LIBRARY OF C(JnGRESS. ;-3iC iiffe UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. OCT \ibl jTamous axaomen. MADAME DE STAEL. Already published : George Eliot. By Miss Blind. Emily Bronte. By Miss Robinson. George Sand. By Miss Thomas. Mary Lamb. By Mrs. Gilchrist. Margaret Fuller. By Julia Ward Howe. Maria Edgeworth. By Miss Zimmern. Elizabeth Fry. By Mrs. E. R. Pitman. The Countess of Albany. By Vernon Lee. Mary Wollstonecraft. By Mrs. E. R. Pennell. Harriet Martineau. By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller. Rachel. By Mrs. Nina H. Kennard. Madame Roland. By Mathilde Blind. Susanna Wesley. By Eliza Clarke. Margaret op Angouleme. By Miss Robinson. Mrs. Siddons. By Mrs. Nina H. Kennard. Madame de Stael. By Bella Duffy. MADAME DE STAEL, BY BELLA DUFFY. JT i 2> ^^^^1^. ■'ocTr'y;,887 / BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. ^887. 3 ^ Copyright, 1887, By Roberts Brothers. University Press : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. PREFACE. Unpublished correspondence — that delight of the eager biographer — is not to be had in the case of Madame de Stael, for, as is well known, the De Broglie family either destroyed or successfully hid all the papers which might have revealed any facts not already in possession of the world. The writer of the present brief memoir has, conse- quently, had to fall back upon the following well- known works : The Correspondance of the Abbe Galiani, of Mme. Du Deffand, of Rahel Varnhagen, and of Schiller ; the Memoirs of Marmontel, of Mme. D'Arblay, of Mme. de Remusat, of Mme. d'Abrante, of Bour- rienne, and of the Comte de Montlosier ; Ticknor's Letters ; Chateaubriand's Memoires d^ Outre Tombe; De Goncourt's Histoire de la SociHt Frangaise pend- ant la Rholution^ and Histoire de la Societe Frangaise pendant le Directoire; Lacretelle's Dix Annees d'E^p- reuve; Michelet's Le Directoire^ Le Dix-huit Bru- maire^ and Jusqu'ci Waterloo ; Le Salon de Madame JVecker, by Vicomte d'Haussonville j Studies of the PREFACE. Eighteenth Century in Italy, by Vernon Lee \ By- ron's Letters ; Benjamin Constant's Letters to Mme. Recamier ; Coppet and Weimar ; Les Correspondants de Joubert, by Paul Raynal ; Les Causeries du Lundi, and other studies by Ste. Beuve ; Droz' Histoire du Regne de Louis XVI. ; Villemain's Cours de Littkra- ture Frangaise ; the fragments from Constant's Jour- nals, recently published in the Revue Internationale ; Sismondi's jfournals and Letters; and sundry old articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes ; besides various other volumes, of which the list would be long and wearisome to detail. BELLA DUFFY. CONTENTS. Chap. Page. I. — THE MOTHER I II. — GERMAINE . . . ' . . 9 III. — GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE . . 20 IV. — NECKEr's SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH . 34 V. — MADAME DE STAEL IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS . . 5 1 VI. — RETURNS TO COPPET ... 69 VII. — THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL . ^8 VIII. — MADAME DE STAEL MEETS NAPOLEON 93 IX. — NEW FACES AT COPPET . . IO8 X. — MADAME DE STAEL VISITS GERMANY . 12/ XI. — MADAME DE STAEL AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME . . I4I XII. — MADAME DE STAEL's SECOND MAR- RIAGE ..... 162 XIII. — =EN GLAND AGAIN . . . . 18O XIV. — CLOSING SCENES . . . . I96 XV.— HER WORKS .... 20/ MADAME DE STAEL. CHAPTER I. THE MOTHER. '* My dear friend having the same tastes as myself, would certainly wish always for my chair, and, like his little daughter, would beat me to make me give it up to him. To keep peace be- tween our hearts, I send a chair for him also. The two are of suitable height and their light- ness renders them easy to carry. They are made of the most simple material, and were bought at the sale of Philemon and Baucis." Thus wrote Madame Geoffrin to Madame Necker when the intimacy between them had reached such a pitch as to warrant the introduc- tion into the Necker salons of the only sort of chair in which the little old lady cared to sit. The "dear friend" was M. Necker, and the " little daughter " of the house must then have been about four or five years old, for it was in the very year of her birth (1766) that Madame (0 2 MADAME DE STAEL. Geoff rin took her celebrated journey to Poland, and it was some little time after her return that she became intimate with Germaine Necker's parents. They were still in the Rue de Clery. M. Neck- er's elevation to the Contrdle General was in the future and had probably not been foreseen ; it is possible that even the Eloge de Colbert, which be- trayed his desire for power, had not yet appeared ; nevertheless, he was already a great man. His controversy with the Abbe Morellet, on the sub- ject of the East India Company, had brought him very much into notice ; and, although his arguments in favor of that monopoly had not saved it from extinction, they had caused his name to be in everybody's mouth. His position as Minister for the Republic of Geneva gave him the entry to the Court of Ver- sailles, and brought him into contact with illus- trious personages, who otherwise might have disdained a mere wealthy foreigner, neither a noble nor a Catholic. His well-filled purse com- pleted his popularity, for it was not seldom at the service of abject place-hunters and needy literati. Moreover, he had been fortunate in his choice of a wife. By the time that the King of Poland's bonne maman wrote that little note to Madame Necker, the wife of the Genevese banker had founded a THE MOTHER. 3 salon as brilliant and crowded as Madame Geoff- rin's own. She had achieved this in a few years, whereas Madame Geoffrin for the same task, and in spite of her wealth and generosity, had re- quired a quarter of a century. But Madame Necker, besides being young, rich and handsome, was bitten with the prevail- ing craze for literature, could listen unwearedly for hours to the most Xdhox^di portraits and eloges, and, although herself the purest and most austere of women, would open her salon to any repro- bate, provided only he were witty. Madame Necker, first known to us as Suzanne Curchod, was the daughter of a Swiss pastor, and saw the light in the Presbytery of Grassier in the Pays de Vaud. The simple white house, with its green shutters, is still to be seen, separated from the road by a little garden planted with fruit trees. The Curchods were an ancient and respectable family whom Madame Necker (it was one of her weaknesses) would fain have proved entitled to patents of nobility. Some Curchods or Curchodis are found mentioned in old chroni- cles as fighting beneath the banners of Savoy, and it was from these that Madame Necker sought vainly to trace her descent. She held a secret consultation for this cherished object with the Sieur Cherin, genealogist to the King ; but his decision disappointed her. Chagrined, but 4 MADAME DE STAEL. not convinced — for her opinions were not easily shaken — she carried home the precious papers and locked them up without erasing the endorse- ment, Titres de noblesse de la famille Curchod, which she had written with her own hand. M. Curchod took pains to give his only daugh- ter an unusually thorough and liberal education. She knew Latin and a little Greek, " swept with extreme flounce the circle of the sciences," and was accomplished enough in every way to attract the admiration, very often even the love, of sun- dry grave and learned personages. Mixed with her severe charm there must have been some coquetry, for at a very early age she began making conquests among the young min- isters who arrived on Sundays at Grassier, osten- sibly to assist M. Gurchod in his duties ; and a voluminous correspondence, somewhat high- flown, as was the fashion of the day, is extant, to prove that Suzanne possessed the art of keeping her numerous admirers simultaneously well in hand. Verses, occasionally slightly Voltairian in tone, were also addressed to her ; and later in life Madame Necker reproached herself for her placid acceptance of the homage thus expressed, and owned that had she understood it better she would have liked it less. Suzanne's parents, proud, no doubt, of their daughter's talents and accomplishments, took her THE MOTHER. 5 after a while to Lausanne. That pleasant city, since giving up its own political ideals and falling under the sway of Berne, had lapsed into easy- going, intellectual ways, and even professed a dis- creet and modified form of Voltairianism. Ever •since the author of the " Henriade" had dazzled it with his presence, it had been on the look-out for illustrious personalities, and welcomed all for- eigners who showed any promise of literary dis- tinction. What with her pretensions to be a hel-espritt her youth and beauty, Mademoiselle Curchod captivated the town at once, and very soon had the proud joy of founding an Academie de la Poud- Here, and being elected to preside over it under the fantastic name of Themire. The members of this intellectual society were of both sexes and all young. Their duties consisted in writing portraits of one another, and essays or odes on subjects in general. Combined with these pro- found pursuits there seems to have been a good deal of flirtation, and, doubtless, both the schol- asticism and the sentiment were equally to Su- zanne Curchod's taste. During her stay in Lausanne she fascinated Gibbon, and, for the first time in her career of conquest, fell in love herself. So profound was her passion — or so profound, in her self-torment- ing way, did she imagine it to be — that she 6 MADAME DE STAEL. remained constant to her engagement during the four years of Gibbon's absence in England, and wrote him agitated, abject letters of reproach, when he, alleging his father's invincible objec- tions, broke off the engagement. Her devoted friend, Moulton, who appears to have loved her all his life, was so touched by her despair, that, with Suzanne's own consent, he sought the me- diation of Rousseau in order to bring the recre- ant lover back to his allegiance. But the attempt was vain. Gibbon showed himself as heartless as Mademoiselle Curchod had proved indulgent, and when the lady, as a last resource, proposed that they should at least remain friends, he declined the amiable offer as being ** dangerous for both." Nevertheless, when they met again in Paris, some years later. Mademoiselle Curchod, then married, welcomed Gibbon with kindness, and even wrote him notes containing, here and there, allusions to the past. For the age was evidently senti- mental, and to cherish memories of vanished joys, and make passing, pathetic reference to them, was a luxury of which Madame Necker would have been the last to deprive herself. On the death of her parents, Suzanne found herself obliged to seek for a situation as gover- ness, or companion. All her life, fortunate in making and keeping the most devoted friends, she found plenty anxious to help her in carrying THE MOTHER. 7 out her plans. Among her sincerest admirers was the charming Duchess d'Enville, whose sweetness, grace, and na'if enthusiasm for Swit- zerland (as a kind of romantic republic, all shep- herds and shepherdesses, toy-chalets, natural sentiments and stage liberty) were so character- istic of the age, and so admiringly celebrated in Bonstetten's letters. It was, in all probability, through her introduction at Geneva that Suzanne became acquainted with Madame de Vermenoux, a rich Parisian widow, who fell immediately under the young orphan's charm, and, engaging her as a companion, took her back to Paris. In that intellectual centre — the promised land of all her thoughts — Suzanne speedily came into contact with several interesting people, among others the delightful Bonstetten, then still young in years, destined to be always young in heart, and whom, in the course of this work, we shall often see among the band of fervent admirers surrounding Madame de Stael. Another frequent visitor at Madame de Ver- menoux's house was M. Necker, at that time a partner in Thellusson's bank, and already pos- sessed of ample means. He was a rejected suitor of the hostess, but continued on very good terms with her, and perhaps was expected to propose a second time. If such were the widow's ideas, they were doomed to disappointment ; for very 8 MADAME DE STAEL. soon after Necker's introduction to Suzanne he made a transfer of his affections to her. He left, however, for Geneva, without declaring his sen- timents ; and Mademoiselle Curchod, once again in love, and once again in despair, poured out her feelings in a long letter to Moulton. That ever faithful friend did his best to bring things to a happy termination, by taking care that M. Necker, during his sojourn in Geneva, should hear nothing but praise of Suzanne. The device, if needed, was most successful ; for the banker returned to Paris with his mind made up. He proposed without loss of time, and it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that Mademoiselle Curchod jumped into his arms. All the friends of the bride elect were delight- ed, and even Madame de Vermenoux proclaimed her pleasure at the turn which affairs had taken. Some little subsequent coolness, however, she must have manifested, for the date fixed- for the wedding was kept a secret from her. When the day dawned, Suzanne stole out quietly and met M. Necker at the church door. In what form the news was broken to the widow is not known ; but any annoyance she may have felt was not of long duration, for in after years we find Madame de Vermenoux a frequent guest of the Neckers, and the little daughter, born on the 22nd April, 1766, was named Germaine after her. CHAPTER 11. GERMAINE. When Germaine was about six years old, M. Necker retired from the bank, and devoted him- self to the study of administrative questions. This was in preparation for the career to which he felt himself called. For years past his wealth had come frequently to the aid of a spendthrift Government and an exhausted exchequer ; and it was natural that he should seek his reward in power. In his Eloge de Colbert, published in 1773, he was at no pains to conceal that he was thinking of himself when drawing the portrait of an ideal Minister of Finance ; and some annoy- ance at Turgot's appointment is thought to have added force to his attacks on the latter's theories concerning free trade in corn. Madame Necker, profiting by her husband's growing importance, quickly attained the sum- mit of her ambition in becoming the presiding genius of a salon thronged with intellectual celeb- rities. Buffon and Thomas were her most trust- ed friends, but, austere though she was, she did (9) lO MADAME DE ST A EL. not disdain to admit to a certain intimacy men like Marmontel, the Abbe Galiani, St. Lambert, and Diderot. They all flattered her outrageously to her face, while some of them, Marmontel espe- cially, sneered at her behind her back. All made love to her, and, misled by the studied warmth of pompous eloquence with which she proclaimed her delight in their society, they not rarely per- suaded themselves that they had added her to the list of their conquests, and were chagrined and not a little disgusted later to discover that the only man she cared for was her husband. Indeed, she bored everybody with praise of M. Necker, composing and reading aloud in her ovm salon a preposterous /^r/ra:/^ of him, in which she compared him to most things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth, from an angel to a polypus. Her rigidity, her self -con- sciousness, her want of charm, and absence of humor, were a fruitful theme of ridicule to the witty and heartless parasites who crowded her drawing-rooms and made raids on her husband's purse. And yet such was the native force of goodness in her that, sooner or later, in every instance, detraction turned to praise. The bit- ter Madame de Genlis, who detested the Neck- ers, and ridiculed them unsparingly, admits that the wife was a model of virtue ; and Diderot paid her the greatest compliment which she, perhaps, / GERMAINE. 1 1 ever received, when declaring that had he known her sooner, much that he had written would never have seen the light. Grimm was another frequenter of the Necker salons ; and the mistress of the house being no less prodigal of gracious encouragement towards him than towards everybody else, he also event- ually declared his sentiments of friendship and admiration, with as much warmth as his manners allowed of. Like Voltaire, he called her " Hy- patie " ; and testified the genuineness of his re- gard by scolding her about her religious opinions. Needless to say these were not infidel, but they were, in Grimm's opinion, disastrously illogical ; and, his fine taste in such matters being offended, he expressed his displeasure on one occasion in no measured terms. Madame Necker retorted, for she loved a discussion too fervently ever to be meek ; but apparently Grimm was too much for her. Either his arguments were irrefragable, or his manner was irritating ; the result was that Madame Necker — to the polite consternation of her numerous guests — dissolved into tears. Humihated, on reflection, at having made such a scene, with characteristic ardor, she seized the opportunity to write Grimm a high-flown apol- ogy ; and an interchange of letters followed in which the philosopher compared the lady to Venus completed by Minerva, and Madame 12 MADAME DE STAEL. Necker ransacked the universe for metaphors wherewith to express her admiration of the gen- tleman's sensibility. As the Neckers spent their summer at St. Ouen — not the historic Chateau associated with Louis XVI I L, but another in the neighborhood, and of the same name — the proximity to Paris enabled them to continue unbroken their series of dinners, suppers and receptions, twice a week. Many of the guests were notable personages, and most of them types which vanished forever a few years later — engulphed by the storm-wave of the Revolution. There was the Abbe Morel- let, clear-headed, gravely ironical, with as much tact in concealing as in displaying the range of his knowledge and the depth of his insight ; St. Lambert, a little cold, but full of exquisite polite- ness, supremely elegant in expression, and, with- out being lively himself, possessed of the delicate art of never quenching liveliness in others ; D'Alembert, charming, if frigid, and destined soon to be an object of sentimental interest, be- cause of his inconsolable grief for Mile. L'Espi- nasse ; the Abbe Raynal, doubtless enchanted to pour into Madame Necker's respectful ears the floods of eloquence for which Frederick the Great laughed at him ; these, with Marmontel and Thomas, were almost always present. A few years earlier the Abbe Galiani, delight- GERMAINE. 1 3 ful and incorrigible, would also have been seen. This extraordinary little man, political econo- mist, archaeologist, mineralogist, diplomatist and pulcinello, was one of Madame Necker's pro- fessed adorers. Everybody liked and admired him ; Diderot described him as '* a treasure on a rainy day"; Marmontel as " the prettiest little harlequin," with "the head of Macchiavelli " ; while, for Madame Geoffrin, he was her petite chose. After so much praise, and from such peo- ple, Madame Necker must certainly have accepted him unconditionally ; but it would be interesting to know exactly with what air she listened to his impassioned declarations. When eventually re- stored to his native land — or, as he expressed it, exiled from Paris — he wrote her impudent and characteristic epistles, in which reproaches at her virtue, intimate interrogations regarding her health, and envy of M. Necker's happiness, ming- led with inquiries after everybody in the beloved capital, and wails of inconsolable grief at his own departure. " Quel desert que cinquante mille Na- politains!'' he exclaims. Madame Du Deffand was also for a time an intimate guest at the Neckers'. The friendship did not last long. The marquise, by this time infinitely weary of men and things, appears soon to have tired of Madame Necker's declamations and M. Necker's superiority. Her final judgment 14 MADAME DE STAEL. on the wife was very severe, rather ill-tempered, and therefore unjust. Madame Necker was, she says, ** stiff and frigid, full of self-consciousness, but an upright woman." Her liking for the hus- band held out longer, but finally succumbed to the discovery that, while very intelligent, he failed to elicit wit from others. " One felt one- self more stupid in his company than when with other people or alone." , There is no trace of any variation in the friendship between Madame Necker and Mad- ame Geoffrin. Perhaps the latter, with her ha- bitual gentle ** Voildy qui est bienj' called her young friend to order, and early repressed the emphatic praises which could not but have wea- ried her. We are told that she hated exaggeration in everything ; and how could Madame Necker's heavy flattery have found favor in her eyes } Her delicate savoir-vivrey too, that preternat- urally subtle sense which supplied the place in her of brilliancy and learning and early educa- tion, must have been vexed at Madame Necker's innocent but everlasting pedantry. We can fancy, however, that she managed, in her imper- ceptible, noiseless way, to elude all these dis- turbing manifestations ; and then she was doubt- less pleased at Madame Necker's good-humored patience with her scoldings. All Madame Geof- GERMAINE. 1 5 frin's friends, as we know, had to submit to be scolded ; but probably few showed under the infliction the magnanimity of Madame Necker, who must have possessed all the power of sub- mission peculiar to self-questioning souls. The calm old lady, ensconced in her own peculiar chair, whether in Paris or at St. Ouen, in the midst of the sparkling society to which she had perseveringly fought her way, was disturbed in her serenity by no presage of misfortune. In point of reputation the most illustrious, and in point of romantic ardor the most fervent, of all Madame Necker's friends, was Buffon. He wrote her some eighty letters full of fervid flat- tery and genuine, almost passionate affection, to which she responded in the terms of adulation that the old man still held dear. Such incense had once been offered to him in nauseating abun- dance ; now that he was old and lonely it had diminished, and this fact, joined to his unques- tionable admiration for Madame Necker, made him all the more easily intoxicated by her praise. Mixed with her high esteem for his genius was a womanly compassion for his bodily sufferings that rendered the tie uniting their two minds a very sweet and charming one. On hearing that his end was near, she hastened to Montbard, where he was residing, and established herself by his bedside, remaining there five days, and cour- 1 6 MADAME DE STAEL. ageously soothing the paroxysms of pain that it tortured her own sensitive nature to see. Perhaps her strong and unconcealed desire that the philosopher should make a Christian end, lent her fortitude to continue the self-imposed task. There is no proof that she directly influenced him in that final declaration of faith by which he scandalised a free-thinking community ; but she had often discussed religious questions with him, and deplored his want of a definite creed ; conse- quently, it is possible that her mere presence may have had some effect upon him at the last. On the brink of the irrevocable, even the pride of controversy may come to be a little thing ; and Buffon's wearied spirit perhaps recoiled from fur- ther speculation on the eternal problem of futu- rity. And to be at one, in that supreme moment, with the pitying woman who had come to solace his final agony, may have weighed with him above the praise and blame over which the grave was to triumph forever. Madame Necker delighted in making herself miserable, and the melancholia natural to him probably caused Thomas to be the most thor- oughly congenial to her of all her friends. The author of the Petreide and the foe of the Ency- clopaedists, he enjoyed during his life a celebrity which posterity has not confirmed. He was the originator of the unhappy style of writing in GERMAIN E. 1/ which Madame Necker so delighted that she modelled her own upon it. For the rest, he was a man of extremely austere and simple life, as well as of very honest character. Passion was unknown to him, unless, indeed, the profound and sentimental esteem which he felt for Madame Necker was of a nature under more favorable treatment to have developed into love. If so, she found the way in his case, as in all, to restrain his feelings within platonic bounds, and indulged him. chiefly with affecting promises not to forget him when she should be translated to heaven. Madame Necker may be said to have touched the zenith of social distinction the day on which the Marechale de Luxembourg entered her salon. This charming old lady and exquisite grande dame, the arbiter of politeness and fine manners, was felicitously and untranslatably described by Madame du Deffand, in one delightful phrase, as '' Chatte Rose!'' Upon all those who met her at this period (when she was already nearly seventy), she seems to have produced the same impression of softness and elegance, of fine mal- ice and caressing, irresistible ways. Madame de Souza — that sweet little woman round whose name the perfume of her own roses still seems to cling — -drew a portrait of the Mare- chale in her novel Eugenie de Rotkelin, under the name of the Marechale de'Estouteville ; nor 2 1 8 MADAME DE STAEL. did she, as Ste. Beuve tells us, forget to intro- duce, by way of contrast, in the person of Mad- ame de Rieny, the pretty and winning Duchess de Lauzun, grand-niece of the Marechale, and another flower of Madame Necker's salon. This little Duchess, ''joli petit oiseau a Vair effarouche'' (to quote Madame c^u Deffand once again), was so devoted an admirer of M. Necker, that, hearing somebody in the Tuileries Gar. dens blame him, she slapped the speaker's face. Apart from this one outburst, which saves her from seeming too meek, she flits shadowy, sweet and pathetic, across the pages of her contempo- raries. The record of her life, as we know it, is brief and touching. She kept herself unspotted from a most depraved world ; loved a very un- worthy husband and died, during the Terror, on the scaffold. Another friend, and apparently a very sincere one, of Madame Necker, was Madame d'Houde- tot. Madame Necker seems to have accepted that interesting woman just as she was, including her relations with St. Lambert, whom the letters exchanged between the two ladies mention quite naturally. The affection which she felt for the mother was extended by Madame D'Houdetot to the little daughter, and there are letters of hers extant describing visits which she had paid to GERMAINE. 1 9 Germaine, while Madame Necker was at Spa or Mont Dore for her health. They were written to relieve the natural pain of absence on the parents' part, and are full of praises of the child, of her engaging ways, her air of health, and her magnificent eyes. CHAPTER III. GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. In the brilliant world in which she awoke, Ger- maine very soon found her place. It is a very familiar little picture that which we have of her, seated on a low stool beside her mother at the receptions, and fixing on one speaker after anoth- er her great, astonished eyes. Soon, very soon, she began to join in the con- versation herself, and by the time she was ten or eleven years old she had grown into a person whose opinion was quite seriously consulted. Some of the friends of the house, Marmontel, Raynal and others, enchanted to have a new shrine in the same temple at which to worship, talked to her, wrote verses to her, and laid at her young feet some of the homage up to then exclu- sively devoted to Madame Necker. That lady began by being enchanted at Ger- maine's amazing powers, and set to work to edu- cate her with characteristic thoroughness and pedantry. Everything that was strongest in her, family pride, the sense of maternal authority, the (20) GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 21 love of personal influence, the passion for train- ing, seemed to find their opportunity in the sur- prising daughter whom Heaven had given her. She drove the child to study with unrelenting ardor, teaching her things beyond her age, and encouraging her at the same time further to exer- cise her intelligence by listening to conversations on all sorts of subjects. The consequence was that at eleven Germaine's conversational powers were already stupendous. On being introduced to a child of her own age, a little Mademoiselle Hiiber, who was her cousin, she amazed her new acquaintance by the questions she put to her. She asked what were her favorite lessons ; if she knew any foreign languages ; if she often went to the theatre. The little cousin confessing to having profited but rarely by such an amusement, Germaine was horror-stricken, but promised that henceforward the deficiency should be remedied, adding that on their return from the theatre they should both proceed to write down the subject of the pieces performed, with suitable reflections ; that being, she said, her own habit. In the even- ing of this first day's acquaintance. Mademoiselle Hiiber, already sufficiently awe-struck, one must think, was further a witness to the attention paid to Germaine by her mother's most distinguished guests. " Everybody addressed her with a compliment 22 MADAME DE STAEL. or a pleasantry. She answered everything with ease and grace. . . . The cleverest men were those who took most pleasure in making her talk. They asked what she was reading, recommended new books to her and . . . talked to her of what she knew, or of what she had yet to learn." From her tenderest years Germaine wrote por- traits and eloges. At fifteen she made extracts from the Esprit de Lois, with annotations, and about the same time the Abbe Raynal was very anxious that she should contribute to his great work an article on the Revolution of the Edict of Nantes. But before this, when she was only twelve, the effects of such premature training had made themselves visible. Her feelings had been as unnaturally developed as her mind. Already that rich, abundant nature, so impetuous, gener- ous, and fervid, which was at once the highest gift and deepest curse, had begun to reveal itself in an exaggerated sensibility. Praise of her par- ents moved her to tears ; for the little cousin she had an affection amounting to passion ; and the mere sight of celebrated people gave her palpita- tion of the heart. She did not care to be amused. What pleased her best was what pained her most, and her imagination was fed upon the " Clarissa' Harlowe " school of novels. By degrees her health began to fail, and at GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE, 23 fourteen the collapse was so complete as to cause the most serious alarm. Tronchin was consult- ed, and prescribed absolute rest from study. This was a cruel blow to Madame Necker. A nature allowed to develop spontaneously, a mind virgin of the pruning-hook, were objects of as much horror to her as if they had been forbid- den by Heaven. That her daughter, just at the final moment, when what was doubtless the mere preliminary course of study had been traversed, should be released from bondage and abandoned to her own impetuosity, was well-nigh insupport- able. She had no alternative but to resign her- self, and therefore, silently and coldly, as was her wont, she accepted the situation. Nevertheless, she was neither reconciled to it, nor felt the same interest in Germaine again. Years afterwards, the bitterness that she had hoarded in her soul betrayed itself in one little phrase. Madame Necker de Sausanne was congratulating her on her daughter's astonishing powers. '' She is nothing," said Madame Necker, coldly, " nothing to that which I would have made her." Despatched from Paris to the pure air of St. Ouen, and ordered to do nothing but enjoy her- self, the young girl quickly recovered her vivac- ity, and developed a charming joyousness. This new mood of hers, while gradually estranging her from her mother, drew her closer to her father. 24 MADAME DE STAEL. M, Necker, who detested literary women, had looked with but scanty favor on his daughter's passion for writing, and it is probable that, as long as she was exclusively under Madame Neck- er's rule, he did not feel for her more than the commonplace sort of affection which a busy and serious-minded father bestows on a little girl. During her childhood Germaine herself lav- ished all her warmest affection on her mother, being apparently drawn to her by the subtle attraction which a very deep and reserved nature exercises on an excitable one. Madame Necker, pale, subdued in manner, restrained in gesture, surrounded with respectful adorers, revered by her husband, and flattered by her friends, seems to have filled her observant, imaginative little daughter with a feeling bordering on awe. Very sensitive, yet very submissive, and quite incapa- ble of resentment, Germaine threw herself with characteristic passionate ardor into the task of winning her mother's praise. How compla- cently Madame Necker must have accepted the homage implied in these efforts, it is easy to imagine. A little contempt for the child's im- petuosity helped to give her the firmness neces- sary for moulding, according to her own notions, the nature so plastic, yet so vital, thus placed within her grasp. A good, nay, a noble woman, yet essentially a self-righteous one, she could GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 2$ comprehend perfection in nothing that did not, to a certain degree, resemble herself. Her ideas, her principles, her will, were, she conceived, to shape and fashion, restrain and re-create, this thing of fire and intellect, this creature all spirit, instinct and insight, that she named her child. Germaine, predestined all her life to struggle, to consume herself to ashes — like the Arabian princess who fought with the djin7t — succumbed for the time to her mother's will, by the annihila- tion of everything that was inalienably herself. The spell lasted as long as the tyranny which had created it ; but once freed from the thraldom, wandering with her young cousin through the avenues of St. Duen, drinking in the freshness of the shadowy glades, and acting innocent little dramas, Germaine became more natural and, in her mother's eyes, more commonplace. Madame Necker lost interest in her, drew frigidly away from her, and even began to feel some jealousy of the new-born affection between the father and child. When Germaine was fifteen, M. Necker fell from power. A few months previously he had published his Compte Rendu, and roused the enthusiasm of France. He had been the idol of the hour, and his name was in everybody's mouth. From all sides, from nobles and bourgeois alike, letters of praise and congratulation poured in 26 MADAME DE STAEL. upon him. Among these was an anonymous epistle, written by Germaine, and immediately recognized by her father, who knew the author's style. She was transported with joy and triumph, and probably understood her father's achievements better than two-thirds of the people who applaud- ed them. For she was endowed with a marvellous quickness and completeness of comprehension, and, where she loved, her sympathy was flawless. She was always willing to welcome and adopt the thought of another, and never seemed to guess how much of force and brilliancy it owed to the illuminating power of her own vivid intellect. On M. Necker's retirement from the Ministry of Finance he came to St. Ouen, followed in his retreat by the pity and praise of the best and brightest minds of France. His daughter, seeing more of him than ever, now, in the greater leis- ure which he enjoyed, and regarding him as the heroic victim of an infamous political cabal, soon conceived for him an affection that amounted to idolatry. On his side he was enchanted with her humorous gayety, and lent himself to her playful- ness in the not rare moments when Germaine's small sum of years got the better of her large amount of intelligence. One day Madame Necker had been called from the dining-room, during meal time, on some GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 2/ domestic or other business. Returning unex- pectedly, she heard a good deal of noise, and, opening the door, stood transfixed with amaze- ment on seeing her husband and daughter caper- ing about, with their table-napkins twisted round their heads like turbans. Both culprits looked rather ashamed of themselves when detected, and their spirits fell to zero beneath the lady's frozen glance. The Neckers, in spite of the ex-minister's so- called "disgrace," continued surrounded with friends, so that from fifteen to twenty, at which latter age she married, Germaine's days were one long intellectual triumph. Her portraits read aloud to the guests, were eagerly received and enthusiastically applauded. She wrote one of her father, in competition with her mother; but when Monsieur Necker was appealed to on the respective merits of the two compositions, he wisely declined to pronounce any opinion. His daughter, however, divined his thoughts : " He admires Mamma's portrait," she said, *• but mine flatters him more." Her own merits inspired the wits surrounding her in their turn. A portrait by Guibert de- scribed her as a priestess of Apollo, with dark eyes illumined by genius, black, floating curls, and marked features, expressive of a destiny su- perior to that of most women. This was an or- 28 MADAME DE ST A EL, namental way of saying that Germaine was not beautiful. She was, in fact, very plain, strangely so, considering that she had magnificent eyes, fine shoulders and arms, and abundant hair. What spoilt her was the total want of grace. When talking, she was much too prodigal of grimace and gesture, and, if eloquent and con- vincing, was also overpowering. She felt too much on every subject, and car- ried other people's small stream of platitudes along in the rushing tide of her own emotions, till her hearers were left exhausted and admiring, but also a little resentful. She disconcerted the very persons whom she most revered by only pausing long enough in her talk to grasp their meaning, and feed her own thought with it till that glowed more consumingly than ever, while all the time what she felt, what they felt, and what she imagined that they meant to say was pro- claimed in loud, harsh accents, most trying to sensitive nerves. All this time she was busily writing, and her father, who nicknamed her Mademoiselle de Ste. Ecritoire, could not correct the tendency, even by his unceasing raillery. In a comedy entitled Sophie, ou les Sentiments Secrets, she scandalized Madame Necker, by selecting for a subject the struggles of a young orphan against the passion inspired in her by her guardian, a married man. GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 29 To this period belong also Ja7ie Grey and Mont- morency, both tragedies, and various novelettes. When Germaine was nearing twenty, the ques- tion of her marriage came under discussion ; and serious consideration was then, for the first time, accorded to a suitor whom her large fortune had long attracted. This was the Baron de Stael Holstein, Secre- tary to the Swedish Embassy. He seems to have been one of the elegant and amiable diplo- matists whom the Courts of Europe in those days turned out by the score. He had wit and good manners, as he had also the golden key of the Court Chamberlain ; otherwise, his personality was insignificant in the extreme. He was fortunate, however, in serving under a very popular ambassador, the Count de Creutz ; and in representing a king who, both for political and personal reasons, was anxious to keep on good terms with France. Gustavus HI. of Swe- den adored Paris, and was in continual corre- spondence with Madame de la Mark, Madame d'Egmont, Madame de Boufflers, and anybody who would keep him conversant with the gossip of the Tuileries and Versailles. The Count de Creutz having the intention of shortly retiring, it was understood that the Baron de Stael Holstein was to be his successor. That gentleman, who comprehended his own interests, and was head- 30 MADAME DE STAEL. over-ears in debt, lost no opportunity of persuad- ing the Swedish King's trio of witty correspon- dents, who in their turn were careful to impress on Gustavus, as well as on Louis XVI. and his Queen, that the next Swedish ambassador must be endowed with a splendid fortune. A grand marriage was, of course, to be the means of achieving this ; and Mademoiselle Ger- maine Necker, an heiress and a Protestant, was fixed upon for the bride. The delicate negotiations lasted for some con- siderable time, during which period the prize the Baron sought was disputed by two formidable rivals — William Pitt and Prince George Augus- tus of Mecklenburg, brother of the reigning Duke. Madame Necker warmly supported Pitt's suit, and showed great displeasure at being una- ble to overcome her daughter's obstinate aversion to it. Seeing how distinguished the Englishman already was, and how brilliant his future career promised to be, one wonders a little at Germaine's rejection of him. Probably the secret of her de- termination lay in the passionate adoration which she had now begun to feel for her father, on whom — as all his friends and partisans assured her — the eyes of misery-stricken France were fixed as on a savior. The idea of quitting France in such a crisis, at the dawn, so to speak, of her father's apotheo- GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 3 1 sis, would naturally be intensely repugnant to her ; and possibly for that very reason Madame Necker, always a little jealous of the sympathy between her husband and her daughter, warmly advocated Pitt's claims. A painful coldness en- sued between mother and daughter, and lasted until the former happened to fall dangerously ill. Then Germaine's feelings underwent a revulsion of passionate tenderness ; and in the touching reconciliation which ensued between parent and child, Mr, Pitt and his suit were forgotten. Prince George Augustus of Mecklenburg was even less fortunate, being refused by both Mon- sieur and Madame Necker, with a promptitude which he fully deserved. For he had nothing to recommend him but his conspicuous position, and had very impudently avowed that he sought Mademoiselle Necker 's hand only for the sake of her enormous dower. The ground being thus cleared for Madame de BoufHer's protege, that energetic lady set to work to obtain from Gustavus a promise not to remove the Baron, now ambassador, from France for a specified long term of years. This assurance that they would not be parted from their daughter having been given to the Neckers, and formally embodied in a clause of the marriage settlement, the document was signed by the King and Queen of France, and 32 MADAME DE STAEL. several other illustrious personages, and the wed- ding celebrated on the 14th January, I7g6. The first few days after her marriage, Madame de Stael, according to the custom of the time, passed under her father's roof ; and among her letters is a sweet and affectionate one, which she addressed to her mother on the last day of her sojourn with her parents. "Perhaps I have not always acted rightly towards you. Mamma," she writes. "At this moment, as in that of death, all my deeds are present to my mind, and I fear that I may not leave in you the regret that I desire. But deign to believe that the phantoms of imagination have often fascinated my eyes, and often come between you and me so as to render me unrecognizable. But the very depth of my tenderness makes me feel at this moment that it has always been the same. It is part of my life, and I am entirely shaken and unhinged in this hour of separation from you. To-night .... I shall not have in my house the angel that guaranteed it from thun- der and fire. I shall not have her who would protect me if I were dying, and would enfold me, before God, with the rays of her sublime soul. I shall not have at every moment news of your health. I foresee regrets at every instant. . . . I pray that I may be worthy of you. Happiness may come later, at intervals or never. The end GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 33 of life terminates everything, and you are so sure that there is another life as to leave no doubt in my heart Accept, Mamma, my dear Mamma, my profound respect and boundless ten- derness." Perhaps when Madame Necker read this letter she felt in part consoled for the real or fancied pain which her brilliant and unaccountable daugh- ter had given her. And in spite of passing dissensions with her mother, Germaine's twenty years of girlhood had been essentially happy, for they had been ten- derly and watchfully