Chapter 14 (three)

In 1814, the emperor abdicated, and Stendhal's official career ended.He claimed to have refused several high offices, preferring to go into exile rather than serve the Bourbons;However, all this failed, so he returned to Milan.He still had enough money to live in a comfortable apartment and see the opera as often as he wanted; but he no longer had the title, the prestige, the cash of old.Gina is fickle.She told him that when her husband heard that he was coming, he became jealous, and the other admirers became suspicious too.He couldn't hide it from himself, knowing that she had no further use value for him, but her indifference ignited his enthusiasm, and finally he thought: there is only one way to win her love again.He chipped in three thousand francs for her.The two went to Venice, along with her mother, her son, and a middle-aged banker.To save face, she insisted that Stendhal go to another hotel, and to his great annoyance, the banker always followed him when he dined with Gina.The following is an excerpt from his diary, which is his own English words: "She said that she came to Venice this time and made a great sacrifice for me. I gave her three thousand francs to travel here. Stupid." Ten days later wrote: "I have her...but she talked about our financial arrangements. No fantasies yesterday morning. Stakes apparently sucked all my nerve fluid into my brain and killed All my sensuality."

As embarrassing as it was, Stendhal spent June 18, 1815, the day Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, in the arms of the majestic Gina. They return to Milan in the autumn.For her own reputation, Gina insisted that Stendhal live in a remote suburb.When she agreed to a tryst, he went there in disguise in the dead of night, changing carriages several times on the way to get rid of the spies following him, and then let the maid let him in.The maid, who may have just had a quarrel with the mistress, or was solicited by Bell's money, suddenly revealed to him the shocking fact that the lady's husband was not jealous at all; When I ran into rivals in love (or rivals in love, because there were far more than one or two), the maid also said that she could prove it to him.The next day, she hid him in a closet in Gina's inner room, and he witnessed the infidelity to her through a small hole in the wall, just three feet from his hiding place. "Perhaps you think," he said years later, when he related the incident to Merimee, "that I would have rushed out of the closet and stabbed these two men? Not at all... I quietly left the dark closet, Just like when I came in, I just thought about the absurdity of this adventure, laughed inside, and was full of contempt for this lady, and I was happy to be free after all."

But he was still in deep distress.He claimed to have been unable to write, think, or speak for a full eighteen months.Gina tries to win his heart back.One day she stopped him at Brera (the famous gallery), knelt down and begged his forgiveness. "Out of an absurd pride," he told Merimee, "I dismissed her contemptuously. I still seem to see her chasing me, holding on to the back of my dress, kneeling I was so stupid to not forgive her, because she must have never loved me as much as she did that day." However, in 1818, Stendhal met the beautiful Countess Dambrowski and fell in love with each other soon.He was thirty-six at the time, and she was ten years younger.This is the first time he has fallen in love with a famous lady.The countess was an Italian who had married a Polish general as a teenager but left him after a few years and took her two children to Switzerland.The poet Ugo Fosquelo was living there in exile, and public opinion mistakenly believed that she had left her husband in order to live with him.When she returned to Milan she was in a difficult position, not because she had a lover, which, according to the fashion of the time, was not at all blameworthy, but because she was living abroad alone, away from her husband.After falling in love with each other for five full months, Stendhal dared to confess his love.The other party immediately shut him down.He humbly wrote to apologize, and she finally relented and allowed him to visit her every two weeks.It was obvious from her attitude that she was being bored by his attentions, but he persisted.It was a strange thing that although Stendhal was always careful not to let others make fun of him, he kept making himself ugly.Once, the Countess went to Voltola to visit her two sons who were studying, and Stendhal followed him; but he knew that doing so would make the other party angry, so he put on green glasses to cover himself.When he went out for a walk in the evening, he took off his glasses and happened to meet the countess.The other party pretended not to see him, and gave him a note the next day, "angrily accusing him of following me to Voltola, and wandering in the park where I walked every day, affecting my safety."He wrote back begging for forgiveness and asked to see him in person a day or two later.She dismissed him coldly.He rushed to Florence, and the sad letter flew to her like snowflakes.She returned the envelope without even opening it, with the following note: "Sir, I don't want to hear from you any more, and I won't reply to you. I respect you very much, wait..."

