But Stendhal left the soul out of his scheme of life; never did he knock at the gate of her dwelling-place. Believing with Napoleon that because the surgeon's scalpel did not lay bare any trace of the soul, there was none, Stendhal practically denied her existence. For this reason his windows do not open upon eternity. They command fair, charming prospects. Has he not written: "J'ai recherché avec une sensibilité exquise la vue des beaux paysages.... Les paysages étaient comme un archet qui jouait sur mon âme"? He meant his nerves, not his soul. Spiritual overtones are not sounded in his work. A materialist (a singularly unhappy home and maladroit education are to blame for much of his errors in after life), he was, at least, no hypocrite. He loved beautiful art, women, landscapes, brave feats. He confesses, in a letter to Colomb, dated November 25, 1817, to planning a History of Energy in Italy (both Taine and Barrès later transposed the theme to France with varying results). A tissue of contradictions, he somehow or other emerges from the mists and artistic embroilments of the earlier half of the last century a robust, soldierly, yet curious, subtle and enigmatic figure. It is best to employ in describing him his own favourite definition--he was "different." And has he not said that difference engenders hatred? VI In his brilliant and much-abused book, A Rebours, the late J.-K. Huysmans describes the antics of a feeble-brained young nobleman who, having saturated himself with Baedeker's London, the novels of Dickens, English roast beef and ale, came to the comical conclusion that he might be disappointed if he crossed the Channel, so after a few hours spent within the hospitable walls of a Parisian English bar he gathered up his plaids, traps, walking-stick, and calmly returned to his home near the French capital. He had travelled to England in an easy-chair, as mentioned by Goldsmith--better after all than not travelling at all. Circumstances condemn many of us to this mode of motion, which comes well within the definition of our great-grandfathers, who called it The Pleasures of the Imagination.