sheltered from blight or harm. CHAPTER IV. necker's short-lived triumph. Some spiteful ridicule awaited the young am- bassadress on her first entrance into official life, and, strangely enough, among these detractors was Madame de Boufflers herself, who wrote to Gustavus III. : " She has been virtuously brought up, but has no knowledge of the world or its usages . . . and has a degree of assurance that I never saw equalled at her age, or in any posi- tion. If she were less spoilt by the incense offered up to her, I should have tried to give her a little advice." Another courtier's soul was vexed because Madame de Stael, when presented on her marriage, tore her flounce, and thus spoilt her third curtsey. As much scandal was caused by this gaucherie as if it had been some newly- invented sin ; but the delinquent herself, when the heinousness of her conduct was communi- cated to her, simply laughed. She could, indeed, afford to despise all such censure, for, if too obstreperously intellectual and ardent for artifi- cial circles, she soon attained to immense influ- (34) NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 35 ence among all the thinking and quasi-thinking minds of France. Politics were now beginning to be the one absorbing subject whose paramount importance dwarfed every other; and Madame de Stael, always in the vanguard of ideas, threw herself with characteristic enthusiasm into the questions of the day. To talk about the glorious future of humanity was the fashionable cant of the hour, but Madame de Stael really believed in the re- generation about which others affectedly maun- dered ; and at all social gatherings in the Rue Bergere, or at St. Ouen (where her presence was as frequent as of yore), she held forth on this subject to the crowd of dazzled listeners, whom she partially convinced and wholly overpowered. She had been married but little more than a year when the first shadow of coming events dimmed the lustre of her new existence. In a speech pronounced at the Assembly of Notables in April 1787, M. de Calonne impugned the accu- racy of the famous Compte Rendu. M. Necker indignantly demanded from the King the permis- sion to hold a public debate on the subject, in the presence of the Assembly before which he had been accused. Louis XVI. refused ; and M. Necker then immediately published a memoir of self-justification. The result was 3. lettre de ca- chet which exiled him to within forty leagues of 36 MADAME DE STAEL. Paris. The order, conveyed by Le Noir, the Min^ ister of Police, reached M. Necker in the evening, when he was sitting in his wife's salon, surround- ed by his daughter and some friends. The live- liness of Madame de Stael's indignation may be imagined. She has described it herself in her Considerations sur la Revohition Frangaise, and declared that the King's decision appeared to her an unexampled act of despotism. Its parallel would not have been far to seek, and acts a thou- sand times worse disgrace every page of the annals of France. But Madame de Stael, always inca- pable of judging where the "pure and noble" interests of her father were concerned, can be pardoned for her exaggeration in this instance, as she had half France to share it. " All Paris," she says, " came to visit M. Necker in the twenty- four hours that preceded his departure. Even the Archbishop of Toulouse, already practically designated for M. de Calonne's successor, was not afraid to make his bow." Offers of shelter poured in upon M. Necker, and the best chateaux in France were placed at his disposal. He finally elected the Chateaux de Marolles, near Fontainebleau, although not, as he nai'vely confesses in a letter to his daughter, without some secret misgivings as to " the decided taste in all things good and bad of dear mamma." Thither Madame de Stael hastened to join him, NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 37 and to console by her unfailing sympathy, her constant applause, and inexhaustible admiration, a misfortune which, after all, had been singularly mitigated. M. Necker accepted all this homage as his due, and his magnanimous wish, that the Archbishop of Toulouse might serve the State and King better than he would have done, is recorded by his daughter with the unction of a true devotee. There is something adorably sim- ple and genuine in all her utterances about this time. In a letter to her husband (who apparently never objected to play second fiddle to M. and Madame Necker) she directs him exactly how to behave at Court, so as to bring home with dig- nity, yet force, to their Majesties the wickedness of their conduct towards so great and good a man ; and she adds that but for her position as Am- bassadress she would never again set foot within the precincts of Versailles. This she wrote even after the lettre de cachet was cancelled. A few months later a reparation was offered to her father with which even his own sense of his worth and the idolatry of his family should have been satis- fied ; for he was recalled to power — unwillingly recalled, it is true. The King's hand was forced. His 'present sentiments to M. Necker, if not hos- tile, were cold ; while those of the Queen had changed to aversion. But the Marquis de Mira- beau had defined the position of France as " a 38 MADAME DE STAEL. game of blind-man's buff which must lead to a general upset " ; consternation had invaded even the densest intelligences ; and the voice of the public clamored for its savior. This time, again, the title given to M. Necker was Director- Gen- eral of Finance ; but, on the other hand, the cov- eted entry into the Royal Council was accorded him. It was the first instance, since the days of Sully, of such an honor being granted to a Prot- estant ; it was given at a moment when the sug- gestion to restore civil rights to those of alien faith had been bitterly resented by the French clergy ; and it was one of the many signs (for those who had eyes to see) that the last hour of the old regime had struck. The nomination was hailed with a burst of ap- plause from one end of France to the other. Madame de Stael hurried to St. Ouen with the news, but she found her father the reverse of elated. Fifteen months previously — the fifteen months wasted by the ineptitude of Brienne — he said he might have done something ; now it was too late. Madame de Stael was far from sharing these feehngs. When anything had to be accom- plished by her father, she was of the opinion of Calonne, in his celebrated answer to Marie An- toinette — ''Si c est possible, cest fait ; si cest impossible, cela se fera!' And undoubtedly M. NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 39 Necker did his best on returning to power ; but, in spite of his honesty, good faith, and unques- tionable abilities, he was not the man for the hour. Very likely, as his friends, and especially his daughter, asserted, no Minister, however gifted, could have succeeded entirely in such a crisis ; and doubtless he was as far as any merely pure- minded man could be from deserving the storm of execration with which the Court party event- ually overwhelmed him. We have said that he did his best ; his mistake was that he did his best for everybody. In a moment, when an unhesi- tating choice had become imperative, he was divided between sympathy with the people and pity for the King. He returned to power without any plan of his own ; but finding Louis XVI. was pledged to assemble the States-General, he insisted that the representation of the Tiers Etat should be dou- bled, so as to balance the influence of the other two parties. Royalists affirm that this was a fatal error, since from that hour the Revolution be- came inevitable. Madame de Stael, jealous of her father's reputation, maintains that reasonable concessions on the part of the Court faction and the higher clergy would have nullified the danger of the double representation. But the point was that such an aristocracy and such a clergy were 40 MADAME DE STAEL, by nature unteachable ; and every moment wasted in attempting to persuade them was an hour add- ed to the long torture of oppressed and starving France. The kind heart, liberal instincts, and adminis- trative ability of Necker taught him that without the double representation the voice of the people might be lifted in vain. But the weakness of his character, and the awe of his bourgeois soul for the time-honored fetich of monarchy, prevented his understanding that the power he invoked could never again be laid by any spell of his choosing. By seeking to arrange this or that, to pare off something here and add something there — in a word, by trying to be just all round, when nobody cared for mutual justice but him- self, he rendered a divided allegiance to his coun- try and his King. If there were no conscious duplicity in his character, there was abundance of it in his opinions ; and to say that nobody could have succeeded better is to beg the ques- tion. In the face of the savage, inflexible arro- gance of the aristocrats and clergy, there was but one course open to a really high-minded man, and that was to leave the Court to its own de- vices, and, throwing himself with all of earnest- ness and wisdom that he possessed into the popular cause, to be guided by it, and yet govern it by force of sympathy and will. NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 41 He might have failed ; in the light of later events, it can even be said that he would have failed. But such a failure would have been grander, more vital for good and sterile for harm, than the opprobrium which eventually visited the honest Necker and pursued him to his grave. Needless to say that opinions such as these never found their way into Madame de Stael's mind. On occasions — perhaps too frequently re- newed — the portals of that enchanted palace were guarded by her heart. In her view, every- thing might yet be saved, were Necker only lis- tened to and obeyed. '* Every day he will do something good and prevent something bad," she wrote to the reactionary and angry Gustavus, and thus betrayed that preoccupation with the individual, his virtues or his crimes, which, for all her intellect, blinded her not rarely to the essential significance of things. With breathless interest and varied feelings of sympathy and indignation she watched the great events which now followed in rapid succession. Her father was monarchical, and believed that a representative monarchy on the English model was the true remedy for France. Madame de Stael — incapable of differing with so great a man — endorsed this opinion at the time, although eventually she became republican. But nobody was republican then — that is in 42 MADAME DE STAEL, name ; people had not yet realized to what logical conclusions their opinions would carry them. Madame de Stael, hating oppression, blamed the sightless obstinacy of the nobles, but, on the other hand, was but little moved by the famous Sermeitt du yen de Paume. She deplored the rejection of Necker's plan — that happy medium which was to settle everything, and stigmatized as it deserved the imbecility of the Court party, as illustrated by confidence in foreign regiments and the Declaration .of the 23d June. Always optimist, and confident of the inevitable triumph of Right over Might, she clung to the belief that a thoroughly pure character, in such a crisis, was the one indispensable element of success. The mysterious nature of Sieyes repelled her ; she preferred the virtuous Malouet to the titanic Mirabeau, and was almost as bUnd as her father to the enormous electric force of the tribune's undisciplined genius. For if often prejudiced, she rarely was morbid, and false ideas did not dazzle her. No splendor of achievement unac- companied by loftiness of principle could win her applause. But she failed to grasp the fact that perfection of moral character, by its very scruples and hesitations, is necessarily handicapped in any race with the velocity of public events. No man can bring his entire self — very rarely can he even bring all that is best of himself — into a struggle NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 43 with warring forces and contradictory individual- ities. In such a contest, swiftness of insight, power of expression, and force of organic im- pulse are the only factors of value. In supreme moments of action, men are greater than them- selves — made so by the sudden, unconscious con- traction of their complex personality into one flame-point of consuming will. All this Madame de Stael seems never to have felt. If she loved unworthy people (and how many she did love !), it was because she deceived herself regarding them, as all her life she de- ceived herself about her father. She was intol- erant of any triumph but that of virtue, and was thus rendered unjust to the great deeds of men who, imperfect and erring themselves, can sym- pathize with the aspirations of the human heart because its baseness is not unknown to them. On the nth of July, at 3 o'clock in the after- noon, M. Necker, who had become a sort of Cas- sandra to the Court party and was detested in proportion, received a letter from the King order- ing him to quit Paris and France, and to accom- plish the departure with the utmost secrecy and despatch. He was at table with some guests when this order was handed to him ; he read it, put it into his pocket, and continued his conver- sation as though nothing had happened. Dinner over, he took Madame Necker aside, 44 MADAME DE STAEL, and informed her what had occurred. Nothing was communicated to Madame de Stael ; proba- bly her father thought she would be too much excited. M. and Madame Necker hastily ordered their carriage and, without bidding anybody fare- well, without even delaying to change their clothes, they had themselves conveyed to the nearest station for post-horses. Thence they continued their journey uninterruptedly, fleeing like culprits from the people whose indignation was feared by the King. Madame de Stael is lost in admiration of this single-minded conduct of her father, and lays especial stress on the fact that, even during the journey, he made no effort to win for himself the suffrages of the multitude. " Where is another man," she naively asks, " who would not have had himself brought back in his own despite t " Certainly an ambitious man might have adopt- ed this theatrical plan ; but it is much more likely, under the actual circumstances, that an ambitious man would never have left at all. M. Necker had only to announce his disgrace to the people of Paris, and go over once for all to the popular side, to have received an intoxicating ovation. As it was, the news of his dismissal cast the cap- ital into consternation. All the theatres were closed, medals were struck in the fallen Minis- ter's honor, and the first cockade worn was NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 45 green — the color of his liveries. What a career might then have been his if, instead of being an obedient subject, he had chosen to be a leader! Madame de Stael thought that it was to the last degree noble and disinterested of him to van- ish from the sight of an adoring multitude rather than bring fresh difficulties on the master who had deserted him. But the destinies of a nation are of higher value than the comfort of a mon- arch, and there are certain responsibilities which no man who does not feel himself incapable (and that was not Necker's case) is justified in declin- ing. To throw back the love and influence offered him then for the last time by France, to sympathize with the popular cause and yet to abandon it, and to do all this out of obedience to the senseless caprice of a faction and the arbi- trary command of a king, was to behave like a Court chamberlain, but in no sense like a states- man. The taking of the Bastille, and the King's dec- laration at the Hotel de Ville, followed immedi- ately on Necker's retirement. Madame de Stael records these events in a very few words, and shows herself, at the moment and henceforward through all the opening scenes of the Revolution, more alive to the humiliation and dismay of the Royal Family than to the apocalyptic grandeur of the catastrophe. 46 MADAME DE STAEL. The acts committed, as one reads of them qui- etly now, are revolting in their mingled gro- tesqueness and terror. To those who witnessed them, they sickened where they did not deprave. The livid head of Foulon on the pike ; the greasy, filthy, partly drunken populace, who rose as from the depths of the earth to invade the splendid privacy of royal Versailles ; the degraded women dragged from shameful obscurity and paraded in the lurid glare of an indecent triumph ; Madame de Lamballe's monstrous and dishonored death ; Marat's hellish accusations, and Robespierre's diseased suspicions, were things that must have destroyed in those who lived through them all capacity for admiration. The fact that Madame de Stael did not lose heart altogether remains an abiding witness to her faith and courage. She was wounded in her tenderest part by the Court's ingratitude and the Assembly's indifference towards her father. Every natural and cultivated sentiment in her was wounded by what she saw. Unlike Madame Roland, she had no traditions and no past of her own to attach her, in spite of everything, to the people. She was insensible to the merely physical infection of enthusiasm, and never even for a mo- ment possessed by the vertigo of the revolution- ary demon-dance. She remained, from first to last, an absolute stranger to every act and every NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 47 consideration that was not either manifest to her intellect or strong in appeal to her heart ; and yet such was her force of mind and rectitude of insight that, under the Directory, we shall find her no less interested in public events than under the Monarchy. The grief that Madame de Stael undoubtedly experienced at her father s banishment was not destined to be of long duration. He had hardly reached the Hotel des Trois Rois at Bale, when, to his great astonishment, Madame de Polignac asked to speak to him. She was the last person that he expected to see there ; but surprise at her presence was soon swallowed up in the far greater amazement excited by all she had to tell. The taking of the Bastille ; the massacre of Foulon and Berthier and DeLaunay ; the critical posi- tion of De Besenval, and the stampede of the aristocrats — what a catalogue of events ! He had never, his daughter says, admitted the possi- bility of proscriptions, and he was a long while before he could understand the motives which had induced Madame de Polignac to depart. He had not much time to reflect on all he had heard before letters from the King and from the Assem- bly arrived urging him to return. He did so most unwillingly, according to Madame de Stael, for the murders committed on the 14th July, although few in number, affrighted him, and " he 48 MADAME DE STAEL. believed no longer in the success of a cause now- blood-stained." He seems to have abandoned all sympathy with the people from this moment, and to have returned avowedly with no intention than that of using his popularity as a buckler with which to defend the royal authority. Madame de Stael, informed by letters from her father of his departure from France and ultimate destination (which was Germany), had hastened after him with her husband and overtook him first at Brussels. There the party had separated mo- mentarily, M. Necker hurrying forward with the Baron de Stael, and Madame Necker, who was suffering in health, following by slower stages with her daughter. The consequence was that Madame de Stael arrived at Bale after her father's interview with Madame de Polignac, and almost at the same time as he received the order to return. In this way she had the profound joy of wit- nessing the enthusiasm which greeted him on every step of his way. No such ovation, she truly says, had ever before been bestowed upon an uncrowned head. Women fell on their knees as the carriage passed ; the leading citizens of the towns where it stopped took the places of the postilions, and the populace finally substituted themselves for the horses. They met numbers of aristocratic fugitives on the journey, and M. NECKER'S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH. 49 Necker, at their request, showered on them auto- graph letters to serve as passports and enable them to cross the frontiers in safety. Whenever the carriage stopped, the popular idol harangued the crowd and impressed on them the necessity of respecting persons and property ; he entreated of them, as they professed so much love for him, to give him the most striking proof that they could of it, by always doing their duty. Madame de Stael says that her father was fully aware of the fleeting nature of popularity ; and, under these circumstances, one wonders that he took the trouble, in such a crisis, to make so many speeches. But it is probable that the intox- ication of praise was a little too much for him ; and he had at all times the sacerdotal tendency to preach. At ten leagues from Paris, news was brought to the travellers that De Besenval had been arrested by order of the Commune, and was to be taken to the capital, where he would, said the pessimists, be infallibly torn to pieces by the populace. M. Necker, entreated to intervene, took upon himself to rescind the order of the Commune, and promised to obtain the sanction of the authorities to his act. On arriving in Paris, consequently, his first care was to proceed, in company with his family, to the Hotel de Ville. The streets, the roofs, the 4 50 MADAME DE STAEL. windows of every house were densely thronged. Cries of "Vive Necker!" rent the air, as the re- deemer of the country appeared on a balcony and began his discourse. He demanded the amnesty of De Besenval and of all those who shared De Besenval's opinion. This extensive programme committed all those who accepted it to a reactionary policy, since to pardon the people's enemies unconditionally was to condone, and in a measure to sanction their crimes. But no such considerations presented them- selves at that moment to impair Necker's tri- umph. The popular enthusiasm accorded him what he asked ; fresh thunders of applause broke forth, and Madame de Stael, overcome with emo- tion, fainted. CHAPTER V. MADAME DE STAEL IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. Necker's victory over the rage of the populace was a fleeting one. He had, indeed, overstepped the prerogatives of a Minister in asking for the amnesty. Misled by the elation of his gratified vanity and the impulse of his benevolent heart, he, an ardent defender of order, forgot that in placing himself between the Assembly and King on the one hand and the people on the other, he practically recognized the right of a faction to act without the consent of the Government. It was for the latter to reverse the decree of the Com- mune and not for the electors of Paris. His dream of smiling peace installed by his hand on the ruins of the Revolution was rudely and rapidly dispelled. Madame de Stael sorrow- fully records that on the very evening of that glo- rious day the amnesty was retracted, and ascribes this result in great part to the influence of Mira- beau. But, in truth, a very little reflection must have sufficed to convince anybody that the Uto- pian demands of Necker were singularly mis- (50 52 MADAME DE STAEL placed. The very electors who had acceded to them asserted that all they had ever intended was to shield the arrested royalists from the fury of the populace, but in no sense from the action of justice. The Assembly confirmed this view, and from that moment Necker's influence was practically gone. It was proved to be a bubble ; and his triumph, respectable as were some of the motives which had urged him to invoke it, be- came ludicrous when contrasted with the stern and tragic realities of the moment. This Mad- ame de Stael did not, could not see. She was fain to console herself with the compassionate reflection that, after all, De Besenval — an old man — was saved. She narrates with dolorous pride the efforts honestly, courageously, and to a certain degree successfully, made by her father, during fifteen months, to avert the disaster of famine ; and inno- cently appeals to them against the failure as a statesman, to which she resolutely shuts her eyes. One measure after another opposed by Necker was voted — the confiscation of the property of the clergy, the suppression of titles of nobility, and the emission of assignats. No popularity could have resisted such successive blows ; and Necker was popular no longer. Still, Madame de Stael touchingly begs the world, in her writ- ings, not to allow itself to be turned from the IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 53 paths of virtue by the spectacle of a good man so persecuted by fate. She claims our admiration for a series of quixotic acts, and is perpetually insisting on the amazing magnanimity which would not allow her father to become base be- cause he had ceased to be useful. Thoroughly discouraged at last (perhaps partly convinced that to preach kindness to savages, and self-abnegation to the vile, was a task to be resumed in better times) Necker tendered his resignation, and had the mortification of seeing it accepted with perfect indifference both by the Assembly and the King. Before leaving Paris forever, he deposited in the royal treasury two millions of his own prop- erty. The exact object of this munificence is not clear; even Madame de Stael failed to explain it on any practical grounds. But she admired it extremely, and so may we. The journey with the terrified and suffering Madame Necker to Switzerland was a great con- trast to the return in the previous year to Paris. Then it had been ''roses, roses all the way" ; now it was nothing but insults. At Arcis-sur- Aube the carriage was stopped by an infuriated crowd, who accused M. Necker of having be- trayed the cause of the people in the interests of the emigrant nobles. The accusation was an absurd one, since he had only endeavored to 54 MADAME BE ST A EL be superhumanly kind to everybody. He had wished to preserve the people from crimes and starvation, the clergy from ruin, and the emigrant nobles from detection, and this was the result. It was hard, but inevitable, and as there were many worse fates than M. Necker's in those days one cannot quite free oneself from a feeling of impatience at Madame de Stael's perpetual lam- entations over the inconceivable hardships of her parent's lot. We now approach an episode in Madame de Stael's life which it is necessary to touch on with discretion. This is her connection with the Count Louis de Narbonne. The stories circu- lated in regard to them are familiar to all readers of Madame d'Arblay's memoirs. Dr. Burney thought himself in duty bound to warn his little Fanny against her growing adoration for Necker's great, but, according to him, not blameless daugh- ter, who, during her stay at Mickleham, exerted herself to win the friendship of the author of Cecilia. Fanny, as we know, was at first greatly shocked, and completely incredulous. She de- scribed Madame de Stael as loving M. de Nar- bonne tenderly, but so openly, and in a manner so devoid of coquetry, that friendship between two men, in her opinion, could hardly be dif- ferently manifested. But the seed of suspicion once cast in the little prude's mind, quickly IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 55 germinated, and led eventually to a total cessa- tion of her acquaintance with the woman whose brilliancy and goodness had so fascinated her. This is not the place in which to discuss Fanny's conduct ; but was the information on which she based it correct ? Who shall say ? Madame de Stael was extremely imprudent, and she seems to have been dangerously near to loving a num- ber of men. Miss Berry, in her memoirs, accuses her of a *' passion " for Talleyrand, and spoke as though concluding it to be a theme of common gossip. She certainly liked to absorb a great deal of her friends' affection, and was avowedly displeased when they married. Her sentiments towards Baron de Stael, full of a sweet and fresh cordiality at first, seems rapidly to have changed to aver- sion. As far as it is possible to judge, she un- hesitatingly sacrificed him on all occasions to her filial love or her intellectual aims. When he was in Paris she left him in order to console M. Necker in his mournful retirement at Coppet. When he was at Coppet she remained in Paris, there to form and electrify a constitutional salon. Various anecdotes attest to the scandal uttered about her, and the truth of some of these stories admits of little doubt. But, on the other hand, it must be remember^ed that detraction is ever busiest with the greatest names ; that Madame 56 MADAME DE STAEL de Stael, always preoccupied with her subject and never with herself, irritated the nerves and stirred the bile of inferior people who were pro- portionately gratified to hear her attacked ; and that she lived in the midst of a society where conjugal fidelity was rare enough to be hardly believed in. Countless passages in her writings prove how exalted was her ideal of family life ; and if they also prove her constant, restless yearning after some unattained, unattainable good, there is at least no sign of the satiety of exhausted emotion in them. Let us be content, then, that in many instances a veil should hide from us the deeper recesses of Madame de Stael's heart. Grant that there were two Germaines — one her father's daughter, lofty-minded, pure, catching the infection of exalted feelings, and incapable of error ; the other her husband's wife, thrust into the fiery circle of human passion, thence to emerge a little scorched and harmed. The hidden centre of that dual self cannot be revealed to us ; but what we do know is some- times so grand and always so great that we can afford to be indulgent when reduced to conject- ure. In 1791, after having paid a visit of condolence to her father at Coppet, Madame de Stael had returned to Paris, and made her salon the rally- ing-point for the most distinguished Constitu- IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 57 tionels. Conspicuous among these, in principles although not in name, was De Narbonne, de- scribed by Madame de Stael herself as " Grand seigneicr, hotnme d' esprit, courtisan et philosophe'^ He was a brilliant, an enlightened, a generous and charming man. His sympathies were lib- eral ; it would have been too much to expect from him that they should be subversive. He had been brought up in the enervating atmosphere of the Court, yet had adopted many of the new ideas. After having accomplished the difficult and perilous enterprise of escorting the King's aunts to Rome, and establishing them under the roof of the Cardinal de Bernis, he returned to Paris and ranged himself on the side of the Con- stitution. His soldier-soul (he was an extremely gallant officer) would not allow of his going any farther along the facile descent of change. The King's abortive attempt at escape and subsequent imprisonment in the Tuileries restored to Nar- bonne all the fervor which his allegiance as a courtier might originally have lacked. But he was a very intelligent man, so much so, that Napoleon himself years later rendered justice to his sagacity. He had serious tastes and a great love of knowledge, and was almost as witty as Talleyrand himself. He was made Minister of War in December, 1791, and the general impres- sion prevailed that Madame de Stael's influence 58 MADAME DE STAEL had contributed to his appointment. He was young and full of hope, and proposed to himself the impossible task of encouraging the action of the Assembly at the same time as he sought to reconstruct the popularity of the King. He also exerted himself to prepare France for resistance to the armies of foreign invaders ; visited the frontier ; reported the state of things there to the Assembly ; provisioned the forts ; re-established garrisons, and organized three armies. But what he could not do was to inspire anybody with con- fidence in himself. " Too black for heaven, too white for hell," he could neither rise to the sub- lime ineptitude of deluded royalism nor sink to the brutal logic of facts. Curtly dismissed by the King, at the end of three months, on resigning the portfolio he resumed the sword. To defend his ungrateful sovereign was his religion, since, in spite of his talents, he did not reach the point of perceiving that there is a mo- ment in the history of every nation when individ- uals must be sacrificed to principles. Perhaps this preoccupation of minds, naturally enlight- ened, with merely personal issues is the real key to all that was tragically mysterious in the Rev- olution. Madame de Stael herself deplored the fate of the King and Queen with precisely the same wealth of compassion that she would have expressed on the occasion of some catastrophe IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 59 involving hundreds of obscure lives. It seemed as though only such sanguinary monomaniacs as Robespierre or St. Just, only such corrupt and colossal natures as Mirabeau or Danton, could look below the accidental circumstances of an event to its enduring elements. All that was morally and vitally, as distinguished from men- tally and potentially, best in France threw itself into passionate defence of persons ; while all that was strong, original, consistent, was drawn into the fatal policy of blood. A few months after Narbonne's fall, Madame de Stael endeavored to associate him in a plan which her pity had suggested to her for the escape of the Royal Family. She wished to buy a property that was for sale near Dieppe. Thus furnished with a pretext for visiting the coast, she proposed to make three journeys thither. On the first two occasions she was to be accom- panied by her eldest son, who was the age of the Dauphin, by a man resembling the King in height and general appearance, and by two women sufficiently like the Queen and Madame Elisabeth. In her third journey she would have left the original party behind and taken with her the whole of the Royal Family. But the King and Queen refused to co-operate in this romantic and courageous plan. Their motives were not unselfish. Louis XVI. objected to Narbonne's 60 MADAME DE STAEL share in the scheme ; and Marie Antoinette, who regarded the double representation of the Tiers Etat as the cause of all her woes, detested Neck- er's daughter. When the Tuileries was invaded by the mob, M. Necker, who was already at Coppet, and knew that the Baron de Stael had been recalled to Sweden, wrote urging his daughter to join him. But she was chained to Paris, fascinated by the very scenes that revolted her, and anxious to intervene if only to save. She assisted, with slender sym.pathy for the revolutionaries, at the celebration of the 14th July in the Champs de Mars, and was wrung with pity for the tear- stained countenance of the Queen, whose mag- nificent toilet and dignified bearing contrasted with the squalor of her cortege. Madame de Stael's eyes were fixed with longing compassion on the figure of the King as he ascended the steps of the altar, there to swear for the second time to preserve the Constitution. His pow- dered head, so lately desecrated by the bonnet rouge, and gold-embroidered coat struck her imagination painfully as the vain symbols of vanished ease and splendor. Then came the terrible night of the 9th Au- gust, during which, from midnight to morning, the tocsins never ceased sounding. ** I was at my window with some of my friends " (wrote IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 6 1 Madame de Stael), " and every fifteen minutes the volunteer patrol of the Constitutionels brought us news. We were told that the fau- bourgs were advancing headed by Santerre the brewer and Westermann. . . Nobody could foresee what would happen the next day, and nobody expected to survive it. . . . All at once (at 7 o'clock) came the terrible sound of cannon. In this first combat the Swiss Guards were victors." The tidings — partly false, as afterwards proved — were brought her of the massacre of Lally Tol- lendal, Narbonne, Montmorency, and others of her friends ; and at once, regardless of peril, she went out in her carriage to hear if the news were true. After two hours of fruitless efforts to pass, she learnt that all those in whom she was most interested were still alive, but in hiding ; and, as soon as the evening came, she sallied forth once more to visit them in the obscure houses where they had taken refuge. Later, she came to have but one thought, which was to save as many as she could of her friends. They were unwilling at first to take shelter in her house as being too conspicuous ; but she would listen to no such objections. Two yielded to her persuasions, and one of these was Narbonne. He was shut up with his companion in the safest room, while the intrepid hostess established herself in the front 62 MADAME DE STAEL apartments, and there, in great anxiety, awaited a domiciliary visit from the authorities. They were not long in coming and in demanding M. de Narbonne. To permit a search was practi- cally to deliver up the victim. Madame deStael's whole mind was consequently bent on averting investigation. The police agents were exceptionally ignorant, and of this fact she was quick to take advantage. She began by instilling alarm into them as to the violation of rights which they committed in invading the house of an ambassador, and she followed this up by informing them that Sweden, being on the frontier of France, would descend upon that offending land immediately. She next passed to pleasantries, and succeeded so well in cajoling her visitors that they finally allowed themselves to be gracefully bowed out. Four days later a false passport supplied by a friend of Madame de Stael allowed Narbonne to escape to England. The Swedish ambassadress herself could easily have left France at any moment, but she lingered on from day to day, unwilling to quit the country while so many of her friends were in danger; and she was rewarded at last by the opportunity of interfering to save Jaucourt, who had been conveyed to the Abbaye — now aptly named *' the Ante-chamber of Death." Madame de Stael IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 63 knew none of the members of the Commune, but, with her unfaiUng presence of mind, she remem- bered that one of them, Manuel, the procitreuTy had some pretensions to be Uterary. These pre- tensions being greater than his talent, Madame de Stael rightly concluded that he possessed suf- ficient vanity to be moved by solicitation. She wrote to ask for an interview, which was accord- ed her for the next morning at 7 o'clock in the official's own house. ''The hour was democratic," she remarks, but she was careful to be punctual. Her eloquence achieved an easy victory over Manuel, who, un- like so many of his colleagues, was no fanatic ; and on the ist of September he made Madame de Stael happy by writing to inform her that, thanks to his good offices, Jaucourt had been set at liberty. She now, at last, determined to quit France the next day, but not alone. Resolute to the end in risking her life for that of others, she consent- ed to take the Abbe de Montesquion with her in the disguise of a domestic, and convey him safely into Switzerland. A passport obtained for one of her servants was given to one of his, and a place on the high road indicated as a rendezvous where the Abbe was to join her suite. When the next morning dawned a fresh ele- ment of terror had invaded the public mind. 64 MADAME DE STAEL The news of the fall of Longwy and Verdun had arrived and Paris was in effervescence. Again in all the sections the tocsin was sounding ; and everybody whose own life was his chief preoc- cupation kept as quiet as possible. But Madame de Stael could not keep quiet — that was impos- sible for her at all times — and at this moment the image paramount in her mind was that of the poor Abbe waiting anxiously at his rendezvous — perhaps only to be discovered if his generous deliverer delayed. Turning a deaf ear to all remonstrance, she started in a travelling-carriage drawn by six horses, and accompanied by her servants in gala livery. This was an unfortunate inspiration. Instead of filling the minds of the vulgar with awe, as she had vainly hoped, it aroused their vigilant suspicions. The carriage had hardly passed under the portals of the hotel before it was surrounded by a furious crowd of old women, "risen from hell," as Madame de Stael energet- ically expressed it, who shrieked out that she was carrying away the gold of the nation. This in- telligent outcry brought a new contingent of exasperated patriots of both sexes, who ordered the fugitive Ambassadress to be conveyed to the Assembly of the Section nearest at hand. She did not lose her presence of mind, but on descending from the carriage found an opportu- IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 65 nity of bidding the Abbe's servant rejoin his mas- ter and tell him of what had happened. This step proved to be a very dangerous one. The President of the Section informed Madame de Stael that she was accused of seeking to take away proscribed royalists, and that he must pro- ceed to a roll-call of her servants. One of them was missing, naturally, having been despatched to save his own master; and the consequence was a peremptory order to Madame de Stael to proceed to the HStei de Ville under charge of a gendarme. Such a command was not calculated to inspire her with any sentiment but fear. Sev- eral people had already been massacred on the steps of the Hotel de Ville ; and although no woman had yet been sacrificed to popular fury, there was no guarantee for such immunity last- ing ; and, as a point of fact, the Princess de Lam- balle fell the very next day. Madame de Stael's passage from the Fau- bourg Saint Germain to the Hotel de Ville lasted three hours. Her carriage was led at a foot- pace through an immense crowd, which greeted her with reiterated cries of " Death ! " It was not herself they detested, she says, but the evi- dences of her luxury ; for the news of the morn- ing had brought more opprobrium than ever on the execrated name of aristocrat. Fortunately, the gendarme who was inside the carriage was 5 66 MADAME DE STAEL touched by his prisoner's situation and her deli- cate condition of health, and her prayers, and promised to do what he could to defend her. By degrees her courage rose. She knew that the worse moment must be that in which she would reach the Place de Greve ; but by the time she arrived there aversion for the mob had almost overcome in her every feeling but disdain. She mounted the steps of the Hotel de Ville between a double row of pikes, and one man made a movement to strike her. Thanks to the prompt interposition of the friendly gendarme, she was able, however, to reach the presence of Robespierre in safety. The room in which she found him was full of an excited crowd of men, women and children, all emulously shrieking, " Vive la Nation ! " The Swedish Ambassadress was just beginning to protest officially against the treatment she had met with, when Manuel arrived on the scene. Never was any apparition more opportune. Greatly astonished to see his late illustrious vis- itor in such a position, he promptly undertook to answer for her until the Commune had made up its mind what to do with her ; and conveying her and her maid to his own house, shut them up in the same cabinet where Madame de Stael had pleaded for Jaucourt. There they remained for six hours, *' dying of IS COURAGEOUS FOR HER FRIENDS. 6/ hunger, thirst, and fear." The windows of the room looked out upon the Place de Greve, and consequently offered the spectacle of bands of yelling murderers returning from the prisons "with bare and bleeding arms.'