Desperate Stendhal returns to Milan, only to learn that his father has passed away.He immediately set off for Grenoble and found that the lawyer's business was not going well. Instead of receiving the expected property, he was left with a debt.He hastened back to Milan, and somehow (we don't know) managed to persuade the countess to allow him to see each other regularly; Caring, he later wrote: "After three years of intimacy, I left a woman whom I loved and who loved me, but never committed to me." In 1821, the Austrian police asked him to leave Milan because of his association with certain Italian patriots.He settled in Paris, where he lived most of the next nine years.He frequented the salons where wisdom was appreciated.He also stopped stuttering and became an interesting and sharp talker, at his peak talking to eight or ten people he liked at once; .He liked to make rules, and made no secret of his disdain when someone disagreed.For the purpose of shocking, he was somewhat indulgent, steeped in obscenity, and critical critics found that, whether amusing or provocative, he often forced humor.Stendhal couldn't stand the boredom, and found it hard to believe that they weren't all rascals.

During this period, he had the only affair in which his affection seemed to be reciprocated.The Countess de Goullar (née Clementine Boureau) has separated from her jealous and irascible cheating husband.She was a beautiful woman of thirty-six, and Stendhal was over forty, a short, fat fellow with a thick red nose, a pot belly, and a huge hip.He wore a reddish-brown wig and dyed a beard to match.He dressed as well as he could with his limited income.Clementine de Gullard was so taken by Stendhal's wit and humor that, after an appropriate period of time, he went on the offensive, expressing his courtship in a way appropriate to her age Thank you.During the two years of their relationship, she wrote him a total of two hundred and fifteen letters, each of which was just as romantic as Stendhal expected.For fear of arousing her husband's wrath, he visited her secretly.Let me quote from Matthew Josephson's account: "He set out from Paris in a disguised carriage, and drove at full speed in the dark to her villa. He did not arrive until after midnight. Madame de Goullar and Stamp She was as daring as any heroine in a novel. Once, when an unexpected visitor (her husband, perhaps) spoiled their tryst, she hastened him to the basement, removed the ladder he had climbed down, and closed the trap door. In the dark and illusory trough, Stendhal, who was trapped in it, was trapped in it (it was like a grave) for three whole days, and Clementine, who was infatuated, prepared food for him, pulled down and set up ladders and sneaked in Look at him, even take down the airtight toilet to meet his needs, and then go to empty it." Stendhal later wrote: "When she went into the basement at night, she looked very sublime." However, not long after , a quarrel ensued between the lovers, as violent as their affection, and the lady eventually ditched Stendhal for a new, possibly easy-to-please, exciting lover.

Then came the Revolution of 1830.Charles X went into exile and was succeeded by Louis-Philippe.By this time Stendhal had spent the little savings left by his father's bankruptcy, and his literary endeavors (he had returned to his old ambition of becoming a famous writer) had brought him neither. Money doesn't bring reputation either. "On Love" was published in 1822, but sold only seventeen copies in eleven years.Armance, published in 1827, was unsuccessful both critically and with the public.As I mentioned above, he tried to get a government job, and with the change of regime, he was eventually sent to the Trieste consulate; however, because of his sympathies with the liberals, the Austrian authorities refused to accept him, and he was transferred to the Pope. Civita Vecchia in the country.

He didn't care about his official position, but traveled tirelessly, whenever he had the opportunity, he would go out to visit.In Rome he found friends who appreciated him.But despite these pastimes, he was terribly bored and lonely; at fifty-one, he proposed to a young girl, the daughter of his laundress and a clerk at the consulate.To his dismay, the marriage proposal was rejected, perhaps because of his age and bad temper, but because of his liberal views. In 1836 he persuaded the minister to give him a minor post, which allowed him to live in Paris for three years while his place was temporarily occupied by others.At this time he was quite corpulent and prone to apoplexy, but this did not prevent him from being well dressed, and he was greatly offended by anyone who expressed contempt for the style of his coat or trousers.He continues to show love, but gets little.He believes that he still loves Clementine de Goullar deeply, and tries to restore the relationship with her.Ten years after the two parted, she sensibly replied that the fire was out and the embers could not be rekindled.She also told Stendhal that he was her first and best friend, and she should be content with that.The blow broke his heart, Melimée recounts: "When he said her name, his voice changed...it was the only time I saw him cry." But he seemed to be completely out of control in a month or two. Recovered, went to court a Mrs. Gautier, and failed again.Finally, he was forced to return to Civitavecchia, where he suffered a stroke two years later.As soon as he recovered, he took leave of absence to consult a famous doctor in Geneva.From there he moved to Paris and resumed his old life.He went to parties, talking loudly and with undiminished interest. One day in March 1842, while attending an official banquet at the Foreign Office, he suffered a second stroke that evening while walking along the main street, and died the next day after being carried back to his lodgings.He has been pursuing happiness all his life, but he has never realized that happiness can only be truly obtained when he does not deliberately pursue it; moreover, he can understand the meaning of happiness only when he loses it.It is unlikely that anyone can say "I am happy"; only "I was happy".This is because happiness is not welfare, contentment, ease, pleasure, enjoyment: all these make people happy, but they are not happiness in themselves.