Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/237

Rh strenuous feelings of right altogether, he makes painting, which he thinks the nobler art, secondary to music, which is the more comfortable. For a very sensitive man, he goes on, with real coherence to the mind of a Beylian, painting is only a friend, while music is a mistress. Happy indeed he who has both friend and mistress. In some of his moods, the more austere, the nobler and less personal tastes and virtues, interest him, for he is to some extent interested in everything; but except where he is supporting one of his few fundamental theses he does not deceive himself into thinking he likes them, and he never takes with real seriousness anything he does not like. Elevation and ferocity are the two words he uses over and over again in explaining that Michelangelo, alone could paint the Bible, and the very poverty of his vocabulary, so discriminating when he is on more congenial subjects, suggests how external was the acquaintance of Beyle with elevation or ferocity, with Michelangelo or the Bible. He has written entertainingly on such subjects, but it all has the sound of guess work. These two qualities, with which he sums up the sterner aspects of life, are perhaps not altogether separable from a third, dignity, and his view of this last may throw some light on the nature of his relations with the elevation and ferocity he praises. Here is a passage from Le Rouge et le Noir: "Mathilde thought she saw happiness. This sight, all-powerful with people who combine courageous souls with superior minds, had to fight long against dignity and all vulgar sentiments of duty." Equally lofty is his tone toward other qualities that are in reality part of the same attitude; a tone less of reproach than of simple contempt. The heroine of Le Rouge et le Noir is made to argue that "it is necessary to return in good faith to the vulgar ideas of purity and honour." Two more of the social virtues are disposed of by him in one extract, which, by the way, illustrates also the truly logical