It would probably occur to none of them, for instance, as it does to Anatole France, to begin an appreciation of Stendhal with the statement that he “had a leg.” Modern costume has abolished this advantage, but Stendhal lived, at any rate for the greater part of his life, in the knee-breeches period, when calves were on exhibition. Unluckily, Stendhal’s calves do not appear in the portrait prefixed to the Correspondence, but only the head, which is rather quaintly ugly. Quaint ugliness in men is not displeasing to women (or where would most of us be?), but what ne’er won fair lady is faint heart, and Stendhal was timid. Thus, as a young man Stendhal is said to have loved Mlle. Victorine Monnier for five years before he spoke to her. He was not sure that even then she knew who he was. And this was the man who wrote a treatise “De l’Amour” (a delightful book to skim through, nevertheless), and preaches that every woman can be captured by direct assault! I remember once talking to the wife of a popular novelist, a great enthusiast for love, about her husband’s variety and virtuosity on this subject. She replied without enthusiasm: “Yes, in his books.” On the same point, M. France reports a capital _sub rosâ_ saying of Renan’s:—“Les Européens font preuve d’une déplorable indécision en tout ce qui concerne la conjonction des sexes.” As might have been expected from a writer for the “happy few,” Stendhal did not suffer fools gladly. A man must have the social, the gregarious spirit for that, and Stendhal lived much to himself. That being so, he could not hope to escape boredom. An incurable _ennui_ lurks behind many of his pages; his enemies would say _in_ them. He even got bored with Italy, as so many others of a century ago, who began as enthusiastic lovers, got bored. Byron went to Greece—and Shelley took to yachting with the fatal result we know—because each was bored with Italy. But Stendhal in his later years had to put up with it at Civita Vecchia—which, for a “littery gent” must have been a deadly dull place in 1840, and would not, I imagine, be very lively even now. Indeed, his existence (after his early experiences with the Grand Army) seems to have been quiet, solitary, and slow. Perhaps that is why his books, his MSS., his letters, are so full of mysterious disguises, initials, pseudonyms, codes, erasures, as though he were being watched by censors and hunted by spies. It was a way of creating for himself an imaginary atmosphere of adventure.