C. K. S. M.
[2]What a phrase, indeed. But it is the Duchessa, not Mosca, who gives this advice to Fabrizio, at Piacenza, and it is the party "opposite to the one he has served all his life" that he is to be flung into.
C. K. S. M.
This article opened the third and concluding number of Balzac's Revue Parisienne, dated September 25, 1840. Each of the earlier numbers had opened with a story, viz.; Z. Marcas and Les Fantaisies de Claudine (Un Prince de la Bohème) afterwards embodied in the Comédie Humaine. This Etude sur M. Beyle will be found in Œuvres complètes de H. de Balzac—XXIII—Œuvres diverses—septième partie—Essais historiques et politiques—Paris, Michel Lévy Frères, Editeurs, &c., 873, pages 687 to 738. It is also reprinted in Lévy's 1853 edition of La Chartreuse de Parme.
[BEYLE'S REPLY TO BALZAC]
On receiving the Revue Parisienne, Beyle at once wrote to Balzac the letter a translation of which follows. This letter he seems to have entrusted to his friend Romain Colomb, afterwards his literary executor, in whose hands it still remained six months later. As published by Colomb, the letter includes the text actually addressed to Balzac and the draft here appended to it, and it so figures in Stendhal: Œuvres Posthumes: Correspondance Inédite précédée d'une Introduction par Prosper Mérimée de l'Académie Française: Vol. II, pp. 293-299 (Calmann-Lévy). The correct text was established by M. Paul Arbelet in the Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, Oct.-Dec., 1917, pp. 548 sqq. La véritable lettre de Stendhal, and reprinted by MM. G. Grès & Cie. in their edition of La Chartreuse de Parme (1922).
Civita-vecchia, 30th October, 1840.
Last night, Sir, I received a great surprise. No one, I think, has ever been so well treated in a Review, and by the best judge of the subject. You have taken pity on an orphan left wandering in the street. I have made a fitting response to this kindness, I read the review last night, and this morning I have cut down to four or five pages the fifty-four opening pages[3] of the work which you have introduced to the world.
The confection of literature would have disgusted me with all pleasure in writing; I have dismissed all rejoicings over the printed page, to a time twenty or thirty years hence. Some literary rag-picker may make the discovery of the works whose merit you so strangely exaggerate.
Your illusion goes a long way, Phèdre, for instance. I may admit to you that I was shocked, I who am quite well-disposed towards the author.