Here again the difference between Beyle and Mérimée is mainly conditioned by the fact that the former was far less sceptical than the latter. Beyle was a materialist of the school of the Encyclopedists, and as such had firm beliefs. He had his philosophy--Epicureanism, to which he adhered faithfully; his method--psychological analysis; his religion--the worship of beauty in life, in music, in the plastic arts, and in literature. Mérimée has no philosophy; one cannot imagine anything less dogmatic than his half-stoical, half-sensual turn of mind; and he has no religion; he worships nothing. He avoids enthusiasm as carefully as if it were a disease. We are impressed by this fact in reading his remarks on Leonidas and the battle of Thermopylæ in the famous essay on Grote's _History of Greece_. He tells how he himself some years before had spent three days at Thermopylæ, and confesses that, "prosaic as he is," it was not without emotion that he climbed the little height where the last of the Three Hundred fell. But he did not allow himself to be overcome by his emotion. He examined the Persian arrow-heads, and found that they were of flint--these Asiatics, therefore, were but poor savages in comparison with the Europeans; if we have cause to marvel at anything, it is that they made their way through the Pass at all. He proceeds to criticise Leonidas severely for having occupied this impregnable position himself, leaving the other pass, which was much more difficult to defend, in charge of a coward. The death of Leonidas was undoubtedly the death of a hero; but let us picture to ourselves, if we can, his return to Sparta after having surrendered the key of Hellas to the Barbarians. Mérimée comes to the conclusion that Herodotus has written history as a poet, and moreover as a Greek poet, whose chief aim it is to throw the beautiful into strong relief; and he ends with the question: Can it be said that in this case the fiction is of more value than the truth? Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would unhesitatingly answer: Yes. Mérimée does not. He is writing in 1849, and with recent historical tragedies in his mind he answers: "Possibly. But it was by misrepresenting Thermopylæ, misrepresenting the ease with which three hundred free men could resist three million slaves, that the orators of Italy persuaded the Piedmontese to pit themselves alone against the Austrians." Compare with this sceptic spirit of Mérimée's the enthusiastic and simple faith with which Beyle retails the untrustworthy legend of Beatrice Cenci.