* Madame de Stael's travelling carriage had remained in the middle of the square. She ex- pected to see it pillaged ; but a man in the uni- form of the National Guard came to the rescue and passed two hours in successfully defending the luggage. This individual turned out to be the redoubta- ble Santerre. He introduced himself later in the day to Madame de Stael, and took credit for his conduct on the ground of the respect with which M. Necker had inspired him when distributing corn to the starving population of Paris. In the evening Manuel, pallid with horror at the events of that awful day, took Madame de Stael back to her own house, through streets of which the obscurity was only relieved at mo- ments by the lurid glare of torches. He told her that he had procured a new passport for herself and her maid alone ; and that she was to be escorted to the frontier by a gendarme. The next day Tallien arrived, appointed by the Commune to accompany her to the barriers. Several suspected aristocrats were present when he was announced. Most people under such cir- 6S MADAME DE STAEL cumstances would have taken care to be found alone ; but Madame de Stael remained undaunt- ed to the end. She simply begged Tallien to be discreet, and he fortunately proved so. A few more difficulties had to be encountered before she was fairly in safety ; but at last she reached the pure air and peaceful scenes of the Jura. CHAPTER VI. MADAME DE STAEL RETIRES TO COPPET. Madame de Stael arrived at Coppet about the beginning of September, 1792. The life there, after her recent experiences in Paris, so far from seeming to her one of welcome rest, fretted her ardent spirit almost beyond endurance. She longed to be back in France, even under the shadow of the guillotine, anywhere but in front of the lake, with its inexorable beauty and mad- dening calm. " The whole of Switzerland inspires me with magnificent horror," she wrote to her husband, who was still in Sweden. " Sometimes I think that if I were in Paris with a title which they would be forced to respect, I might be of use to a number of individuals, and with that hope I would brave everything. I perceive, with some pain, that the thing which least suits me in the world is this peaceful and rustic life. I have put down my horses for economy's sake, and because I feel my solitude less when I do not see any- body." (69) 70 MADAME DE STAEL By "anybody" it is to be presumed that she meant the good Swiss, whose expressions of hor- ror, doubtless as monotonous as reiterated, must have been irritating to one whose single desire night and day, was to cast herself into the arena, there to combat and to save. One outlet she found for her activity in perpetual plans for ena- bling her friends, and often her enemies, to escape from Paris. The scheme which she projected was to find some man or woman, as the case might be, who would enter France with Swiss passports, cer- tificates, etc., and after getting these properly viseSy would hand them over to the person who was to be saved. Nothing could be simpler, Madame de Stael averred ; and as she provided money, time, thought, energy, and presumably infected her agents with a little of her own enthusiasm, her efforts were often successful. Among those who engaged her attention were Mathieu de Mont- morency, Frangois de Jaucourt, the Princess de Poix and Madame de Simiane. Among the people whom she saved, and whose rescue she records with the most complacency, is that of young Achille du Chayla. He was a nephew of De Jaucourt's, and was residing at Coppet under a Swedish name — (M. de Stael had lent himself to many friendly devices of that RETIRES TO COPPET yi kind). The news came that Du Chayla, when trying to escape across the frontier under cover of a Swiss passport, had been arrested at a fron- tier town on suspicion of being what he truly was — a refugee Frenchman. Nevertheless, the authorities declared themselves willing to release him if the Lieutenant Baillival of Nyon would attest that he was Swiss. What was to be done } To bring M. Reverdil, the functionary aforesaid, to such a declaration seemed well-nigh hopeless, and Jaucourt was in despair. His nephew, if once his identity were discovered, had no chance of escape from death ; for not only was his name on the list of the suspected ones, but his father actually held a command under Conde's banner. This was one of the opportunities in which Mad- ame de Stael delighted. Her spirits rose at once in the face of such difficulties. Fortunately, M. Reverdil was an old friend of her family ; she believed that she would be able to melt him, and she hurried away to try. The task was more arduous than she had antic- ipated. M. Reverdil (by her own confession one of the most enlightened of Swiss magistrates) turned out to have a sturdy conscience and an uncomfortable amount of common sense. He represented to his ardent visitor, first, that he would be wrong in uttering a falsehood for any motive ; next, that in his official position he ^2 MADAME DE STAEL might compromise his country by making a false attestation. " If the truth be discovered," he urged, ^'we shall no longer have the right of claiming our own compatriots when arrested in France ; and thus I should jeopardize the interest of those who are confided to me for the sake of saving a man towards whom I have no duties." M. Reverdil's arguments had " a very plausible side," Madame de Stael allowed thus much her- self ; but the good man little knew with whom he had to deal if he thought that such cold jus- tice would have the least effect on his petitioner. She swept all paltry considerations as to the remote danger of unknown, unromantic Swiss burghers to the winds. Her object was to bring back to Jaucourt the assurance of his young nephew's safety ; and from this no abstract prin- ciples could turn her. She remained two hours with M. Reverdil, arguing, entreating, imploring. The task she proposed to herself was, in her own words, " to vanquish his conscience by his humanity." He remained inflexible for a long while, but his vis- itor reiterating to him, " If you say No, an only son, a man without reproach, will be assassinated within twenty-four hours, and your simple word will have killed him," he ultimately succumbed. Madame de Stael says it was his emotion that tri- umphed ; it is just possible that it was sheer RETIRES TO COPPET. 73 physical exhaustion. Madame de Stael was at no time a quiet person to deal with ; when excited, as in the present instance, she must have been overpowering. It was shortly after these events that Madame de Stael visited England, and while there went to Mickleham, there to be introduced to, and for a time to captivate, Fanny Burney. Except Tal- leyrand, she was the most illustrious of the bril- liant band of exiles gathered together at Juniper Hall, and familiar to all readers of the memoirs of Madame d'Arblay and the journal of Mrs. Phillips. It is well known how Fanny withdrew from her intimacy with the future author of Corinne on learning the stories which connected the latter's name with Narbonne. Mrs. Phillips herself was much more indulgent, and Madame de Stael appears to have felt a grateful liking for her ; but it is evident that she was deeply hurt at Fanny's coldness. The approbation of a nature so narrow could hardly have affected her much, one would think, and yet it is plain that she longed for it — she longed indeed, all her life for such things as she possessed not. She could sacrifice her wishes at all times generously and unregretfully, but she never knew how to bear being denied one of them. In all the glimpses one obtains of Madame de Stael, in different countries and from different 74 MADAME DE STAEL people, she never seems quite so womanly, so imperfect and yet so pathetic, as in these journals of Mrs. Phillips. Perhaps the reason of it is that one divines in her at this time a sentiment which, if erring, was simple and truey while many of her later sorrows gained a kind of factitious grandeur from the train of political circumstances attend- ant on them. Mrs. Phillips was present when Madame de Stael received the letter which sum- moned her to rejoin her husband at Coppet, and relates the effect produced upon her. She was most frankly inconsolable, spoke again and again of her sorrow at going, and made endless entreat- ies to Mrs. Phillips to attend to the wants, spirits and affairs of the friends whom she was leaving. She even charged her with a message of forgive- ness for the ungrateful Fanny, and fairly sobbed when parting with Mrs. Folk. Madame de Stael did not leave Coppet again until after the Revolution. Her life seems to have passed with a monotony that the long drama of horror slowly culminating in Paris rendered tragically sombre. She continued her efforts — every day more difficult of accomplishment and sterile of results — to save her friends and foes ; and when the Queen was arraigned, she wrote, in a few days, that eloquent and well-known defence of her which called down upon the writer the applause of every generous heart in Europe. RETIRES TO COPPET. 75 The Neckers during this period seem to have seen very little society. Gibbon was almost their only friend; and in 1794 he went to England, and a few months later died. The next to go was Madame Necker herself. She had long been ill, and her last few months of life were embittered by cruel pain. She had prepared for her end with the minute and morbid care that might have been expected from her. The tomb at Coppet in which she rests, together with her husband and daughter, was built in conformity with her wishes, and in great part under her eyes. She died on 6th May, 1794. M. Necker felt her death acutely, and for months not even his daughter's sympathy could console him. Madame Necker had one of those self-tormenting natures which poison the existence of others in embittering their own. Too noble to be slighted, and too exacting to be appeased, they work out the doom of un- achieved desires ; and when they go to be wrapt in eternal mystery, their parting gift to their loved ones is a vague remorse and doubting. Silent themselves when they might have spoken, they leave an unanswered question in the hearts of their survivors. Monsieur Necker, with his exaggerated consciousness, must have asked him- self repeatedly if he had cared for his strange and loving wife enough. Madame de Stael mourned her mother sincerely, but it is clear that the keen- ^6 MADAME DE STAEL est edge of her grief came from contemplation of her father's. Three months had not elapsed after Madame Necker's death when the 9th Thermidor dawned, and at its close, all sanguinary as that appalling termination was, France drew one long sigh of Inconceivable relief, for Robespierre had fallen. The Directory followed, and Baron de Stael hav- ing been re-nominated to his post, his wife lost no time in hurrying back to Paris. There, true to her indefatigable self, she immediately set about obtaining the eradication of her friends' names from the list of the proscribed emigres. From this moment her opinions, and with them her character, underwent a certain change. She had been a moderate royalist; she became avowedly a republican. But her republicanism was of a strangely abstract and eclectic sort, and it was dashed with so many personal leanings towards monarchists that it resulted in nothing better than a spirit of intrigue. She could not understand that the law, what- ever it may be, which governs circumstances, makes no account of individuals. She believed that, by causing Mathieu de Montmorency and Talleyrand to be recalled from exile, and inspir- ing Benjamin Constant with the loftiest ideals, she could obliterate the blood-stained past and reverse the logic of events. When everybody RETIRES TO COPPET 77 (everybody, that is, whom she cared about) should have been restored to peace, prosperity, and the air of France, she conceived that the study of metaphysical systems and the cultivation of the affections would alone be needed to re-model and perfect humanity. With this in view she toiled and plotted un- ceasingly, clasping the hands of regicides like Barras, rubbing skirts with such women as Tal- lien, and sacrificing her own pet ideal of womanly duty, which consisted, as she repeatedly pro- claimed, in loving and being loved, and leaving the jarring strife of politics to men. Had she remained in France, she must inevi- tably have been betrayed into greater inconsist- encies still. But, fortunately for her fame, her intellect, and her character, the period was ap- proaching in which Bonaparte's aversion was to condemn her to a decade of illustrious exile. CHAPTER VII. THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. In all its varied story, the world probably never offered a stranger spectacle than that presented by Paris when Madame de Stael returned to it in 1795. The mixture of classes was only equalled by the confusion of opinions, and these, in their turn, were proclaimed by the oddest con- trasts in costumes. Muscadms in gray coats and green cravats twirled their canes insolently in the faces of wearers of greasy carmagnoles ; while the powdered pigtails of reactionaries announced the aristocratic contempt of their wearers for the close-cropped heads of the Jacobins. To the squalid orgies in the streets, illuminated by stinking oil-lamps, and varied by the rumble of the tumbrils, had succeeded the salons where Josephine Beauharnais displayed her Creole grace, and Notre Dame de Thermidor sought to wield the social sceptre of decapitated princesses. Already royalism had revived, although furtively, and fans onwhich the name of the coming King could be read but by initiated eyes, were passed (78) THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 79 from hand to hand in the cafes of *' Coblentz." A strange light-hearted nervous gayety — intoxi- cating as champagne — had dissipated the lurid gloom of the Terror ; the dumbness of horror had given way to a reckless contempt for tyranny. A sordid, demented mania for speculation had invaded all classes, and refined and delicate women trafficked in pounds of sugar or yards of cloth. An enormous sensation was produced by Du- cancel's Nouveaicx Aristides, ou l Interieitr des Comites Revolutionnaires, a comedy in which its author distilled into every line the hoarded bit- terness of his soul against the Jacobins. Barras flaunted his cynical sensuality and shameless waste in the face of a bankrupt society ; and austere revolutionaries, beguiled into the enervating atmosphere of the gilded salons, .sold their principles with a stroke of the same pen that restored some illustrious proscribed one to his family. " Every one of us was soliciting the return of some emigre among his friends," writes Madame de Stael. " I obtained several recalls at this period ; and in consequence the deputy Legendre, almost a man of the people, denounced me from the tribune of the Convention. The influence of women and the power of good soci- ety seemed very dangerous to those who were excluded, but whose colleagues were invited to 80 MADAME DE STAEL. be seduced. One saw on decadis, for Sundays existed no longer, all the elements of the old and new regune united, but not reconciled." Into this seething world Madame de Stael threw herself with characteristic activity. Le- gendre's attack upon her, foiled by Barras, could not deter her from interference. Her mind being fixed upon some ideal Republic, she was anxious to blot out all record of past intolerance. The prospect of restoring an aristocrat to his home, or of shielding him from fresh dangers, invariably proved irresistible to her. Nevertheless she was quick to perceive and to signalize the folly of the reactionaries ; and she felt but scant sympathy with the mad attempt at a monarchical restora- tion known in history as the 13th Vendemiaire. She uttered no word of palliation for the massa- cres committed by the . Royalists in Lyons and Marseilles, and she was more than willing to admit the benefits conferred on France by the first six months of the Government of the Directory. But she could not be happy at the continued exclusion of the nobles and clericals, and any. appeal from one of them touched her with all the force of old association. Talleyrand had not returned from America when her eloquence induced Chenier to address the Convention in favor of his recall. Montesquion next claimed her attention, and in consequence of all this she THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 8 1 became an object of suspicion and was accused of exciting revolt. The Government, indeed, thought her so dangerous that, at one moment, when she was at Coppet, they ordered her to be arrested and brought to Paris, there to be impris- oned. Barras, however, defended her, as she relates, *' with warmth and generosity," and, thanks to him, she was enabled to return, a free agent, to France. Throughout the events preceding the coup d'Etat of the i8th Fructidor, Madame de Stael was keenly alive to the danger which threatened and eventually overtook her friends among the Moderates. To act, in these circumstances, was with her a second nature. Her relations with Barras had naturally become very friendly ; and she used her influence to obtain the nomination of Talleyrand to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. " His nomination was the only part that I took in the crisis preceding the iSth Fructidor, and which I hoped by such means to avert," she wrote. "One was justified in hoping that the intelligence of M. de Talleyrand would bring about a reconciliation between the two parties. Since then I have not had the least share in the different phases of his political career." There is a ring of disappointment in these words ; but how could Madame de Stael, with 6 82 MADAME DE STAEL. ■ her supposed infallible insight, ever have believed in such a nature ? " It is necessary to serve someone," was the answer of a noble when reproached for accepting the office of chamberlain to one of Napoleon's sisters. Madame de Stael records the reply with scorn; but she should, one thinks, have recog- nized the fibre of just such a man in the Bishop of Autun. The proscription extending on all sides after the i8th Fructidor, Madame de Stael's intervention became unceasing. She learnt the danger incurred by Dupont de Nemours, accord- ing to her " the most chivalrous champion of lib- erty " France possessed, and straightway she betook herself to Chenier, who, two years pre- viously, had made the speech to which Talley- rand owed his recall. Her eloquence soon fired the nervous, violent-natured, but imaginative author, and, hurrying to the tribune, he succeed- ed in saving Dupont de Nemours, by represent- ing him as a man of eighty, whereas he was barely sixty. This device displeased the very person in whose favor it was adopted ; but Madame de Stael saved her friends in spite of themselves. So much energy could not be displayed with impunity, and the Committee of Public Safety caused a hint to be conveyed to the Baron de Stael, which induced his wife to retire for a short time to the country. According to Thibaudeau, THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 83 indeed, the hint was in the first instance a dis- tinct order to quit France, and M. de Stael cut a somewhat sorry figure when appearing before the Committee to protest against it. In spite of his *' embarrassed air" and ''want of dignity," he managed to convey to his hearers that to expel the wife of an ambassador would be a violation of rights ; and after some discussion the decree was withdrawn. Nevertheless, probably yielding to the prudent representations of her husband, Madame de Stael did retire for a while, and took refuge with a friend. We may suppose that she felt greatly aggrieved and ill-used, and yet it can- not be denied that her qualities — rare and noble though they might be — were not of a nature to recommend her to a Revolutionary Government. One can even affirm that they were not of a sort to recommend her to any Government. Her tal- ents, her wealth and her position gave her im- mense social power. When she used this, as she repeatedly did, to inspire officials with disobe- dience to orders, and to save the lives of reac- tionary prisoners at the risk of ruining radical functionaries, it is not to be wondered at if the selfish majority regarded her interference as ex- ceedingly pernicious. It may even be questioned whether her influ- ence at this time was intrinsically valuable. Her state of excited feeling kept her floating between 84 MADAME DE STAEL sympathy with principles and sympathy with individuals. The result was an eclecticism of feeling, which reflected itself in the composition of her salon. Had she been able to declare her- self frankly either Monarchical or Republican she might have left some lasting impress on the des- tinies of her land. As it was, she was kept in a condition of restless activity which, while sterile of intellectual results, brought her into disrepute as a conspirator. The time was now rapidly approaching when Bonaparte was to cross her path, and, as she chose to conceive it, to spoil her existence. The instrument of destiny in this instance was Ben- jamin Constant. Immediately after the fall of Robespierre he arrived — a young old man, world- weary, full of unsteady force, and warmed by an inner flame of passion that sometimes smouldered but never died down. A Bernese noble, he had been reared in aris- tocratic prejudices, but his life was early embit- tered by domestic circumstances and the political conditions of his country. After being educated at Oxford, Edinburgh, and in Germany, he was forced by his father to accept the post of Cham- berlain at the Court of Brunswick. Ariel in the cloven pine was not more heart-sick, with the dif- ference that Constant's "delicate" spirit was dashed by a vein of mephistophelian mockery. THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 85 Some malignant fairy seemed to have linked to his flashing and unerring insight a disposition the most cynical of which man ever carried the bur- den through sixty-three years of life. Being utterly unwarped by illusion, he could place him- self on the side of opposition with telling effect, for he could neither deceive himself nor be deceived by others ; and if not rigidly conscien- tious, he was inexorably logical. At war with the authorities of his native land, too familiarized with order to be further charmed by it, and tired of the solemn absurdities of Court functions, he turned his thoughts towards revolu- tionary Paris as being, perhaps, the one city in the world which could still afford him afresh sen- sation. Moreover, every element of originality and audacity in his brilliant mind was attracted by the amazing spectacle then presented by the Convention. A government which, deprived of organized armies, money, or traditions, confront- ed with a European coalition, and weighted with the responsibility of crime, had conquered its ene- mies in the field, and made its will respected from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, was exactly of a kind to fascinate a born combatant like Constant. He arrived, eager to be initiated into that strange world ; longing to find himself in the salons of Madame Tallien, Josephine Beauha-rnais an^ Madame de Stael. 86 MADAME DE STAEL. Hitherto his Egeria had been Madame de Charriere, a charming middle-aged monitress, Dutch by birth, but French by right of intellect and choice of language. Her delicate penetra- tion and subtle sympathy with minor moods had doubtless for years responded precisely to his ideal ; for if she might not excite neither could she bore him ; and she must have understood his fastidious notions even before he could express them. She was, in fact, perfection, as long as he was still too young to mind feeling old ; but there necessarily came a moment when that uncon- scious comedy was played out. The fitful energy of his nature had gradually vanquished his early lassitude, and he needed to renew his utterances at the founts of some Sybilline inspiration. Madame de Stael appears simply to have over- whelmed him ; and the effect which he produced on her was not less startling. Her salon was the rallying-ground of contradictory individualities. She believed in those days that she could recon- cile Irreconcilables, and she welcomed Conven- tionnels hke Chenier and Roederer, stranded •'survivals" of a vanished epoch like Suard, Morellet and Laharpe ; and aristocrats, some of them altogether soured and worn out, like Castel- lane, Choiseul and Narbonne. Into this political menagerie Constant fell like a spirit from another world. Applauding the Revolution, yet having THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 87 played no part in it, he was its virgin knight. There was something strange and attractive also in his appearance ; a certain awkwardness in fig- ure and gesture joined to a handsome, clever, young face and long, fair hair. Just at that mo- ment (1795) the predominant tendency in Ma- dame de Stael's salon was hostile to the Govern- ment. She professed herself already to be converted to Republicanism, and probably was so in theory, but she had not yet overcome her aversion to the real revolutionaries. Either directly through her influence or with her tacit consent, Constant was induced to publish three letters protesting against the admission of two thirds of the old Convention into the new body of Representatives. The success which followed was prodigious. All the women of the Royalist party flattered and caressed him, and all the jour- nalists extolled him to the skies. Constant, how- ever, was not the man to bear that kind of petting long, he required excitement with some keener edge to it, and was, moreover, too logical, too naturally enlightened and liberal to endorse reac- tionary platitudes. He hastened to disavow the letters, and although he did not find it easy to disabuse the public mind of its first impression, he was careful not to deepen this by any further mistakes. During the following four years his intimacy with Madame de Stael flourished and 88 MADAME DE ST A EL. grew apace. They acted and reacted upon one another by the law of their opposing natures. His ardor was as uncertain as hers was steady ; but whenever he caught fresh fire, it came from her. On the other hand, the tormenting kind of cruelty which belonged to his cynical caprice seems to have cast a spell over Madame de Stael's own warm and frank simplicity which she found it difficult to break. To Constant, at this time, belongs the merit of having appreciated her thoroughly and defended her warmly — if not invariably, at any rate in his truer moments. On his very first meeting with her, which was in Switzerland, she enthralled him instantaneously ; perhaps all the more so that, like most people, he had been prejudiced against her by hearsay. He wrote to Madame de Char^- riere, who seems to have felt and expressed some bitterness regarding his new acquaintance, that she should get rid of the idea that Madame de Stael was nothing more than a " talking ma- chine." He praised her lively interest in everyone who suffered, and her courage in scheming for the escape of her friends and enemies. He admitted that she might be active partly because she could not help it ; but silenced further carping by the remark that her activity was well employed. In about a month more his admiration had risen to THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 89 enthusiasm, and he could hardly find words in which to praise the brilliancy and accuracy of mind, the exquisite goodness, the generosity and social politeness, the simplicity and charm of his latest friend. He declared that she knew just as well how to listen as to talk (a point on which many both before and after Madame de Charriere differed from him), and that she enjoyed the tal- ents of other people quite as much as her own. This was perfectly true. No woman ever breathed who was less envious than Madame de Stael ; but, on the other hand, what woman's intellect was ever so unapproachable .'* At the time, however, of her first acquaintance with Constant, her liter- ary reputation was still to make, and it is not to be wondered at, consequently, if Madame de Charriere felt more inclined to question than agree when informed that this restless female politician was a being of so superior a sort that her like could not be met with once in a century. About 1796 Madame de Stael took a new de- parture. Perhaps thanks to Constant's enlight- ened views, perhaps thanks merely to her own common sense, she felt the full futility of reac- tionary effort, and ranged herself frankly on the side of the Directory. The royalist Club de Clichy was by this time an accomplished fact ; and to neutralize its mischievous influence the Cercle Constitutionnel had been formed at the 90 MADAME DE STAEL. H6tel de Salm. For some time Madame de Stael was the soul of these meetings, and Constant was their orator. Finally, when a fresh division in the Convention declared itself, and a large num- ber of deputies deserted the Directory, Madame de Stael and Constant exerted themselves to prove that such dissensions could profit only the two extremes of Royalists or Terrorists, but never the Moderates. Naturally, the latter were deaf (when have Moderates eyes to see or ears to hear in moments of vital significance?), and Madame de Stael's worst previsions were justi- fied by the events of the i8th Fructidor. The establishment, two years later, of the Consulate, while filling Madame de Stael's noble soul with dismay, offered Constant the opportunity as- signed to him by his talents. He entered then upon the course of opposition from which he did not again deviate until sixteen years later, when he yielded either to Napoleon's personal charm, the fascination of his deeds, and the hope of his repentance, or to the profound disgust of a world- worn man with the imbecility of the Restoration. This is how Constant, in 1800, described the state of the public mind in France : — " The predominating idea was : Liberty has done us harm, and we wish for it no longer ; and those who modestly pointed out to these candi- dates for slavery that the evils of the Revolutioii THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL. 9 1 came precisely from the fact that the Revolution had suspended liberty, were hounded through the salons under the names of Jacobins and Anarch- ists. A nation which begged for slavery from a military chieftain of thirty, who had covered him- self with glory, might count upon its wishes being gratified ; and they were." These few lines are a good example of Con- stant's incisive intellect and biting style. An- other man with such gifts would have retired disgusted from all opposition ; but Constant loved fighting for its own sake. Perhaps he loved the combat better than the cause ; but that is one of the secrets which it is given to no one to fathom. Whatever the central motive, the final fact of his complex and interesting nature, he proved him- self the ideal leader of a forlorn hope. By the contemporaries of Constant and Ma- dame de Stael the connection between these two brilliant minds was, as might be expected, vari- ously judged. Later critics have asserted that he was completely under her influence, but it is more likely that his native cynicism and spurious passion alternately irritated and dominated her. She may have inspired, but she couldnot mould, a nature so original and perverse. Chenedolle said of Madame de Stael about this time that she had more intelligence than she could manage, and in this there was probably 92 MADAME DE STAEL. some truth. She had hardly begun to write as yet, having published (besides some pamphlets) only the Letters on Rousseau^ and her work on the Passions. Her turbulence of ideas, scarcely then reduced to any system, must necessarily have been crystallized at moments by contact with a more definite mind. CHAPTER VIII. MADAME DE STAEL MEETS NAPOLEON. The hostility between Madame de Stael and Napoleon was inevitable, since not a single point of sympathy existed between them. Her moral superiority, unselfishness, romantic ardor and sin- cerity, were precisely the qualities for which he would feel contempt, as being incompatible with the singleness of individual purpose, serene indif- ference to suffering, and calm acceptance of means which' are necessary to material success. Madame de Stael was intimately convinced that not only honesty, but every other virtue consti- tuted the best policy. Napoleon treated all such amiable theories as mere sentimentalism. If occasionally sensual from love of excitement, he was essentially passionless, and looked upon women as toys, not as sentient beings. He hated them to have ideas of their own ; he liked them to be elegant, graceful and pretty. He was brought into contact with Madame de Stael — a woman overflowing with passion, energy and intellect, large of person, loud of voice, careless (93) 94 MADAME DE STAEL in attire. She had generally found her eloquence invincible, and he meant nothing to be invinci- ble but his system. She had every reason to believe in her talent, and proclaimed that belief somewhat obstreperously ; while he was disgust- ed at not being able to differ from her, and at finding that there was still one light which could shine unquenched beside his star. He usually succeeded in repressing people so entirely as to leave alive in them no possibility of protest ; but she was, by her nature, irrepressible. It is true that she records having felt suffocated in his presence, but such a feeling could not have endured in her long. A very little familiarity would have transformed it into impatient rebel- lion. For Napoleon society, with a few excep- tions, was composed of dummies, some of them a little more tangible and resisting than others, consequently more difficult to thrust out of the way. The individual had no intrinsic value for him, but was simply a factor in the sum of suc- cess. Madame de Stael admired everybody who was clever, loved everybody who was good, pitied everybody who was sorrowful. She detested oppression, and fought against it and conquered, if not materially, at least morally, although some- times she hardly foresaw when engaging in it how much the fight would cost her. In the beginning of her acquaintance with him Madame MEETS NAPOLEON. 95 de Stael evidently entertained an admiration for Napoleon greater than that which she eventually cared to avow. Bourrienne goes so far as to assert that she was in love with him, and that she wrote him perfervid letters, which he dis- dainfully threw into the fire. It is not necessary to accept the whole of this story. Bourrienne as a returned hnigre can have felt but a meagre sympathy for Madame de Stael, and he probably yielded to the temptation of making his account of her as piquant as possible. But as she never did anything by halves, and always wrote with the most unconventional ardor, it is certain that her first sentiments towards the conqueror of Italy were expressed in a form to weary rather than gratify him. She presumably praised him for views which he did not hold, and for a disin- terestedness that he was far from feeling. He must have understood that to an intellect such as hers, the first shock of disappointment would bring enlightenment, and then his schemes would be penetrated before they were ripe for execu- tion. Add to all these elements of antipathy the fact that every intelligent man in Paris would find his way to Madame de Stael's salon, with the further fact that she herself was not to be silenced, and it becomes easy to understand how Bonaparte could condescend from his greatness to hate her. 96 MADAME DE STAEL His aversion, owing to his Italian blood, had a strain of Pulcinello-like malignity, and every fresh outbreak of clamor from his victim only roused him to strike harder. That he should exile her in the first instance was not only comprehensible but justifiable. He had undertaken a gigantic task, that of accomplishing by the single force of his own will, and in the brief space of his own life-time, what, in the natural course of events, would have required the slow action of genera- tions. That is, he sought to weld into his own system the mobile, alert, and impressionable mind of France. To crush a thing so impalpable, to extinguish a thing so fiery, was an impossible undertaking, and to anybody but Napoleon it must have seemed so. He, at least, so far understood its magnitude as to appreciate the full danger of even a momentary reaction. And what, in that sombre but electric atmosphere, charged with suppressed fire, was so likely to provoke a reac- tion as the influence of Madame de Stael— a woman of amazing talent, of high position and great wealth ; notoriously disinterested, and, although ever true to her principles, yet strongly swayed by personal influences. Moreover, she represented the Opposition. Let anybody consider what public opinion is, even in well-ordered England, how it reverses in MEETS NAPOLEON. 97 a moment the best laid plans of Ministers, and it becomes easy to understand how in revolutionary France, a new thought emanating from Madame de Stael's salon could prove gravely dangerous to Napoleon. In exiling her he only treated her as she had been treated already. If he found her in France on coming to power, it was because she had been reconciled to the Directory ; but there never was the least chance of her becoming reconciled to him. There are several very womanly touches in Madame de Stael's own account of her relations with Napoleon. Here is one of them, relating apparently to a time when the aversion between the First Consul and his illustrious foe had become an accomplished but not an acknowl- edged fact. Madame de Stael was invited to General Berthier's one evening when it was known that Napoleon would be present. " As I knew," she says, " that he spoke very ill of me, it struck me that he would address me with some of the rude things which he often liked to say to women, even to those who flattered him ; and I wrote down on chance, before going to the party, the different stinging and spirited replies which I could make to his speeches. I did not wish to be taken by surprise if he insulted me, for that would have been a greater want of char- acter even than of wif; and as nobody could be 7 98 MADAME DE ST A EL sure of remaining at ease with such a man, I had prepared myself beforehand to defy him. For- tunately, it was unnecessary ; he only put the most insignificant question in the world to me, for . . . he never attacks except where he feels himself to be the stronger." The whole of this passage is enchantingly simple-minded. One may be allowed to think, in spite of Madame de Stael's assertion to the contrary, that she was really disappointed at not being able to make some of her defiant retorts to the conqueror; but it was child-like of her to have arranged them in advance ! Napoleon was preparing to invade Switzerland. Madame de Stael flattered herself for a moment that she might deter him from the project, and sought an interview with him for that purpose. The tete-a-tete lasted an hour, and Napoleon lis- tened with the utmost patience, but he did not give himself any trouble to discuss Madame de Stael's arguments, and quickly diverted the con- versation to his own love of solitude, country life and fine arts — three things for which, by the way, his visitor cared almost as little as himself. She came away convinced that the eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes combined would not move him, but captivated, she admits, by the charm of his manner ; in other words, by the false bonhomie which he possessed the art of MEETS NAPOLEON. 99 introducing into his Italian garrulity. While Madame de Stael pleaded and Bonaparte chat- tered they were both learning to understand one another, but it is most probable that the first to be enlightened was the man. Switzerland being threatened with an invasion, Madame de Stael left 'Paris in 1798 to join her father at Coppet ; for he was still on the list of emigres, and therefore came under a law which forbade him on pain of death to remain on any soil occupied by French troops. His daughter, always as much alarmed by remote danger as courageous when in imminent peril, trembled for his safety, and supplicated him to leave, but in vain. He probably supposed that her fears were groundless ; and so they turned out to be. When Madame de Stael was returning to France, Necker, anxious to have his name erased from the list of the proscribed, drew up a memo- rial to that effect, which was presented by his daughter to the Government. His request hav- ing been unanimously granted, his next step was to endeavor to recover the two millions which he had quixotically left in the public treasury when quitting France on the outbreak of the Revolu- tion. The Government recognized the debt, and offered to pay it out of the confiscated church lands. But to this M. Necker would not consent. He no longer disapproved of the sale of ecclesi- lOO MADAME DE STAEL astical property, but he did not wish to throw doubt on his perfect impartiality by confounding his interests with his opinions. About this time Madame de Stael's separation from her husband took place. Her ostensible ob- ject was to ensure the safety of her children's fort- une, which was jeopardized by Baron de Stael's extravagance. Any other reason which may have existed is not of great importance, inasmuch as the Baron, always a shadowy personage, had finally been quite eclipsed by his brilliant wife. He was said to be indifferent to her, but he seems to have been always fairly amiable and very obe- dient. As it will not be necessary to speak of him again, it may be mentioned here that he died in 1802, and that his last moments were soothed by the ministrations of his wife, who, hearing that he was ill, travelled from Switzerland to France to attend on him, and tried to bring him back with her to Coppet ; but he expired on the road at a place called Poligny. Madame de Stael happened to be returning from Coppet to Paris on the i8th Brumaire, when she learnt that her carriage had passed that of her former ally Barras, who was returning to his estate at Grosbois accompanied by gendarmes. The name of *' Bonaparte " was' on everybody's lips — the first time, as she remarks, that such a thing had happened since the Revolution. The MEETS NAPOLEON. 10 1 state of things which she found on entering the capital was of a kind to excite her imagination. Five weeks of intrigue had ripened Napoleon's opportunity, and the 19th Brumaire dawned on a France exhausted and enslaved. From that moment Madame de Stael's role was marked out for her irrevocably as one of per- petual opposition. At no time inclined to silence, she was, we may be sure, both loud and intrepid in her denunciation of the new tyranny. At first Napoleon appeared disposed to win her over. Joseph Bonaparte, who was her friend and fre- quented her salon, came to her once with some- thing that sounded like a message. Napoleon had asked why Madame de Stael would not give in her adhesion to his Government. Did she want the two millions to be paid to her father, or residence in Paris accorded him .? There should be no difficulty about either. She had only to say what it was she wanted. Madame de Stael's answer is celebrated : **The question is not what I want, but what I think." Some protests against the growing despotism proceeded from the Tribunat, and notably from Constant. It is superfluous to say that Madame de Stael applauded these with fervor. It is well known how, the evening previous to a celebrated speech which he was about to make. Constant consulted her on the subject. She encouraged 102 MADAME DE STAEL him warmly, although already perceiving that the path which she had elected to tread would, in all likelihood, lead to exile. The salon was full of her friends at the time, but Constant warned her that, if he spoke the next day, everybody would desert her. "You must obey your conscience," she replied ; but adds that, had she known what she would have to suffer from that day, and throughout the next ten years, her answer might have been different. But here we think that Madame de Stael's literary instinct carried her away. She was very sincere, but very imagina- tive, and, when writing for the public, it must often have been difficult for her to distinguish between what she felt before and after the fact. Considering what her disposition was, and the opportunities for eloquence afforded both to her- self and Constant by an attitude of hostility to Napoleon, it is impossible to resist the conclu- sion that she enjoyed her opposition with one- half of her nature, if she regretted its results with the other. For some weeks after Constant's speech Ma- dame de Stael's salon, usually so animated, was silent and deserted. Joseph Bonaparte was for- bidden by his brother to attend it ; but most people needed no prohibition, they absented themselves of their own accord under various pretexts. Fouche, the Minister of Police, called MEETS NAPOLEON. 