De l'Amour Édition revue et corrigée et précédée d'une étude sur les oeuvres de Stendhal par Sainte-Beuve

A keen observer of European life, the author turns his fifteen‑year wander through Italy and Germany into a meticulous study of love‑as‑madness. Rather than a romance, the work reads like a scientific report, cataloguing the rare, almost pathological forms of affection that slip beneath the polished veneer of polite society. His travel notes—visits to salt mines, encounters in Roman salons, fleeting glimpses of a handsome captain in Berlin—serve as concrete data for a broader inquiry into the heart’s hidden currents.

The prose balances clinical precision with vivid, personal detail, exposing how the era’s obsession with decorum and fear of ridicule stifles genuine feeling. Listeners will be drawn into a thoughtful meditation on the social forces that shape desire, presented through a narrator who values honesty over sentimentality. The book offers a rare glimpse into early‑19th‑century attitudes toward love, inviting reflection on the timeless tension between passion and propriety.