Stendhal's first literary endeavors were biographies, Vies de Haydn, de Mozart, et de Métastase, written in 1815 in Milan, where he lived as a dilettante, fraternizing with Italian liberals, delighting in Italian art and music. In 1812, he participated in Napoleon's Russian retreat. A highly placed relative obtained for Stendhal an administrative position in the army that took him to Germany, with periodic trips back to Paris. Back in Paris, Stendhal resigned from the army, and from 1802 until 1806, he studied the eighteenth-century materialistic philosophers Helvétius and Cabanis, and aspired unsuccessfully to become a playwright. Thirsting for adventure, he went to Paris, and securing a commission in the army, sojourned briefly in Italy, a country he came to love above France. Stendhal studied at the Ecole Centrale in Grenoble until 1799, excelling in mathematics and art. Of a fiery and rebellious nature, Stendhal declared himself early to be an atheist and 'jacobin,' or liberal - an expression of revolt, no doubt, against his father. Later, he idealized her memory just as he exaggerated the mediocrity of his father.

Chérubin Beyle, Stendhal's father, a reactionary in politics, was an industrious, narrow-minded bourgeois, whom Henri detested and to whom he later referred as the 'bâtard.' Stendhal loved his mother tenderly, but this delightful woman, whose origin Stendhal liked to think was Italian, died when he was only seven. Henri Beyle (Stendhal) was born in 1783, in Grenoble, into a respectable, middle-class family.

Julien sorel the red and the black