I shudda read The Red and the Black, in French, in college, but I gave up that romantic language as soon as I could, sure I would pick up what I needed when I become an Existentialist, in Paris, which would be soon, I hoped. (Where are the Existentialists of yore? Who hung out with women wearing black tights, bogarting Gauloises, regretting nothing.)

Had I read about Julian Sorel back then, would I have recognized myself as a young man from the provinces? Would I have learned to leap into pitfalls I later stumbled into? Would I have recognized—and been grateful to—those mentors who passed me up the ladder? Would I have been amazed at how Proustian Stendhal was? Would I have learned to preempt “remorse” the way Julian did, by seizing the moment, that is, his mistress, even as her husband seemed about to burst into the room with a gun?

When, just now, I thought they should have cast Gerard Philippe as Julian, in fact, they did. He’s always been a hero of mine. In Le Diable au Corps, he can’t afford to take the woman he is wooing to dinner. But they go anyway, and he proceeds to reject the first bottle of wine, and even the second offered by the waiter. Even the bottle brought, with apologies, by the maître d’. Even the champagne—the meal has now progressed to the dessert—by the owner, who is ashamed to have insulted such a connoisseur and begs to be allowed not to present the bill. Suave!

But how, at this late date, did I finally catch up with Stendhal? My wife asked, if I was going to the library, would I get her some Balzac? Which seemed strange, since she’s not usually into the canon. But I went and grabbed The Unknown Masterpiece...and was seized by The R. & The B.

Youth, they say, is wasted on the young, and it’s wonderful to come belatedly upon a treasure that might once have been squandered. By that same token, I’ve recently been thrilled by Pontormo’s Deposition (1528), in the Cappella Capponi in Santa Felicità, Florence. Not in the flesh, unfortunately, but on the Web; see for yourself: http://www.wga.hu. Such lovely sadness. (Bronzino helped out on the Cappella Capponi; Ludovico Capponi, his portrait of a Medici page, a favorite of mine in the Frick, must be the patron’s son!) In any case, Pontormo has now been installed in my pantheon, along with...Vermeer, whose View of Delft I’d like to see again, although I don’t dare go look—it might not be as wonderful as it was that afternoon so long ago when I turned a corner in the Mauritshuis, and there it was.