STENDHAL(Marie-Henri Beyle) was born in Grenoble in 1783. He served in Napoleon's cavalry and thereafter lived in Italy and Paris, where he wrote many books, including On Love, the autobiographical Life of Henri Brulard, The Charterhouse of Parma (which he wrote in fifty-two days), and The Red and the Black. He died in 1842. BURTON RAFFEL is a distinguished professor of humanities at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His many translations include Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, winner of the 1991 French-American Foundation Translation Prize, Chretien de Troyes's Arthurian Romances, Cervantes's Don Quijote, and Balzac's P re Goriot. His translation of Beowulf has sold more than a million copies. DIANE JOHNSON Is the author of ten novels-most recently Le Mariage and Le Divorce-two books of essays, two biographies, and the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick's classic film The Shining. She has been a finalist four times for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.