mpelled by Napoleonic enthusiasm to join the French army as a volunteer
on the eve of the battle--go through the great day in such a state of
vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that he
really _was_ at Waterloo. He experiences a succession of trivial and
unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by
two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot
from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he crosses
and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks
brandy with a _vivandiere_, gallops over a field covered with dying men,
has an indefinite skirmish in a wood--and it is over. At one moment,
having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his
horse to splash into a stream, thereby covering one of the generals
with muddy water from head to foot. The passage that follows is a good
specimen of Beyle's narrative style:

En arrivant sur l'autre rive, Fabrice y avait trouve les generaux
tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla redoubler; ce fut a peine
s'il entendit le general, par lui si bien mouille, qui criait a son
oreille:

Ou as-tu pris ce cheval?

Fabrice etait tellement trouble, qu'il repondit en Italien: _l'ho
comprato poco fa_. (Je viens de l'acheter a l'instant.)

Que dis-tu? lui cria le general.

Mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que Fabrice ne
put lui repondre. Nous avouerons que notre heros etait fort peu
heros en ce moment. Toutefois, la peur ne venait chez lui qu'en
seconde ligne; il etait surtout scandalise de ce bruit qui lui
faisait mal aux oreilles. L'escorte prit le galop; on traversait
une grande piece de terre labouree, situee au dela du canal, et ce
champ etait jonche de cadavres.

How unemphatic it all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in
explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial
expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that
'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in
conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of
hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet terseness has
produced?

It is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and
intellectual nature of Beyle's method is most clearly seen. When he is
describing, for instance, the d