In 1813 his duties brought him to Segan in Silesia, and in 1814 to his native town of Grenoble. The fall of Napoleon in the same year deprived him of his position and prospects. He went to Milan and stayed there with little interruption till 1821; only leaving after these, the happiest, years of his life, through fear of being implicated in the Carbonari troubles. In 1830, he was appointed to the consulate of Trieste; but Metternich, who, no doubt, mistrusted his liberal [Pg xxi] tendencies, refused to ratify his appointment, and he was transferred to Civita Vecchia. This unhealthy district tried his health, and frequent travel did not succeed in repairing it. In 1841, he was on leave in Paris, where he died suddenly in the following year. * * * * * Stendhal's best-known books are his two novels: _La Chartreuse de Parme_ and _Le Rouge et le Noir_. Besides these there are his works of travel--_Promenades dans Rome_ and _Rome, Florence et Naples_; _Mémoire d'un Touriste_; his history of Italian painting; his lives of Haydn, Mozart and Rossini; _L'Abbesse de Castro_ and other minor works of fiction; finally a number of autobiographical works, of which _La Vie de Henri Brulard_, begun in his fiftieth year and left incomplete, is the most important. But _De l'Amour_, Stendhal himself considered his most important work; it was written, as he tells us, in his happy years in Lombardy. It was published on his return to Paris in 1822, but it had no success, and copies of this edition are very rare. Recently it has been reprinted by Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons (in _Chef d'Œuvres de la Littérature Française_, London and Paris, 1912). The second edition (1833) had no more success than the first and is equally difficult to find. Stendhal was preparing a third edition for the press when he died in 1842. In 1853 the work made a new appearance in the edition of Stendhal's works published by Michel-Lévy, since reprinted by Calmann-Lévy. It contains certain additions, some of which Stendhal probably intended for the new edition, which he was planning at the time of his death. Within the last year have appeared the first volumes of a new French edition of Stendhal's works, published by Messrs. Honoré and Edouard Champion of Paris. [Pg xxii] It will be the most complete edition of Stendhal's works yet published and is the surest evidence that Stendhal's position in French literature is now assured. The volume containing _De l'Amour_ has not yet appeared. The basis of this translation is the first edition, to which we have only added three prefaces, written by Stendhal at various, subsequent dates and all well worth perusal. Apart from these, we have preferred to leave the book just as it appeared in the two editions, which were published in Stendhal's own lifetime.