close of 1799.

Beyle used to say that it was as wrong to apply to tke generally speaking uninteresting French landscape the epithet of " La Belle France," as to speak of stern, puritanical England as " Merry England." But there are certainly parts of France to which the epithet may be applied, and to none more so thaii the Dauphin^. In the neighbourhood of the Is§re, where the rugged Alps and sombre forests alternate with rich slopes of pasture and vineyard, is the city of Grenoble, once the Gratianopolis of the decline of the Roman Empire.

The interior of Grenoble has little architecture to recommend it save a court of justice in that style of the revival of which there are many charming specimens in France, from Anet to Chenonceaux, from the sumptuous palace to its miniature in the domestichotels of Rouen and other ancient towns. With the exception of this palace of justice and its noble halls, with their luxuriant woodcarving of free cinque-cento character, the interior of the town is plain and dull almost to the lugubrious. But what human pen can describe the glorious exterior and environs of the place ? Salzburg alone of the European cities seems at all comparable to Grenoble in picturesque situation. The dark blue Isfere, slightly speckled with foam, rushes down its inclined plane with the rapidity of an alpine torrent. On one bank is_ the bulk of the town, on the other rises the castle, a mountain stronghold of great extent and formidable aspect from its precipitous and almost inaccessible sides. The wide plain of the Graisivaudan, smiling with culture, is seen far and near, dotted with villas and villages. Hills verdant with forests of waving oak and chestnut bound this plain ; and beyond and above these the high and hoary Alps are visible in all the towering grandeur of jagged peak and primeval rock, rising out of snows which at noontide have tender shadows of the faintest azure, and at sunset successive gradations of effulgence from brightest gold to those richer orange tints that herald in approaching night.*

The inhabitants of Grenoble have been always renowned for their sprightly character. Nor have men of solid renown been wanting to the native city of Beyle. The knightly Bayard, the acute metaphysician Condillac, the once renowned mechanical genius Vaucanson, the eloquent Barnave, and others of minor note, such as the " Gentil Bernard," were natives of the town in which, on the 23d January 1783, Marie Henri Beyle first saw the light.

Beyle was born in the sphere most favourable for a man of letters — that section of the middle class in which mental culture is conjoined with easy material circumstances. His father was an advocate at the bar of the Parliament of Grenoble, and his mother the daughter of M. Gagnon, an eminent physician.

Beyle lost his mother when only seven year's of age, and the grandfather, M. Gagnon, appears to have been moved by tender affection for his deceased daughter to take her children home to liim. The father, M. Beyle, senior, who lived much at his property at Claix, in the environs of Grenoble, saw the children when he was in town, and had them to spend their summer hoUdays with him at his country-house.

Beyle, senior, was a man of literary culture, and had a wellstored library of French, Italian, and English classics. He was ^sincerely attached to the House of Bourbon, and at the same time liberal in his political opinions. But the new democracy filled

* The " Graisivaudan," or " Gratianswood " (Gratiani Valdua Denaus), was the scene of the exploits of Leadiguifere, that great soldier of the Protestant cause, who, like his master and friend, Henri IV., turned Catholic for reasons of state. In his last days he was Constable of Prance. The plantations around his palace, with terraces and marble statues are at the present time the public garden of Grenoble.

PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION. S

him with disgust, hence his preference for a philosophic retirement at Claix with his books and his flowers. His views on human life were considered profound, but in practice he was sybaritic in his habits, and careless in money matters, so that certain imprudent pecuniary investments told in the sequel unfavourably on the patrimonial interests of the family. We have no records of the capacity of Beyle's mother ; but the maternal grandfather, M. Gagnon, having been a physician in good practice, was acquainted with physical sciences. He was the founder of the library of Grenoble, and considered the most literary person in the town, so that Beyle's own subsequent studies on human passions and on temperaments were no doubt due to hereditary qualities.

