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presented to the
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
by
Mr. Armistead B. Carter
ftetcrptrccs of JFordgn gutljors.
SAINTE-BEUVE'S
PORTRAITS OF WOMEN
Social Sciences & Humanities Library
University of California, San Diego
Please Note: This item is subject to recall.
Date Due
DEC 1 9 1996
CI39(2#5)
UCSD Li).
C. A. SAINTE-BEUVE.
AGED 62.
PORTRAITS OF WOMEN
BY C A. SAINTE-BEUVE
TRANSLA TED B Y
HELEN STOTT
CHICAGO
A. C. M'CLURG, & CO.
1891
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE, vii
MADAME DE MAINTENON, 1851, . . . . i
MADAME DE SEVJGNE, 1829, .... 22
MADAME DE STAEL, 1835 43
JEANNE o'Aac, 1850, 134
MARIE ANTOINETTE, 1851, 153
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE, 1836, .... 170
PREFATORY NOTE.
I-x compiling thia volume of Sainte-Beuve's studies of
illustrious women, I have not confined my choice to
his " Portrait " studies, but have selected from them
and from his Causeries the essays which appeared to
me most likely not only to interest English readers,
but also those which exemplify the exploring and far-
reaching erudition which the great French critic has
brought to bear upon the complex science of literary
criticism. His method is original ; his style, neither
very ponderous nor very brilliant, is essentially
penetrating and analytic. He read and studied,
carefully observed and noted, every natural trait in a
writer as an individual ; every literary characteristic ;
recognised every shade of opinion, discussed these
opinions liberally ; and then, with infinite subtlety of
understanding and great copiousness of language, he
boldly clothed his subject with his own convictions,
making, as he himself has said, his " praise prominent
and his criticism unobtrusive," blending enchantment
with his smiling sarcasm, fascinating ever and anon by
those flashes of poetic prose which relieve some of his
most curiously-enveloped passages.
In another volume of this series there is a critical
memoir of Sainte-Beuve by Mr. William Sharp, and
to that it is unnecessary to add in this volume. I
quote, however, one or two passages from the Remin-
viii PREFA TOR Y NO TE.
isceuces of his latest secretary, M. Jules Troubat, which
disclose in an interesting and graphic manner the
private life of the celebrated critic :
" On the day my duties began, I was conducted by a
narrow carpeted staircase to the master's study. Sainte-
Beuve just touched my hand without grasping it,
holding his fingers straight, after the priestly fashion.
At one corner of the table was a little silver saucepan
with the remains of milk in it. He had just finished
his frugal luncheon, which consisted of tea with milk
and two rolls spread with fresh butter, an English
fashion, or one acquired at Boulogne in his childhood.
He always left a little of this bread and milk, and put
it in a corner by the fireside for Mignonne.* This
was how he kept his head clear and cool for work ; his
feet he kept warm in winter by the aid of a foot- warmer,
which was also placed in the carriage on Thursdays
when he went to the Academy. He took the greatest
care of his brain, using nothing to excite it, not even
coffee, and never smoking; the utmost stimulant he
ever allowed himself was the 'About' mixture, a little
Curagoa with a suspicion of rum, for which the witty
author of the Roi des Montagues had given him the recipe.
Dinner, more substantial than luncheon, was delicately
composed of soup, roast meat of some kind, salad,
vegetables, cheese, fruit, or cake, a special kind of cake,
which was got from the baker in the Rue Fleurus.
He had a weakness for strawberries, and sometimes ate
* This little cat Mignonne deserves a word. When she died,
she was greatly regretted by the master. She was the only cat
he ever tolerated in his study ; he even allowed her little velvet
paws to wander about with daring familiarity among the books
and papers which covered his two tables. She had soft, sweet
eyes, which lighted lovingly at a caressing touch, with an almost
speaking expression in them.
rREFA TOR Y NO TE. ix
them with sugar at night before retiring to rest. He
took scarcely a saucerful of chocolat au lait in the
morning, and no bread.
" He believed himself that his five years' engagement
with the Constitutionnel obliged him to diet himself thus
carefully, in order to regulate his talent and intellect.
Each article he wrote was worth a hundred crowns to
him. His patrimony was small ; from his mother he
had inherited the house he lived in, with an income
of about two thousand livres.
