From 1814 till 1821, except for a short absence in 1817, Beyle was an inhabitant of his beloved Milan. He did not leave it even during the Hundred Days, being convinced that Napoleon's fortunes were irretrievable. A passionate lover of Italian music and singing, he spent happy evenings at the La Scala Theatre. He was received into the best society of the town; in Count Porro's house, or in Lodovico de Brême's box at the theatre, he made acquaintance with the Italian authors and patriots--Silvio Pellico, Manzoni, &c.; and also with such famous travellers as Byron, Madame de Staël, Wilhelm Schlegel, and a whole host of other English and German notabilities. An attachment which lasted for several years made him, what he was capable of being, perfectly happy; but this happiness was rudely disturbed in the summer of 1821 by his summary banishment from Milan. The Austrian police suspected him, quite groundlessly, of intrigues with the Carbonari. He returned once more to Paris in a state of the deepest dejection; and it was during the height of his grief at being separated from the woman he loved, that he wrote his famous book, _De l'Amour_. Hitherto he had written, or at least published, nothing but biographies of Haydn and Mozart, which were only adaptations of Italian and German works, and the _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, with its proudly humble dedication to the captive of St. Helena. None of these books had made any sensation; but the last-mentioned had won him the goodwill and friendship of De Tracy, the philosopher. Beyle at first felt himself completely isolated in Paris. Many of his old associates under the Empire were banished; others had forfeited his regard by cringing to the new Government. At De Tracy's house, however, he met the best of the good society of the day--Lafayette, the Comte de Ségur, Benjamin Constant, &c, &c.; and at such houses as Giuditta Pasta, the famous opera-singer's, he met the young authors, men like Mérimée and Jaquemont. Beyle remained in Paris, except for short visits to England and Italy, until 1830. From 1830 until his death in 1842, he was again in government employment, holding posts which were practically sinecures. The first year he was Consul at Trieste, a place which he disliked, and the rest of the time at Civita Vecchia, which was almost equivalent to being in Rome. Here he lived under the sky he had always loved and among the people he preferred to all others, but his solitude and idleness were unutterably wearisome to him. To such of his countrymen as sought him out and suited him, he was an amiable and most efficient cicerone; but he longed to be back in Paris, although the old martial spirit of the Empire forbade him to acknowledge himself a Frenchman after Louis Philippe's Government yielded (in 1840) to the verdict of Europe on the Eastern question without striking a blow. During the last years of his life his health was bad. He died suddenly of apoplexy while on leave in Paris.[2]