Books: A Swim in the Mud

LUCIEN LEUWEN (Book Two: THE TELEGRAPH—415 pp.)—Stendhal—New Directions ($3.50).

"I will be a rogue!" cried Lucien Leuwen. No one was alarmed. It was a commonplace among French liberals in the 1830s, and especially among very young liberals, for disappointments in love to take this form. Lucien's heart had in fact been thoroughly shattered in Book One of a Stendhal novel, and now in Book Two the young man was determined to live without a heart. His father, a banker, was delighted, and chevied the boy into politics.

The story of Lucien in politics is told in The Telegraph, part two of Lucien Leuwen,...

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