" He made me a sign to sit down on the easy-chair
between the bed and the fireplace, an easy-chair in
green repp, historic in its simplicity, and in which all
Sainte-Beuve's visitors had sat.
" ' There,' he said, pointing to a pile of fifteen
volumes, ' are Veuillot's articles ; I have to write on
him this week, so all that has to be swallowed.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I dictate
the article which will appear on the following Monday,
read, take notes, and think over the next article ;
Friday I put that on paper, a labour . . . painful too ;
. . . Saturday and Sunday we correct the proofs of
Monday's article. . . . Therefore my bad temper begins
on Monday ; Tuesday it is worse ; Wednesday at its
height ; Thursday quite as bad ; Friday I am invisible
all day, at home to no one ; I put cotton in my ears so
that no external sound will jar upon me : I build up
my article as a tailor builds a coat. . . .'
"And, indeed, the rough drafts or jottings which
issued from his hands on the Friday evenings when he
had built the article (as he said), composed of scraps
pinned together, very much resembled the first lining
of a costume ready for fitting on.
" ' My good temper,' he continued, ' does not return
till the Sunday evening at six o'clock, when the last
x PREFA TOR Y NO TE.
pull of proofs for the Constittitionnel has been corrected
and signed. ... I then feel relieved, set free. ... I
have a few hours before me. ... I give you a holiday on
Sunday afternoon, but for myself I never have one. . . .
I have no Sunday ... all days are alike in nature.
" ' We live without any ceremony ; when you come
in the evening, if you find me still at table with Mme.
Dufour, you must just sit down and join in the con-
versation. There will be no restraint, and therefore
you must pay no attention to my bad times. You can
understand, when one feels bound for five years to do
the same work each week and each day one must
have occasional fits of impatience. . . . My life is like
a mill, a perpetual feeding and grinding. . . . Cheron
at the Library tells me I shall overdo it some day.
Thursdays I have the Academy, but I do not go there
always : I have quarrelled several times with my col-
leagues there. They are insignificant people. What
can I do ? I get there with my head already excited
by my work, and I fight with them.'
" At this I laughed, I could not help it, and he
laughed with me.
" Much has been said of Sainte-Beuve's ill-favoured
appearance, a prejudice which still prevails. For my
part, I think that ugliness or beauty is conditional.
We must consult men as regards beauty in women, and
ask a woman's opinion as to whether a man is hand-
some or not. Sainte-Beuve had a very expressive face,
illuminated with the light which intellectual, high-
purposed work alone gives.
" He was not one of those who believe that the name
is sufficient in literature. He was for ever spurring
himself on, as if he had to be continually whetting his
talent. Of short stature, straight and portly ; his full
face closely shaved each day ; a large nose (' an inquisit-
PREFA TOR Y NO TE. xi
ive nose,' as Eugene Pelletan said, speaking of Napoleon
III.), one of those inquiring, prying noses, so to speak ;
the bald outline of his head showed the point of a
philosopher's cranium, ' a sage after the fashion of
the ancient Greeks, to whom externally he bore no
slight resemblance,' his bushy reddish eyebrows over-
hung his eyes, roofed them in ; and the legendary velvet
cap moved lightly with quick-coming thoughts, or
twisted and turned about in his hand in expressing
some metaphorical meaning, just as the advocates use
their flat-crowned caps in heated argument.
" The study was furnished with a simplicity which a
Goncourt would not understand in a man (especially a
man living in his own thoughts) like Sainte-Beuve.
A bed by the side of the door, two tables joined together
in the middle of the room, no ornaments, nor any artistic
object except the bust or rather a miniature of the
bust by Mathieu-Meusnier, which gives such a noble
and moreover a real idea of the countenance of the
great master, and of which the original makes the
pendant to that of Daunou in the Library of Boulogne-
sur-Mer, his native town."
This is Troubat's portrait of the celebrated literary
critic, whose works, so highly esteemed in France, are
increasingly read in England. From this glimpse of
the man and of his method, we are able to form an
idea of the minute and painstaking research he brought
to bear upon the studies he so voluminously produced.
