Beyle often said that only pedants and priests talk about death; he was not afraid of it, but he looked upon it as a sad and ugly thing of which it becomes us best to speak as little as possible. When in 1842 he died suddenly, as he had hoped he might, his name was almost unknown to the public. Only three people attended his funeral, at which not a word was spoken. Such notices of him as appeared in the newspapers, though well-intentioned, only proved how little understood he was by those who appreciated him most. But since then his fame has steadily increased. At first he was regarded as a more or less affectedly eccentric original; and at a later period, when his great gifts were acknowledged, he was still looked upon as an isolated figure, as a paradoxical, unfruitful genius. I, for my part, see in him not only one of the chief representatives of the generation of 1830, but a necessary link in the great intellectual movement of the century; for as a psychologist his successor and the continuer of his work was no less a man than Taine, and as an author his successor and disciple was Prosper Mérimée.[3] [1] For example: "Julien's answers to these objections were very satisfactory as far as the actual words were concerned, but the tone in which he spoke and the ill-concealed fire which gleamed in his eyes made Monsieur Chélan uneasy. Yet we must not augur too unfavourably of Julien. He had found the very expressions which a crafty hypocrite would have used. This, at his age, was not bad. As to tone and gestures, it is to be remembered that he had lived among peasants and had had no opportunity of studying the great masters. Hardly had he had the privilege of seeing these said gentlemen than he became as admirable in the matter of gesture as in that of language." On another occasion Julien is dining with a brutally cruel governor of a prison. He feels ashamed of the company he is in; he says to himself that he too may some day attain to such a position, but only by committing the same base actions to which his companions have accustomed themselves. "O Napoleon!" he ejaculates, "how glorious was thy day, when men rose to fortune by the dangers of the battle-field! But think of doing it by basely adding to the sufferings of the unfortunate!" Beyle adds: "I confess that the weakness which Julien betrays in this monologue gives me a poor opinion of him. He would be a fit colleague of those gloved conspirators who aim at completely changing the destinies of a great country, but are determined not to have even the smallest scratch to reproach themselves with."