In the family, Beyle's favourite became in the sequel his sister Pauline, a young lady of remarkable intelligence and culture, but somewhat original and independent in her ways. She was three years younger than Beyle. In one of his later letters to her which has passed through my hands, I find his reminiscences to go back to childhood. How he did not love her much in infancy; how they had to suffer from a crabbed ill-natured aunt called Seraphiue ; how Beyle once beat his sister, and took refuge in the library of Claix; and how the father came in and threatened the little boy with, " Wretched child, I will eat you !" and how their favourite walk was by the pond-side, with magnificent views of the mountains beyond Voreppe. Whatever befell Beyle in after-life, whether in the whirl of Paris amusements, in the more momentous excitements of Napoleon's victories and reverses, or in the art studies and soft delights of his long Italian retirement, he always had a tender recollection of his beloved sister, and of Claix, with its modest house and garden, and its landscape of green fields and noble mountain profiles.

Beyle's first preceptors were priests, who during the revolutionary period found themselves fallen on evil tongues and evil days of persecution, even to the risk of life, and therefore sometimes suddenly quitted the tuition of the youthful Henri. In the case of Beyle, the boy was father to the man : he was not of a lymphatic, but of a nervous and sanguine temperament, full of curiosity and desire of excitement. One of his peculiarities in after-life was to assume many shapes and adopt many pseudonyms. Like Swift, he frequently addressed the public, not as a professed author, but as a member of some most unliterary trade or profession; and this propensity to the pseudonymous showed itself in early life.

4 MEMOIRS or HENRY BEYLE.

In order to escape claustral discipline, Beyle wrote a letter in a feigned name to his grandfather, pointing out that it would be proper to send the youthful Henri to the " Temple Ddcadaire " of the philanthropists, where the young men were enrolled for the new Spartan sort of education of the young France of that age of social and political novelty ; but the cheat was discovered by a hunchbacked writing-master, who denounced it, to the ire of the grandfather.

In spite of this instance of secretiveness, the character of Beyle appears to have been generous and elevated. When aU the senior members of the Colomb family were thrown into prison during the revolutionary Keign of Terror, the subsequent friend of Beyle, then a little boy, remained alone at home with a nurse, and on the following day was taken to the house of Beyle's grandfather. After dinner the boy slumbered, and yet overheard a conversation in the family as to whether it was safe to incur the suspicions of the " Commune" by harbouring the child of those in prison on political grounds. The iU-natured aunt wished to send off the boy Colomb ; but Beyle, not knowing that he was anxiously overheard by the friend of his future life, pleaded the cause of the other boy in such a manner as to strengthen their nascent friendship.

As the business of this book is not only the life of Beyle, but some little elucidation of the political history of the times in which he lived, we may premise that in 1760 commenced the sharp debates and contests between the Parliament of Dauphin^ and the Government of Louis XV. as to taxation and the despotic registration of laws. The agitation of twenty-eight years later brought matters to a point, led as it was by such men as Monnier and Baruave. But the legal resistance to despotism had results which the moderate Monnier never anticipated. The revolutionary spirit took possession of Grenoble. On the 7th June 1788 took place the first attack of the people on the troops, with tiles taken from the roofs of houses, and called " La journ^e des tui4es" (Pilot's "Departement de I'lsSre Faits Historiques "). Bernadotte, then a sergeant in the " Eegiment Royal Marine," was wounded in the head on this occasion. It was the first overt act of revolution, not only in Grenoble, but of France itself, and has been characterised as such by several eminent historians.

During the four following years the inhabitants followed with intense interest the progress of events in Paris ; but the Republic

GRENOBLE DUKING THE REVOLUTION. 5

in Grenoble, although completely victorious, was not sanguinary ; and many tears were shed when Barnave, their brilliant Girondin townsman, perished on the Paris scaffold on the 28th of November 1793. In order to revolutionise the Dauphinlin the Jacobin sense, the Commune of Paris sent one Chepy, a native of Champagne, to Grenoble. He was then a man of thirty-eight years of age, with a rubicund countenance, a lively eye, and a sonorous voice. He spoke with fluency, and even with purity, and a literary elegance of style. His title was that of " Commissary of the Executive Power."

Chepy began his work by ferreting out all the dep6ts of church silver in private houses, aided by a committee of twenty-one persons. He ordered the arrest of the Bishop as an enemy to philosophy. But Rivier, the president of the committee, said that religion was necessary to prevent the common people from committing robbery and murder. But he was informed that a " bas peuple " did not exist in France, as all were equal. This man, who passed the night in weeping on account of the unjust arrest of the Bishop, was next day most ungallantly taken to task for having spoken to a citoyenne under arrest with his hat off !