In the essays on seven celebrated women which com-
pose this volume, we find a chivalrous delicacy of style,
and a scrupulous appreciation of the sacredness of
literary effort, which softens the pungency of critical
judgment. There is a varied expressiveness, also, in
his choice of words, which makes his prose poetic ;
and we remark, that while the distinct vein of poetry
xii PREFA TOR Y A T TE.
in his nature never disturbs the philosophical subtlety
with which lie renders each study a complete and
scientific analysis, it yet lends real charm to the language
in which he clothes his judgments which not even the
ordeal of translation can quite destroy.
H S.
March 1891.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.
1851.
THE present seems a favourable time in which to
approach the subject of Mme. de Maintenon. Popular
taste inclines to display a keen interest in matters
which relate to that great century when Louis XIV.
reigned ; and as soon as we begin to consider that epoch
intellectually, it becomes evident that she must occupy
in it a very prominent place. Mme. de Maintenon's
mental qualifications cause us to pardon her all those
errors with which history justly reproaches her. Her
faults were greatly exaggerated at the time by the
general public. Mme. de Maintenon did not in reality
originate any of the great Apolitical acts of the time.
Except in one or two instances, which, however, are
quite open to dispute, she did no more than favour
very zealously the wrongs which were perpetrated
during that closing reign. Her chief concern seems to
have been to find interesting and amusing occupations,
within his necessarily restricted circle, for the latter
years of Louis XIV. This is the attitude, indeed the
sole part she assumes in her language, her conversation,
and also her correspondence, which certainly proves this
clearly the more carefully it is studied. She is one of
those persons we may hastily condemn, but who, ou
A
2 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
closer critfcism, cannot be so misjudged. She commands
respect by her tone of noble simplicity and dignified
discretion ; she pleases by the piquancy and excellence
of her reasoning. There are even moments when we
would call her charming ; although we no sooner find
ourselves beyond her spell than the charm is broken,
and we resume our former prejudice against her. I do
not know if I am expressing the sentiments of others,
but this is my own feeling each time that I approach
the subject of Mme. de Maintenon. I shall endeavour
to make out a few of my reasons, and to explain them.
Mine, de Maintenon has of late years found a very
desirable historian in one of her own kinsmen, M. le
Due de Noailles, who writes most gravely and delicately.
The last half of his History is anxiously looked for ; I
shall make ample use of the two volumes already
published, allowing myself, however, a little more
freedom or licence in my judgment.
Born in 1635, in the conciergerie of the prison of
Niort, where her father was for the time confined,
Franchise d'Aubigne began life as in a romance, and,
indeed, the strangest romance which could have hap-
pened to a person who above all her other characteristics
was sensible. A grand-daughter of the illustrious
Captain d'Aubigne, who distinguished himself in the
sixteenth century, the daughter of the profligate Count
Constant d'Aubigne and of a wise, good mother, she
had early experience of the strangeness and harshness
of fate ; yet her heart held a drop of the noble blood of
her ancestor, which gave her pride, and she would not
have changed her condition for a more fortunate one
of lower degree. As a child she accompanied her
parents to Martinique. On her return, being under
the care of a Huguenot aunt, she had, although born
a Catholic, embraced the doctrines of Calvin, when
MADAME DE MAINTENON, 3
another relation, Mme. de Neuillant, came with an
order from the court to rescue her from heresy.
Placed first in a convent at Niort, then removed to
Paris, the young D'Aubigne*, now altogether orphaned,
felt every moment of her life the bitterness of
dependence. Mme. de Neuillant, so zealous for her
spiritual welfare, was so miserably mean that she
allowed her to want for everything. However, the
young girl began in her visits to Paris to see the world,
and from the first she made a successful appearance
there. " That was the epoch of elevated conversation,
of gallant compliments ; in a word, of what was called
the ruelles." Wit easily attained a position which was
almost honour. La jeune Indienne, as she was called
on account of her sojourn in America, was remarkable
even at first eight, and she lost nothing on closer
acquaintance. The Chevalier de Me"re, a fashionable
wit of the time, became her lover and instructor, and
proclaimed her praises. He has described her at this
time as possessing a calm and even temper, " very hand-
some, with a kind of beauty which always pleased."
He recommended her to the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres,
who travelled much, as one who had many charming
resources. "She is sweet, grateful, trustworthy, faith-
ful, modest, intelligent, and, to crown her charms, she
uses her wit only to amuse or to make herself beloved."
When Mile. d'Aubigne", on her return to Poitou, wrote
to her young friends in Paris, her letters were passed
round as chef s-d? centre, and kept up her growing re-
putation. It was about this time she came to know
Scarron, the cripple, a man of gay humour, which
passed at that time for delicate wit. Surrounded by
affectation, Scarron, with his merry, comical style, was
as an antidote. He saw Mile. d'Aubigne, and, to hia
credit, was at once interested in her. After some
4 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
reflection, lie thought that the simplest way of testify-
ing this interest, and of aiding her, was to marry her.
She consented, giving naively enough her reason : " I
prefer to marry him rather than become a nun." She
lias never mentioned her poor cripple but with suitable
respect and esteem, as a man of integrity, and of a
much more kindly disposition than those who judged
him only by his sprightly conversation, knew. We
find her thus at seventeen (1652), in the earliest bloom
of her beauty, the wife of a crippled invalid, her
protector rather than her husband, in a circle of society
as gay and unscrupulous in conversation as in morals,
requiring all her precocious talent and wise and watch-
ful sense to enforce consideration and respect from that
youthful company of the Fronde. She succeeded,
however, and this was her apprenticeship to prudence
and circumspection, which was to be the business and
the pride of her whole life. Scarron died (1660), and
the position of the beautiful widow of twenty-five,
with no means, became more precarious, more dangerous,
than ever. Let us in fact picture her to ourselves in
this early beauty, which Mile, cle Scudery has faithfully
described to us :
" Lyriane (this is Mme. Scarron, who is represented in
Clelie as the wife of the Roman Scaurus), Lyriane was tall,
with a splendid figure, but her height was not alarming, simply
becoming. Her complexion was very smooth and beautiful,
her hair a bright chestnut, very pretty, the nose well formed,
the mouth well shaped. Her manner dignified, sweet, bright.
and modest ; and, to render her beauty still more strikingly
perfect, she had the loveliest eyes in the world. They were
black, sparkling, soft, passionate, and full of fun ; there was
something I cannot express in their glance : a sweet melancholy
appeared in them at times, with its ever present charm ; while
playfulness also danced ill them in turn, with all the attraction
which happiness inspires."
MADAME DE AIAINTENON. 5
All contemporary testimony agrees in regard to that
In-nuty, that graceful deportment, that wit, and that
8t rain of playfulness. " All who know her," says the
Grand Dictionnaire des Pre'cieuses, " are quite convinced
that she is one of the most sprightly persons of
Athenes."* And towards the end of her life she
describes herself as " gay by nature, and sad from her
position." This shows us a side of her character which
eeems at the present day to have escaped us, and Avhich
the letters of Mine, de Maintenon only hint at. Her
letters give us only a glimpse of her inind ; the taste,
the high-bred tone, the perfect judgment, and the
piquant style are there, but the spirit with which she
animated society, the wit so discreetly interspersed in
her stories and conversation, and which sparkled so
brightly and delicately in her face when she spoke
enthusiastically, as Choisy says, all this is lost or un-
noticed in her letters. We have only a kind of outline,
or engraving, of the wit of Mine, de Mainteuon, with
none of the rich colour.
A critical moment arrived for Mme. Scarron after
the death of her husband, but all her friends hastened
to serve her, and succeeded in doing so. She received
a pension from the queen-mother, and was able for
some, years to enjoy life as she felt inclined. She
became one of the Hospitalieres f of the Place Royale,
and there she met the best society ; she was constantly
at the Hotel d'Albret or the Hotel de Richelieu. Old,
and at the height of her glory, she spoke of these years
of youth and poverty as the happiest of her life.
" All my youth was very pleasant," she said to her maidens
of Saiiit-Cyr : " I had no ambition, nor any of those passions
which might have disturbed my enjoyment of that vain shadow of
* Paris. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
f A sisterhood for ladies of noble rank. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
6 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
happiness (worldly happiness) ; for although I have experienced
poverty, and passed through conditions very diS'erent to that
in which you now see me, I was contented and happy. I knew
neither weariness nor chagrin ; I was free. I went to the Hotel
d'Albret or to the Hotel de Richelieu, sure of a kind reception,
and of finding my friends assembled there, or else of attracting
them to my own salon, by warning them that I would remain
at home."
Was Mine. Scarron able to remain free from all sus-
picion of evil during all these long years of widowhood
and semi-worldliness 1 Discussion on this subject
appears to me mere idle curiosity, and I leave questions
of this nature to more daring minds ; it is sufficient for
me, and it otight to be enough for all whose aim it is
to inquire into the character of an eminent personage,
that Mme. de Maintenon preserved on the whole a
line of conduct which Avas altogether circumspect and
seemly. The most serious evidence we have in her
disfavour is an expression 'of her friend Ninon, on the
subject of M. de Villarceaux, their common friend ; but
in regard to this very insinuation, Ninon admits that
she does not know how far things went, and that
Mme. Scarron always seemed to her " too awkward
for love." Now this soxmds well, nay, is almost a
guarantee. The fact is, if we put malice aside, that
Mme. Scarron, during these her years of greatest
peril, appears never to have been moved by sentiment
at all, never to have been excited by the emotions of her
heart, and to have been restrained by two curbs which
are the strongest of all, namely, her love of consider-
ation and esteem, which from her own account was her
dominant passion, and her strict and practical religion,
from which she never swerved. " I possess," she has
said, "a great support in my religion, which prevents
me doing evil things, shields me from all frailties, and
makes me hate all that might draw scorn upon me."
MADAME DE MAINTENON. 7
I can find no reason to doubt her statement, other than
the unforeseen circumstances of her life.
In these her younger days, the chief trait of her
character, and the distinguishing feature of her social
position, may be thus denned : she was one of those
women, who as soon as they gain a little advantage,
have the wit and the cleverness to make such good use
of it, that they succeed in every way, simply by making
themselves always useful and necessary, and at the
same time pleasant and agreeable. No sooner had she
the entree of a house than she Avas initiated into all its
private arrangements as no one else was, and, by some
subtle vocation she possessed, she soon unconsciously,
and without having any right to such a position, became
the moving power of that household. In fact, intimacy
established, \her friends knew no half measures ; she
became at once the soul, the charm, the fascination of
that house.
Such was Mine, de Maintenon among friends like
Mme. d'Heudicomt and Mine, de Montchevreuil, at
the Hotels d'Albret and Richelieu ; considerate and
attentive to every one, and so obligingly kind, that
Saint-Simon has very justly observed upon this trait,
and has described it to us in his own inimitable way ;
for, with all his unjust exaggerations and inaccuracies,
we must not ignore the masterly strokes of honest
rectitude in what he says of Mme. de Maintenon ;
but the explanation he gives of this diligence to please
is more harsh than is quite fair, and I would rather
judge from what Mme. de Maintenon tells us herself.
She represents herself to us (in her correspondence) as
indastliooa and active, up at six o'clock every morning,
busy with all her different occupations, because she
loved them, not from any interested motives ; and in
matters concerning her women friends, laying herself
8 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
out to oblige them, that she might be loved by them,
and distinguished for her amiability, and also from an
impulse of self-glorification.
"In my tender years," she has said, "I was what people
call a good child, everybody loved me ; even my aunt's servants
were charmed with me. When I was older, I was placed in
various convents : you know how much I was loved there by
my teachers and companions, and always for the same reason,
because my chief thought from morning to night was of how I
could serve them or oblige them. When I lived with that poor
cripple, I found myself in the world of fashion, where I was
sought after and esteemed. The women loved me because I
was gentle in society, and because I was more occupied about
others than about myself. . Men waited on me because I had
the beauty and the grace of youth. I have had all kinds of
experiences, but have always kept ray reputation stainless.
The admiration I received was rather a general friendship or
esteem than love. I did not desire to be loved by any one in
particular ; I wished to be loved by everybody, to be spoken
of with admiring respect, to be popular, and especially to be
approved of by good people : this was my ideal. "
And again, apropos of that restraint which she at all
times imposed on herself, and of that subordination of
all her inclinations to which she forced her nature :
" But that cost me little when I thought of those praises, of
that fame, which would be the fruit of my discipline. That
was my hobby. I was not concerned about riches ; I was above
all thought of self-interest ; I desired honour."
This confession gives us the chief key to Mine, de
Maintenon's conduct during her early life : active,
obliging, insinuating but not vulgar, entering with
extreme sensibility into the trials and troubles of her
friends, and anxious to aid them, not from pure friend-
ship, nor from true sympathy, nor from any principle
of tender devotion, but because above everything else
she yearned for their good opinion, she of necessity
MADAME DE MAINTENON. 9
grasped every likely means to advance herself higher
in their esteem : this, at least, is my opinion of her.
Material and positive interest always was of secondary
consideration in her. eyes, in spite of her straitened
circumstances, and was ever subordinate to that other
moral interest founded on the esteem in which she was
held. She longed to be specially distinguished and
admired by those among whom she lived, whoever
they were, and desired that it might be said of her : " As
a woman, she is unique ! " In this lay all her coquetry,
a coquetry of the mind, which with advancing years
became to her an ambition, a career. Of an indefatig-
able temperament and unwearying patience, yet if one
made a demand upon her in any direction touching
self-respect and honour, she would accede to that which
would have been barely possible to another. When at
a later period she had become the most indispensable
person at the court of Versailles, the companion of the
king, the resource of princes, the person whom no one
in all that royal household could ignore for a single
moment, she showed herself capable of miraculous self-
restraint and forbearance. Wholly occupied with the
affairs of those she did not love, she endured her
slavery with a smiling grace which never failed. " For
twenty-six years," she has said, " I never displayed the
slightest impatience at any time."
Latterly, through one of those illusions of self-esteem,
illusions which are very natural, she imagined her-
self endowed with some special gift which fitted her for
the new part she had to play, a gift which was but
the result, the perfection, and the crown of all the rfiles
it had been her fate to perform from her youth up : she
regarded her life as a miracle. She had been so often
called an Esther, that she believed herself one in reality,
destined by Providence to sanctify the king, even
to MADAME DE MAINTENON.
although she herself should be a martyr. When the
ladies of Saint-Cyr pressed her, during her last retreat
there, to write her life, she declined, saying, that it would
be a story full of marvellous inner experiences, and
peculiar traits, " Only saints would be able to find
pleasure in reading it." And in expressing herself
thus, she really believed that she spoke humbly. But
it is not necessary to be a saint in order to find plea-
sure in those secrets of the heart which she herself has
frankly unveiled.
Mine, de Montespan was still the declared mistress
of the king when she met Mme. Scarron at the house
of Mme. d'Heudicourt, their common friend, and, find-
ing her so active, such a devoted friend, so discreet and
domesticated, yet with an honourable amount of dignity,
she could not help thinking what an inestimable
advantage it-would be if she could have her to educate
secretly the two illegitimate children she had given
to Louis XIV. According to the notions of the time,
.such a choice was a species of honour. Mme. Scarron,
however, had discernment enough to perceive the
dubiousness of the position, and very justly considered
the proposal from its correct aspect. " If these children
are the king's children," she replied, " I shall be very
happy ; I could not without scruple take charge of
Mme. de Montespan's children ; so the king must
command me, this is all I have to say." The king
commanded, and Mme. Scarron became the governess
of the mysterious children.
Her character is well portrayed in the singular life
she lived during these years (1670-72). She took a
large isolated house in the neighbourhood of Vaugirard,
and, unknown to all her friends, took up her residence
there, devoting herself to her precious charges, directing
their early education, their diet, acting as housekeeper
MADAME DE MA1NTENON. ti
and nurse, everything, in fact ; and at the same time
keeping up her customs of morning visits to her friend?,
as if nothing at all uncommon was going on at the very
doors of these fashionable friends ; for at first it was
necessary that no one should suspect that there was
anything unusual. Gradually, however, the secret began
to be less carefully guarded, and the cloud unrolled.
The king, who went to see his children, then got to
know Mme. Scarron ; but the impression she made
on him at first was not favourable. " In the beginning
I was very displeasing to the king ; he looked on me as
a clever person, to whom it was necessary to speak
very learnedly, a most difficult individual in every
respect." There had been a time when Mnie. de
Montespan had had to make great efforts to break the
ice, and to insinuate this chosen friend into the good
graces of the king : we can imagine her subsequent
bitterness and wrath.
