When D'Erfeuil for the first time sees St. Peter's in the distance, he likens it to the dome of the Invalides in Paris--a comparison more patriotic than apt; when he sees Corinne at the Capitol he feels a desire to make her acquaintance, but no reverence for her. He is not surprised that her heart has remained untouched in a country where he finds no good qualities in the men, but he cannot help flattering himself with the hope that she will be unable to resist the charms of a well-bred young Frenchman. When she speaks to others in his presence in Italian or English (languages he does not understand), he says to her: "Speak French. You know the language and are worthy to speak it." When he sees that Corinne loves Oswald he does not take it amiss, though his vanity is wounded; but he thinks her passion foolish, because of the improbability of its bringing her happiness. At the same time he most strongly advises Oswald not to enter into a life-long union with an unpresentable woman like Corinne. With all his daring, he bows to the supreme authority of established custom. "If you will be foolish," he says to Oswald, "at least do nothing irreparable;" reckoning among irreparable follies marriage with Corinne. His ideas on literary, correspond to his ideas on social subjects. In Corinne's house the conversation frequently turns upon Italian and English poetry. D'Erfeuil, starting from the premise that French poetry from the time of Louis XV. onwards forms the unquestioned standard, is naturally very severe in his judgment of all foreign productions. To him the Germans are barbarians, the Italians are corrupters of style, and "the taste and elegance of French style" are law-giving in literature. "Our stage literature," he remarks, "is admittedly the finest in Europe, and I do not think that it occurs even to the English themselves to compare Shakespeare with our dramatists." In a company of Italians he shrewdly enough, if without much delicacy, defines Italian drama as consisting of ballets, silly tragedies, and wearisome harlequinades; to him the Greek drama is coarse, Shakespeare formless. "Our drama," he says, "is a model of refinement and beauty of form. To introduce foreign ideas among us would be to plunge us into barbarism."