ABSTRACT
Stendhal was his own master in the art of self-portraiture. And what a consummate artist he was in this field. In earliest childhood he made his preliminary essays in the art of self-observation. The premature death of his dearly loved mother left the little boy forlorn in a hostile and alien world. He had to conceal and deny the impulses of his heart, thus acquiring early in life "the slave's art" of lying. His second course in psychology lasted till the end of his life. Love and women were his training college. Stendhal is the last to hide the melancholy fact that he was no hero as a lover, no conqueror; least of all a Don Juan, whose mantle he would fain have assumed. Stendhal is obsessed by his own inferiority as a Don Juan; no other problem so completely occupies his thoughts.