1 03 on her, and insinuated that a brief retirement into the country would be advisable, as giving the storm time to blow over. She took the hint, and retired for a short time to St. Ouen. On her return to Paris she avers that she did not find Napoleon's vi^rath at all appeased. Apparently she expected it to die a spontaneous death, for she did not adopt the only means by v^hich she could have pacified him, but continued to applaud, if not instigate, an active hostility to his meas- ures. It vi^ould have been grand and magnani- mous of Napoleon to have despised the enmity of a woman, but he was neither grand nor magnan- imous. Moreover, the last thing which Madame de Stael probably desired was to be despised. Nobody can deny her the meed of admiration which she deserved for her love of liberty, and the indomitable spirit with which, when in exile, she refused to conciliate her oppressor by one word of praise. But, inasmuch as she knew with whom she had to deal, and what would be the consequence of her actions, one must admit that the amount of pity which she claimed for herself, and has generally received, is excessive. She was in direct contradiction to her own theories of a woman's true duty, when interfering in poli- tics ; and in being treated by Napoleon as a man might have been, she paid the penalty of the splendid intellect which emancipated her from 104 MADAME BE STAEL the habits and the views, if not from the weak- nesses, of her sex. She was neither helpless nor harmless, since she could stir up enemies to the tyrant by her eloquence, and revenge herself, when punished, by the power of her pen. She was exiled not because she was a woman and defenceless, but because she was a genius and formidable. She deliberately engaged in a con- test of which the object was to prove who was the stronger— herself or Napoleon. She came out of it scarred, but dauntless. What right had she to complain because the weapons that wounded her were keen } Besides, paltry as Napoleon showed himself in many respects, he was a phenomenon of so ex- ceptional a nature that to judge him by ordinary standards was absurd. It was the weakness of France which made his opportunity ; and if the epoch had not been abnormal, he never could have dominated it. The people whom he gov- erned had two courses open to them : to submit or to protest. The first brought profit, the sec- ond glory ; and the glory which is purchased by no sacrifice is unworthy of the name. In 1801 Madame de Stael published her work on Literature, in which, as she says, there was not a word concerning Napoleon, although " the most liberal sentiments were expressed in it with force." The book produced an immense sensa- MEETS NAPOLEON. 10$ tion ; and Parisian society, in its admiration for the writer, forgot the First Consul's displeasure, and again crowded round her. She admits that the winter of 1801 was a pleasant one. Napo- leon, passing through Switzerland the previous summer, had seen and spoken with M. Necker. It is characteristic of both interlocutors that the ex-statesman was far more impressed with the warrior than the latter with him. Necker divined in the young hero a strength of will to which his own hesitating nature was a stranger; while Napoleon, on his side, penetrating but preju- diced, contemptuously described the once august financier in two words, '* A banker and an Ideal- ist." With his usual cynicism, he attributed Necker's visit to the desire of employment ; whereas Madame de Stael affirmed that her father's chief object was to plead her cause. In this he was so far successful that residence in France was for some time at least assured to her. " It was," she writes, *' the last time that my father's protecting hand was extended over my life." For the moment, either this beneficent influence, or, as is more likely, a passing fit of good humor on the part of Napoleon, enabled her to enjoy existence. Fouche consented to recall several emigres for whom she interceded, and even Joseph Bonaparte once again treated her with I06 MADAME DE STAEL cordiality, and entertained her for a little time at his estate at Morfontaine. A variety of circumstances arose to put an end to this state of things and to revive Napoleon's dislike to Madame de Stael. Her father pub- lished his work, Dernieres Vues de Politique etde Financey with the avowed intention of protest- ing against Napoleon's growing tyranny. His daughter had encouraged him in this feeling, her- self unable, as she declares, to silence this " Song of the Swan." Then Bernadotte had inaugu- rated a certain sullen opposition to the First Con- sul, and Madame de Stael immediately became his friend. Finally, her salon was more crowded than ever, and by great personages, such as the Prince of Orange and other embryo potentates, besides foreigners of celebrity in letters and sci- ence. Napoleon detested salons. It was his convic- tion that a woman who disposed of social influ- ence might do anything in France, inasmuch as he held that the best brains in the country were female. Madame de Stael, moreover, possessed the art of keeping herself well before the public. Even now she had just published Delphine^ and all the papers were full of it. To please Napol- eon, they condemned it as immoral — a strange criticism in that age, and an excellent advertise- ment in any. MEETS napoleon: 107 Napoleon, on Madame de Stael's again visiting Switzerland, hinted to Lebrun that she would do well not to return to Paris. His obsequious col- league hastened to intimate this by letter ; and although the communication was not official, the First Consul's lightest intimations by this time carried so much weight that Madame de Stael was compelled to obey. She did so very reluc- tantly ; and perhaps if her father's prudence had not been greater than her own, her longing to be back in the capital would have overpowered every other consideration. As it was, she made the best that she could of a year's uninterrupted sojourn at Coppet. The Tribunat meanwhile had shown itself again rebellious. Bonaparte, irritated, declared that be would shake twelve or fifteen of its members " from his clothes like ver- min," and Constant had no choice but to rejoin his friend in Switzerland. CHAPTER IX. NEW FACES AT COPPET. Some remarkable people had already begun to cluster round the Chatelaine of Coppet. De Gerando, Sismondi, Camille Jordan, Madame de Kriidener, Madame Recamier— all are interest- ing names. Camille Jordan, who was introduced by De Gerando, appears to have been taken up at once with characteristic ardor by Madame de Stael. His Vrai Sens du Vote National sur le Consulat a Vie, published in 1802, was just the kind of trumpet-call to which she always respond- ed. Straightway her letters to him became fre- quent, and full of the excessive fervor and flattery which. distinguished all her protestations of af- fection. Oddly enough, Madame de Kriidener, not yet a priestess, but a most .decided coquette, appears to have exercised a rather perturbing influence upon these new relations. Madame de Stael writes that she would have liked to send Jordan a ring containing a lock of her hair, and formerly the property of her husband, but she is restrained by the recollection of Madame de Krii- (108) NE W FA CES A T COPPE T. 109 dener's fair tresses, for which, as she learns, Camille entertains a lively admiration. Another letter contains an invitation to him to join her and one or two other friends in a journey to Italy,, coupled with a playful hint that in such scenes he might find her society more agreeable than the lovely blonde's. Camille not responding in the way desired, Madame de Stael betrays some wounded feeling. She had thought that when once she had admired Jordan's writings so much, everything must be in harmony between them. She had been mistaken. She would take refuge in silence. Nevertheless she is not silent ; and Madame de Kriidener's name reappears. Ma- dame de Stael is willing to admit that she is a remarkable person, but objects that she is always talking of persons who have killed themselves for love of her. Then Jordan is summoned to say if it be true that he is in love, not with Madame, but with Mademoiselle de Kriidener } She has nothing but a Greuze-like face to recommend her, and if she has enthralled him then why has he not fallen a victim to every young girl of fifteen } Nevertheless, if he really be in love, and will con- fess it, Madame de Stael will set herself to study Mademoiselle de Kriidener better, with a view to loving her herself if she prove indeed worthy of Jordan's affection. In reading all this, one is forced to the conclu- no MADAME DE STAEL. sion that a more emotional woman than Madame de Stael never trod the earth. Every human creature, perhaps, has one unsolved, it may be msoluble, riddle in his life — one mystery of feel- ing which nobody fathoms. More especially is this true of women who live so much in sentiment ; and supremely true of a woman like Madame de Stael. That ineffable something in her which nobody seems to have guessed while she was liv- ing, of which Byron felt the presence in her with- out divining the cause, was the passionate and unappeasable desire to be loved. All men who had dealings with her appear to have misunder- stood her in so far that they believed her to be more dominated by her head than her heart — in- stead of understanding that, in her, head and heart were the systole and diastole of a temper- ament surprisingly forcible but not essentially strong. Or, if they did learn to comprehend her better at last, it was when she was no longer young, and feeling of a certain sort had become, alas ! ridiculous. As long as she was entitled to feel and to suffer they made almost a reproach to her of the intellectual superiority which they could not deny, and cast her back upon her own thoughts for happiness. Madame de Kriidener, on one occasion, arrived at the complacent conclusion that Madame de Stael was jealous of her. Not jealous of her NE W FA CES A T COPPE T. Ill beauty and golden locks, which was conceivable, and might have been true, but jealous of her lit- erary fame ! Corinne ]Q2i\oMS oi Valerie \ It is true that Corin7te had not yet seen the light, while Valerie had not only appeared, but had met with great success. So great an authority as St. Beuve pronounces Madame de Kriidener's novel to be a thing of joy, a work to be read thrice, "in youth, in middle life, and in old age." But it is possible to have many intellectual qual- ities, and yet remain at such an immeasurable distance beneath Madame de Stael that nothing but vanity could scale the height. Moreover, Madame de Kriidener's meaner self had not been a stranger to the immediate and surprising triumph of her work. She was always intriguing, and intrigued to some purpose when her novel was on the eve of publication. She ran about to all the fournisseurs in Paris, asking them for bows a la Valerie y caps and gowns a la Va- lerie. They heard the name for the first time, but naturally proceeded to call a variety of articles by an appellation presumably so fashionable, and the success of the novel was assured. Madame de Kriidener, promptly and conveniently obliv- ious of the sources of this sudden triumph, al- lowed herself to become somewhat intoxicated by it, and wrote to a friend that the "dear 112 MADAME DE STAEL. woman" (meaning Madame de Stael) was jeal- ous of her. The person at whom this accusation was levelled probably never heard of it. She cer- tainly would never have divined it ; and, the little difficulty about Jordan once overcome, she ap- pears to have found Madame de Kriidener's soci- ety more than tolerable. Indeed they ended by becoming affectionate friends ; but that was after the authoress of Valerie had undergone the mys- tic change which transformed her from a flirt into a priestess. She had always been immensely admired, and had not preserved a spotless reputation. But she had one of those emotional natures in which a restless vanity, love of novelty, a morbid sensi- bility and an excess of imagination, combine to produce religious fervors. Standing at a window in Riga one day, she saw an old admirer drop dead at the very moment that he was lifting his hat to salute her. This event made on her one of those terrifying and ineffaceable impressions which in regenerate cir- cles is known as "a call." She plunged into mysticism ; became the exponent of a new dog- ma, and finally claimed for herself the gift of prophecy. People were, of course, not wanting to declare that her predictions had in several instances been verified ; and, her personal fasci- nation remaining always great, she now acquired NEW FACES AT COPPET. II3 an enormous influence. Her extreme self-abne- gation and boundless charities increased her rep- utation for sanctity, and she even succeeded in bringing down on herself a satisfactory amount of persecution. In Paris superstition was, as always, rife. The days were not yet so remote when Philip Egalite had gone to question the devil in the quarries of Montrouge ; and men were barely more than middle-aged who in their first youth had looked on the brazen brow of Cagliostro, and felt their blood agreeably frozen by the Comte de St. Germain's casual mention of personal experiences three hundred years old. But little more than thirty years previous to Madame de Kriidener's '' revival " Mesmer had seen numbers of the fairest and many not of the stupidest heads in Paris gathered round his famous baquet. A little later the illuminati had been credited unve- raciously and to their scant honor, with a share in the sanguinary priesthood of Robespierre, and finally Mademoiselle Lenormand had shuffled the cards of prophecy at the instance of Napoleon himself. Into this strange world, so exhausted and cynical, yet excited, impulsive, and thirsting for novel emotions, the Northern Sybil, with her strange, pale face and shining eyes, came like a wandering star. But all this was subsequent to our first meeting with • her at Coppet, when she was still fairly 8 114 MADAME DE STAEL. young and singularly pretty, and the gold in her tresses owed as yet no fancied splendor to the aureole of inspiration. Madame Recamier, the charming Juliette, was a far more normal, but a not less attractive per- son. Chateaubriand's memoirs have made her famous, but he was among the latest of her many swains. Her path through life was strewn with conquests, and she had offers of marriage by the score. They continued up to the age of fifty-one, when the author of Rene laid a heart which was hardly worthy of her at her feet. Three generations of Montmorencys adored her ; a German prince of royal blood urged her to divorce her husband in order to marry him ; and Lucian Bonaparte was among the most ar- dent of her slaves. Ampere the younger, at twenty, fell in love with her, she being then forty- three ; and Chateaubriand addressed her as " tres belle et tres charmante'' when she was seventy and blind. The little Savoyards turned round in the streets to look at her, and when they did so no longer she knew that her marvellous beauty was on the wane. But the fascination of her grace, her goodness, her unfailing tact and deli- cate intelligence survived her loveliness ; and the men who knew her still worshipped her for years after fresher charms had attracted the eyes of the multitude. She was not a politician, but her NE W FA CES A T COPPE T. 1 1 5 friendship with Madame de Stael gave her de- cided opinions, and she incurred the anger of Napoleon by declining to be Dame du Palais to one of his sisters. It was said, however, that what specially raised his ire was that a throng which on one occasion had been assembled to do homage to him, so far forgot his presence, when Madame Recamier appeared, as to have eyes only for her. Finally Constant, the inexplicable, unhappy, brilliant Constant, sought the peace which he had never found in anyone in a tardy passion for her. He sought in vain, for she treated him as she treated all men, with a kind and gracious indifference which her unique fascination robbed of all its sting. She influenced his political con- duct — not altogether for good, as it turned out in 18 14, when Napoleon returned from Elba. Vague hints at a rivalry before this date between her and Madame de Stael are to be found in some of the correspondence of the time, but they are contradicted by the tone of Madame de Stael' s letters to her belle Juliette, and by Ma- dame Recamier's own rare discretion. Moreover, although Constant first saw Ma- dame Recamier at Coppet in 1806, and confided to her those grievances of his against Madame de Stael, which just then were rising to exaspera- tion point, it was only in 18 13, when she called Il6 MADAME DE STAEL. upon him to defend the interests of Murat at the Congress of Vienna, that he fell in love with her. The correspondence which ensued between them does more honor to her than to him. Leaving aside the questionable nature of his passion, he allowed himself to speak of Madame de Stael with a fractious mistrust which, even if transi- tory, could have come from nobody with a more deplorable grace. The basis of the sentiment appears to have been jealousy of Madame de Stael's influence over her devoted friend. Such a jealousy was as futile as paltry ; for it would have needed a more witching tongue even than Constant's to have shaken the loyalty of the lov- ing Juliette. To gratify a request of hers he wrote some fragments of memoirs and sketched a portrait of Madame de Stael which, besides much praise, contains some furtive sarcasm at her inexpugnable belief in herself — that large quality, too grand to be called conceit, which, according to Constant, amounted to a cultus and inspired a " religious respect." It is interesting to record that the first time Chateaubriand ever saw Madame Recamier was at Madame de Stael's. He had gone to thank the latter for having occupied herself about his recall to France. He found her at her toilette, talking eagerly, and twirling in her fingers, as usual, a little green twig, Madame Recamier suddenly NEW FACES AT COPPET. 11/ entered, dressed in white. From that moment Chateaubriand was so absorbed in her that he had no longer any attention to bestow on her eloquent friend. This was in 1800. He did not see her again for twelve years. Benjamin Constant, in the " portrait " already mentioned, has left an account of Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, which gives a very good idea of both of them, and is specially interesting as coming from such a source. He relates that, at the first inter- view between them, Madame Recamier felt very shy. He says : — Madame de Stael's appearance has been much dis- cussed, but a magnificent glance, a sweet smile, and an habitual expression of kindness, the absence of all minute affectation and of all embarrassing reserve, flattering words, praise a little direct but apparently dictated by enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety in conversation, astonish, attract, and reconcile almost everybody who approaches her. I know no woman, and even no man, who is more convinced of her immense superiority over the whole world, and who renders this conviction less oppressive to others. Nothing could be more charming than the conversa- tions between Madame de Stael and Madame Re- camier. The rapidity of the one in expressing a thousand new thoughts, the rapidity of the second in seizing and judging them j on the one side a strong and masculine intelligence which unmasked every- thing, on the other a delicate and penetrating mind which understood everything. All this formed a whole impossible to render for those who did not enjoy the privilege of witnessing it. II 8 MADAME DE STAEL. Madame de Stael scattered golden rain of the frankest and sincerest praise over Madame Re- camier every time that she addressed her. " You are exquisite," *'you are beautiful," "you reign as a queen over sentiment," are among the sen- tences that stud every other line of her letters. Another of her female friends was she whom she named the " sweet Annette de Gerando," the wife of the author of The Signs and Art of Thinking in their Mutual Relations, the Origi^i of Human Intelligence y the Comparative History of Philo- sophic Systems, etc. He was a philanthropist as well as a philosopher, and Madame de Stael in later years once made rather a bitter allusion to this fact. As time went on, and Napoleon's star blazed brighter, De Gerando was unable to resist the general infection of idolatry ; moreover, he had accepted a post under the new Government, and the withering blight of officialism fell to a certain extent on his spirit. " There is too much philanthropy in his friendship," wrote Madame de Stael to Jordan. " One is afraid of being treated by him like a pauper." But in the summer of 1801 all this was still in the future, and harmony and wit reigned at Cop- pet. Sismondi about this time appears on the scene ; discreet, observant, serene, reasonable, he conceived for Madame de Stael a friendship which remained moderate in expression and sin- NEW FACES AT COPPET. II9 cere in feeling to the last. He was not as much dazzled by her as many, and saw her failings clearly. Occasionally she even wounded his quiet self-love, and once or twice, when very rest- less and excited, she offended him. But he was invariably drawn back to her by the spell of her goodness. He appears as a rock of strength amid all the sparkling, moving, changing tide of ideas and feelings that rippled, dashed, recoiled, and returned unceasingly in every hour of the sojourn at Coppet. His steady sense and calm judgment bring out into sharper contrast the unrest of Con- stant ; the flashing splendor of Madame de Stael ; the dreamy refinement of Mathieu de Montmo- rency ; the fantastic charm of Madame de Kriide- ner, and the unfailing grace of the lovely ''Juli- ette." Bonstetten was yet another visitor at the cha- teau. He was called the Swiss Voltaire, was eternally young, and even grew younger and more plastic in mind as the unnoticed years crept over him. He had seen Madame Necker in Paris when she was still unmarried, and reappeared in her daughter's home at Coppet as gay, as smiHng, as vivacious and witty as he had shown himself in the long-vanished salon of Madame de Verme- noux. He laid himself at Madame de Stael's feet at once, was received by her with her usual gra- cious warmth, and profited by her keen but gen- 120 MADAME DE STAEL. erous criticism of his works. Everybody began by gently laughing at Bonstetten's incurable youthfulness, and ended by adoring him for it. He wanted steadiness of intellectual purpose — a ** belfry," as St. Beuve expresses it ; in other words, some central fact of mind round which all his ideas could rally — but he had plenty of insight, and, amid the universal eulogium of Madame de Stael's powers, seems to have been the first to point out a defect in her which Schiller com- mented on later. For when writing of her to Frederica Brun, he says : " Her goodness is ex- treme, and nobody has more intellect ; but that which is best in you, in her does not exist. She lacks feeling for art, and sees no beauty except in eloquence and intelligence. She has more practical wisdom than anybody, but uses it more for her friends than herself." Frederica Brun herself came to Geneva about this time, and has left enthusiastic descriptions of Madame de Stael, of Necker, Madame Necker de Saussure and Madame Rilliet-Hiiber. She also bore testimony to Madame de Stael's devo- tion to her children. Her eldest son, Auguste, and her only daughter, Albertine, were destined all her life to solace her by their love for much that she suffered. She directed the education of both her boys, but occupied herself especially with that of the girl. She was accused by some NEW FACES AT COPPET. 121 of her friends, even by Sismondi, of not caring very much for her children ; but no word of theirs ever betrayed any sense of such a deficiency in her. On the contrary, both Auguste and Alber- tine always spoke and wrote of her with the utmost enthusiasm. After spending two summers and one winter uninterruptedly at Coppet, during which period she wrote and published Delphine, the desire to return to France grew into an overpowering force. Napoleon had now been declared Consul for life, and was preparing to invade England. She hoped, she said, that amid such multifarious occu- pations he would not have leisure to conceive any objection, against her establishing herself within a few miles of Paris, near enough, in fact, to enjoy the society of such friends as would not be too much in awe of the potentate to pay her occa- sional visits. She further deluded herself with the notion that Napoleon would shrink from the odium of exiling a woman so well known as her- self. Such a hope shows how simple Madame de Stael could still be at times. Napoleon was no longer in a position in which blame for mere de- tails of conduct could touch him, and his career from this moment was to be one long outrage on public opinion. Madame de Stael established herself in a coun- try house about ten miles from Paris. Then there 122 MADAME DE STAEL, happened a circumstance which she had not fore- seen. In the eighteen months of her sojourn at Coppet, the society which she knew formerly had grown baser. A whole race of parasites had arisen, whose real or fancied interest it was to obtain the favor of Napoleon by denouncing the people whom he detested. A woman, whose name is suppressed, lost no time in informing Napoleon that the road leading to Madame de Stael's dwelling was crowded with her visitors. Immediately one of her friends warned her that a gendarme would probably be sent to her with- out loss of time. She instantly became a prey to anxiety, an excessive anxiety it is certain, for she was excessive in most things. She wrote to De Gerando to plead her cause with Talleyrand ; she solicited the good offices of Lucian and Joseph Bonaparte ; and finally she wrote a passionate but dignified letter to Napo- leon himself. Then she waited, in the midst of strangers, and consuming herself with a fiery impatience that made every hour of fresh sus- pense a torture. She spent the nights sitting up with her maid, listening for the tramp of the horse which was to bring the gendarme and his message. But the gendarme did not arrive ; and, worn out with her terrors, Madame de Stael be- thought herself of her " beautiful Juliette." That loving and devoted person assured her of a kind NEW FACES AT COFFET. 1 23 welcome at St. Brice, a place about two leagues from Paris. Thither Madame de Stael went, and finding there a varied and agreeable society, was for the time being cured of her fears. Hearing nothing more about her exile, she persuaded her- self that Napoleon had changed his mind, and she returned with some friends to her own lodg- ings at Maffliers. It is probable enough that some officious courtier again drew her enemy's attention to her ; or perhaps Madame de Stael's own letter, in which she spoke of her children's education and her father's advanced age, and be- trayed in every line her haunting fear of exile, enlightened Napoleon as to the tenderest spot in which to wound her. Disliking her as he did, and irritated by the mere thought of her as he seems to have been, it would have been highly characteristic of his southern malice to be decided in his course by the very prayers that should have deterred him. However that may be, she was sitting at table with her friends one late September afternoon when she perceived a rider, dressed in grey, pull up at her gate and ring the bell. This prosaic- looking individual was the messenger of destiny. She felt it at once, although he did not wear the dreaded uniform. He was the bearer of a letter signed by Napoleon, and ordering her to depart within twenty-four hours for any place not nearer than forty leagues to Paris. 124 MADAME DE STAEL. Needless to say, Madame de Stael did not sub- mit without protest, and represented so energet- ically to the gendarme that a woman and three children could not be hurried off with no more preparation than a recruit's, as to induce him to allow her three days at Paris in which to get ready. On their way they stopped for a few moments at Madame Recamier's, and there found General Junot, who, like everybody else, was one of Juli- ette's admirers. Perhaps to please the latter, he promised to intercede with the despot for her illustrious friend ; and he was, as it appears, so far successful that Napoleon accorded permission for Madame de Stael to reside at Dijon. As soon as Madame Recamier received this news she com- municated it in a letter to the care of Camille Jordan. But Madame de Stael never received it, having been driven, as she says, by daily admoni- tions from her gendarme — but as Madame Re- camier appeared to think, by her own impatient agitation — away from Paris to Morfontaine. This was the home of Joseph Bonaparte. Probably pitying her state of excitement and misery, he invited her thither to spend a few days. He was just then animated, as far as he dared be, by a spirit of opposition to his mighty brother; and perhaps — who knows } — was kind to Madame de Stael as much for that reason as for any other. NEW FACES AT COFFET. 1 25 In any case, nobody in those days appears to have been profoundly in earnest except Madame de Stael herself. She could not recover either pa- tience or peace. She was wretched at Morfon- taine in spite of the kindness of her host and hostess, because surrounded with officers of the Government who had accepted the servitude against which she rebelled. She knew that her father would receive her, but the thought of tak- ing refuge at Coppet again was distasteful to her. She had but just left that place, and to return thither was to resume habits of which she had tired, and to acknowledge herself beaten. Prob- ably she longed for a change ; and probably enough, also, she was in that morbid condition of mind in which to do the simplest and most obvi- ous thing is to rob grief of all its luxury. Finally, she decided to crave permission through Joseph to betake herself to Germany, with the distinct assurance that the French Minister there would consider her a foreigner and leave her in peace. Joseph hastened to St. Cloud for the purpose, and Madame de Stael retired to an inn within two leagues of Paris, there to await his reply. At the end of one day, receiving no answer, and fearing (but why } ) to attract attention to herself by remaining any longer in one inn, vshe sought the shelter of another; and is extremely — one cannot really help thinking needlessly — 126 MADAME DE STAEL. eloquent in describing her anguish during these self-imposed peregrinations. At last Joseph's letter came. He not only forwarded her the permission to go to Berlin, but added several valuable letters of introduction, and took leave of her in the kindest terms. Accompanied by her children and Benjamin Constant, she started, hating the postillions for their boasted speed, and feeling that every step taken by the horses was a fresh link in the ever- lengthening and indestructible chain of which one end was Paris and the other her heart. What Constant's feelings were she does not say, and speaks of his accompanying her as a spontaneous act of friendship. But he had been exiled as well as herself ; and although his desire to go to Germany had partly determined hers, and neither wished to separate from the other, there are indications that Constant quitted France as reluctantly as his companion. Their relations were already varied by alter- nate periods of shine and storm ; and although her influence over him was still immense, it had begun, as was inevitable with such a man, to fret him. And probably some doubts that were not political, and some sufferings that had their root in another cause than exile, played their part in the extreme agitation of Madame de Stael's mind at this period. CHAPTER X. MADAME DE STAEL VISITS GERMANY. At Metz Madame de Stael was received in tri- umph. The Prefect of the Moselle entertained her, parties were given in her honor, and all the literary big-wigs of the place hastened to do her homage. She there, for the first time, came into personal contact with Charles de Villers, with whom she had previously corresponded on the subject of Kant. Of course she was charmed with him, her first impulse invariably being to find every clever or distinguished person delight- ful. Her friendship with him resembled all her friendships. She began by expecting to have in- spired as much enthusiasm as she felt, possibly a little more, seeing that she was a*voman, and such a woman, and exiled to boot. Villers, a cross-grained kind of Teuton, had no idea of allowing his theories, which were extremely sturdy on all subjects, to be spirited away by any of Madame de Stael's conversational conjuring tricks. They discussed philosophy, and he railed sourly at French taste ; and, perhaps by way of (127) 128 MADAME DE STAEL proving his final emancipation from all such fet- ters, he had obtained the companionship of a cer- tain Madame de Rodde, whom Madame de Stael described, with some asperity, as a "fat German." But she separated from the philosopher still quite charmed with his appreciation of the good and true, and not in the least repulsed by his ways. On the contrary, she wrote to him shortly afterwards, reproaching him passionately with his silence. One can imagine how absurd such exac- tions must have seemed to the good Villers, with his head full of Kant and Madame de Rodde to attend to his comforts ; but the truth was that Madame de Stael's mood just then caused her to make herself needlessly miserable about every- thing. To Mathieu de Montmorency she wrote that she was filled with terror, and fancied that death must shortly overtake her father, children, friends, everybody dear to her. She seemed to forget entirely that it was her own choice which had taken her to Germany; Napoleon had banished her merely from Paris ; and there was nothing to prevent her returning to Coppet to soothe the last years and enjoy the conversation of her venerated father. But this did not suit her ; she required a wider intellectual horizon and more varied society. For many reasons, some of them dependent on the political bias of monarchical writers, it has VISITS GERMANY. 1 29 been the fashion to proclaim Madame de Stael's opposition to Napoleon as inspired by pure hatred of despotism. To us this does not seem quite a correct version. If it were, Madame de Stael would have been a totally different person ; cold- er, less impulsively benevolent, less thoroughly womanly. All through her life her conduct was determined by her feeling towards individuals. While professing republicanism she counted, as we have seen, hosts of reactionary friends ; the claims to consideration of noble names and social distinctions weighed powerfully with her; and all her love of liberty could not save her from being torn by sympathy for every Royalist head that fell during the Revolution. Such a catho- licity of feeling constitutes a charming woman, but not a great politician ; and Madame de Stael's liberal instincts and penetrating insight only lent force to her hatred of Napoleon, they did not orig- inate it. There was a natural antagonism be- tween their natures — circumstances increased this, and obstinacy on both sides confirmed it — and Madame de Stael made the most of a perse- cution which, while condemning her to inaction, added enormously to her fame. That Napoleon in his most transcendent mo- ments was great simply by stupendous intellect and amazing will ; that in his baser moments he was inconceivably callous, cynical, arrogant and 9 130 MADAME DE STAEL mean, perhaps few persons in these days will be found to deny. But it is overstating the case to assert, as has been done, that he persecuted Madame de Stael from unmitigated envy of her superiority. Much as he resented intellectual power in a woman, it is nevertheless most likely that what really inspired his action against Ma- dame de Stael was her turbulent disposition and the restless mind which made her the centre of Parisian opposition. As to this opposition itself, without any wish to detract from its sublimity, it may fairly be asked whether — at the time Con- stant began his denunciations, and Madame de Stael encouraged them — it was altogether well- timed. To declaim against Napoleon's growing despotism was perhaps irresistible to indepen- dent spirits ; but such declamation necessarily remained sterile of results in the state in which' France then was. What would these orators have substituted for the strong will of a Dictator t The greed for place of a Talleyrand t The mystic fervor of a Montmorency } The dissolute ambi- tion of a Barras .? Between the sanguinary ex- cesses of the T err eur Rouge, the lust for revenge of the Terreur Blanche, the incorrigible short- sightedness and criminal frivolity of the " Cob- lentz " faction, the diseased logic of the Jacobins, and the frightful collapse of intelligence, morality, decency, and humanity that extended from end VISITS GERMANY. 131 to end of France, it is difficult to understand what ruler could have governed it for other ends than personal ones. Napoleon sprang armed from the ruin of France, as a kind of fatal embod- iment of all the evil under which she groaned and all the crime that stained her. And yet who shall say that his career of conquest, desolating as it was, could have been spared from European history } It enters as a factor into almost all that this closing century has brought us — the unity of Italy, the power of Germany, France's own awakening to the limitations of her destiny. It was not given to any mortal, eighty years ago, to foresee all this ; and Madame de Stael, who was in most things of a preternatural acuteness, only foresaw the coming despotism and its immediate, not its ultimate, results. Nevertheless, had her bias against Napoleon not been a personal one, she might have submitted more quietly to his first acts of tyranny, and only protested when his insatiable ambition had prostrated France at the feet of the nations. She might have done this, because she was constantly led away by her feel- ings, and could be blind on occasion. That she was not more dazzled by Napoleon must be con- sidered a lucky accident. In Germany the feeling in regard to her was not generally favorable. The mightiest minds, indeed, admired her great intellect ; and Goethe's 132 MADAME DE STAEL unwilling homage is the brightest jewel in her crown. But it was as a woman that she excited a somewhat sour antipathy. Her plaintive little friend Madame de Beaumont had called her a tourbillon, and Heine has only added a doubtful picturesqueness to this description when desig- nating her a "whirlwind in petticoats." But as a most disturbing element she certainly did intro- duce herself into German society. Rahel Varn- hagen acidly — it is difficult to help thinking ungenerously — echoes the usual complaint of her obstreperousness, saying, with striking lack of originality, by the way, '* She is nothing to me but an inconvenient hurricane." Schiller, as is well known, was infinitely more magnanimous. He had made up his mind as to her kind of intellect before she came. In 1798 he had already pronounced her to be of an " exalt- ed, reasoning, entirely unpoetical nature " ; and, although he clung, after seeing her, to his con- viction that ** of poetry she had no conception," he was obviously surprised and enchanted at her native goodness, her healthy simplicity of mind, and unaffectedness. To her penetration, bril- liancy and vivacity, he does full justice. And if, as her book on Germany afterwards showed, his statement that " nothing existed for her unless her torch could illuminate it," was as misleading as are most metaphors, still its descriptiveness ena- VISITS GERMANY, 1 33 bles one exactly to understand the particular sort of splendor with which Madame de Stael flashed through the windings of the German mind. Schiller — poor man ! — was quite pathetic over her amazing volubility, which left him, with his halting French, a hopeless distance behind her. It is rather comic to trace the dismay at her exhausting personality which pierces through all his admiration for, and interest in, her mind. To Goethe, who was coquetting at Jena, and wished the brilliant stranger to come there to him, Schiller later writes : " I saw the De Stael yesterday, in my house, and again to-day at the Dowager Duchess's. One would be reminded of the sieve of the Danaides, if Oknos with his donkey did not then occur to one." He fears she will have to discover that the Germans in Weimar can be fickle, as well as the French, unless it strikes her soon that it is time she went. To Korner he complained that the devil had brought the French female philosopher to tor- ment him just in the middle of his new play. He found her, of all mortals within his experi- ence, ** the most gesticulative, combative, and talk- ative," even while admitting that she was almost the most cultivated and intellectual of women. But he declared that she destroyed all poetry in him, and waxed plaintive once again over his ineffectual struggles with French. He pro- 134 MADAME DE STAEL claimed that not to admire her for her fine mind and liberality of sentiment was impossible ; and he breathed a sigh of the most unfeigned relief when she departed. All the Court personages felt that they had been having a severe time of it; although the bright and petulant Duchess Amelia was enchanted in the first instance, and wrote to Goethe imploring him to come and study the phenomenon. He resisted for a long while, but finally arrived — not without a previous sneer or two. Madame de Stael was charmed to know him — in fact, her days in Weimar passed in a per- fect effervescence of delight. While the Ger- mans were coldly, sometimes rather snarlingly, criticizing her, she was admiring them, Schiller she speaks of with the liveliest enthusiasm. Their acquaintance began with an animated dis- cussion on the respective merits of French and foreign dramas. Madame de Stael maintained that Corneille and Racine were unsurpassable. Schiller, of course, differed ; and managed to make her heed his reasons, in spite of his diffi- culty in speaking French. His quiet simplicity and. earnestness, as well as his originality of mind, became instantly manifest to the illustrious stran- ger. With her, admiration meant always the most ungrudging friendship ; and this was the sentiment with which Schiller inspired her for the rest of his days. Goethe she found cold, and VISITS GERMANY. 1 35 she was characteristically disappointed at his no longer displaying the passionate ardor of Wer- ther. " Time has rendered him a spectator," she says ; yet she admits the universality of his mind and his prodigious information when once pre- vailed on to talk. It is provoking to think that she never saw the best of Goethe, and that this disappointing result was — although she was far, indeed, from guessing it — her own fault chiefly ; for she informed the poet that she intended to print his conversation, and of this Goethe had a horror. He states as much in a letter to Schil- ler, and gives as his reason the sorry figure which Rousseau had cut in his correspondence — just then published — with Madame de la Tour Franqueville and her friend. The Dowager Duchess Amelia was a vivacious, pleasure-loving, singularly intelligent, and.liberal- minded woman, who had governed the duchy dur- ing her son's minority admirably, and made allies for herself among the best German intellects. Thanks to her, her son Karl August had been so trained, that, in the midst of a court circle to which the light of the eighteenth century had barely penetrated, he showed a most manly con- tempt for the ideals of mistresses of the robes and silver sticks in waiting, and swept all such frip- peries away to become the dearest friend of Goethe. His duchess (whose courage both ex- 136 MADAME DE ST A EL torted Napoleon's admiration and saved her hus- band from further proofs of his ire) was a woman of grand character, and as great a contrast, except in what was really best in both of them, to her lively mother-in-law as could well be imagined. She insisted on the most uncompromising observ- ance of etiquette, and wore to the last day of her life the costume which had prevailed in the years when she was young. Of this remarkable trio of exalted personages it was the reigning duchess whom Madame de Stael selected for her friend. Indeed, she never mentions the Dowager Duchess in corresponding with the daughter-in-law, and in her Allemagne dismisses the Grand Duke with a few lines, in which she alludes to his military talents and speaks of his conversation as piquante and thoughtful. From Weimar, Madame de Stael went to Ber- lin, with letters from their highnesses of the little court to the lovely and charming Queen Louise. In a well-known letter to the Grand Duchess (the first of their long correspondence), she re- cords 2ifete which took place immediately after her arrival. It was a masquerade representing Alexander's return to Babylon; and the beauti- ful queen, of whom Madame de Stael is lost in admiration, danced in it herself. To this pageant succeeded various costume quadrilles, in which VISITS GERMANY. 