"He hated the flowery manner of writing made fashionable by
Chateaubriand, and which a hundred lesser authors had sedulously aped.
Stendhal's aim was to set down whatever he had to say as plain and
exactly as he could, without frills, rhetorical flourishes of
picturesque verbiage. He said (probably not quite truly) that before
starting to write he read a page of the CODE NAPOLEON in order to
chasten his language. He eschewed description of scenery and the
abundant metaphors which were popular in his day. The cold, lucid,
self-controlled style increases the horror of the story he has to tell
in LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR, and adds to its enthralling interest."
W. Somerset Maugham, Ten Novels and Their Authors.
