[54.] Johannes von Müller—the German historian (1752–1809).
[55.] La Trappe—the headquarters (near Mortagna) of a monastic body, the Trappists, a branch of the Cistercian order. The word is used for all Trappist monasteries.
[56.] Samuel Bernard (1651–1739), son of the painter and engraver of the same name, was a man of immense wealth and the foremost French financier of his day. He was born a Protestant, not, as has been thought, a Jew, but became a Catholic after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). He was ennobled and became the Comte de Coubert (1725).
[57.] Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), a celebrated mathematician and scientist.
[58.] Hazlitt, in a note to his essay on Self-Love and Benevolence, remarked on Stendhal's absurdly exaggerated praise of Helvétius. After quoting this passage, he adds: "My friend Mr. Beyle here lays too much stress on a borrowed verbal fallacy." Hobbes and Mandeville, he says, had long before stated, and Butler answered, this fallacy, which not unfrequently vitiates Stendhal's psychological views.
[59.] Francois Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1761–1819), the author of numerous sentimental and popular novels.
[60.] The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (222–181 B. C.).
[61.] Jean Francois de la Harpe (born 1739) is frequently mentioned by Stendhal in this hostile spirit. After winning considerable notoriety, without very much merit, La Harpe in 1786 became professor of literature at the newly founded Lycée. Having started as a Voltairian philosopher, and still apparently favourable to the Revolution, he was none the less arrested in 1794 as a suspect and put into prison. There he was converted from his former Voltairian principles to Roman Catholicism. He died in 1803.