1 37 Kotzebue appeared as a priest of Mercury, poppy- crowned, caduceus in hand, and so ugly and awk- ward, that Madame de Stael wonders why her imagination was not irretrievably ruined by the sight of him. One likes to think of her at this court in the midst of such famous and distinguished people ; the personages so outwardly brilliant, so inwardly dull, who surrounded her having vanished down the gulfs of Time, her own unique personality stands out vividly against the picturesque but confused background reconstructed by our fancy. At Berlin she first saw and liked August Wil- helm Schlegel, destined later to be so unwelcome to Sismondi, Bonstetten, and her other friends at Coppet. She succumbed at once to the varied attractions of his colossal learning, his surprising linguistic accomplishments, and his great conver- sational powers. She felt that here was a foeman worthy of her steel, and she magnanimously over- looked his acerbity, his pedantry and vanity. She had indeed a royal indifference to the defects of great minds. It was only the greatness she cared for. Berlin was destined to be associated with the greatest, perhaps the most genuine, grief of her life. She left it pleased with her reception, en- riched with new friends, new experiences, and new ideas. She had been happier there than six 138 MADAME BE STAEL months previously she would have admitted she could ever be again ; far happier than at Coppet, which for years past had only been a place where she tarried and amused herself as s.he could until the moment came for returning to Paris. She had treasured up a wealth of conversation for her father— all kinds of novel and delightful impres- sions which she felt would be listened to by no- body so appreciatively as by him ; and she started for Vienna, there to glean a little more. But she had hardly set foot in Austria when a courier brought her the news that her father was danger- ously ill. He was, in truth, dead, and the mes- senger knew it ; but the fact was withheld, to be broken to her later on. She instantly quitted Vienna, where, as she expresses it, ''her happi- ness had ended," and started homewards. On the road her father's death was communicated to her. Her grief was overpowering and demon- strative toothe last degree. It was not only sor- row that she felt, but an overmastering terror, for it seemed to her that with her father her last moral support* had vanished. Henceforward she would bend to the storms of life like a reed. On arriving at Coppet, she sank into a condi- tion that temporarily resembled dementia. The idea that in losing her father her whole existence was irretrievably wrecked from its moorings, and would drift aimlessly in the future, again filled her VISITS GERMANY. 1 39 mind, and this time with greater force. To every remonstrance she only answered, " I have lost my father." She soon recovered — strangely soon as it seemed to many— her old elasticity and fire, but a curious secret change was wrought in her from the hour of her loss. She showed mystic yearnings, and became even a little superstitious. She invoked her father in her prayers, and noth- ing deeply agreeable to her ever happened with- out her saying, '' My father has obtained this for me." One of Necker's latest acts was to write a letter to Napoleon begging him to rescind the order for Madame de Stael's exile. Needless to say that the pathetic request had no effect upon the per- son to whom it was addressed. Domestic senti- ment at no time appealed strongly to Napoleon, and at this period he had almost reached his final pitch of unreasoning and arrogant egoism. The murder of the Due d'Enghien had hardened all his nature, and in preparing to have himself pro- claimed Emperor he had kicked away any useless rubbish in the shape of scruples that might still encumber him. Now, when the first germ of decay had begun to consume the core of his splendor, his attitude towards Madame de Stael itself altered. His persecution of her ceased to be a capricious thing compounded of spasmodic spite on his side and 140 MADAME DE STAEL. sporadic fears on hers, and became an organized system of repression which placed its originator in a light all the meaner that the woman against whom it was directed rose from this time to a new and grander moral altitude. CHAPTER XL MADAME DE STAEL AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. Madame de Stael sought to solace her grief for her father's death by writing ''The Private Life of Necker," a short sketch intended to serve as preface to a volume of his fragmentary writ- ings. Constant spoke very feelingly of this sketch, and pronounced it to be a revelation of all that was best in the writer's head and heart. He said that all her gifts of mind and feeling were here devoted to express and adorn a single sen- timent, one for which she claimed the sympathy of the world. This is all quite true, but it is natural that the sketch should affect us less than it did Madame de Stael's contemporaries. Necker was a good and intelligent man. He had varied talents of no common order, and an incorruptibility of char- acter which would be rare — given the circum- stances—in any age, and, by his admirers, was supposed to be especially so in his. But joined to all these qualities in him were just the foibles which spoil an image for posterity. He had a (r4i) 142 MADAME BE ST A EL profound compassion for what he considered the hardships of his lot. It is touching to read the way — so simple, loving, and yet ingenuous — in which Madame de Stael records such facts as the following : — *' It was painful to him to be old. His figure, which had grown very stout and made movement irksome to him, gave him a feeling of shyness that prevented his going into society. He hardly ever got into a carriage when anybody was looking at him, and he did not walk where he could be seen. In a word, his imagination loved grace and youth, and he would say to me sometimes, * I do not know why I am humiliated by the infirmities of age, but I feel that it is so.' And it was thanks to this sentiment that he was loved like a young man." For the rest, the sketch is one long impassioned elegy in prose. One is astonished at the sudden creative force of expression in it. It is graphic by mere power of words without any help from metaphor. It was not in Madame de Stael's nature to mourn in solitude, and we have Bonstetten's authority for the fact that the summer of 1804 was one of the most delightful which he had ever passed at the Chateau. Schlegel, Constant, Sis- mondi, were all there, as well as Bonstetten, him- self, and Madame Neckerde Saussure, now more than ever devoted to her cousin. Madame de AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 43 Stael had also a new visitor, Miiller, the histo- rian, whose learning was stupendous, and who wrangled from morning till night on subjects of amazing erudition with Schlegel The mistress of the house, although far from being the equal of the two combatants in learning, sometimes rushed between them with her fiery eloquence, like an angel with a flaming sword ; but most of the society were reduced to silence. Sismondi felt a perfect ignoramus, and talked plaintively to Bonstetten of going to Germany, there to drink in facts and theories at the source of the new intellect In short, the German " Revival " was beginning, and Madame de Stael in bringing Auguste Schlegel to Switzerland had broken a large piece off the mountain of learning, like somebody in the fairy tale who carried away a slice from the Island of Jewels. In October, 1804, Madame de Stael started with Schlegel and her three children for Italy, and it is to this journey that the world owes Corinne. It is said that Schlegel first taught Madame de Stael to appreciate art— that is, painting, sculpture, and architecture. For music she had always had a passion, and both sang and played agreeably. But plastic beauty had as yet been a sealed book to her, and she had not even any great appreciation of scenery. A sponta- neous feeling for all these she perhaps never 144 MADAME DE STAEL acquired. Ste. Beuve, indeed, complains that the spot on Misenum where she places Corinne on one occasion, was the least picturesque of many beautiful points of view. Nevertheless, Italy revived her. She found hope and thought and voice anew beneath that magic sky. There was nothing but the still-abiding sense of loss to mar the pleasure of her visit. The diplomatic agents of Napoleon abstained from interference with her, and Joseph had given her letters introducing her to all the best society in Rome. Unlike her own Corinne, however, she found it very uninterest- ing, and wrote complainingly to Bonstetten that Humboldt was her most congenial companion. The Roman princes she found extremely dull, and preferred the cardinals, as being more culti- vated, or more probably more men of the world. For the rest, she was received with the liveliest respect, and even enthusiasm ; was made a mem- ber of the Arcadian Academy, and had endless sonnets written upon her. Unfortunately, her Dix Aiinees d Exil does not speak of this Italian journey, and so, for the impression she received, one has to turn to CorinnCy where, of course, everything reappears more or less transfigured. One would have liked to know the genesis of that work, on what occasion it took root, and how it grew, in Madame de Stael's mind. How much did §he really know of that poor, lampooned. AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 45 insulted, and squint-eyed Gorilla who was the origin of her enchanting Sibyl ? How far below the surface did she really see of that strange Roman world, so cosmopolitan, so chaotic after the French invasion, so thrilled with fugitive novel ideas, so steeped in time-worn apathy ? It would be delightful to know what was the impres- sion which Madame de Stael herself produced in the few salons Vv^here a little culture prevailed, and what was the true notion concerning her in that motley and decaying society of belated Arca- dians, exhausted cicisbei and abatini lapsed for- ever from the genial circles where their youth had passed in gossiping and sonneteering. Hers must have seemed a curious and forcible figure among all those frivolous " survivals "; and great and strange, mad and merry as were the many foreigners who found their way at various times to Rome, probably no more striking couple ever appeared there than Madame de Stael and Auguste Schlegel. As soon as she returned to Switzerland she began Corinne. At Coppet some of her old cir- cle immediately gathered round her again : Ma- dame Necker de Saussure, of course, and Madame Rilliet-Hiiber, Schlegel, Constant, and Sismondi, assembled to enjoy her society once more. The private theatricals in which she delighted were again resumed, and such tragedies as Zaire and 10 146 MADAME DE STAEL Phedre performed, as well as slight comedies composed by the chatelaine herself. Madame de Stael was fond of acting ; and although she had no special talent, her imposing presence, and the earnestness with which she played, made her performance a pleasing one — at any rate, to her admirers. When Corinne was drawing to an end, its authoress could no longer resist her old and re- curring temptation to return to France. She went first to Auxerre ; then, profiting by the indulgence of Fouche, who, when it was possible (and politic), always shut one eye, she accepted an invitation to Acosta, a property near Meulon belonging to Madame de Castellane. Some of her old friends ventured there to visit her, and in peace and reviving hope she completed Corinne. It was no sooner published than it was hailed with universal applause. All this success annoyed Napoleon, possibly because it revealed in his enemy greater powers than he had hitherto suspected, hence a greater influence with all enlightened minds. According to some, an article which appeared in the Moni- teur attacking Corinne was written by the Impe- rial hand. And this first sign of ire was followed by a new decree of banishment, which sent Ma- dame de Stael back to Coppet. There a few new figures came to join the usual set, among them AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 147 Prince Auguste of Prussia, who straightway fell a victim to Madame R^camier. For a few weeks this love affair introduced a new element of romantic, yet very human, interest into the in- tensely intellectual life of Coppet. The Prince wished Madame Recamier to marry him ; and for a short time, either dazzled by the prospect of such splendor, or really attracted by her royal wooer, she hesitated. But such a step would have involved a divorce from M. Recamier. He was old ; he had lately lost his fortune ; he had always been good to her ; and Juliette made up her mind that it would be too unkind to leave him. Some other scenes not altogether literary were passing just then in the Chateau. The relations between Madame de Stael and Constant, of late much strained, had now become constantly stormy. Sismondi, some years later, in writing to the Countess of Albany, referred to them as really distressing, and apparently Madame Re- camier was in the flattering but uncomfortable position of having to listen to and, as well as she could, soothe both parties. Constant would have married Madame de Stael, but she desired a secret marriage, and he would only hear of an open one. It was only in 1808 he finally put an end to his perplexities by mar- rying Charlotte von Hardenberg. He carefully 148 MADAME DE ST A EL avoided telling Madame de Stael of his intention beforehand, being still too much under her influ- ence to bear her criticisms and possible reproach- es with equanimity. About November, 1807, Madame de Stael had returned again to Germany, accompanied by two of her children, by Constant, Sismondi, and Schlegel. From Munich she wrote one of her characteristic letters to Madame Recamier : — " I have spent five days here, and I leave for Vienna in an hour. There I shall be thirty leagues farther from you and from all who are dear to me. All society here has received me in a charming manner, and has spoken of my beau- tiful friend with admiration. You have an aerial reputation which nothing common can touch. The bracelet you gave me [this bracelet contained Madame Recamier's portrait] has caused my hand to be kissed rather oftener, and I send you all the homage which I receive." In another she significantly remarks : — " The Prince de Ligne is really amiable and good above all things. He has the manners of M. de Narbonne, and a heart. It is a pity he is old, but all that generation fill me with an invin- cible tenderness." This is one of her touching allusions to her father, of whom all " good gray heads " reminded her. But the Prince de Ligne and Necker were AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 49 two very different people. The former was the ideal of 2i grand seigneur, clever, brave, handsome, all in a supreme degree ; the descendant of a chivalrous race, and as gallant and noble himself as any of them. He was extremely witty, and quickly achieved the conquest of the Empress Catherine when he was sent on a mission to Rus- sia in 1782. He followed in her suite through the Crimea on the occasion of her famous jour- ney there with Joseph H., and his amusing account of this expedition is one of his claims to literary reputation. The last years of his bril- liant life were embittered by the loss of his prop- erty, consequent on the French invasion of Belgium, and by the death in battle of his eldest and best-beloved son. Madame de Stael probably enjoyed his soci- ety all the more that the Viennese gentlemen appeared to her singularly uninteresting. She complained of them in her letters to the Grand Duchess of Weimar, and also to Madame Reca- mier, and declared that she felt the need of a sum- mer at Coppet to indemnify her for the frivolous monotony of the Austrian capital. She seems to have been in an unusually depressed state of mind, and recurred perpetually to the hardships of exile. In April, 1808, shortly before starting again for Weimar, she addressed a letter to her former I50 MADAME DE STAEL friend, the ungrateful Talleyrand, begging him to interest himself for the payment of the two mill- ions left by her father in the French Treasury. She alluded sadly, and at some length, to all her sufferings again in this letter, and reminded him that he wrote thirteen years previously to her from America, " If I "must remain even one year longer here I shall die." One is not much surprised to divine from sub- sequent circumstances that this appeal produced no effect. Amiable, and even pathetic as it was, Talleyrand was not the man to be moved by it. Like Napoleon, to whom he perhaps showed it, he would be likely to think that Madame de Stael's " exile " was singularly mitigated. It is one thing to be proscribed and banished, not only from one's own country but from friends and fortune ; to wander, as so many illustrious refugees have done, a lonely stranger in a foreign land, not daring to invoke the protection of any authority, and constantly eking out a miserable existence by teaching or worse. It is another thing to be wealthy, influential, admired ; to be the guest of sovereigns, and the honored friend of the greatest minds in Europe ; to be sur- rounded with sympathy, and followed at every step by the homage of a brilliant and cultured crowd. Such was the existence of Madame de Stael. Her sorrows were great because her fiery AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 151 temperament rebelled against her grief, at the same time that her great intellect fed it with lofty and lyric thoughts. But her sorrows were of the affections exclusively. She never felt the sting of the world's scorn, nor knew the bitter days and sleepless nights of poverty. If she ever " ate her bread with tears," they were not those saltest tears of all which are wrung from burning eyes by unachieved hopes and frustrated endeavor. Every field of social and intellectual activity was open to her except the salons of Paris, and those were very different under the blight of Napole- onic bureaucracy from what they had been even during the mingled vulgarity and ferment o£ the Directory. She returned to Weimar, and had a touching meeting with the Grand Duchess, whose recent troubles, and the courage she displayed under them, had not only endeared her to her subjects and her friends, but had won the applause of the world. On her way thither she presumably de- layed a short while in Berlin, and it must have been to that period that Ticknor refers when relating a very amusing anecdote in his Life and Letters. She asked Fichte to give her in a quar- ter of an hour a summarized idea of his famous Ego, professing to be, as she doubtless was, en- tirely in the dark about it. Fichte's consterna- tion may be imagined, for he had been all his life 152 MADAME DE STAEL developing his system, and intended it to com- prehend the universe. Moreover he spoke very- bad French, and even if Madame de Stael were momentarily silent in speech, we may fancy how voluble she looked, and how nervous the pre- science of her imminent rapid speech must have made the philosopher. However, he made up his mind to the attempt, and began. In a very few moments Madame de Stael burst out : ** Ah ! that is enough. I understand perfectly. Your system is illustrated by a story in Mun- chausen's travels." Fichte's expression at this announcement was a study ; but the lady went on • ** He arrived once on the banks of a wide river, where there was neither bridge nor ferry, neither boat nor raft ; and at first he was in de- spair. But an idea struck him, and taking hold of his own sleeve, he jumped himself over to the other side. Now, Monsieur Fichte, is not this exactly what you have done with your Ego f " This speech charmed everybody except Fichte himself, who never forgave Madame de Stael, or at least so Ticknor's informant said, and it is easy to believe him. During the remainder of 1808, and the whole of 1809 and 18 10, Madame de Stael remained alternately at Coppet and Geneva, working stead- ily at the Allemagne. It was only about this time that she acquired habits of sustained occu- AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 53 pation. Her father had entertained so strong and singular an objection to seeing her engaged in writing, that, rather than pain him, she used to scribble at odd hours and in casual positions — sometimes, for instance, standing by the chim- ney-piece. In this way she was able to hide her work as soon as he appeared, and thus spare him the annoyance of supposing that he had inter- rupted her. She talked so continually that it was a marvel how she ever wrote at all ; and her friends used often to wonder where and how she planned her works. But the truth seems to have been that they sprang full grown from her brain, after having been unconsciously developed there by perpetual discussion. During the years above mentioned society at Coppet, although normally composed as of old by Schlegel, Sismondi, Constant (for a time), Ma- dame Recamier, and Bonstetten, was varied once more by new and interesting visitors. Among these was Madame Le Brun, who not only paint- ed a portrait of Madame de Stael, but noted many things which now afford pleasant glimpses of the life at the Chateau. Of course, like everybody else who sojourned as a guest at Coppet, she fell under the spell of the hostess. Byron himself some years later recorded how much more charm- ing Madame de Stael was in her own house than out of it ; and she seems to have possessed the 154 MADAME DE STAEL art of dispensing her hospitality, which was royal, with as much grace as cordiality. Among the new figures in these years at Cop- pet were Werner and Oehlenschlager. Both were poets and cursed with the irritability of the genus, so that their mutual exasperation was great, and Madame de Stael had some trouble to keep the peace between them. Sismondi in one of his letters described Werner as a man of many intellectual gifts, who considered himself the apostle of Love and bound to preach it in his wanderings through the world. Occasionally his utterances were a little puzzling to sober-minded people, who were too much taken aback by his mystical mixtures of passion, sentiment, and piety to be always ready with an answer. Werner had had a Sturm und Drang period of extreme dissipation, had taken to Freemasonry, and imbibed, apparently, some of the ideas of the Illuminati ; and, besides his mysticism in religion, inclined to socialism in politics. After all this vagueness of thought, joined to a highly impres- sionable and very vivid temperament, it is not surprising to learn that he eventually became a Roman Catholic priest and rose to great renown as a preacher. Oehlenschlager has left a spiteful picture of Werner, with his nose full of snuff, discussing his esoteric doctrines in an execrable patois which AND AUGUSTS SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 55 was intended for French. Both poets, however, united in admiring and praising, almost worship- ping, Madame de Stael, and she on her side seems to have cared little for any peculiarity in their habits as long as there was originality in their characters. It was during this visit of the two poets at Coppet that Karl Ritter appeared for a short time on the scene. He enjoyed a great reputa- tion in Germany, being considered as the in- ventor of the Science of Comparative Geog- raphy. He was also a gentle, earnest man, and became extremely religious in his old age. He records an animated, indeed perfervid and amaz- ingly eloquent, speech pronounced before him by Madame de Stael in favor of the metaphysical origin of religion, and in answer to Sismondi who maintained that its basis should be reasoned morality. Madame de Stael declared that religion was the condition of virtue ; and that without it there could be no higher life, by which she meant no communion with God. In support of this thesis she displayed the most surprising power both of analysis and illustration, while her logic appearing to Ritter unanswerable, caused the discussion, as he avers, to be an epoch in his intellectual life. This new interest of Madame de Stael in such questions was largely due to the ever-growing influence of Madame de Kriidener, 156 MADAME DE ST A EL now irrevocably " regenerate " and rapidly rising to fame as a priestess and prophetess, while lead- ing a life of the utmost asceticism. She had been in Coppet again, and had left there the trail of her sacerdotal tendencies. Poor Bonstetten, daily growing younger in mind and heart, was comic- ally disgusted at the change which was coming over the intellectual life at the Chateau. The confusion of dogmas prevailing could not console him for the fact of there being any dogmas at all. Between Catholics, Boehmists, Martinists and Mystics, he appeared at times to be quite worn out, and attributed the whole revolution to the influence of his pet aversion Schlegel. How he made this out is not very clear, for the theolog- ical spirit was as cosmopolitan in its repre- sentatives as varied in its forms. Mathieu de Montmorency was a Catholic, somebody else a Quietist, a third an Illuminist, while Rationalism was left to the doubtful prowess of Baron Voght, who was reported by Bonstetten to be as gyra- tory in his opinions as a weathercock. We now approach an event in Madame de Stael's life so well known and so often recounted, that it will not be necessary to relate it again in detail. This was the suppression of her Alle- inagne, Napoleon's crowning act of meanness, and a deed which obtained for Madame de Stael AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 57 the entire and unquestioning sympathy of every enlightened mind and generous heart. Madame de Stael determined, after some hes- itation, to publish the work in Paris, after sub- mitting it in the first instance to the approval of the Imperial Censors. Why she took this unfort- unate resolution it is difficult to conceive ; for she had been plentifully illuminated with regard to Napoleon's spite, and even if all her penetra- tion did not enable her to foresee the full lengths to which this would carry him, she might, one would think, have guessed that the censors in Paris would judge her work with the utmost severitv. However this may be, she took up her abode near Blois for the sake of correcting the proofs as they issued from the press. She had, before leaving Coppet, caused her passports to be made out for America, in which country she had prop- erty, and whither, for the sake of her children she said, she was gradually making up her mind to go. One cannot imagine Madame de Stael in the New World such as it was in those days ; and as she entertained the project for a long while, put it off from month to month, and finally abandoned it altogether, it is more than probable that she never liked it sufficiently to have resolved upon it seriously. At Blois she established herself first in the 158 MADAME DE STAEL famous Chateau of Chaumont-sur-Loire, haunted by such various memories as the Cardinal d'Am- boise, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, and Nostradamus. But the owner of the house shortly returning, she removed to another man- sion at Fosse, the home of a M. de Salaberry. She had addressed a letter to Napoleon in which she presented her work to his notice, craved an interview in very respectful terms, and urged on his notice the advantage which it would be for her sons' career and her daughter's eventual mar- riage (Albertine was then thirteen) if she were allowed to reside again in the neighborhood of Paris. While awaiting the answer to this, she gath- ered round her a group of her usual friends, among them Madame Recamier, Adrien and Mathieu de Montmorency, Prosper de Barante, and Benjamin Constant. This society amused itself with music (an Italian musician, Albertine's master, who played the guitar, being of the com- pany), and with a quaint invention named La petite poste. This consisted in abolishing con- versation and substituting for it little notes, which were passed from one to the other. A very inno- cent amusement ; but either it, or the guitar-play- ing, or " Corinne's " famous name made some noise in the neighborhood. Finally, one evening Madame de Stael went to AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. 1 59 the theatre at Blois, and, on leaving it, was sur- rounded by a curious crowd. Some officious person communicated this fact, probably with various others, some true, some false, to the Min- ister of Police, who wrote to the Prefect of the department to complain that his master's cele- brated foe was the centre of a little court. In a short time the blow fell. No answer came from Napoleon, but, instead of it, the announcement that her book had been seized, that all copies of it were destroyed, and that the authoress was to leave France within three days either for Amer- ica or Coppet. At the same time, the Prefect of Loir and Cher demanded the surrender of the MS. of the work. Fortunately Madame de Stael possessed a rough copy, which she gave him, while her son saved the real one. She wrote to Savary, Duke of Rovigo (" per- mitted," she says bitingly " to hide his name under a title "), and represented to him that the interval allowed her for her departure was insuf- •ficient. She received a reply which has become classic for its baseness, its insolence, and its ludi- crous arrogance. All the littleness and none of the force of Napoleon was reflected from the mind of his underling. He told her that she need not seek for the cause of her exile in the silence regarding the Emperor which she had observed in her work, for that no place in it could l60 MADAME DE STAEL have been found worthy of him ! For the rest, the air of France did not suit her, and as for its inhabitants, they were not yet reduced to taking as models the nations whom she admired. Her last work was not French, and it was he (this worthy official) who had forbidden it to be printed. Savary thus claimed for himself, and not for his master, the glory of this precious proceeding ; but as nobody suspected him of acting except under orders, he blew this trumpet to the desert air. The blow to Madame de Stael was a terrible one. Her first impulse was to go to America ; but fearing the long sea-voyage for her daughter at that season of the year (it was October), she once again set her face most reluctantly towards Coppet. This place, which she henceforward de- scribes as a "prison," was shortly afterwards made further distasteful to her by a change of Prefect. Monsieur de Barante, who was a friend of hers, was removed, and the successor appointed to him, M. Capelle, was one of the functionaries now turned out by the gross from the Imperial mould. He regarded Napoleon as a deity and himself as a prophet, and conceived the brilliant idea of distinguishing himself by persusiding Madame de Stael to write something flattering of the Emperor. Naturally he failed ; the mind of a bureaucrat prostrate before the feticb of his AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME. l6l own alarmed idolatry alone could have conceived the possibility of success. And naturally, again, his failure rankled, and caused him to visit his disappointment on the creator of it by numerous small vexations. II CHAPTER XII. MADAME DE STAEL's SECOND MARRIAGE. Madame de Stael arrived at Coppet in a con- dition of despair, which she partially solaced by writing to Madame Recamier and thanking her again and again for the constancy of her friend- ship. Evidently many of her friends had already dropped away, or she fancied they had. Perhaps she wearied them a little with her lamentations, for one knows that silence was never her forte. But all at once a happy change came over her. Sismondi, writing to the Countess of Albany, mentioned the transformation, and spoke of their friend with admiration for her new-born but to him inexplicable courage. She had given up literary work, and no longer alluded to her afflic- tions ; and yet, in spite of that, her gaiety was great and her conversation as charming and sparkling as ever. Sismondi doubtless consid- ered that Reason— his beloved Reason was at last asserting its sway over ** Corinne's " excita- ble imagination. He must have been greatly surprised a long time afterwards when he learnt (162) SECOND MARRIAGE, 1 63 that the magician was Love. Years previously, when Sismondi had himself been in love in his decorous fashion, and had reproached Madame de Stael for a want of sympathy in his trouble — a want which he had not expected in the author of Delphine — she said to him : '* I have never loved that I have not felt in myself two persons — one who laughed at the other." But when she made that answer she was young and restless, and, like all great and burning minds, claimed from life a destiny too radiant to be ever realized. Now she was middle-aged ; she had drunk of the waters of bitterness and known some of the tragic awakenings of passion; she had experienced an immeasurable sorrow in the loss of her father ; she had become familiar to satiety with the tri- umphs of the world ; and was, as she wrote to Madame Recamier, ** wearied of suffering." In short the moment had come when the one impe- rious cry of her soul was for peace. In such a state of mind what seems ridiculous becomes possible, and the spirit of mocking youth in Ma- dame de Stael, which once could laugh at the passionate half of her nature, was buried with most of her hopes and almost all of her illusions. It was shortly after her return to Switzerland that, going to Geneva to spend some little while, she-first met Rocca. He was twenty-three, she was forty-five; but that disparity of years did 1 64 MADAME DE STAEUS not prevent his conceiving for her a most roman- tic passion. He was extremely handsome — a fact to which Frederica Brun and Byron alike bear witness, and was further interesting through hav- ing been wounded in the war in Spain, and so badly that his health was never restored. He was the son of a Councillor of State in Geneva, and descended from a noble Piedmontese family which had emigrated to Switzerland during the persecution of the Protestants. He had some culture and considerable intelligence ; was even something of an author ; and, finally, was a splen- did horseman. He was wont to ride a magnifi-- cent black Andalusian steed, and performed unheard-of feats of jumping and galloping under the windows of the house in Geneva where Ma- dame de Stael was staying. These varied attrac- tions finally proved irresistible to the object of his homage, and before the year 1811 a secret marriage took place. Why it was a secret is one of those mysteries which has never been satisfac- torily cleared up. One explanation is that Bo- naparte, out of hatred of Madame de Stael, would order Rocca, who, of course, was in the French army, away on service. But if this had been the real reason, it was sufficiently strong to have ren- dered any further explanation unnecessary. Nev- ertheless, a very good authority, the authoress of Coppet et Weimar^ gives two other reasons : one SECOND MARRIAGE. 1 65 that Madame de Stael would " never have con- sented to give up the aristocratic name which she had made so illustrious" ; the other, that the world would have turned such a marriage into ridicule. In this connection it is worth while to state that Constant has given Madame de Stael's unwillingness to change her name as a reason why she would not consent to an open marriage with him. The union with Rocca seems to have been a very happy one ; but inasmuch as it passed for years in the eyes of everybody for a connection of another nature, there is no doubt that it brought Madame de Stael into some discredit. Many of the guests at Coppet admired Rocca, but Sis- mondi, for one, disliked him extremely. Sis- mondi, however, was not unfrequently disposed to be rather severe on Madame de Stael and her guests ; he even carped a little at the lovely Juli- ette. " She (Madame R6camier) has put in a fleeting appearance here," he wrote in August, 181 1. " She is full of kindness and graciousness towards Madame de Stael, and is not less pretty than two years ago, and yet I am glad that she is going ; for whenever she is present, all true con- versation is destroyed. She always beguiles her neighbor into low-toned tete-d-tete talk. Her small airs and graces weary me, and her intelli- 1 66 MADAME DE STAEUS gence — for she is intelligent — in no way profits the public." Sismondi sometimes visited Madame de Stael herself with criticism not less captious, although he was generally vanquished in the end by her heroism and her charm. During the summer of i8ii she was in a very restless and unhappy mood, which often drew forth his censure. The conviction of the extreme disfavor with which Napoleon regarded her was now widely spread, and one of its results v/as a real or fancied falling-off of friends, which wounded her exceed- ingly. To nothing was she so sensitive as to any failure of affection, and the ardor with which she sought to defend herself from blame was caused not so much by offended self-love as by slighted feeling of a more amiable kind. Just about this time she wrote to Camille Jordan a very charac- teristic letter. Its tone was indignant, for Jordan, always rather cold and repellent, had evidently stung her by some censure of her conduct. Apparently also, he had sought to justify himself for not coming to see her, for she assured him that she had never dreamed of blaming him, nor entertained a thought against his loyalty. She quivered under a shaft which had struck more deeply home, and in one sentence made an allu- sion applying apparently to Rocca. She owned that being placed, as it appeared to her, on the SECOND MARRIAGE. 167 highest pinnacle of moral dignity, she had felt some wonder at the fact that Jordan, '* indulgent towards the inconceivable conduct of Girando,'% should have reserved all his wraih for an unhappy woman who, " while resisting all attacks and de- fending her children and her talent at the risk of happiness, security, and life," had allowed her- self to be momentarily touched by the self-sacri- ficing chivalry of a young man. Her anger was but fleeting, and a few months later she wrote as affectionately as ever to Camille, who, perhaps, for once had been shaken from his prudent calm by her fiery words, and had calmed her by pro- testing unaltered regard. This year of 181 1 was fruitful of sorrow. Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame de Re- camier were both exiled immediately after a visit paid by them to their illustrious friend. Accord- ing to Madame Lenormant, the writer of Coppet et Weimar, as well as to Madame de Stael her- self, the letter from the Minister of Police which conveyed the order of exile to Mathieu de Mont- morency distinctly signified that friendship with the mistress of Coppet was the cause of his dis- grace. Sismondi, however, who showed himself incredulous, and to a certain extent unsympathiz- ing throughout all these circumstances, when writing to the Countess of Albany, was concerned to correct such an impression, and declared that 1 68 MADAME DE STAEVS not only had the Prefect of Geneva and the Min- ister of the French Police disclaimed the idea as unfounded, but he himself had never seen that anybody was in the least compromised by going to Coppet. Nevertheless, in a very short time Schlegel was ordered to quit the Chateau on the preposterous plea that he had pronounced the Phoedra of Euripides to be superior to that' of Racine ! Madame de Stael went to Aix for the sake of her youngest son's health, but at the end of ten days was recalled by a letter from the Pre- fect, who advised her not to venture more than two leagues from Coppet. Very naturally she was irritated to the last degree and often deeply distressed at all these incidents. The exile im- posed on Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame Recamier caused her the greatest grief, more especially as she never doubted but that unwit- tingly she was the cause. She had other causes of suffering also in her health at the time, and doubtless was far from being as brilliant as of yore. Circumstances (she had a' son by Rocca in 1812) condemned her to an isolation which fret- ted her almost beyond endurance ; and Sismondi, not possessing the key to the situation, was aggrieved at her sombre mood and nervous irri- tability. He wrote that he sometimes " bores himself " at Coppet (O Ichabod ! ) ; and he was SECOND MARRIAGE. 1 69 induced to take refuge with sundry amiable per- sons at Geneva who soothed his wounded self- love. At last Madame de Stael — inconsolable for the loss of Schlegei's society, panting to escape be- yond the narrow limits of Coppet, where her sons had no career before them, and her daughter no chance of marrying, and she herself was harassed by hints and admonitions from the Prefect at every turn — resolved upon escape. She was informed through Schlegel, who was in Berne at the time, that if she would even now write some- thing in praise of Napoleon her fate would be considerably mitigated. It is no slight credit to her that, agitated and ill as she was, she firmly declined. Nothing, indeed, at such a moment could have been more courageous than her re- fusal, for she was torn with a thousand fears at her impending journey. The passport would have been an insuperable difficulty, as the per- mission to go to America, once accorded, had now been withdrawn from her ; entrance into Italy was also denied, and the Government was determined that she should not take refuge in England. Yet to England she was resolved to go. The only route open to her was through Russia and Sweden. Through her friend the Grand Duchess of Weimar she obtained a passport, which was I/O MADAME DE STAEVS to be handed to her in Vienna. All this took months to settle, and it was only on the 23rd of May, 1812, that she was at last able to start. It was necessary to leave in such a way as not to excite the attention of the lynx-eyed Prefect of Geneva. The eve of her departure she wandered about the park of Coppet a prey to the utmost grief. She had been unwilling to return there at one time, but now she was heart-broken at having to bid a long, perhaps a last, farewell to the tomb of her father and the scenes associated with his memory. To her, both by nature and system, such a parting was particularly poignant. At 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the 23rd, she got into her carriage, announcing that she would return for dinner. Only two of her servants were in the secret. Albertine, Auguste and Rocca were with her ; her second son was to follow in a few days, and join her at Vienna with her bag- gage. For the present, all the necessaries which the travellers absolutely needed were stowed away in the pockets of Auguste and Rocca ; Madame de Stael and Albertine only carried fans. The escape thus ingeniously planned was car- ried out with a success that it is quite pleasant to read of, even to this moment. The police never awoke at all to the fact of the flight until the lug- gage followed the fugitives, and then Madame de SECOND MARRIAGE. 171 Stael was beyond their reach. History draws a veil over the feelings of the Prefect. At Berne, Schlegel joined the party, and Au- guste de Stael separated from it, in order to return to Coppet to see after things there. The travel- lers pushed on, but, because of Madame de Stael's health, in no great haste, through Switzerland and the Tyrol. Her one haunting fear all this time was that in Bavaria an agent of the French Government might have preceded her with an order for her arrest. The abject subservience of the German Governments at that time to Napoleon made it very likely that in such a case passports would be so much waste-paper. Vienna was reached in safety, and there Ma- dame de Stael at first determined to remain three weeks, while a courier was despatched to Wilna to obtain the Russian passport from the Emperor Alexander. The first ten days of her sojourn were marked by cloudless pleasure. Security had returned to her ; and, after her late repres- sion, varied chiefly by the Prefect of Geneva's solemn exhortations, it was a real delight to find herself in the midst of a society where Napoleon was frankly abused. But the Emperor and Em^ press of Austria were at Dresden, and the official mind, left to itself, soon became frightened at the idea of sheltering the dangerous authoress. Spies were stationed at her door, and cropped up, 172 MADAME DE STAEVS like poisonous fungi, with silent rapidity along her path. Moreover, an order had arrived for the arrest and return of Rocca as a French officer — ' the fact of his wounds and inability to serve being waived in the interests of persecution. At this point one pauses to ask why, after all, Madame de Stael herself was not arrested. There seems but little doubt that the obsequiousness of the Austrian police would have been equal to the task. Perhaps Napoleon shrank from the odium of such a proceeding ; perhaps he was, in reality, rather glad to be rid of Madame de Stael. This would agree with a well-known conversation which he had held four years previously with Auguste de Stael, who, going to him to plead for his mother's recall, was told, with insolent, good- humored contempt, that the whole of Europe, except France, was open to her ; that she would not be imprisoned, as then she might have some cause to complain, but that she alone could be unhappy when allowed to wander at will through every capital of Europe except Paris. But if this explanation be accepted, it becomes difficult to account for the later persecutions of Madame de Stael at the hands of the French and Swiss police. Could it be that Savary and his underlings, through excess of zeal, interpreted their instructions with liberal severity and that Napoleon was not responsible for every Individ- SECOND MARRIAGE. 1 73 ual act, but only for the angry hatred which promised approval of each and all of them ? However this may be, Madame de Stael's fears were not long in reasserting themselves. Too impatient to wait for the passport, she started with her son and daughter for Galicia, having extracted from a friend the promise of hurrying after her as soon as the expected paper arrived. In her Memoirs she admits that this was a mis- take ; for at Vienna she had friends to intercede in her favor, while in Galicia there was no shield between herself and the servility towards France of inferior officials. As a consequence she was driven along her route by the unceasing admoni- tions to " move on " of the police. Her immedir ate goal was Lanzut — the home of her friends Prince and Princess Lubomirski. Here she was to meet Rocca, who had also proceeded on his way, but disguised. At some point of the road her passport reached her. This was a ray of light ; and a letter from Madame Recamier, which overtook her somewhere near Olmutz, was another. But, as a rule, her sensations were all gloomy. The discomforts of her journey through such a country and under such circumstances increased her sadness, to which the finishing touch was put by the aspect of the desolated countries, and of the overtaxed, starving popula tions withering beneath the Napoleonic blight, 174 MADAME DE STAEVS and mingling curses on the oppressor with prayers to heaven for relief. These tragic pictures were ludicrously, but by no means reassuringly relieved by the sight of placards, in the various towns where the pass- ports had to be examined, which ordained that '^Madame de Stael was to be submitted, wherever she appeared, to the surveillance of the police ! At Lanzut she had been informed that she was not to stay more than twenty-four hours. This, however, was previous to her receiving the Rus- sian passport. With that to show, she hoped for more indulgence. The hope was vain, for at Lanzut a police agent presented himself, having received orders from his chief, the Governor of the district, to see that Madame de Stael did not remain more than eight hours at the Lubomirski's Chateau. And when she left, he followed her carriage in a caleche, thus causing her much alarm lest Rocca, on join- ing them, should be recognized. Fifty leagues of Austrian territory had still to be traversed. The police agent, who is described as carrying out his instructions with a most vex- atious pertinacity, quitted the travellers at the limit of his " circle " ; but Madame de Stael says that grenadiers were still found posted along the route to observe hei*, and she did not breathe freely until she found herself on Russian terri- SECOND MARRIAGE. 1 75 tory. Even there she could not allow herself to feel quite secure, for Napoleon's huge army- destined by its apparent power and its oncoming doom to typify the falling might of France — was hastening by forced marches to Moscow; and Madame de Stael, to avoid meeting it, had to reach St. Petersburg by a circuitous route. Her terror of being arrested and imprisoned still abode with her ; she was evidently convinced that the Emperor was furious with her for having escaped his clutches ; and she began seriously to consider what she would do if any portion of the army threatened to overtake her. Her plan was to hasten on to Odessa, and thence proceed to Greece and Constantinople. Fortunately, her companions succeeded in per- suading her that she could travel by post much faster than an army ; and partially calmed, she at last gave herself up to some enjoyment of the scenes and people around her. Her Dix Aiinees d'Exil, always vivid, becomes from this point a charming book. She is a little too optimistic, and indulges, as usual, too much in generaliza- tion, but seizes on salient points with swiftness, and describes them with remarkable force. She was delighted with her reception by the nobles and the Imperial family. Of the Czar she speaks with a fervent admiration that later gen- erations have not shared. He had the facile 176 MADAME BE STAEVS amiability and conventional philanthropy of a sovereign who finds his benevolent theories so constantly crossed by circumstances as to release him, in most instances, from the responsibiUty of applying them. But any promise of political reform and any appeal to general principles of excellence found so ready a response in Madame de Stael's own heart that, especially where a mon- arch spoke, she ceased to be severely critical. According to Galiffe, she met in Russia with immense social success, and enchanted every- body. He, personally, found her much improved since the days of her brilliant, but too self-assert- ing youth. Stein was struck with her air of simplicity and goodness, and sought to convey her great unaf- fectedness of manner by saying that ''she gave herself no trouble to please " — quite a man's judgment on a woman, and curiously inaccurate as a necessary consequence. Madame de Stael was so intensely interested in every new person who appeared to her at all distinguished, that she must always have cared supremely to please. But what Stein probably meant was that she had none of the airs and graces of worldly coquettes ; and very often, when launched in conversation, she must have been more bent on convincing than seducing. Madame de Stael passes over in her Memoirs SECOND MARRIAGE. 1 77 a scene at the theatre, during her visit to St. Petersburg, which wounded her deeply, and is related by Arndt. She went with her son and somebody else to the " Theatre Franpais," to see Racine's Phedre. Scarcely was she seated, when somebody in the pit denounced her and her com- panions as French. Instantly the people rose and clamored for them to be turned out. The performance was stopped, the actors decamped, and poor Madame de Stael, sobbing with indig- nation and grief, was led away. Even then she felt the insult chiefly as levelled at Racine, and repeated incessantly, *' Oh ! les barbares, les bar- bares 1 Oh, moil Racine!''' Arndt was rather astonished at her taking such a scene so much to heart ; but, on reflection, arrived at the conclu- sion that German women might be the better for a little of the same passionate patriotism. But unpleasant incidents during her stay in the Russian capital seem to have been few. She vis- ited several institutions, was received everywhere with politeness and cordiality, and revelled again, as she had done in Vienna, in listening to the free expression of sentiments that agreed with her own. Events, however, were progressing rapidly, and, in spite of the engagement never to sign a peace entered into by the Czar with Bernadotte at Abo, the battle of Borodino and the taking of Moscow filled most people with dis- 12 178 MADAME DE STAEVS may. Madame de Stael, always easily alarmed, thought that the moment had arrived when she could no longer remain in Russia with safety, and she set her face towards Sweden, en route for England ; thus quitting St. Petersburg a few days too soon to receive in all its force the electric shock of learning that Moscow was fired. At Abo, where she was to embark for Stockholm, she met Bernadotte, now Prince Royal of Swe- den, whom she had formerly known in Paris as an habitue of her own and Madame Recamier's salon. Of course he admired the lovely Juliette, and hastened to inquire after her with an interest which Madame de Stael straightway conveyed in a letter to her friend — a letter worded, however, with a caution that reveals the inconceivable dif- ficulty even of private correspondence in those stormy days. At Stockholm she was welcomed, according to her son, with " perfect kindness " ; and as she was notoriously enthusiastic about Bernadotte, whom she unhesitatingly pronounced to be "the hero of the age," it is probable that he honored her with a great deal of his confidence. Galiffe (author of Uun Steele a r autre), who had access to her correspondence from Sweden with J. A. Galiffe in St. Petersburg, was of opinion that her influence had a large share in determining Ber- nadotte to declare himself against Bonaparte. SECOND MARRIAGE. 1 79 She dedicated her Reflexions stir le Suicide to the Prince in a very complimentary preface, in which she compared herself and her children as seeking his protection in the same way as Ara- bian Shepherds take shelter from a storm *' under a laurel " : and went on to assure him that his public life had been signalized by all the virtues which claim the admiration of thinkers, and she encouraged him to persevere and remind the world of that which it had entirely forgotten, namely, that the highest reason teaches virtue. In contrast to all this praise, it is piquant to learn that BernadottC' — like so many other practically- minded people — had his little grumble at his illus- trious guest, and talked of the "inconceivable preoccupation with self," which by this time had led Madame de Stael to see in every political move of Napoleon the beginning of some new measure against herself. Her oft-professed anxiety about her sons' future was allayed by the Prince Royal's offer to interest himself in Auguste's diplomatic career, while Albert was to enter the Swedish army. One might wonder why this obvious solution of her difficulties had not presented itself sooner to Madame de Stael, were it not evident that she had consciously or unconsciously made the most of every circumstance which could heighten the apparent hardship of her lot. CHAPTER XIII. ENGLAND AGAIN. After quitting Sweden Madame de Stael went to England. Some eighteen years or so had passed since she had wept in the lanes at Mickle- ham at the thought of separating from the charm- ing colony at Juniper Hall. Her heart was still almost as young as in those days ; the vivid flame of enthusiasm for all that was good still burnt as brightly in her soul. If her spiritual horizon had widened, and a fervent if rather vague religious sentiment had succeeded to her unquestioning faith in men — that was almost all the change in her. For her nature was a singularly homoge- neous one, and growth, while widening and deep- ening it, did not render it more complex. Her reception in English society was marked by all the enthusiasm w^hich we are accustomed to lavish on illustrious foreigners. She was mobbed at routs and assemblies, and ladies mounted on chairs and tables to stare at her. She took up her abode at 30, Argyll Place, Re- gent Street, a house now a bathing establishment. (180) ENGLAND AGAIN, l8l It was here that she received the mixed but bril- liant society which Byron declared reminded him of the grave, inasmuch as all distinctions were levelled in it ! These social meetings formed her protest against the enormous and overcrowded gather- ings which were dignified then, as now, with the name of "society" in London, and where Ma- dame de Stael found that 'all intellectual enjoy- ment was smothered by sheer force of numbers. She was willing enough to admit that clever men and women in England were transcendentally interesting when caught in sufficiently small groups to make rational conversation possible ; but declared that all qualities of mind were anni- hilated in the crowds, where the only superiority necessary was physical force to enable one to elbow one's way along. Byron and Madame de Stael became very good friends, although she rated him about his conduct in love ; and he laughed, with quiet malice, at many of her peculiarities. One of his favorite diversions — or, at least, so he said — was to plague her by declaring that he did not believe in Na- poleon's "persecutions." Nothing made her more angry, he declared, inasmuch as she was proud of the danger, which, as she believed, threatened Napoleon's Government from her elo- quence and her fame. Byron, in his Conversa- 1 82 MADAME DE STAEL. tions with Lady Blessington, told one or two stories of " Corinne," more diverting probably than veracious, and complained of her over- whelming declamation (as distinguished from talk), her tendency to metaphysical subtleties, her extraordinary self-complacency, and the strange simplicity which caused her to be per- petually mystified. But he admitted that she was " a fine creature with great talent and many noble qualities" ; and he loudly proclaimed her immeasurable superiority to every woman with pretensions to literary fame in England. He even found several things to admire in her appearance, which in a man of his taste was a very precious testimony, and might have consoled Madame de Stael, had she only known of it, for those personal defects which were said to aflfiict her. The person who in all England appears to have been the best match, conversationally, for Ma- dame de Stael was Sir James Mackintosh, who, perhaps, gave the best of all descriptions of her when he said, " She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation. She has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular if, in society, she were to confine herself to her infe- rior talents— pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius." At another ENGLAND AGAIN. 1 83 time he remarked : " Her penetration was cer- tainly extraordinary, with an air of apparent occu- pation in things immediately around her." He recorded, not always approvingly, some of her sweeping judgments, as for instance, that "Po- litical Economy was prosaic and uninteresting," and that " Miss Austen's novels were common- place." Her stay in England was saddened, although apparently not very deeply so, by the violent death of her younger son. Byron's flippant allu- sion to this tragic event has brought him into much disrepute. " Madame de Stael," he wrote, " has lost one of her young Barons, who has been carbonaded by a vile Teutonic adjutant. . . . * Corinne ' is, of course, what all mothers must be, but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could — write an essay upon it. She can- not exist without a grievance and somebody to see or read how much grief becomes her." All these epigrammatic previsions turned out to be apparently unfounded ; for there is no proof that Madame de Stael mourned her son with anything approaching to the passion with which she had grieved for her father. Sismondi, indeed, always censorious, is rather severe on what he is pleased to consider her want of maternal feeling ; and, as she was never known to hide her sentiments, it is only fair to conclude that comparative silence 1 84 MADAME DE STAEL. meant comparative insensibility. Albert de Stael was very high-spirited and impetuous, and rather wild. Judging from a severe and somewhat self- righteous epistle addressed to him on one occa- sion by his mother, he had many of the faults that irritated, and none of the qualities that pleased her. Auguste and Albertine, inspired by their adoring veneration, presumably tried to mould their tastes and pursuits by hers ; but Albert appears to have been different — for his mother reproaches him with remaining unmoved by her own intellect, the dignity of his brother, the charm of his sister, and the talents of M. Schlegel ! She assures him that he is unfit to appreciate the mother whom he possesses, and very charac- teristically requests to be told of what service it has been to him to be " the grandson of Necker." Neither the invocation of this august memory, nor the general drift of the arguments, strike one as happily chosen for moving a thoughtless lad in his teens, who was probably drawn towards his brother and sister by other reasons than their respective dignity and charm, and was more than likely to be secretly bored by the disquisitions of the learned Schlegel. However this may be, the letter gives the full measure of the contempt which Madame de Stael could feel for folly and frivolity ; and, if those were the distinguishing characteristics of Albert, it is very comprehensi- ENGLAND AGAIN 185 ble that, the first pangs of natural grief overcome, his loss would not leave a great void in her active existence. In the autumn of 18 13 L Allemagne was pub- lished. It appeared in London, and straightway caused the greatest ferment known for a long while in the literary world. The circumstances under which it saw the light — the social position, sex, and history of its author — and its own intrin- sic merits, combined to make it an event. It is notorious how much Sir James Mackintosh and Byron admired it ; and articles concerning it, crit- ical and laudatory, poured from the European press. Goethe admitted that no previous writer had so largely revealed the riches of German lit- erature to the intelligence of an unappreciative generation ; and although the great Teutonic race was not fully satisfied with the work at the time, and has since become somewhat captious regarding it, the talent which it displayed has never been called in question. By a sufficiently striking coincidence the publication of U Alle- magne took place in the same month as the battle of Leipzic. Only a brief period then elapsed be- fore Napoleon abdicated, and Madame de Stael, her splendid and triumphant exile terminated, was enabled once more to re-enter the gates of beloved but, alas ! humiliated Paris. She was far too patriotic not to entertain saddened feel- 1 86 MADAME DE ST A EL. ings on seeing the streets of the capital filled with soldiers in German, Russian and Cossack uniforms ; for while rejoicing in the overthrow of Napoleon, she mourned the tarnished glory of the French arms. She was received with the utmost cordiality by Louis XVIII. , and her salon quickly became the rallying-ground for all the brightest intellects of France. It is interesting to read that Talley- rand — the supple, silent, time-serving Talleyrand ■ — was among her guests. She forgave him, of course, for his long oblivion of her old claims on his friendship ; but not more thoroughly, in all probability, than he forgave himself. To Paris had returned the Abbe de Montesquion, Lally, Tollendal, Lafayette. How changed were the times since the latter had hurried thither to plead, and plead in vain, for his imprisoned King ; since the Abbe had waited in disguise on the high road for Madame de Stael to arrive in her carriage and convey him out of France ; since Lally, " the fat-test of susceptible men," had brought his eloquence and sensibility to help in enlivening the sylvan glades of Mickleham. Madame Recamier had returned and Constant, at the ripe age of forty-eight and married for the second time, was so in love with her as to resent any allusion to the past which could divert him, even momentarily, from his all-absorbing passion. ENGLAND AGAIN 1 87 Madame de Kriidener, worn and wasted with sybilline fervor, had commenced her rehgious gatherings, and the Czar was drawn daily within the circle of her spells, while Madame Recamier was banished from it because her beauty could still claim glances that were vowed to heaven. Constant, going once, never went again ; perhaps because Juliette was wanting ; perhaps because such mystic utterances as fell from the inspired priestess's lips were too vague to find an echo in his passion-tossed soul. To Paris also had come Bonstetten, younger than ever in spirit, and hope- ful, for all his burden of years. The dawn of the new era — so quickly clouded for more serious and prescient souls than his — filled him with delight. He was brighter and more contented now than he had been in youth ; the world seemed a better place to him, and he almost wondered how anybody could be sad in a universe so full of new ideas and dazzling Intel- lectual possibilities. Besides all these interesting figures, other and more splendid, if not more illustrious, personages crowded Madame de Stael's salon. Thither came the Czar, so chivalrous and sympathetic in these days ; thither came her old friend the Duke of Saxe Weimar; and Wellington presented him- self to be received with the utmost cordiality, and 1 88 MADAME DE STAEL. to inscribe himself on the long list of Madame Recamier's admirers. At first Madame de Stael's heart beat high with patriotic hopes. She had become monarch- ical in her feelings again, and expected great things for France from the liberal disposition of the King. She exerted herself quite in her old way to talk over dissidents and reconcile malcon- tents ; for her one longing was that the new con- stitution of France might be made on the pattern and informed with the spirit of England. But she was not slow to discover how ill-founded were such aspirations. Egotism stalked through the exhausted land — egotism under various forms and professing various creeds ; now wearing the supei^- annuated uniform of the Maison Rouge ; now decorated with the medals conferred by Napo- leon ; now prating of old services before the emi- gration ; now professing a servile repentance for base obedience to Bonaparte. They were but differences in the mask after all ; yet over these differences men wrangled, and meanwhile the poison of a deadly indifference crept through the veins of France. Madame de Stael saw all this and felt it with a passionate regret. In the last volume of her Considerations she shows how everything was accorded in the letter, only to be constantly violated in the spirit. She deplored the irreconcilable folly of the emigres ; the abject ENGLAND AGAIN 1 89 cringing of converted Bonapartists, who only cared for power ; and the disastrous reactionary influences which hampered the action of the Court. She returned for the summer to Coppet — a very welcome refuge to her now that she went thither of her own free will. Her health was beginning to fail about this time, while that of M. Rocca gave her constant anxiety. Originally she had been blest, if not with a splendid consti- tution, at least with a royal disdain of physical influences. She had felt neither heat nor cold, and spoke even with a certain impatience of invalid considerations. But she had lived at such high pressure intellectually from her very earliest years ; had thought, felt, talked, and done so much, that her existence could not be counted, like most people's, by years. In the sense of accumulated efforts and results it had been a very long life, and the expenditure of nervous energy so constantly kept up was beginning to tell at last. Even Bonstetten, the optimist, saw a change in her when in July, 18 14, he visited her at Coppet. She was, indeed, very depressed in spirits ; but he appeared to allude only to a phys- ical alteration, for he declared her to be as bril- liant and good as ever. 'He might have added as indefatigable. She found somebody to translate Wilberforce's work on the Slave Trade, and wrote igO MADAME DESTAEL. a preface to the French edition. Also she pub^ lished, in pamphlet form, an appeal for Abolition addressed to the Sovereigns met together at that time in Paris ; and she was busy with her work, Considerations, of which the first tv/o parts alone were eventually revised by herself. In July, from Coppet, she wrote a characteristic letter to Madame Recamier, telling what diffi- culty she experienced in keeping up the fine love of solitude, which had beguiled her momentarily into seeking that picturesque and sacred but monotonous retreat. " My soul is not sufficiently rural," she writes. "I regret your little apart- ment and our quarrels and conversations, and all that life which is yours." In this sturdy love of streets Madame de Stael resembled Dr. Johnson and, perhaps, if the truth were known, she resem- bled all good talkers. She returned to Paris in the winter of 1814-' 15, and, conscious that her strength was failing, she became extremely anxious to marry her dar- ling daughter to some man who would be worthy of her. Her circumstances had been recently much improved by the repayment from the Treas- ury of the two millions which Necker had left there. Such wealth, joined to her own brilliant social position, entitled her to look out for a good parti for Albertine ; but she was resolute that the match should be a happy one. Her ideal of felic- ENGLAND AGAIN. I9I ity was conjugal love. She preached, indeed, a code of wifely submission that would seem very insipid to some emancipated damsels in our days, and was perhaps a little too perfect to be possi- ble. But she put into it all her own rare faith in good, and often laughingly declared that " she would force her daughter to make a marriage of the heart." In the midst of these amiable preoccupations, and while enjoying once again the delight of social intercourse, unhampered by foreign modes of speech and thought, and untroubled by the irrita- tion of exile, Madame de Stael was still haunted by a foreboding of evil. Such presentiments were very common with her. She had the quick, indefinable instinct of imaginative minds, and felt that subtle vibration of events which precedes, or perhaps causes, change in them. Probably she hardly knew what she anticipated ; and yet, when the news of Napoleon's escape from Elba arrived, it seemed as if the expected disaster could only be that. An hour after she met M. de la Valette, and said to him : " If Bonaparte triumph, liberty is lost ; and if he be beaten, our national independence is over." A few days of utter consternation followed — a pause of bewildered, incapable silence, through which, as Chateaubriand so graphically says, *' the sound of Bonaparte's advancing footsteps 192 MADAME DE ST A EL. echoed." Then came the news of one town and province after another rallying round the stand- ard of the resurgent conqueror. Ney departed, vowing to bring back his former master in an iron cage ; and the vain boast, so quickly yet not ludicrously disproved, inspired as little confidence as it deserved. The Court prepared for ignominious flight, and Madame de Stael had no choice but to follow its example. But a few months previously she had by chance become aware of a conspiracy against Napoleon's life, and, for all her hatred of him, had been so moved by the menace of peril to her ancient and implacable foe, that she had found means to despatch a warning to him. Yet now, when she heard of his return, all her terror of him revived in its pristine force, bringing back with it the flood of agitated imagination which had so long poisoned her life. Villemain has left a record of the evening of the 1 8th March 1815, which he passed in the salon of the Countess Rumford, and where he met Madame de Stael. Several famous, and to us now famihar, personages were present— Lay- fayette, Constant, Jancourt, Cuvier, Sismondi, and Lemercier among others. Every moment somebody arrived with news of the advancing hero. Madame de Stael came late, and instantly attracted the general attention to herself. She ENGLAND AGAIN. 1 93 was overwhelmed with sadness, but more for France even than for herself. She had been at the Tuilleries, and found that there all hope of resistance was abandoned. Her own mind was made up for flight, yet she urged Madame de Rumford to remain, showing that she considered Napoleon's hatred of herself to be inextinguisha- ble and as active as ever. In point of fact, Na- poleon's earliest care, on reaching the capital, was to express his regret at her departure. It is very unlikely that he would have' molested her in any way had she remained ; but it was ordained that, to the last, he should make her suffer even more in imagination than in reality. She urged Madame Recamier to escape with her, for, Juli- ette's prescription never having been formally revoked, Madame de Stael considered her danger as great as her own. But Madame Recamier, more calm, refused. With her remained also Benjamin Constant, although he also was admon- ished by Madame de Stael to seek safety in another land. His career during the Hundred Days is well known. He began by attacking Napoleon violently, then had an interview with him, was fascinated, converted, appointed a coun- cillor of state, and helped to edit the Acte Addi- tioiinel. Another convert was the sober-minded Sismondi, and several people have asserted, on the authority first of an English editor, and then 13 194 MADAME BE STAEL. of M. Thiers, that the great, the irreconcilable ** Corinne " herself, gave in a tardy but complete adhesion. Ste. Beuve endorsed the error, and based his belief upon the style of an unsigned note in French found among Lord Castlereagh's posthumous papers, and attributed by Lord Lon- donderry's secretary to Madame de Stael. This letter was supposed to have been written at Cop- pet and forwarded to Mr. Crawford, the Ameri- can Minister in Paris, in order that he might take it to London. Its object was to inspire English statesmen with the writer's own belief in Napo- leon's new-found sincerity, and to recommend his government to their support. A comparison of dates shows, however, that such a letter, if despatched from Coppet, could only have reached Paris twenty-four hours after Mr. Crawford's departure, and Thier's assump- tion that Madame de Stael remained in Paris during the Hundred Days is disproved by her correspondence from Switzerland with Madame Recamier. Finally, and again according to Thiers, Sismondi's conversion was a result of Madame de Stael's own change of views. But this also appears quite untenable, inasmuch as Sismondi himself bears testimony to her resent- ment against Napoleon, strengthened, as he says, " to a blind and violent hatred." This is the nat- ural language of a person who has veered about ENGLAND AGAIN. 1 95 of another person who has not, and the expres- sion occurs in a letter of Sismondi's written from Coppet a short time after Waterloo, and when he had gone to the chateau in some doubt as to the nature of the reception there awaiting him. He had been much relieved to find his hostess as cordial as ever. Madame de Stael, indeed, never seems to have willingly or spontaneously given up any friend whom she had once admitted to the title. PoUtics are apt to envenom the most inti- mate relations, but they left no bitterness in her great and gentle soul. Alas ! the happy days at Coppet were numbered now for most of those whom we have seen congregating there through so many exciting summers. Madame de Stael delighted in the exercise of a generous hospitality. Nobody ever seems to have managed her business affairs better than she did, and among the few apparent contradic- tions of her transparent nature was the spirit of order in which she dealt with life, as soon as the things presented to her consideration were hard facts and not sentiments. In all administrative matters she had the capacity of a true French- woman, and, while systematic and careful, was the least avaricious of women. CHAPTER XIV. CLOSING SCENES. After Waterloo, Madame de Stael did not return to France. The thought of the second occupation by foreign troops was odious to her, and, besides this, she feared the outbreak of reac- tionary feelings, and foresaw a political condition in which her pure and ideal liberalism would be equally unwelcome to all parties. Rocca's state of health finally induced her to go to Italy. From Milan she sent a letter to Madame Recamier, which is interesting a^ show- ing how little her fine mind and noble heart were in harmony just then with the condition of affairs in France. You are kind enough to say to me," she wrote, *' that I should do better to be in Paris. But no, indeed, I should not care to see some forms of liberty (franchises) * accorded ' to the people, for it is my creed that nations are born free. I should say unfashionable things and make enemies unnecessarily. When all is arranged for Albertine's marriage, I shall lead a (196) CLOSING SCENES. 1 97 solitary life in Paris ; but at present I do well, believe me, to have myself represented by Au- guste. Like you, I think well, and better than ever, of Victor de Broglie, and I shall be very glad of the marriage if nothing goes against it. I am also of your way of thinking in regard to Madame de Kriidener. She is the herald of a great oncoming religious epoch. Speak of me to her, I beg, as of a person quite devoted to her. . . . . M. Rocca's health still gives me anxiety. I have never recovered any happiness since Bo- naparte disembarked. Madame de Stael had been very happy in her marriage with Rocca, and the tenderness with which she regarded him was manifest to all her acquaintances. Under such circumstances, it does seem strange that she should to the last have kept her marriage with him a secret. The most plausible reason for such a course, fear of 'Napoleon's spite, existed no longer after Waterloo. Why, then, have gratuitously incurred the reproach of an illicit connection t Why, above all, separate herself for five years from her own and Rocca's child t Such conduct does not on the face of it seem quite consistent with the lofty ideal of duty which Madame de Stael pro- fessed. Albertine's wedding took place in civil form at Leghorn on February 15 th, 181 5 ; and five 198 MADAME DE ST A EL. days later in Pisa a double religious ceremony, one Catholic, the other Protestant, was performed. All Madame de Stael's friends gave a charm- ing picture of Albertine. Guizot, Lamartine, and Bonstetten were most enthusiastic about her. Their praises were also echoed by Byron, who, needless to say, was no mean judge; and Tick- nor, seeing her in Paris about a year after her marriage, never mentioned her except in terms of admiration. She was both beautiful and clever, and, after her mother's death, became, in her turn, the queen of a cosmopolitan salon. Accompanied by the bride and bridegroom, by Rocca, by Schlegel and Sismondi, Madame de Stael presently betook herself to Florence, and while there renewed her acquaintance with the Countess of Albany. Alfieri was dead now, and Fabre reigned in his stead. Madame de Stael appears to have adopted him with the mingled enthusiasm and indulgence which she exhibited towards all the tastes of her friends. The summer of 18 16 was spent in Coppet. The newest and most interesting figure there on this occasion was Byron. He had shaken the dust of England from his feet, and was nursing his lyrical cynicism at Cologny near Geneva. Unfortunately, his reputation was so bad that the virtuous society of the place would not know him. Madame de Stael alone not only received but CLOSING SCENES. 1 99 welcomed him. He was grateful ; and so far yielded to the influence which this gratitude en- abled her to exercise over him as actually to make an imperfect attempt at reconciliation with his wife, in order to please his eloquent and mag- nanimous hostess. It is amusing to note the different impressions which Byron — the charming, reprehensible By- ron — made upon the various guests at the Cha- teau. Bonstetten, as might be expected, was quite fascinated by him, and wrote to Malthasson of his musical voice and beautiful head ; and of the " half-honest little demon " that darted in a lambent way through the sarcasm of his speech. Sismondi — the correct and censorious — dwells more especially on Byron's cynical contempt for appearances, and the conduct and companion- ship which had brought him into disrepute with the worthy Genevese. Coppet had never been quite as brilliant, prob- ably, as in this last summer that Madame de Stael was to reign there. The society was more varied in nationality than in the days when a brilliant but small band of intellects had gathered round to console her in her exile. Brougham, Bell, Lady Hamilton, Lord Breadalbane, Romilly, Stendahl, Schlegel, passed in rapid succession over the scene — talked, sparkled — and disappear- ed. They flashed like meteors, but Madame de 200 MADAME DE ST A EL. Stael shone among them with a steady splendor. Wherever and with whomsoever she was, her powers remained always unquenchable. Never- theless a great sadness possessed her. This was partly due to her anxiety concerning Rocca — partly to the disappointment inevitable in a spirit which broke impatiently against the limi- tations of life, the pettiness of human nature. *' Ah happiness ! " she exclaimed yearningly. Then added, ** But at my age no trust is possible but in the goodness of God." Bonstetten, parting with her, was struck with the profound melancholy of the glance which she gave him. He had been gay and content, as usual, yet the memory of her look dwelt with him ; and unable to explain it, he at last, the dear, genial old man, arrived at the touching con- clusion that she had been thinking how old he was, and that she would never see him again. The adieu was, indeed, a lasting one ; but it was over Madame de Stael's radiant path that the shadows of death were to gather first. Nevertheless, during the winter of 1 8 16-17, and when she returned to Paris, her spirit showed no sign of failing. In her salon gathered Cha- teaubriand, Talleyrand, Wellington, Humboldt, Blucher, Lafayette, Schlegel and his brother, Canova, and crowds of English. Bonstetten averred that to her influence over Wellington CLOSING SCENES. 201 alone was due the fact that the Army of Occu- pation was about this time diminished by 30,000 men. Just before her death she removed from the Rue Royale to the Rue Neuve des Mathurins ; and it was here that Chateaubriand again, after so many years, saw Madame Recamier, and com- menced the romantic friendship which was to end only with his death. He had been invited to dine at Madame de Stael's; but, when he ar- rived there, found that she was too ill to enter- tain the .2:uests. The dinner took place all the same — for Madame de Stael invariably insisted on this, and made her daughter do the honors. They must have been melancholy banquets ; the little Duchess de Broglie presiding with a heavy heart, and all the guests being vividly conscious of the noble life slowly and painfully ebbing away in another room. It is with a certain re- lief, therefore, in the midst of so much sadness that one reads Chateaubriand's record of his meeting with Juliette. He was selfish and self- conscious and weak no doubt — his fretful uneasy vanity, indeed, pierces through the affected mel- ancholy of the Memoires d Outre Tombe. They are sickly with a kind of faded perfume ; and yet in the great void which is coming, one is glad to think that the blind Madame Recamier, the aged and feeble Chateaubriand, must often have 202 MADAME DE ST A EL, remembered, perchance often talked of, that din- ner where they met in the house of their dying friend. Her interest in life remained undiminished to the last. Not only Chateaubriand, but Constant, Mathieu de Montmorency, Sismondi, all her old friends, were daily with her. She was even glad to welcome strangers, although frequently so ill that her physicians forbade such visits for several days at a time. It was after one of these inter- vals that Ticknor saw her. She received him in bed, and her weakness was already so great that she could hardly stretch out her hand to touch his. She alluded to her approaching end with a calmness infinitely pathetic and admirable in one who suffered none of that slow extinction of the faculties which blunts the anguish of the end for so many departing souls. Seeing that her words pained her daughter, she changed the subject to America, and spoke of the great future of that country with characteristic enthusiasm of belief. Of Europe, Ticknor said, "she despaired." She might well do so, for the era then beginning was one with which she could not have sympathised. Whatever its virtues, its force, its promise, the oracles by which it was inspired must have sounded strange in her ears. Herself, she had been a kind of priestess ; through her some un- known God had spoken, and amid the thunder of CLOSING SCENES. 203 great events her faith, for all its ideal grandeur, had hardly seemed too mighty. But that age had passed, and it was fit she should pass with it. All witnesses except the captious Sismondi bear testimony to the devotion with which Rocca nursed his wife in her last illness. Silent, pallid, sad as a phantom itself, he sat day by day beside her bed. According to Madame d'Abrantes, she never looked long at him without feeling that she might still live. The sense that her existence was necessary to him seemed to inspire her for a moment with the courage to take up anew the increasing burden of her days. But at other times her thoughts turned with a grateful sense of coming rest to the great change, and to the thought of her father " waiting for her," as she said, " on the other shore." Constant passed the last night of her life by her bedside. She had seemed so much better that at eleven o'clock Mathieu de Montmorency left, convinced that in the morning he would find her revived. She suffered no pain during the concluding hours, and the brightness of her intellect was not even mo- mentarily dimmed. Sleep visited her as usual ; j:hen at 5 o'clock she opened her eyes again, for the last time on the world. A few moments later she passed away, so quietly that her watchers did not note the precise moment in which her 204 ' MADAME DE STAEL. great soul was exhaled. The date of her death was 14th July, 18 1 7. The news of it was the signal for, perhaps, the most widely-spread and most genuine outburst of grief ever known. Joubert, indeed, asserts the contrary, and not only declares that she was not regretted, but adds that Constant, meeting him casually the very day after the event, did not even allude to it. It never seems to have oc- curred to Joubert that Constant might have had some other and deeper cause for silence than indifference. From such a nature reserve was perhaps the only tribute that could be more elo- quently expressive than the loud lamentations of other friends. These abounded, and even Chat- eaubriand, who, after all, had not been bound to the dead woman by such ties of constant friend- ship as attached Schlegel, Sismondi, and others — even he records with a sort of jealous care that in the last letter she ever wrote to Madame de Duras, a letter penned in "large, irregular characters like a child's," there was an affection- ate allusion to " Francis." Bonstetten and Sismondi have both left records of their grief at her funeral. The latter, writing immediately after it to his mother, said : *' My life is painfully changed. I owe more to her than to any other person." Bonstetten's sorrow finds a more energetic expression : *' I miss her CLOSING SCENES. 205 as though she were a part of myself. I am maimed henceforward in thought." She was buried at Coppet, and they laid her coffin at the foot of her father's. A crowd of friends, of humble mourners, and of official functionaries, assembled to do her homage ; but Rocca was too ill to be present. He died, in- deed, only seven months later, and the son whom Madame de Stael had borne him hardly reached early manhood before he also passed away. Auguste de StaeL had preceded him along the road to eternity, and the Duchess de Broglie did not live to be old. Twenty years had hardly elapsed before, with the sole exception of her faithful friend and cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure, no near relative of Madame de Stael was still alive ; but those who had known her did not need to be reminded of her. She was constantly present to them, a radiant, imperishable vision. " I wish I could see you asleep," Bonstetten had said one day to her. " I would like to feel sure that you sometimes close your eyes, and are not always thinking." She had remained so bright and full of life to the last, that even Death's inexorable hand could not for many long years efface the recollection of her vivid personality. In a page of the Memoires d Outre Toinbe, Chateaubriand has left a description of a visit 206 MADAME DE STAEL. paid by himself and Madame Recamier to the grave at Coppet. It was fifteen years after Madame de Stael's death. The Chateau was closed, the apartments deserted. Juliette, wan- dering through them, recognised one after another the spots where Madame de Stael had played the piano, had talked to those gathered round her, or had written. The two friends went into the park where the autumn leaves already were reddening and fall- ing. The wind subsided by degrees, and the sound of a millstream alone broke the stillness. Madame Recamier entered the wood into whose depths the grave is hidden, while Chateaubriand remained looking at the snowy line of the Alps, and at the glittering lake. Above the sombre heights of Jura the sky was covered with golden clouds "like a glory spreading above a bier." Suddenly Madame Recamier, pale and tearful, phantom-like among phantoms, emerged from the wood. And on her companion's melancholy spirit fell a sense of all the emptiness of glory, of all the sad reality of life. " Qu est-ce que la gloiref' asked Madame de Stael. '' Ce nest qiiim deuil eclatant du bofiheiirr We could wish that the most famous of women might have held a less hopeless creed. CHAPTER XV. HER WORKS. Any notice of Madame de Stael would be im- perfect without a review of her works. She did not begin, like so many famous authors, to write at an abnormally early age — it is true, she com- posed Portraits, which were read aloud in her mother's salon, but everybody did as much in those days, and her attempts were not sufficiently remarkable to stamp her at once as a literary genius. It has been said how much her father discouraged her writing. This may account in part for the tardy development of the taste, al- though more was doubtless due to the peerless conversations in which, before the Revolution, her young intellect found all that it could need of ideas. However this may be, she was twenty before she wrote Sophie, ou les Sentijneitts Secrets, that elegiac " comedy " which drew down on its authoress's youthful head the animadversions of her austere mother. Madame Necker was shocked at the subject, which represented a young girl of seventeen struggling against a (207) 208 MADAME DE STAEL. secret passion for her guardian, a married man, who is in love with her. Sophie (who, by the bye, is English) behaves in the noblest manner as soon as she discovers that her feelings are reciprocated, and leaves the home of which she has unwittingly destroyed the peace. Her guar- dian and his wife are no less equal to the occasion, and Milord Henri Bedford, Sophie's slighted swain, is inspired by their example. Everybody expresses his or her sentiments in polished and prolix verse, and the curtain finally falls on four loftily eloquent and magnanimously miserable people. The style is not inflated, but the piece is very dull, and, while betraying little of the writer's future talent, reveals two of her defects, exaggeration of sentiment and a want of humor. To the same date as Sophie belong yane Grej/y a tragedy in five acts, also in verse, of no real merit ; another tragedy, Montmorency, and three tales — all romantic and tiresome. Finally, in 1788, when she was nearly twenty- two, Madame de Stael published her Letters on Rousseau, and thus established her position as an aspirant to literary fame. The book, coming from a woman, made a great sensation. Indeed, this fact of her sex must never be lost sight of in judging the reception accorded to Madame de Stael's works. She attempted subjects of his- HER WORKS. 209 torical and philosophical interest which no woman in her country or age had approached before her. As might be expected, she was an ardent ad- mirer of Rousseau. Her sympathy with the philosophy of Helvetius was naturally slight. She required something declamatory, earnest, and didactic. In a glorification of natural sen- timents to result in some future apotheosis of humanity lay the key to her creed. '' Virtue " and still ** virtue " and more " virtue " was her cry, as though "virtue" were a tangible and definitely constituted thing to be extracted en bloc out of the materials composing humanity. To such a mind it was inevitable that Emile'SM^ the Contrat Social should appeal more strongly than any number of witty epigrams at the expense of penitents and priests. She sympathised with the philosophy of the eighteeth century in so far as it tended, by up- rooting abuses, to promote the progress of cul- ture and the emancipation of the oppressed, but she required some system that would reconstruct as well as destroy ; and being a fervid believer in theories, disliked nothing so much as the idea of leaving the human race to take care of itself. Rousseau, as embodying a protest against the spirit of frivolous negation, appeared to her in the light of a prophet of perfection ; and she saw in the approaching meeting of the States 14 2IO MADAME DE STAEL. General a first step towards the realization of his views. These radiant ideals were destined to be suddenly and painfully obscured by the events of the Terror. Her only contribution to literature during that time was her celebrated and impassioned defence of the unhappy Queen. Public events so fascinated her attention that she had no leisure for any other thougtit. Two sen- tences in her Reflexions sur la Paix, published in 1794, reveal this preoccupation. *' During the reign of Robespierre," she says, "■ when each day brought a list of devoted vic- tims, I could only desire death, and long for the end of the world and of the human race which was witness to, or accomplice in, such horrors. I should have made a reproach to myself even of thought, because it was separate from sor- row." In another passage she exclaims : " Oh appalling time, of which centuries will barely dim the trace ; time which will never belong to the past ! " Nevertheless, Robespierre had hardly fallen, before her ever vivid faith in humanity revived in full force. She looked for safety to the fac- tion which divided extreme revolutionaries from extreme reactionaries, and refused to believe that it could only act as a buffer. Its modera- tion was partly caused by exhaustion ; yet Madame de Stael, always optimistic, maintained HER WORKS. 211 that having no passions it must have convictions, and that the trumpet-call of liberty would sum- mon it to the front. In this she was mistaken ; but in the course of her observations on public events she uttered one remarkable prophecy. *' France," she wrote, " may remain a republic ; but to become a monarchy it must first submit to a military government." In 1790 she published her work on TAe Influ- ence of the Passions tipoft Human Happiness. This was originally to have been divided into two parts. The first portion was to be devoted to reflections on man's peculiar destiny ; the second, to the constitutional fate of nations. We have to concern ourselves with the first alone, as the second, which would have required an im- mense and minute knowledge of ancient and modern governments, was never even begun. In Madame de Stael's view the true obstacle to individual and political happiness lay in the force of passion. Neutralize this, and the prob- lem of government would be solved. Happiness, as she conceived it, was to consist in having hope without fear, activity without anxiety, glory without calumny, love without incon- stancy — in a word, ideal good with no admixture of evil. The happiness of nations would consist in the combination of Republican liberty with monarchical calm, of emulation among talents 212 MADAME DE STAEL. unaccompanied by factious clamor, of military spirit in foreign affairs, and a law-abiding- ten- dency in domestic matters. She concluded by saying that such an ideal is impossible of attain- ment, and the only achievable happiness is to be acquired by studying the true means of avoiding moral pain. To the discovery of this spiritual Nirvana her work was directed. The subject, as is evident, was a sterile one, since it dealt with abstractions that have no correspond- ing realities. To say that men and nations vi^ould be prosperous and contented without some particular institution or defect, is the same as to say that a human face would be beautiful without features. A blank surface is conceivable as a blank surface, but not as a physiognomy ; and to speculate concerning ideal humanity divorced from social systems, imposes on thought the most futile exercise that ever occurred to an enlightened mind. Such being the case, it is not surprising that Madame de Stael should eventually have abandoned her self-imposed task. Even as much of it as she accomplished landed her on a moving morass of conclusions of which the essential nullity must have been evident to herself before anybody. For the rest, her analysis of the various passions is admirable. One wonders as one reads how a young woman could have reached so perfect a HER WORKS. 213 comprehension of the springs of human action. The penetration displayed is unerring, and only- equalled by the masculine vigor of touch. A good example is the following : '* Truly great men are such as have rendered a greatness like their own less necessary to successive genera- tions." And here is another striking passage: " A revolution suspends every action but that of force. Social order establishes the ascendancy of esteem and virtue, but a revolution limits men's choice to their physical capacities. The only sort of moral influence that it does not ex- clude is the fanaticism of such ideas as, not being susceptible of any restraint, are weapons of war and not exercises of the mind. To aspire to distinction in times of revolution one must always outstrip the actual momentum of events, and the consequence of this is a rapid descent which one has no power of staying. In vain one perceives the abyss in front. To throw oneself from the chariot is to be killed by the fall, so that to avoid the danger is more perilous than to face it. One must of one's own accord tread the path that leads to ruin, since the least step backwards overturns the individual but does not hinder the event." This is a very good example both of the clear- ness of Madame de Stael's thought and the care- less confusion of her style. She introduced 214 MADAME DR STAeL metaphors just as they occurred to her, without any preparatory gradations of thought. The second section of the work is devoted to the examination of natural affections such as family love, friendship, and pity.. Here, agam, the analysis is delicate and true, but the mind, fatigued by the futility of the theme, recoils from such minute dissection of emotion. Pas- sion, being comparatively rare, is always inter- esting, but sentiment does not bear prolonged contemplation. Finally come the remedies to be applied to the evils worked by passion. They consist in phi- losophy, in study, and the practice of benevo- lence, joined, if possible, to a child-like faculty of extracting from each hour just the amount of happiness that it contains. With this lame and impotent conclusion the book practically ends, for all the remaining reflections do not avail to place in any clearer light the uncertain and colorless thought of the writer. Her next work was that on Literature Consid- ered in Relation to Social Institutions. Its object was to establish the continuous progress and ultimate perfectibility of the human mind, and the happy influence exercised by liberty upon literature. The theory of the authoress was that the prog- HER WORKS, 215 ress of philosophy, i. e. thought, had been grad- ual, while that of poetry had been spasmodic. Art, indeed, offering, by its early maturity, an awkward contradiction to her system, she pro- ceeded to get rid of it by describing it as the product of imagination rather than of thought, and by adding that its plastic and sensuous qualities rendered it capable of flourishing under systems of government which necessarily crush every other form of intellectual activity. To prove the perfectibility of the human mind, she then had but poetry and philosophy. To the latter she assigned the really glorious future, while the former she regarded^ as finished. She was the first of the Romanticists, in the sense that she preferred the poetry of the north to that of the south ; and her predilections in this line carried her so far, that she placed Ossian above Homer. She considered that the early forms of poetry— in other words, mere tran- scripts of material impressions — were superior to those later creations in which sentiment enters as an element. And this idea, which seems at first a contradiction to her theory of perfectibility, was really intended to confirm it. For, in her view, the value of literature consist- ing exclusively in the amount of thought that it contained, introspective poetry became a mere 2l6 MADAME DE ST A EL. bridge which the mind traversed on its way to wider horizons. Madame de Stael was not only not a poet herself, but she was incapable of appreciating the higher forms of poetry. In her excursions through the regions of literature, she was always in pursuit of some theory which would reconcile the contradictions of human destiny. Man, re- garded as socially perfectible, being her ideal, she was in haste to classify and relegate to some convenient limbo the portions of a subject which did not directly contribute to her hypotheses. Having disposed, therefore, of poetry and art, she undertook to consider literature from the point of view of psychology. She was only pleased with it when self-conscious and analyti- cal. Dante probably perplexed her, and she evoked to condemn him the perruqued shade of *' Le Gout." Shakespeare she applauded, as might be expected, chiefly in consideration of Hamlet ; while Petrarch pleased her principally because he was harmonious ; and Ariosto be- cause he was fanciful. The true significance of the Renaissance escaped her. She sought for the origin of each literature in the political and religious institutions of the country where it arose, instead of regarding both literature and social- conditions as simultaneous products of the national mind. Her erudition was inade- HER WORKS. 217 quate to her task, and the purpose of her works, by warping her judgments, contributed to make them superficial. While pronouncing the Eng- lish and French drama to be essentially superior to the Greek, she characteristically preferred Euripides to his two mighty predecessors. The grandeur of the dominant idea of Greek tragedy — that of an inevitable destiny, against which man struggles in vain — appears to have escaped her altogether. This is not surprising, since such a conception was entirely opposed to, her own order of mind and to the age in which she lived. The root of all the social theories then prevailing was the value of the individual. Man was not a puppet of the gods, but the architect of his own fate. To lose hold of ideal virtue was to become incapable of governing or being governed ; and ideal virtue was a definite entity which anybody might possess who chose. This — rather crudely stated — was Madame de Stael's point of view. Her enthusiasm rejected all idea of limited responsibilities. The ethical value of the ^schylean trilogy — the awful sense of overhanging doom which pervades it — did not appeal to her, because it tended to the an- nihilation of the struggling soul. In other words, she liked self-conscious drama, and was attracted to Euripides by his creation of arti- 21 8 MADAME DE STAEL. ficial situations, in which interesting personages had room and leisure to explain themselves. With Aristophanes she was frankly disgusted ; from her didactic standpoint, because of his pro- nounced indecency ; and on artistic grounds, because he attacked living individuals instead of creating characters like Tartufe and Falstaff. To his beauties she remained entirely blind, and this, perhaps, is to be explained by her deficiency in the aesthetic faculty. It is said that Chateau- briand first taught her to appreciate nature, and Schlegel to perceive the loveliness of art. Che- nedolle complained that she had lived for years opposite Lake Leman *' without finding an im- age" in regard to it; and she herself once frankly admitted that of her own accord she would hardly open her window to gaze on the bay of Naples, while she would go a hundred miles to converse with a new mind. Its defects admitted, we may own that Madame de Stael's work contains many charming chap- ters. If, true to her theory, she provokes her reader by preferring the Latin poets to the Greek ones, and Quintihan to Cicero, simply because of their later date ; if she persists, rather than modify her views, that the sterile scholasticism of the Middle Ages was not a real retrogression, and strangely overlooks, in her admiration for Christianity, the intellectual benefits which man HER WORKS. 219 owes to the Arabs ; on the other hand, she has flashes of admirable insight. The chapter on the invasion of Italy by the barbarians, and the part played by Christianity in fusing the two races, is very suggestive. But, unfortunately, it is suggestive only, and sins by a sketchiness which, more or less, mars the whole book. This was one of Madame de Stael's defects. She' abounded in ideas, but failed either in the power or the patience to work them out. Two other interesting chapters are those on the " Grace, Gaiety, and Taste of the French Nation," and on "Literature in the Reign of Louis XIV." The peculiar social influences which, among successive generations of cour- tiers, produced the best writers of France, are very happily described ; but here again the con- clusions are indicated rather than developed. Madame de Stael stated her conviction that the palmy days of French wit were over, and that the literature of the future, if it wished to flour- ish, must invest itself with greater gravity. Convinced that the moment had come for the dramatist to pack up his puppet-show and de- spatch it to a museum of antiquities, she laid down rules for an ideal republican literature, and prescribed strong emotions, careful analysis of character, and a high moral tone as indispensa- ble ingredients. She was in fact one of the first 220 MADAME DE ST A EL. to admire and write that appalling product, the novel with a purpose. Anything duller than Delphine it would be difficult to imagine. From the first page to the last there is hardly one line of genuine inspira- tion. All is forced, exaggerated, overstrained. The misfortunes of the heroine are so needlessly multiplied, that they end by exasperating the reader ; and the motif of the book — the contrast between conventional and moral ideals— fails in true dramatic interest. The plot is as follows : Madame de Vernon has a daughter, Mathilde, beautiful and sanctimonious, whom she desires to marry to Leonce de Mondoville, a young Spaniard of noble birth and aristocratic preju- dices. Madame de Vernon has in the whole world one friend, Delphine d'Albemar, a miracle of grace, wit, and beauty, who does acts of un- heard-of generosity, and generally by some evil chance accomplishes them at the moment when they lead to unlucky results for herself. She is a young widow, and has been left by her elderly and devoted husband a fortune, of which she proceeds to divest herself as rapidly as possible. One of her favorite objects of charity is Madame de Vernon, who does not deserve her pity, since the pecuniary embarrassments under which she suffers arise from her love of card-playing, and general mismanagement. But Delphine adores HER WORKS. 221 her friend, who is represented as extremely charming, and is in some respects a well-drawn character. Her life is one long act of dissimu- lation. She masks her cynicism cleverly, under an appearance of indolence, which dispenses her from ever taking inconvenient resolutions, or ap- pearing agitated by events which should — but do not — move her. She has some faint affection for her generous dupe — Delphine ; but not enough to be prevented from taking every mean advantage of her. There is some difficulty in arranging Mathilde's marriage, on account of the want of a dowry. Delphine hastens to supply this, and then the bridegroom elect, Leonce, appears on the scene. He is described as di- vinely handsome. The cold and pietistic Mathilde falls in love with him immediately (as was her duty, since he was to be her husband), but so, unfortunately, does Delphine. What is still worse, he is by no means attracted by his 'fiancee, but reciprocates the young widow's pas- sion. Then the drama begins. Madame de Vernon, while seeming to see nothing, sees everything. Mathilde is really blind. Delphine is agitated, but resolved, if possible, to be happy. This, by the way, is the only gleam of common sense that she has throughout the book. Unfor- tunately, she manages to compromise herself (of course quite innocently) by espousing the cause 222 MADAME BE STAEL. of a pair of guilty but repentant lovers; and Madame de Vernon cleverly uses the awkward positions in which she places herself, in order to detach Leonce from her. He marries Mathilde and is madly unhappy. Delphine pours out her feelings in long letters to her sister-in-law and confidant, Mademoiselle d'Albemar, letters which she writes, by the way, on recovering from faint- ing fits, or when lying in bed, or when on the vero:e of distraction. The whole of the novel is told in letters, and is proportionately long- winded and unnatural. Not long after the marriage Madame de Vernon dies, and on her death-bed confesses her perfidy to her victim. Then the mutual passion of Del- phine and Leonce enters upon a new and har- rowing phase. They determine to remain technically virtuous, but to see one another con- stantly — of course unknown to Mathilde. This unnatural situation — unnaturally prolonged, be- comes unbearable through its monotonous misery. Finally Mathilde discovers the state of the case and conjures Delphine to separate herself from Leonce. Madame d'Albemar consents, and disappears. Leonce is then described by his confidant as being on the point of madness. He alternately loses consciousness, and rushes about with dishevelled hair and distraught looks. Del- HER WORKS. 223 phine goes to Switzerland, and there proceeds to compromise herself anew, this time beyond recall, for the sake of a rejected lover who had behaved disgracefully to her. She had taken refuge in a convent of which the superioress, Madame de Ternan, turns out to be the aunt of Leonce. This lady is some- thing of the same sort as Madame de Vernon — except that her egotism, although quite as sys- tematic, is not so base. But it can become so on occasion, and, as she is rather fond of Delphine and anxious to keep her with her to solace her old age, she plays into the hands of Madame de Mondoville (the mother of Leonce) and cleverly contrives to make Delphine take the veil. Barely has this been done when Leonce appears and claims her as his own, Mathilde having in the meanwhile died. Then is the exhausted reader harassed anew by a fresh spectacle of poignant anguish. A Monsieur de Sebersci suggests that Delphine should break her vows, quit her con- vent, and join Leonce, pointing out that, thanks to the Revolution, they can be quite respectably married in France. Delphine is horrified at first, but Leonce having announced the firm intention of putting an end to his existence if she remains a nun, she finally escapes and joins him. One begins to hope that they are going to be happy at last, when the "purpose" of the book pre- 224 'MADAME DE ^TAEL. sents itself. Madame de Stael was anxious to prove that social conventions may not be braved with impunity, but overtake and crush the nature which defies them. Delphine throughout had listened to no voice but that of her conscience and her heart ; she is consequently the victim of calumny. Leonce is principally swayed by pas- sion. He defies society in the end to possess Delphine, but has no sooner induced her to break her vows for him than he begins to feel the stigma of the act He leaves her, and seeks ^eath on the battle-field. Death spares him, but he is arrested as an aristocrat and condemned to be shot. Delphine follows him, and by her elo- quence wrings a pardon from the judge. Leonce, enlightened by the approach of death as to the nothingness of the world's opinion, is prepared to live happily at last with the woman whom he still professes to adore. But all at once the order for his release is rescinded and he is taken out to die. Delphine accompanies him, and talks all along the road. Indeed, she is super- fluously eloquent, from the first page of her history to the last. When Leonce has been strung up by her to the highest pitch of exalted feeling, she takes poison and dies at his feet. He is then shot ; and the lovers are interred in one grave by Monsieur de Serbellane, who has appeared again in the last chapter, after having ■HER WORKS. 225 been the primary though unwitting cause of his unhappy friends' woes. It is difficult to understand why critics like Sainte Beuve should so warmly have praised this novel. No doubt it shows talent, especially in the analysis of mental struggle ; but it is false from beginning to end. All the characters want vitality, although some of the qualities attributed to them are described with penetration and force. Delphine and Leonce talk too much, and faint too much, and are simply insupportable. Finally, the book is drearily monotonous and unrelieved by one gleam of poetry or humor. Cormne is a classic of which everybody is bound to speak with respect. The enormous admiration which it excited at the time of its appearance may seem somewhat strange in this year of grace ; but then it must be remem- bered that Italy was not the over-written country it has since become. Besides this, Madame de Stael was the most celebrated woman, and, after Napoleon, the most conspicuous personage of her day. Except Chateaubriand, she had nobody to dispute with her the palm of literary glory in France. Her exile, her literary circle, her cour- ageous opinions, had kept the eyes of Europe fixed on her for years, so that any work from her pen was sure to excite the liveliest curiosity. Corinne is a kind of glorified guide-book, with 15 226 MADAME DE STAEL. some of the qualities of a good novel. It is very long-winded, but the appetite of the age was robust in that respect, and the highly-strung emotions of the hero and heroine could not shock a taste which had been formed by the Sorrows of Werther. It is extremely moral, deeply sentimental, and of a deadly earnestness "" — three characteristics which could not fail to recommend it to a dreary and ponderous genera- tion, the most deficient in taste that ever' trod the earth. But it is artistic in the sense that the interest is concentrated from first to last on the central figure, and the drama, such as it is, unfolds itself naturally from its starting-point, which is the contrast between the characters of Oswald and Corinne. Oswald Lord Nelvil is a young man of ex- quisite sensibility and profound melancholy. He comes to Rome (after distinguishing himself he- roically during a fire at Ancona) accompanied by a young Frenchman, the Count D'Erfeuil, whom he has casually met. One of the first sights which greets them on their arrival in the Eternal City is the triumphal procession of *' Corinne " on her way to be crowned in the Capitol. She is a musician, an improvisatrice, a Muse or Sibyl, with all the poetry and passion of Italy stamped upon her radiant brow. In the midst of her im- HER WORKS. 227 provisation she exchanges glances with Lord Neivil, and the fate of both is sealed. He is in- tended to be a typical Englishman imbued with a horror of eccentricity in women. His ideal of the sex is a domestic angel, and he feels bound to disapprove of Corinne, who lives alone, though young and beautiful, and offers the spectacle of her various talents to the profane view of the crowd. The Count D'Erfeuil mocks at every- thing, and is the most amusing character in the book ; feels no scruples about knowing Corinne, and, having quickly discovered that his reserved English friend pleases her, he persuades that gentleman to call on her also. Corinne speaks English wonderfully, and allows Lord Nelvil to divine that there is a mystery about her past. Once she betrays great agitation on hearing the name of Edgermond, which is the patronymic of a certain Lucile, whom Lord Nelvil's father had destined him to marry. Grief at the death of this father is, by the way, the ostensible cause of his persistent melancholy, but he also vaguely hints at remorse. He promises that he will one day confide his history to Corinne, who on her side prepares herself to tell him hers. But as she greatly fears the effect of it on him, and is deeply in love, she puts off the evil hour, and, in order to keep him with her, offers to be his cicerone in Rome. Together they wander among 228 MADAME DE STAML. the ruins, visit the galleries, and drive on the Appian Way. Corinne explains everything, dis- courses on everything, and Oswald interrupts her with exclamations of rapture at her wit and learning. This novel form of courtship lasts for some weeks, and finally the lovers proceed to Naples. Corinne persuades Oswald that there is nothing at all extraordinary in such conduct in Italy, where everyone, according to her, may do as he likes. But the Count L'Erfeuil makes remarks which, although intended to be merely flippant, are sensible enough to convince Lord Nelvil that he must either marry Corinne or leave her. He is very much in love, or fancies himself so. Nevertheless he hesitates because of the mystery surrounding his inamorata. Who is she .-* What is her name 1 Whence comes her fortune.-* If she is not quite blameless, he thinks he can never marry her, for that would be derogating from the traditions of his order and outraging the shade of his father. The mental struggle which he undergoes is visible to Corinne and fills her with anguish and alarm. At last, during an expedition to Vesuvius, Oswald speaks. He had been at one time in love with an un- worthy Frenchwoman ; had lingered in France when his father required his presence in England, and had finally returned, only to find him dead. From that hour he had known no peace ; re- HER WORKS, 229 morse had pursued him ; his filial love, which was morbidly excessive, caused him to look upon himself as almost a parricide, and he considered that he was thenceforward morally bound to do nothing which his father might disapprove. This absurd conclusion afflicts Corinne visibly, and the sight of her agitation reawakens all Oswald's doubts. He conjures her to tell him her history. She consents ; but begs for a few days' grace, and employs the interval in planning and carrying out a fete on Cape Misenum. In front of the azure, tideless sea she takes her lyre and pours out an improvisation on the past glories of that classic shore. This, although Oswald does not know it, is an adieu to her past life, for she foresees that what she has to tell him of herself will entirely change her destiny. Either he will refuse to marry her, and then she will never know happiness again-, but wingless, voiceless, will go down to her tomb, or else he will make her his wife, and the Sibyl will be lost in the peeress. The next day she leaves with him the narrative of her youth. She is the daughter of Lord Ed- germond by an Italian wife, consequently the half-sister of Lucile. At the age of fifteen she had gone to England, and fallen under the rule of her stepmother. Lady Edgermond, a cold and rigid Englishwoman, who cared for nothing out- 230 MADAME DE STAEL. side her small provincial town, and regarded genius as a dangerous eccentricity. In the narrow monotony of the life imposed upon her Corinne nearly died. At the age of twenty-one she finally escaped and returned to Italy, having dropped her family name out of respect for Lady Edgermond's feelings. Until her meeting with Oswald she had led the life of a muse, singing, dancing, playing, improvising for the whole of Roman society to admire, and had conceived no idea of greater felicity until learning to love. This love had been a source of peculiar torment to her from the fact of her divining how much the unconventionality of her conduct, when fully known to him, must shock Oswald's English notions of propriety. In the first moment, how- ever, his love triumphs over these considerations, and he resolves to marry Corinne. Only he wishes first — in order that no reproach may attach to her — to force Lady Edgermond once again to acknowledge her as her husband's daughter. He goes to England, partly for this purpose, partly because his regiment has been ordered on active service. In England he again meets Lucile, a cold- mannered, correct, pure-minded, but secretly ardent English girl, with an odd resemblance in many ways to a French jeune fille. He men- tions the subject of her step-daughter to the HER WORKS, 231 upright but selfish Lady Edgermond, who has set her heart on seeing Oswald the husband of Lucile. She is too honorable to try and detach him from Corinne by any underhand means, but does what she knows will be far more effectual ; that is, she makes him acquainted with the fact that his father had seen Corinne in her early girlhood, had admired her, but had strong- ly pronounced against the marriage proposed by Lord Edgermond between her and Oswald. In the view of the late Lord Nelvil, she was too brilliant and distinguished for domestic life. This is a terrible blow to Oswald. He begins to think he must give up Corinne, and is strength- ened in the idea by perceiving that the beautiful and virtuous Lucile is in love with him. Finally he marries her, decided at the last by Corinne's inexplicable silence. She has not answered his letters for a month, and he concludes that she has forgotten him. But her silence is owing to her having left Venice and come to England. She loses a whole month in London, for very in- sufficient reasons — necessary, however, to the story — and at last follows Oswald to Scotland just in time to learn that he is married, to fall senseless on the road-side, and to be picked up by the Count D'Erfeuil. She returns heart-broken to Italy, and dies slowly through four long years of unbroken misery. 232 MADAME DE STAEL. When she is near her end Oswald comes to Florence, accompanied by his wife and child. He had begun to regret Corinne as soon as he had married Lucile, who, on her side, being naturally resentful, takes refuge in coldness and reserve. As soon as Lord Nelvil learns that his old love is in Florence and dying he wishes ardently to see her, but she refuses to receive him. He sends the child to her, and she teaches it some of her accomplishments. Lucile visits her secretly, and is converted by her eloquence to the necessity of rendering herself more at- tractive to her husband by displaying some graces of mind. At last Corinne consents to see Oswald once again, but it shall be, she determines, in public. This is one of the most unnatural scenes in the book. Corinne invites all her friends to as- semble in a lecture hall. Thither she has her- self transported and placed in an arm-chair. A young girl clad in white and crowned with flow- ers recites the Song of the Swan, or adieu to life, which Corinne has composed, while Oswald, listening to it and gazing on the dying poetess from his place in the crowd, is suffocated with emotion and finally faints. A few days later Corinne dies, her last act being to point with her diaphanous hand to the moon, which is partially HER WORKS, 233 obscured by a band of cloud such as she and Lord Nelvil had once seen when in Naples. Even as a picture of Italy, Corinne leaves much to be desired. Madame de Stael's ideas of art were acquired. She had no spontaneous admiration even for the things she most warmly praised, and her judgments were conventional and essentially cold. Some of the descriptions are good in the sense of being accurate and forcibly expressed. But even in the best of them — that of Vesuvius — one feels the effort. Madame de Stael is wide-eyed and conscientious, but has no flashes of inspired vision. She can catalogue but not paint. A certain difficulty in saying enough on aesthetic subjects is rendered evident by her vice of moralizing. Instead of admiring a marble column as a column, or a pict- ure as a picture, she finds in it food for reflection on the nature of man and' the destiny of the world. Some of her remarks on Italian character are extremely clever, and show her usual sur- prising power of observation ; but they are gen- erally superficial. . This was due, in part, to her system of ex- plaining everything by race and political institu- tions, in part to her passion for generalization. Because ItaHans had produced the finest art and some of the finest music ; because they had no salons and wrote sonnets ; because they had de- 234 MADAME DE STAEL. veloped a curiously systematic form of conjugal infidelity ; finally, because they had no poUtical liberty, Madame de Stael constructed a theory which represented them as simply passionate, ro- mantic, imaginative and indulgent. This theory has cropped up now and again in literature from her days to our own, and if partially correct, overlooks the subtler shades and complex con- tradictions of the Italian mind. Roman society in the beginning of this century was far from being the transfigured and exotic thing represented in Corinne. The modern Sibyl's prototype, poor Maddalena Maria Mo- relli, was mercilessly pasquinaded, and on her road to the Capitol pelted with rotten eggs. This gives a very good idea of the sort of impres- sion that would have been produced on a real Prince of Castel-Forte and his fellows by the presence in their midst of a young and beautiful woman, unmarried, nameless, and rich. Co- rinne's lavish exhibition of her accomplishments is another "false note," as singing and dancing were but rarely, if ever, performed by amateurs in Italy. What redeems the book are the de- tached sentences of thought that gem almost every page of it. Madame de Stael had grad- ually shaken off the vices of style which her warmest admirers deplore in her, and in her Allemagne she was presently to reveal herself as HER WORKS. 235 singularly lucid, brilliant, and acute. This work of hers on Germany is, perhaps, the most satis- factory of her many productions. As a review of society, art, literature, and philosophy, it nat- urally lends itself to the form best suited to her essentially analytical mind. Madame de Stael was always obliged to gen- eralize, that being a law of her intelligence, and this disposition is accentuated in th'e Allemagne^ through her desire to establish such contrasts between Germany and France, as would inspire the latter with a sense of its defects. She saw Germany on the eve of a great awakening, and was not perhaps as fully conscious of this as she might have been. As Saint Beuve happily says, she was not a poet, and it is only poets who, like birds of passage, feel a coming change of season. Germany appealed to her, however, through everything in herself that was least French ; her earnestness, her vague but ardent religious tendencies, her spiritualism, her exces- sive admiration of intellectual pursuits. She was, therefore, exceptionally well-qualified to reveal to her own countrymen the hitherto un- known or unappreciated beauties of the German mind. She was, on the other hand, extremely alive to the dullness of German, and especially of Vien- nese, society, and portrays it in a series of 236 MADAME DE STAEL. delightfully witty phrases. The Allemagne is indeed the wittiest of all her works, and abounds in the happiest touches. The opinions expressed on German literature are favorable towards it, and on the whole cor- rect. If she betrays that Schiller was personally more sympathetic to her than Goethe, she never- theless was quick to perceive in the latter the strain of southern passion, the light, warmth and color, which made his intellect less national than universal. Her chapters on Kant and German philosophy generally, are luminous if not exhaustive. She takes the moral sentiment as her standpoint, and pronounces from that on the different sys- tems. Needless to say, she admires metaphys- ical speculations, and considers them as valuable in developing intellect and strengthening char- acter. Les Dix Annees d Exit is a charming book. Apart from its interest as a transcript of the writer's impressions during her exile at Coppet and subsequent flight across Europe, it contains brilliant pictures of different lands, and especially Russia. One is really amazed to note how much she grasped of the national characteristics during her brief sojourn in that country. The worst re- proach that can be addressed to her description is that, as usual, it is rather too favorable. Her HER WORKS. 237 anxiety to prove that no country could flourish, during a reign such as Napoleon's, made her disposed to see through rose-colored spectacles the Governments which found force to resist him. The Considerations on the French Revolution were published posthumously. According to Sainte Beuve, this is the finest of Madame de Stael's works. "Her star," he says, *' rose in its full splendor only above her tomb." It is difficult to pronounce any summary judgment on this book, which is partly biographical and partly historical. The first volume is principally devoted to a vindication of Necker ; the second to an attack on Napoleon ; the third to a study of the English Constitution and the applicability of its principles to France. The first two vol- umes alone were revised by the authoress before her death. We find in this work all Madame de Stael's natural and surprising power of compre- hension. She handles difficult political problems with an ease that would be more astonishing still, had the book more unity. As it is, each separate circumstance is related and explained admirably, but one is not made to reach the core of the stupendous event of which Europe still feels the vibration. Her portrait of Napo- leon is unsurpassable for force and irony, for sarcasm and truth. All she possessed of epi- grammatic power seems to have come unsought 238 MADAME DE ST A EL. to enable her to avenge herself on the mean, great man who had feared her enough to exile and persecute her. In closing this rapid review of her works, one asks why was Madame de Stael not a greater writer ? The answer is easy ; she lacked high creative power and the sense of form. Her mind was strong of grasp and wide in range, but continuous effort fatigued it. She could strike out isolated sentences alternately bril- s liant, exhaustive and profound, but she could not link them to other sentences so as to form an organic page. Her thought was definite singly, but vague as a whole. She always saw things separately, and tried to unite them arbitrarily, and it is generally difficult to follow out any idea of hers from its origin to its end. .Her thoughts are like pearls of price profusely scattered, or carelessly strung together, but not set in any design. On closing one of her books, the reader is left with no continuous impression. He has been dazzled and delighted, enlightened also by flashes; but the horizons disclosed have van- ished again, and the outlook is enriched by no new vistas. Then she was deficient in the higher qualities of imagination. She could analyze but niot characterize ; construct but not create. She could take one defect like selfishness, or one HER WORKS. 239 passion like love, and display its workings ; or she could describe a whole character, like Napo- leon's, with marvellous penetration ; but she could not make her personages talk or act like human beings. She lacked pathos, and had no sense of humor. In short, hers was a mind en- dowed with enormous powers of comprehension, and an amazing richness of ideas, but deficient in perception of beauty, in poetry, and true originality. She was a great social personage, but her in|iuence on literature was not destined to be lasting, because, in spite of foreseeing much, she had not the true prophetic sense of proportion, and confused the things of the pres- ent with those of the future — the accidental with the enduring. THE END. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. GEORGE SAND. By bertha THOMAS. One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^i.oo. ** Miss Thomas has accomplished a difficult task with as much good sense _ as good feeling. She presents the main facts of George Sand's life, extenuating nothing, and setting naught down in malice, but wisely leaving her readers to form their own conclusions. Everybody knows that it was not such a life as the women of England and America are accustomed to live, and as the worst of men are glad to have them live. . . . Whatever may be said against it, its result on George Sand was not what it would have been upon an English or American woman of genius." — New York Mail and Express. *' This is a volume of the * Famous Women Series,' which was begun so well with George Eliot and Emily Bronte. The book is a review and critical analysis of George Sand's life and work, by no means a detailed biography. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, the maiden, or Mme. Dudevant, the married woman, is forgotten in the renown of the pseudonym George Sand. " Altogether, George Sand, with all her excesses and defects, is a representative woman, one of the names of the nineteenth century. She was great among the greatest, the friend and compeer of the finest intellects, and Miss Thomas's essay will be a useful and agreeable introduction to a more extended study of her life and works." — Knickerbocker. " The biography of this famous woman, by Miss Thomas, is the only one in existence. Those who have awaited it with pleasurable anticipation, but with some trepidation as to the treatment of the erratic side of her character, cannot fail to be pleased with the skill by which it is done. It is the best production on George Sand that has yet been published. The author modestly refers to it as a sketch, which it undoubtedly is, but a sketch that gives a just and discriminating analysis of George Sand's Hfe, tastes, occupations, and of the motives and impulses which prompted her unconventional actions, that were misunderstood by a narrow public. The difficulties encountered by the writer in describing this remarkable character are shown in the first line of the opening chapter, which says, ' In nam- ing George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius.* That tells the whole story. Misconstruction, condemnation, and isolation are the penalties enforced upon the great leaders in the realm of advanced thought, by the bigoted people of their time. The thinkers soar beyond the common herd, whose soul-wings are not strong enough to fly aloft to clearer atmospheres, and consequently they censure or ridicule what they are powerless to reach. George Sand, even lo a greater extent than her contemporary, George Eliot, was a victim to ignorant social prejudices, but even the conservative world was forced to recog- nize the matchless genius of these two extraordinary women, each widely different in her character and method of thought and writing. . .. She has told much that is good which has been untold, and just what will interest the reader, and no more, \n the same easy, entertaining style that characterizes all of these unpretentious iiographies." — Hartford Times. Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. MARY LAMB By ANNE GILCHRIST. One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. " The story of Mary Lamb has long been familiar to the readers of Elia, but never in its entirety as in the monograph which Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has just contributed to the Famous Women Series. Darkly hinted at by Talfourd in his Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, it became better known as the years went on and that imperfect work was followed by fuller and franker biographies, — became so well known, in fact, that no one could recall the memory of Lamb without recalling at the same time the memory of his sister." — New York Mail and Ex- press. " A biography of Mary Lamb must inevitably be also, almost more, a biogra- phy of Charles Lamb, so completely was the life of the sister encompassed by that of her brother ; and it must be allowed that Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has per- formed a difficult biographical task with taste and ability. . . . The reader is at least likely to lay down the book with the feeling that if Mary Lamb is not famous she certainly deserves to be, and that a debt of gratitude is due Mrs, Gilchrist for this well-considered record of her life." — Boston Courier. "Mary Lamb, who was the embodiment of everything that is tenderest in woman, combined with this a heroism which bore her on for a while through the terrors of insanity. Think of a highly intellectual woman struggling year after year with madness, triumphant over it for a season, and then at last succumbing to it. The saddest lines that ever were written are those descriptive of this brother and sister just before Mary, on some return of insanity, was to leave Charles Lamb. ' On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a little foot-path in Hoxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum.' What pathos is there not here ? " — New York Times. " This life was worth writing, for all records of weakness conquered, of pain patiently borne, of success won from difficulty, of cheerfulness in sorrow and affliction, make the world better. Mrs. Gilchrist's biography is unaffected and simple. She has told the sweet and melancholy story with judicious sympathy, showing always the light shining through darkness. " — Philadelphia Press. Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Fuhlications. jFamous 0Eomen Series. RACHEL. By Mrs. NINA E. KENNAED. One Volume. 16mo. Clotli. Price, $1.00. "■ Rachel, hy Nina H. Kennard, is an interesting sketch of the famous woman whose passion and genius won for her an almost unrivalled fame as an actress. The story of Rachel's career is of the most brilliant success in art and of the most pathetic failure in character. Her faults, many and grievous, are overlooked in this volume, and the better aspects of her nature and history are recorded." — Hartford Courant. "The book is well planned, has been carefully constructed, and is pleasantly written." — The Critic. "The life of Mile. ;^lisa Rachel Felix has never been adequately told, and the appearance of her biography in the ' Famous Women Series ' of Messrs. Roberts Brothers will be welcomed. . . . Yet we must be gladthe book is written, and welcome it to a place among the minor biographies ; and because there is nothing else so good, the volume is indispensable to library and study." — Boston Evening Traveller. " Another life of the great actress Rachel has been written. It forms part of the ' Famous Women Series,' which that firm is now bringing out, and which already includes eleven volumes. Mrs. Kennard deals with her subject much more amiably than one or two of the other biographers have done. She has none of those vindictive feelings which are so obvious in Madame B.'s narrative of the great tragedienne. On the contrary, she wants to be fair, and she probably is as fair as the materials which came into her possession enabled her to be. The endeavor has been made to show us Rachel as she really was, by relying to a great extent upon her letters. . . . A good many stories that we are familiar with are repeated, and some are contradicted. From first to last, however, the sympathy of the author is ardent, whether she recounts the misery of Rachel's childhood, or the splen- did altitude to which she climbed when her name echoed through the world -^nd the great ones of the earth vied in doing her homage. On this account Mrs, Kennard's book is a welcome addition to the pre-existing biographies of one of the greatest actresses the world ever saw." — N.Y. Evening Telegram. ♦ Sold everywhere. Mailed postpaid, by the Ptcblishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. BY VERNON LEE. One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.00. "It IS no disparagement to the many excellent previous sketches to say that *The Countess of Albany,' by Vernon Lee, is decidedly the cleverest of the series of biographies of ' Famous Women,' published in this country by Roberts Brothers, Boston. In the present instance there is a freer subject, a little farther removed from contemporary events, and sufficiently out of the way of prejudice to admit of a lucid handling. Moreover, there is a trained hand at the work, and a mind not only familiar with and in sympathy with the character under discussion, but also at home with the ruling forces of the eighteenth century, which were the forces that made the Countess of Albany what she was. The biography is really dual, trac- ing the life of Alfieri, for twenty-five years the heart and soul companion of the Countess, quite as carefully as it traces that of the fixed subject of the sketch." — Philadelphia Times. " To be unable altogether to acquiesce in Vernon Lee's portrait of Louise of Stolberg does not militate against our sense of the excellence of her work. Her pictures of eighteenth-century Italy are definite and brilliant. They are instinct with a quality that is akin to magic." — London Academy. " In the records of famous women preserved in the interesting series which has been devoted to such noble characters as Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Fry, and George Eliot, the life of the Countess of Albany holds a unique place. Louise of Albany, or Louise R., as she liked to sign herself, possessed a character famed, not for domestic virtues, nor even for peculiar wisdom and creative power, but rather notorious for an easy-going indifference to conventionality and a worldly wisdom and cynicism. Her life, which is a singular exponent of the false ideas prevalent upon the subject of love and marriage in the eighteenth century, is told by Vernon Lee in a vivid and discriminating manner. The biography is one of the most fascinating, if the most sorrowful, of the series." — Boston Journal. " She is the first really historical character who has appeared on the literary , horizon of this particular series, her predecessors having been limited to purely literary women. This brilliant little biography is strongly written. Unlike pre- ceding writers — German, French, and English — on the same subject, the author does not hastily pass over the details of the Platonic relations that existed between the Countess and the celebrated Italian poet ' Alfieri.' In this biography the details of that passionate friendship are given with a fidelity to truth, and a knowl- edge of its nature, that is based upon the strictest and most conscientious inves- tigation, and access to means heretofore unattainable to other biographers. The history of this friendship is not only exceedingly interesting, but it presents a fascinating psychological study to those who are interested in the metaphysical aspect of human nature. The book is almost as much of a biography of ' Alfieri ' as it is of the wife of the Pretender, who expected to become the Queen of Eng- land." — Hartford Times. Sold by all booksellers. Mailed., postpaid, on receipt of the price, by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. MESSES. KOBEETS BEOTHEES' PUBLIOATIONS. jFamous aaaomen ^nits. GEORGE ELIOT. By MATHILDE BLIND. One vol. i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^i.oo. " Messrs. Roberts Brothers begin a series of Biographies of Famou? Women with a life of George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind. The idea of tha series is an excellent one, and the reputation of its publishers is a guarantee for its adequate execution. This book contains about three hundred pages in open type, and not only collects and condenses the main facts that are known in regard to the history of George Eliot, but supplies other material from personal research. It is agreeably written, and with a good idea of propor tion in a memoir of its size. The critical study of its subject's works, which is made in the order of their appearance, is particularly well done. In fact, good taste and good judgment pervade the memoir throughout." — Saturday Evening Gazette. " Miss Blind's little book is written with admirable good taste and judg- ment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the reader with critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flown meanings and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea' and ' nay ' of life. It is a graceful and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning one of the greatest writers of the time. It is a deeply interesting if not fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents," says the New York Tribune. " Miss Blind's little biographical study of George Eliot is written with sympathy and good taste, and is very welcome. It gives us a graphic if not elaborate sketch of the personality and development of the great novelist, is particularly full and authentic concerning her earlier years, tells enough o£ the leading motives in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the true drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various writings, with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing, but with appreciation, insight, and a clear grasp of those underlying psychological principles which are so closely interwoven in every production that came from her pen." — Traveller. " The lives of few great writers have attracted rnore curiosity and specula- tion than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the -true story of her career to the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author of the present volume." — Philadelphia Press. Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. FAMOUS WOMEN SEEIES. EMILY BRONTE. By a. MARY F. ROBINSON. One vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. " Miss Robinson has written a fascinating biography. . . . Emily Bronte is interesting, not because she wrote ' Wuthering Heights,' but because of her brave, baffled, human life, so lonely, so full of pain, but with a great hope shining beyond all the darkness, and a passionate defiance in bearing more than the burdens that were laid upon her. The story of the three sisters is infinitely sad, but it is the ennobling sadness that belongs to large natures cramped and striving for freedom to heroic, almost desperate, work, with little or no result. The author of this intensely interesting, sympathetic, and eloquent biography, is a yoimg lady and a poet, to whom a place is given in a recent anthology of living English poets, which is supposed to contain only the best poems of the best writers." — .5^^2f«7« Daily Advertiser. "Miss Robinson had many excellent qualifications for the task she has per- formed in this little volume, among which may be named, an enthusiastic interest in her subject and a real sympathy with Emily Bronte's sad and heroic life. ' To' represent her as slie was,' says Miss Robinson, ' would be her noblest and most fitting monument' . . . Emily Bronte here becomes well known to us and, in one sense, this should be praise enough for any biography. "— A^^w York Times. "The biographer who finds such material before him as the lives and characters of the Bronte family need have no anxiety as to the interest of his work. Char- acters not only strong but so uniquely strong, genius so supreme, misfortunes so overwhelming, set in its scenery so forlornly picturesque, could not fail toattract all readers, if told even in the most prosaic language. When we add to this, that Miss Robinson has told their story not in prosaic language, but with a hterary style exhibiting all the qualities essential to good biography, our readers will understand that this life of Emily Bronte is not only as interesting as a novel, but a great deal more interesting than most novels. As it presents most vividly a general picture of the family, there seems hardly a reason for giving it Emily's name alone, except perhaps for the masterly chapters on ' Wuthering Heights,' which the reader will find a grateful condensation of the best in that powerful but some- what forbidding story! We know of no point in the Bronte history — their genius, their surroundinais, their faults, their happiness, their misery, their love and friend- ships, their pecuUarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride, — which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sym- pathy."— 7',%^ Cr/Vz'c'. " ' Emily Bronte ' is the second of the ' Famous Women Series,' which Roberts Brothers, Boston, propose to publish, and of which ' George Eliot ' was the initial volume. Not the least remarkable of a very remarkable family, the personage whose life is here written, possesses a peculiar interest to all who are at all famihar •with the sad and singular history of herself and her sister Charlotte. That the author, Miss A. Marv F. Robinson, has done her work with minute fidelity to facts as well as affectionate devotion to the subject of her sketch, is plainly to be seen all through the book." — Washingtoti Post. Sold by all Booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. JFamous BEomen Series. MARGARET FULLER. By JULIA WARD HOWE. One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.00. " A memoir of the woman who first in New England took a position of moraH and intellectual leadership, by the woman who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, is a literary event of no common or transient interest. The Famous Women Series will have no worthier subject and no more illustrious biographer. Nor will the reader be disappointed, — for the narrative is deeply interesting and full of inspiration." — Woman'' s Jourtial. "Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's biography of Margaret Fuller, in the Famous Women Series of Messrs. Roberts Brothers, is a work which has been looked for with curiosity. It will not disappoint expectation. She has made a brilliant and an interesting book. Her study of Margaret Fuller's character is thoroughly sympathetic ; her relation of her life is done in a graphic and at times a fascinating manner. It is the case of one woman of strong individuality depicting the points which made another one of the most marked characters of her day. It is always agreeable to follow Mrs. Howe in this ; for while we see marks of her own mind constantly, there is no inartistic protrusion of her personality. The book is always readable, and the relation of the death-scene is thrillingly impressive." — Satur- day Gazette. "Mrs. Julia Ward Howe has retold the story of Margaret Fuller's life and career in a very interesting manner. This remarkable woman was happy in having James Freeman Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Henry Channing, all of whom had been intimate with her and had felt the spell of her extraordinary personal influence, for her biographers. It is needless to say, of course, that nothing could be better than these reminiscences in their way." — New York World. "The selection of Mrs. Howe as the writer of this biography was a happy thought on the part of the editor of the series ; for, aside from the natural appre- ciation she would have for Margaret Fuller, comes her knowledge of all the influences that had their effect on Margaret Fuller's life. She tells the story of Margaret Fuller's interesting life from all sources and from her own knowledge, not hesitating to use plenty of quotations when she felt that others, or even Margaret Fuller herself, had done the work better." — iJ/zjj' Gilder^ in Pkiladel- J>hia Press. Sold by all booksellers. Mailed.^ post-paid., on receipt of the price ^ by the publishers^ ROBERTS BROTHERS, Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. jFamous W,t^viim Series* MARIA EDGEWORTH. By HELEN ZIMMERN. One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price Sl.OO. " This little volume shows good literary workmanship. It does not weary the reader with vague theories ; nor does it give over much expression to the enthu- siasm — not to say baseless encomium — for which too many female biographers have accustomed us to look. It is a simple and discriminative sketch of one of the most clever and lovable of the class at whom Carlyle sneered as ' scribbling women.' ... Of Maria Edgeworth, the woman, one cannot easily say too much in praise. That home life, so loving, so wise, and so helpful, was beautiful to its end. Miss Zimmern has treated it with delicate appreciation. Her book is refined in conception and tasteful in execution,— all, in short, the cynic might say, that we expect a woman's book to be." — New York Tribune. " It was high time that we should possess an adequate biography of this orna- ment and general benefactor of her time. And so we hail with uncommon pleas- ure the volume just published in the Roberts Brothers' series of Famous Women, of which it is the sixth. We have only words of praise for the manner in which Miss Zimmern has written her life of Maria Edgewprth. It exhibits sound judgment, critical analysis, and clear characterization. . . . The style of the volume is pure, limpid, and strong, as we might expect from a well-trained Eng- lish writer." — Margaret J. Preston, in the Home Journal, " We can heartily recommend this life of Maria Edgeworth, not only because it is singularly readable in itself, but because it makes familiar to readers of the present age a notable figure in English literary history, with whose lineaments we suspect most readers, especially of the present generation, are less familiar than they ought to be." — Eclectic. " This biography contains several letters and papers by Miss Edgeworth that have not before been made public, notably some charming letters written during the latter part of her life to Dr. Holland and Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor. The author had access to a life of Miss Edgeworth written by her step-mother, as well as to a large collection of her private letters, and has therefore been able to bring forward many facts in her life which have not been noted by other writers. The book is written in a pleasant vein, and is altogether a delightful one to read." — Utica Herald. Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the pub- lishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Mass. Messrs, Roberts Brothers* Publications, JFamous aEomen Series* ELIZABETH FRY, By Mrs. E. R. PITMAN. One vol. i6mo. Cloth. Price ^i.oo. " In the records of famous women there are few more noble examples of Christian womanhood and philanthropic enthusiasm than the life of Elizabeth Fry presents. Her character was beautifully rounded and complete, and if she had not won fame through her public benefactions, she would have been no less esteemed and remembered by all who knew her because of her domestic virtues, her sweet womanly charms, and the wisdom, purity, and love which marked her conduct as wife, mother, and friend. She came of that sound old Quaker stock which has bred so many eminent men and women. The time came when her home functions could no longer satisfy the yearnings of a heart filled with the tenderest pity for all who suffered ; and her work was not far to seek. The prisons of England, nay, of all Europe, were in a deplorable condition. In Newgate, dirt, disease, starvation, depravity, drunkenness, &c., prevailed. All who sur- veyed the situation regarded it as hopeless ; all but Mrs. Fry. She saw here the opening she had been awaiting. Into this seething mass she bravely entered, Bible in hand, and love and pity in her eyes and upon her lips. If any one should ask which of all the famous women recorded in this series did the most practical good in her day and generation, the answer must be, Elizabeth Fry." — N^ew York Tribune. " Mrs. Pitman has written a very interesting and appreciative sketch of the life, character, and eminent services in the causes of humanity of one of Eng- land's most famous philanthropists. She was known as the prison philanthropist, and probably no laborer in the cause of prison reform ever won a larger share of success, and certainly none ever received a larger meed of reverential love. No one can read this volume without feelings of admiration for the noble woman who devoted her life to befriend sinful and suffering humanity." — Chicago Evening Journal. " The story of her splendid and successful philanthropy is admirably told by her biographer, and every reader should find in the tale a breath of inspiration. Not every woman can become an Elizabeth Fry, but no one can fail to be im- pressed with the thought that no woman, however great her talent and ambition, can fail to find opportunity to do a noble work in life vinthout neglecting her own feminine duties, without ceasing to dignify all the distinctive virtues of her sex> without fretting and crying aloud over the restrictions placed on woman's field of work." — Eclectic Monthly. * Our publications are for sale by all booksellers^ or will be sent post-paid on receipt of advertised price. ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. jFamDus aEometi Series* MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL. One volume. 16nio. Cloth. Price $1.00. '* So far as it has been published, and it has now reached its ninth volume, the Famous Women Series is rather better on the whole than the English Men of Letters Series. One had but to recall the names and characteristics of some of the women with whom it deals, — literary women, like Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Fuller, Mary Lamb, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, and George Sand ; women of the world (not to mention the other parties in that well-known Scrip- tural firm), like the naughty but fascinating Countess of Albany ; and women of philanthropy, of which the only example given here so far is Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, — one has but to compare the intellectual qualities of the majority of English men of letters to perceive that the former are the most difficult to handle, and that a series of which they are the heroines is, if successful, a remarkable col- lection of biographies. We thought so as we read Miss Blind's study of George Sand, and Vernon Lee's study of the Countess of Albany, and we think so now that we have read Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Pennell's study of Mary WoUstone- craft, who, with all her faults, was an honor to her sex. She was not so consid- ered while she lived, except by those who knew her well, nor for years after her death ; but she is so considered now, even by the granddaughters of the good ladies who so bitterly condemned her when the century was new. She was notable for the sacrifices that she made for her worthless father and her weak, inefficient sisters, for her dogged persistence and untiring industry, and for her independence and her courage. The soul of goodness was in her, though she would be herself and go on her own way ; and if she loved not wisely, according to the world's creed, she loved too well for her own happiness, and paid the penalty of suffering. What she might have been if she had not met Capt. Gilbert Imlay, who was a scoundrel, and William Godwin, who was a philosopher, can only be conjectured. She was a force in literature and in the enfranchise- ment of her sisterhood, and as such was worthy of the remembrance which she will long retain through Mrs. Pennell's able memoir." — R. H. Stoddard, in the Mail and Express. Sold by all booksellers. Mailed., post-paid^ on receipt of price by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. JFamous raomm Series. HARRIET MARTINEAU. By Mrs. R FENWICK MILLER. i6mo. Cloth. Price $i.oo. " The almost Tiniform exce]]ence of the ' Famous Women ' series is well sus- tained in Mrs. Fenwick Miller's life of Harriet Martineau, the latest addition to this little library of biography. Indeed, we are disposed to rank it as the best of the lot. The subject is an entertaining one, and Mrs. Miller has done her work admirably. Miss Martineau was a remarkable woman, in a century that has not been deficient in notable characters. Her native genius, and her perseverance in developing it ; her trials and afflictions, and the determination with which she rose superior to them; her conscientious adherence to principle, and the important place which her writings hold in the political and educational literature of her day, — all combine to make the story of her life one of exceptional interest. . . . With the exception, possibly, of George Eliot, Harriet Martineau was the greatest of English women. She was a poet and a novelist, but not as such did she make good her title to distinction. Much more noteworthy were her achievements in other lines of thought, not usually essayed by women. She was eminent as a political economist, a theologian, a journalist, and a historian. . . . But to attempt a mere outline of her life and works is out of the question in our limited space. Her biography should be read by all in search of entertainment." — Professor Woods in Saturday Mirror. "The present volume has already shared the fate of several of the recent biog- raphies of the distinguished dead, and has been well advertised by the public con- tradiction of more or less important points in the relation by the living friends of the dead genius. One of Mrs. Miller's chief concerns in writing this life seems to have been to redeem the character of Harriet Martineau from the appearance of hardness and unamiability with which her own autobiography impresses the reader. . . . Mrs. Miller, however, succeeds in this volume in showing us an alto- gether different side to her character, — a home-loving, neighborly, bright-natured, tender-hearted, witty, lovable, and altogether womanly woman, as well as the clear thinker, the philosophical reasoner, and comprehensive writer whom we already knew." — The Index. "Already ten volumes in this library are published; namely, George Eliot, Emily Bronte, George Sand, Mary Lamb, Margaret Fuller, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Fry, The Countess of Albany, Mary WoUstonecraft, and the present volume. Surely a galaxy of wit and wealth of no mean order ! Miss M. will rank with any of them m womanHness or gifts or grace. At home or abroad, in public or private. She was noble and true, and her life stands confessed a suc- cess. True, she was literary, but she was a home lover and home builder. She never lost the higher aims and ends of life, no matter how flattering her success. This whole series ought to be read by the young ladies of to-day. More of such biography would prove highly beneficial." — Troy Telegram. Our publications are for sale by all booksellers^ or will be mailed., post-paid^ on receipt of price-, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. Jamous Women Series. MADAME ROLAND. By MATHILDE BLIND, AUTHOR OF "GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE." One volume.. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $i .00. " Of all the interesting biographies published in the Famous Women Series, Mathilde Blind's life of Mme. Roland is by far the most fascinating. . . . But no one can read Mme. Roland's thrilling story, and no one can study the character of this noble, heroic woman without feeling certain that it is good for the world to have every incident of her life brought again before the public eye. Among the famous women who have been enjoying a new birth through this set of short biographies, no single one has been worthy of the adjective great until we come to Mme. Roland. . . . "We see a brilliant intellectual women in Mme. Roland; we see a dutiful daughter and devoted wife ; we see a woman going forth bravely to place her neck under the guillotine, — a woman who had been known as the ' Soul of the Giron- dins ; ' and we see a woman struggling with and not being overcome by an intense and passionate love. Has history a more heroic picture to present us with? Is there any woman more deserving of the adjective 'great' ? " Mathilde Blind has had rich materials from which to draw for Mme. Roland's biography. She writes graphically, and describes some of the terrible scenes in the French Revolution with great picturesqueness. The writer's sympathy with Mme. Roland and her enthusiasm is very contagious ; and we follow her record almost breathlessly, and with intense feeling turn over the last few pages of this litde volume. No one can doubt that this life was worth the writing, and even earnest students of the French Revolution will be glad to refresh their memories of Lamartine's ' History of the Girondins,' and again have brought vividly before them the terrible tragedy of Mme. Roland's life and death." — Boston Evening Transcript. " The thrilling story of Madame Roland's genius, nobility, self-sacrifice, and death loses nothing in its retelling here. The material has been collected and arranged in an unbroken and skilfully narrated sketch, each picturesque or exciting incident being brought out into a strong light. The book is one of the best in an excellent series." — Christian Union. For sale by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS {^Not included in General Catalogue) LATELY PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS, 3 Somerset Street, Boston. JULY, 1887. A NEW "NO NAME" NOVEL. A QUESTION OF IDENTITY. Being the tenth volume in the third "No Name Series." i6mo. Cloth. $i.oo. " A Question of Identity " takes its title from the resemblance of girl twins to each other, — a resemblance so strong that a lover of Rachel offered himself to Leah, calling her his beautiful Rachel. It is a story of New England life, with strong characterization and intense dramatic incidents which give coloring to the impression that it is very real. The locality might be a half-hour's ride from Boston by rail. A YEAR IN EDEN. Part I. Spring ; Part II. Summer ; Part III. Autumn ; Part IV. Winter. By Harriet Waters Preston. i2mo. Cloth, $i.oo; paper covers, 50 cents. "There is a great charm in the style, and there are some exquisite scenes unsurpassed by any writer on New-England life. The book will interest a very large number of readers by its subject, its thought, and its wit." — London Academy. A LAD'S LOVE. A Campobello Romance. By Arlo Bates, author o£ " The Pagans," " A Wheel of Fire," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. OURSELVES AND OUR NEIGHBORS: Short Chats on Social Topics. By Louise Chandler Moul- TON, author of "Bed-Time Stories," "Some Women's Hearts," " Random Rambles," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^i. 00. 2 Messrs, Roberts Brothers' New Books. AGATHA AND THE SHADOW. The second volume in the "Old Colony Series" of novels. Uniform in size and style with "Constance of Acadia." i2mo. Cloth. $1.50. " This is the second in the ' Old Colony Series.' Agatha is represented as the daughter of Elder Brewster, and the wife of Bernard Anselm. The story is a series of pictures of the early life of this country, always with Puritans as the central figures. Indians have a large place in this record of Pilgrim life, and the book is crowded with romantic and dramatic material, with intense feeling, with brilliant descriptions." — Worcester Spy, CARVING AND SERVING. By Mrs. D. A. Lincoln, author of " The Boston Cook Book." Square i2mo. Illuminated board covers. 60 cents. " Carving and Serving," by Mrs. D. A. Lincoln, author of the " Boston Cook Book,' ' is a little manual by the aid of which any gentleman or lady can become an expert carver. What an advantage it must be to be able to place with the left hand a fork in the breast of a turkey, and, without once removing it, with the right hand to carve and dissect, or disjoint, the entire fowl ready to be helped to admiring guests ! This is done by skilful carvers. The book also coBtains directions for serving, with a list of utensils for carving and serving. MABEL STANHOPE. A Story. By Kathleen O'Meara, author of "Madame Mohl," etc. i6mo. Cloth. $1.25. This is a French story, with both English and French characters. The author, Miss O'Meara, by a long residence in Paris, has become familiar with French life ; and her delightfiil book, ■' Madame Mohl, her Salon and her Friends," is a foretaste of what " Mabel Stanhope " will be found to be. THE COMMON SENSE OF RIDING. RIDING FOR LADIES. With Hints on the Stable. By Mrs. Power O'Donoghue, author of " Ladies on Horseback " and " A Beggar on Horse- back." Very fully illustrated by A. Chantrey Corbould. Square i2mo. Cloth. Gilt. $3.50. Special English edition. So much interest is now being given to horseback-riding that the publication of this book is very opportune. It is a collection of useful and practical hints on matters that pertain to the horse and his management. The instructions given are of the plainest and easiest description, and are the result of an experience which has in some instances been dearly bought. Messrs. Roberts Brothers'' New Books. 3 FRANKLIN IN FRANCE. From Original Documents, most of which are now published for the first time. By Edward E. Hale and Edward E. Hale, Jr. "With three newly engraved portraits of Franklin from copies which are now quite rare, and numerous portrait-illustrations throughout the text. One handsome 8vo volume of 500 pages. Cloth. $3.00. When Benjamin Franklin died, in 1790, he left to his grandson, Wm. Temple Franklin, the largest collection of his papers. This collection, which had been supposed to be irrevocably lost, was found a few years since on the top shelf of an old tailor's shop in St. James, became the property of Mr. Henry Stevens, and finally of the United States. From this collection and from other original docu- ments, this life of " Franklin in France " has been written. SOME CHINESE GHOSTS. By Lafcadio Hearn. ** If ye desire to witness prodigies and to behold marvels, JBe not concerned as to whether the mountains are distant or the rivers far away." — Kin-Koti-Ki-Koan. Contents : The Soul of the Great Bell ; The Story of Ming-Y; The Legend of Tchi-Niu ; The Return of Yen-Tchin-King ; The Tradition of the Tea-Plant ; The Tale of the Porcelain-God. i6mo. Cloth, ^i.oo CATHEDRAL DAYS. A Tour through Southern England. By Anna Bowman Dodd. Illustrated from sketches and photographs by E. Eldon Deane. i2mo. Cloth. $2.00. " Mrs. Dodd is a most delightful travelling companion. Nothing in method exactly like " Cathedral Days " is, so far as we know, to be found in English. W e can no more describe its flavor than we can describe the flavor of a fruit. Nobody who once takes it up will be willing to put it down until he has absorbed the whole of it. People who are going to England ought to take Mrs. Dodd's book with them. People who must stay at home ought to read it and enjoy the trip in fancy." — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. A WEEK AWAY FROM TIME. i6mo. Uniquely bound in cloth. ^1.25. " Fair Harbor is one of the few places now left in the world which most people know nothing about- You may count on your fingers the men and women who have ever heard of it ; and if you have the usual number of fingers, your list will come to an end first." And ir. this " singularly pretty and attractive bit of the very tip end of the heel of Cape Cod " some happy summer idlers passed the delightful " week away from time " which the book records. A bit of advice : Read it. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' New Books. THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. A Fragment of Thought. By Mabel Collins. i6mo. Limp cloth. Style of "A Little Pilgrim.'' 50 cents. " A work which is reported to be of a remarkable character will be published by Roberts Brothers in February. It is called ' Through the Gates of Gold ; ' and though by a well-known author, it was submitted to that house under condi- tions of the strictest secrecy, and nothing concerning the writer's identity or rationality is to be revealed. As Roberts Brothers have had much experience in the secret-keeping business, there seems to be little prospect that the mystery surrounding the origin of the work will be penetrated. The book deals with problems of the future life in an unusual manner, and it is believed that it will make as much of a sensation as did ' The Gates Ajar.' Its simultaneous publica- tion in London has been arranged for." MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, QUEEN OF NAVARRE. By A. Mary F. Robinson, author of " Emily Bronte." MRS. SIDDONS. By Mrs. Nina H. Kennard, author of " Rachel Felix." Two new volumes in the " Famous Women Series," which now comprises Lives of George Eliot, Emily Bronte, George Sand, Margaret Fuller, Mary Lamb, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Martineau, Countess of Albany, Rachel Felix, Madame Roland, Susanna Wesley. Uniform library volumes. i6mo. $1.00 each. DANTE : A Sketch of his Life and Works. By May Alden Ward. i6mo. Cloth. $1.25. A delightful study of the poet's life and works, written with remarkable and lucidity both of style and arrangement. THE KERNEL AND THE HUSK. Letters on Spiritual Christianity. By the author of "Philo- christus " and " Onesimus." i2mo. Cloth. $1.50. The author of this book asserts that a belief in the miracles of Christ is not essential to a belief in Christ; and in an introduction " to the reader " he says " it is to the would-be worshippers and the doubtful worshippers of Christ that the following letters are addressed by one who has for many years found peace and salvation in the worship of a non-miraculous Christ." Messrs. Roberts Brothers' New Books. FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAVIOUR. A Volume of Devotional Studies in the Life and Nature of our Lord. By the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, pastor of the New-Church in Boston Highlands. One handsome i6mo volume. Cloth. Gilt top. Rough edges. $i.oo; white and gold cover, in a neat box, ;55i.25. LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE. An Historical Sketch. By Lord Ronald Gower, author of '* My Reminiscences." With a steel portrait of Marie Antoinette, and a fac-simile letter. The edition is limited to 483 copies, num- bered. Printed on hand-made Irish linen paper. Small 4to. Beautifully bound in cloth. Gilt top. $4.00. CALENDRIER FRANCAIS. 1888. y Printed entirely in the French language, and mounted on a card of appropriate design. Price, $i.oo. " A calendar with a handsome illuminated background of scarlet, blue, and gold, containing a fine collection of bits from the best French literature of modem and olden times, all in the French language. It is a good idea, well carried out." — Hartford Times. IMAGINATION IN LANDSCAPE PAINTING. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. An elegant folio volume, fully illustrated, and bound in cloth. Gilt. I6.50. (Limited edition.) " A richly illustrated folio, of especial interest to students of art, and, it might be added, to students of mental philosophy ; for the imaginative faculty is here investigated quite as much as are Its bearings on the painter's art. Mr. Hamerton even goes into the distinctions between fancy and imagination, — a labyrinth in which Ruskin once confessed himself as good as lost." — Commer- cial Gazette, Cincinnati. REYNARD THE FOX. After the German Version of Goethe. By Thomas James Arnold, Esq. With 60 woodcut illustrations from the original designs of "William Von Kaulbach, and 12 full-page etchings by Fox, from designs by Joseph Wolf. One handsome super-royal 8vo volume. Bound in half seal morocco. Cloth sides. Gilt top. 5^9.00. " The illustrations are wonderful studies in animal expression, and convey a meaning no less sharp than that of the poem itself. Their humor is of the gro- tesque variety, but it is nevertheless a rich liumor. . . . The volume is sumptu- ously printed, and is a standard edition of one of the world's most celebrated books." — N. Y. Tribune. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' New Books. TWO PILGRIMS' PROGRESS From Fair Florence to the Eternal City of Rome. Delivered Under the Similitude of a Ride, Wherein is Discovered, The Manner of Their Setting Out, Their Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired City- " And behold, they wrought a work on the wheels." — Jer. xviii. 3. By Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell. With illustrations by Joseph Pennell. i2mo. $2.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. " The whole work is pervaded with a sense of the glory of movement, the buoyancy of open air, the joy of rapid passage through exquisite scenery. The gayety of spirits is infectious ; and the reader shares, while he envies, the pleasure of the pilgrims." — London Academy. FAMILIAR TALKS ON SOME OF SHAKSPEARE'S COMEDIES. By Mrs. E. W. Latimer. i2mo. I2.00. The Comedies are "The Winter's Tale," "The Tempest," " Midsummer Night's Dream," " Taming of the Shrew," " Much Ado about Nothing," " As You Like It," " Twelfth Night ; or, What You Will," " The Merchant of Venice," " Cymbeline." " A series of easy-going essays in sesthetic criticism which were delivered before a women's reading-class in Baltimore. For similar clubs, and for students, Mrs. Latimer's book will be found entertaining, sometimes original, occasionally naive, and often suggestive." — Shakesperiana. A PHANTOM LOVER. A Fantastic Story. By Vernon Lee, author of " Baldwin," "Euphorion," "The Countess of Albany" (Famous Women Series), etc. i6mo. 50 cents. " ' A Phantom Lover ' is probably the best shilling story since ' Dr. JekylL* It is short ; it is startling. . . . One is fascinated, and offended, and finally ap- palled." — .S*^. Jameses Gazette. JOHN JEROME: HIS THOUGHTS AND WAYS. A Book without Beginning. By Jean Ingelow, author of "Off the Skelligs," "Fated to be Free," "Sarah de Berenger," and " Don John." i6mo. $1.25. " Every page is fresh and original, and touched with a charm all its own. The talented author has never produced anything better." ~ Springfield Union. Messrs. 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