Stendhal's Acquaintance with Germany
[37.] In 1806 Stendhal returned to Paris from Marseilles whither he had followed the actress Melanie Guilbert and taken up a commercial employment in order to support himself at her side. He now again put himself under the protection of Daru, and followed him into Germany, though at first without any fixed title. He was not at Jena, as he pretends (being still in Paris the 7th October), but on the 27th of the month he witnessed Napoleon's triumphal entry into Berlin. Two days later he was nominated by Daru to the post of assistant commissaire des guerres.
Stendhal arrived in Brunswick in 1806 to take up his official duties. Although his time was occupied with a considerable amount of business, he found leisure also for visiting the country at ease. In 1807 he went as far as Hamburg. His observations on the country and people are occurring continually in his works, particularly in his letters and in his Voyage à Brunswick (in Napoléon, ed. de Mitty, Paris, 1897), pp. 92–125. In 1808 he left Brunswick, but soon returned with Daru to Germany. This time he was employed at Strasbourg—whence he passed to Ingolstadt, Landshut, etc., etc. Facts prove that he was not at the battle of Wagram, as he says in his Life of Napoleon. He was at the time at Vienna, where he managed to remain for the Te Deum sung in honour of the Emperor Francis II after the evacuation by the French. He returned in 1810, after the peace of Schonnbrunn, to Paris. It was during his stay in Brunswick that Stendhal made the acquaintance of Baron von Strombeck, for whom he always preserved a warm affection. He was a frequent guest at the house of von Strombeck and a great admirer of his sister-in-law, Phillippine von Bülow—who died Abbess of Steterburg—la celeste Phillippine. Baron von Strombeck is referred to in this work as M. de Mermann. See generally Chuquet, Stendhal-Beyle, Chap. V.
[38.] Triumph of the Cross. In Arthur Schuig's sprightly, but inaccurate, German edition of De l'Amour—Über die Liebe (Jena, 1911)—occurs this note:—
"Stendhal names the piece Le Triomphe de la Croix, but must mean either Das Kruez an der Ostsee (1806), or Martin Luther oder die Weihe der Kraft (1807)—both tragedies by Zacharias Werner."
[39.] The Provencal story in this chapter, and the Arabic anecdotes in the next, were translated for Stendhal by his friend Claude Fauriel (1772–1806)—"the only savant in Paris who is not a pedant," he calls him in a letter written in 1829 (Correspondance de Stendhal, Paris, Charles Brosse, 1908, Vol. II, p. 516). A letter of 1822 (Vol. II, p. 247) thanks M. Fauriel for his translations. "If I were not so old," he writes, "I should learn Arabic, so charmed am I to find something at last that is not a mere academic copy of the antique.... My little ideological treatise on Love will now have some variety. The reader will be carried beyond the circle of European ideas." Saint-Beuve relates that he was present when Fauriel showed Stendhal, then engaged on his De l'Amour, an Arab story which he had translated. Stendhal seized on it, and Fauriel was only able to recover his story by promising two more like it in exchange. M. Fauriel is referred to p. [188], note 3, above.
[40.] The reference is to a piece by Scribe (1791–1861).
[41.] Stendhal had no first-hand knowledge of America.
[42.] Stendhal was writing before Whitman and Whistler; yet he had read Poe.
[43.] The entire material for these three chapters, and to a very great extent their language too, is taken straight from an article in the Edinburgh Review—January 1810—by Thomas Broadbent. See for a full comparison of the English and French, Doris Gunnell—Stendhal et l'Angleterre, Appendix B.