The victory over exterior constraints is sufficient to enchant Stendhal; in Chroniques italiennes (Three Italian Chronicles) he cloisters his heroines in remote convents, he locks them up in a jealous spouse's palace: they have to invent a thousand tricks to meet their lovers; secret doors, rope ladders, bloody chests, kidnappings, sequestrations, and assassinations, the unleashing of passion and disobedience is served by an ingenuity in which all the mind's resources are displayed; death and the threat of tortures highlight even more the daringness of the deranged souls he depicts.