ded to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not
inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his
love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and,
so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be
found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward,
capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, covering
his papers with false names and anagrams--for the police, he said, were
on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and
less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was
he registered the fact--upon his braces. He dreamed and drifted a great
deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, wrote
the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up his
mind whether Napoleon after all _was_ the only being he respected;
no--there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at
Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime parfaite,
me fait songer a ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes reveries et me
fait venir des idees excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me
dissimuler que j'ai le malheur _of being too great an admirer of Lady
L...._' He abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du Beau qui
souvent encore remplissent ma tete a l'age de _fifty-two_.' He wondered
whether Montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. He sat
scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the
fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until at
last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by M.
Chuquet himself. He wandered among the ruins of ancient Rome, playing to
perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough
to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the
satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen by
the wayside in the Campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or
the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since
the days of Horace, to draw water from the fountains of Tivoli. In more
cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was
never proof against the terror of being laughed at. But sometimes, late
at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be
very happy among his friends. 'Un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he
said, 'don