Why? Like the other authors of this select crowd, there's nothing about human behaviour Stendhal didn't understand. Dostoevsky will tell you all about the seamier side of life, Stendhal tells you about love - love in all its glory, fragility and pain - and he tells you about it as no one else can, with an empathy of startling depth. He wrote it in only about six weeks, too - not bad for a masterpiece of this calibre. Read the Red and the Black and On Love too, if you like this.