Sixty-five arrests and sixteen summonses to give explanations now followed. With these arrests commenced " the Eeign of Terror " in Grenoble ; not actual guillotine massacres, but the acute apprehension that they were about to supervene — 'a most awful condition of the mind for pacific citizens. There were no burnings of chateaux in Dauphini, but Grenoble was melancholy and deserted. In the Graisivaudan the peasants would not take the assignats, and hid their grain ; hence successive mobs and riots in the town, with plundering of flour stores and bakers' shops.

On the 6th of December 1793, the cathedral was converted into a " Temple of reason and truth," Chepy in a Phrygian cap being the chief preacher on the occasion.* This not ineloquent popular tribune, after all his fine harangues, occupied the obscure post of chancellor of the French Consulate at Rhodes, and at the close of the Empire was commissary of police at Brest.

* I give a Bpecimen of a priest of tiiis curious period. " V. A. excliartreux eat depuis la revolution prdtre conetitutionnel abjure le fai>atisme, part pour la defense de la patrie, et pour donner le coup de gr^oe au monstre encore palpitant vient de faire proolamer son mariage." — (Albin Gras,, "Deux Annies de I'Histoire de Grenoble.")

6 MEMOIES OF HENKT BEYLE.

The reader may imagine the temporary alarm of the Beyle, Gagnon, and Colomb families. But at Paris, Heurion, the Jacobin deputy of the IsSre to the Convention, pleading with Eobespierre, stated that he would be personally responsible for the democratic sentiments of Grenoble, and it was thus saved from having a bloody tribunal. A son of the Duke de Eohan and two priests were the only persons executed in Grenoble during the " Terror." It was in the house of his birth, at the corner of the Grande Kue and the Place Greuette, that the youthful Beyle was a contemporary and spectator of those events which he followed with an admittedly precocious intelligence. On the establishment of a central school, his priestly tutors were sent away ; a free-thinking education succeeded to the ecclesiastical one, and until the close of his life Beyle was a determined sceptic.

M. Colomb, his schoolfellow and friend through life, gives a lively sketch of Beyle in these youthful days, which we condense for the British reader, who may not be familiar with proper names of persons and places in Grenoble.

" Beyle had a keen relish for reading, and a great desire to possess books. One of his first acts of independence was to purchase the works of Florian, on which he spent a louis d'or of twenty-four francs, which was all his capital at that time. He devoured in secret the simple romances of the good-natured Florian. How our young hearts beat with new sensations derived from the perusal of 'Estelle,' ' Galat^e,' 'Gonsalve,' and 'Numa'!

" We had patriotic sentiments of admiration for the victories of the Eepublioan armies, but, on the other hand, we had the Royalist opinions of our parents. One evening of January 1797, between seven and eight o'clock, Beyle and I with ten other comrades found ourselves opposite the tree of fraternity, which had a superscription painted on canvas —

" Hatred to Royalty.

Constitution of the year III."

One of us fired at the painted canvas with heavy lead drops, so as to completely disfigure the emblem. This threw our families, who were already ill-famed with the Commune, into a mortal anxiety, for some people thought that there was a great conspiracy against the Republic ; but the authorities treated it as having been done for a wager, and made light of it, consequently no arrest took place.

HIS EDUCATION. 7

"Among the pupils of the Central School was a youth of fair complexion, vulgar face, athletic form, and rustic manners, who was nicknamed Goliath by the schoolboys. Beyle, who from his punchy form was called the walking turret [la tour ambulante], cracked his jokes on this man, who on one occasion would no longer stand them, and a conflict of fisticuffs ensued. The combatants were separated by their comrades, but a duel with pistols was arranged in the fosse of the rampart. The pistols were loaded, and four or five hundred persons were present to see the affair ; but it ended in a burlesque interruption of all possibility of bloodshed by the interference of the bystanders."

