[2] In a letter of July 16, 1813, he writes: "If the so-called superiority is only a superiority of some few degrees, it makes its possessor amiable and attractive to others--see Fontenelle. If it is more, it destroys every relation between him and other men. This is the unfortunate position in which the superior man, or, to speak more correctly, the man who is different from others, finds himself. Those who surround him can contribute nothing to his happiness. The praise of all these people would very soon disgust me, and their criticism would gall me." And in the fourth chapter of _La Chartreuse de Parme_ we read: "His comrades found out that Fabrice was very _unlike_ themselves, at which they took umbrage; he, on the contrary, began to have a very friendly feeling towards them." [3] In the letter which he wrote, but did not send, to Byron, he writes of Napoleon as "le héros que j'ai adoré." And a letter of 10th July 1818 contains the following lyrical outburst--probably the only one in his twenty volumes: "O Sainte-Hélène! roc désormais si célèbre, tu es l'écueil de la gloire anglaise." We are reminded of Hugo and Heine. [4] For references to Lord Byron in Beyle's works, see the essay "Lord Byron en Italie" in the volume entitled _Racine et Shakespeare_, 261; and _Lettres à ses Amis_, i. 273, &c.: ii. 71, &c. [5] _Rouge et Noir_, i. 105; ii. 45. XX BEYLE Prior to 1830 Beyle published no imaginative work of any importance except a novel entitled _Armance_, an unsuccessful book, the hero of which, a gifted young man, makes the woman he loves unhappy, because he suffers from a half-physical, half-mental ailment, the nature of which is not precisely defined, but which appears to resemble that which played a part in the lives of Swift and Kierkegaard. The year 1830, epoch-making in history, is also epoch-making in Beyle's literary career. It is the year in which he writes or plans both his great novels--_Le Rouge et le Noir_, published in 1831, and _La Chartreuse de Parme_, which was not completed till 1839, when it was published simultaneously with the most important of his Italian Chronicles, _L'Abbesse de Castro_.