apparent exception is the book in which Beyle has embodied his reflections upon Love.  The volume, with its meticulous apparatus of analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of being a parody of L’Esprit des Lois, is yet full of originality, of lively anecdote and keen observation.  Nobody but Beyle could have written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating.  But here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is interesting—­one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of La Bruyere’s short sentences than in all Beyle’s three hundred pages of disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless and problematical spirit.  ‘Le Beylisme’ is certainly not susceptible of any exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in spite of his lo-gique, ever to have framed a coherent philosophy; it is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, and quick visions of flying thoughts.  M. Barres says that what lies at the bottom of it is a ‘passion de collectionner les belles energies.’  But there are many kinds of ‘belles energies,’ and some of them certainly do not fit into the framework of ‘le Beylisme.’  ’Quand je suis arrete par des voleurs, ou qu’on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande colere contre le gouvernement et le cure de l’endroit.  Quand au voleur, il me plait, s’il est energique, car il m’amuse.’  It was the energy of self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not interest him.  The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an egotist.  But in reality it was something more significant than that.  The ‘chasse au bonheur’ which Beyle was always advocating was no respectable epicureanism; it had about it a touch of the fanatical.  There was anarchy in it—­a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality.  Writing his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, Beyle looked back with pride on the joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at Grenoble, when the news came of the execution of Louis XVI.  His father announced it: 

     —­C’en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l’ont assassine.

Je fus saisi d’un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j’ai eprouve en ma vie.  Le lecteur pensera peut-etre que je suis cruel, mais tel j’etais a 5 X 2, tel je suis a 10 X 5 + 2 ...  Je puis dire que l’approbation des etres, que je regarde comme faibles, m’est absolument indifferente.

These are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are constantly recurring in his books.  He is always discharging his shafts against some established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest