Stendhal's life resembled that of his novels. If his heroes were on the whole younger and better looking than he was, they were less mature; in many of these letters it is the poet who did not die young who writes, in a poetry of ideas. The three persistent themes of the novels, the love affairs, the life of action, and the precise analysis of the various forms of passion he distilled from these, are also the persistent themes of his correspondence. Here Stendhal courts Metilde, delineates the anatomy of love and struggles through the snow, retreating from Russia.