Beyle at this time studied Latin, belles lettres, drawing, mathematics, and the higher principles of grammar. The principal professors of the new Central School had been selected by his grandfather, M. Gagnon, and therefore, with his natural talents, he made great progress, and gained most prizes. M. Gagnon took the most lively interest in his studies, the father continuing to live at Claix, in the environs, occupied with rural affairs. Beyle had a turn for mathematics ; but it was especially in literature that his progress was rapid ; and M. BussiSre mentions that, when he was fourteen years of age, his school companions renounced the contest with him in belles lettres in recognition of his superiority, so that he gained the prize of literature without a contest. He studied mathematics in Grenoble down to the autumn of 1799 ; and as his father wished him to complete his studies at the newly-created Polytechnic School of Paris, which was speedily rising to a European celebrity, he left Grenoble for the French capital

MEMOIRS OF HENRY BETLE.

CHAPTER II.

Paris in 1800— Beyle's Connection with the Dara Family — Becomes Supernumerary Clerk in the War Office — Accompanies the Army to Italy during the Campaign of Marengo — Becomes an Officer of Dragoons — Quits the Army, and Returns to Paris.

Beyle arrived in Paris on the lOth November 1799, as the century was about to close. Paris was then in the high tide of the g-aiety and laxity of the newly re-constituted society of the Directorial period. The huge nightmare of the Revolution had disappeared, and the astounding, almost incredible, victories of the youthful Bonaparte raised the public joy and enthusiasm to fever height. If the boy is father to the man, the man is the descendant of the boy. In Beyle's tender years we find the factors of his subsequent most cherished opinions. From the "Temple D6cadaire" dates his confirmed opposition to all religious belief; and from the natural enthusiasm for the great soldier of the Republic grew that Bonapartist idolatry that shut its eyes to even the crimes and the errors of the First Empire. In Paris his tastes showed themselves to be rather literary and artistic than scientific. M. Bussifere says that he went to Paris more pre-occupied with the pleasure of hearing Italian music than with mathematics ; and what a triad of mathematicians then taught in Paris — Laplace, Lagrange, and Legendre !

It was a distant relationship with the Daru family that launched the youthful Beyle into the society of the Directorial period. The Darus "were in the seventeenth century highly respectable tanners in the Rue du Boeuf of Grenoble; and, as in the case of a majority of the modern noblesse of France and England, the descendants of those enriched by trade and manufacture passed through the grades of the legal profession to the hij;her branches of administration. In the middle of last century the Daru of that day held the considerable post of secretary of the " Intendant " of Dauphin^, and afterwards settled with his family in the same capacity in Languedoc. Half a cen-

THE DAEU FAMILY. 9

tury later, during the Directory, we find " M. Daru, p§re, " living at Paris with his two intelligent and active sons, Pierre and Martial Daru, who had been especially noticed and eraployed by Camot in his career of Minister of War and organiser of victory at the eventful period of the renovation of the military administration of France. They were both at this time in Carnot's office, and the former became one of the most important personages of the Consulate and the Empire — Napoleon's Commissary- General of those grand armies that for a few brief years swept victoriously over Europe. Successively Count of the Empire, Senator, Peer of Louis XVIII. 's creation, and President of the Freiich Academy, this man inspired universal respect by his punctuality and integrity as a man of business, by the conciliatory amenity of his character .in situations of great difficulty while serving the most unscrupulous of masters, and by an elastic intelligence and large general knowledge, which was not only displayed in his official functions, but made his conversation relished by that briUiant, literary, scientific, and artistic society of Paris which an Alexander von Humboldt has painted with such graphic felicity.

The man who has few allies must storm the world's ramparts himself. How rarely have those wljo possess allies, escorts, guides, adjutants, and supporters, the consciousness of their advantages ! Among these latter was Beyle. The Darus repeatedly, during Beyle's career, got Fortune to knock at his door, but with disappointing results. If we consider the influence which such men could use, and in fact did use, for Beyle, the importance of such a connection is obvious. But Beyle, inconstant, wayward, and with the temperament of an artist, does not seem to. have practically appreciated that which most ordinary prosaic men of the world would have grasped at. Beyle was a man of genius, but he had a hundred irresistible impulses which could not be squared with reason.* Yet he was conscious of his own defects, and showed at a subsequent period that he could analyse the mental processes of the prudent and the selfcommanding with the rarest felicity.

After getting over a supposed menace of chest-disease, Beyle lodged in the house of M. Daru in the Kue de LUle, which had