Here we might easily exhaust all plausible explana-
tions and apologies, but we should never succeed in
proving that Mme. de Mainteuon (for by this time she
was so styled) did not at a certain period play a double
game : installed by Mme. de Montespan, apparently
deeply interested in her passion and in all the
troubles connected with it, writing to her, even, in March
1678, "The king is returning to you covered with
glory, and I am infinitely concerned in your joy;'"'
while at the same time she had already conceived
projects of personal ambition. Probably she did not
all at once entertain the idea of what no imagination
could have conjectured : she certainly could never have
imagined, even in her own heart, that she would one
day become not the secret but the acknowledged wife
of the monarch ; she only felt the possibility of being
able to exercise great influence over him, and she kept
12 MADAME DE MA INTEND N.
tin's aim in view. This extraordinary romance was
woven thread by thread, guided by the most patient
and adroit skill. As soon as Mme. de Maintenon had
gained a footing at court, she began to try to make it
appear that she was not made for court life, and that
she remained against her inclinations. This was one
of her stratagems, one which probably half deceived
even herself. In her ever-recurring schemes and threats
of retirement, I can find no better comparison for her
than M. de Chateaubriand, who, as we know, was always
longing to exchange the world for a hermitage, to flee
from it back to his American savages.
" I would return to America," said Mme. de Maintenon,
" if I were not ceaselessly told that God requires me to
remain where I am."
Her confessor was the Abbe Gobelin, who was clever
enough to say to her very early, when indicating to her
the place (a nameless place, and not even a vacant one,
for the queen still lived) which had to be filled
towards Louis XIV., " God wishes you there ! " Mme. de
Maintenon was persuaded, and remained, and nothing
is more curious than to look at her between the
two mistresses of the king (Mme. de Montespan and
Mme. de Fontanges), reconciling one, counselling the
other ; conciliating, and, without seeming to do so,
meddling with their affairs, and undermining them,
and all the time (for this was her method, her weak-
ness), craving pity for her situation, and continually
expressing her wish to retire. Was there ever more
skilful tact than this ? Never did a woman's tact affect
greater modesty or more refinement. "Nothing is
more clever than irreproachable behaviour," Mme. de
Maintenon has said, applying the expression to her own
conduct. She may congratulate herself and glorify
herself as she will, but I shall never call this virtue.
MADAME DE MAINTEXOX. 13
In the midst of her own peculiar and interesting
affairs, she continued to exercise her characteristic
influence. A true, warm-hearted woman would not for
a single instant have accepted or endured such a rdle.
Mme. de Maintenon spun out these ambiguous interests
during many years.
"The king has three mistresses," said Mme. de
Montespan to her furiously, " myself in name, that girl
(Fontanges) in fact, and you in the real affections of his
heart." " His Majesty visits me occasionally, but not
by my desire ; he retires disconsolate, but never hope-
kss," replied Mme. de Maintenon, in her triumphant
humility. Or, on another occasion, she said : " I send
him away distressed always, but never despairing." This
Penelope's web was woven and unwoven continually
for about eleven years. Let us try to imagine the skill
and invention, the wise discretion, which preserved for
such a period the king's attachment, contenting him,
yet not extinguishing his passion for her !
If, on a little consideration, we can see in Mme. de
Maintenon, this woman of forty-five, the most consum-
mate schemer, able so skilfully to carry on an intrigue
in which passion and sentiment mingled under a cloak
of virtue and religion, we must also recognise the in-
tellectual talent she must have used, the conversational
charm by which she amused, fascinated, and evaded a
king less ardently in love than of old, and who is rather
astonished to find himself attracted by a reluctance
new to him. When the queen died unexpectedly in
1683, Mme. de Maintenon saw before her a vista of
undreamt-of ambition, and she acted in this crisis as
judiciously as she had heretofore acted, with prudent
calculation disguised by supreme modesty. She was at
last married secretly to the king, the date being, it is
supposed, 1685. There were three or four persons,
14 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
including her confessor, who in private called hej
" Your Majesty ; " this satisfied her pride. As regarded
all other people, it was sufficient for her, that she was a
personage, distinct though not definite, occupying a place
apart, respected, and enjoying her greatness, scarcely
veiled by the cloud which covered it, conscious of the
fulfilment of the marvellous destiny which, as Saint-
Simon says, was conspicuous enough under its trans-
parent .mystery. Here, as in everything, there was a
mixture of glory and modesty, of reality and sacrifice,
which suited her well, and was her ideal ambition.
In her own words, which express so well her clear
understanding, she defines her position on one occasion
at Saint-Cyr, when, some one seeing her fatigued from
unnecessary exercise, remarked in her presence that she
was not careful enough of herself, did not comport
herself as other great ladies : " That is because I am not
great," she said ; " I am only exalted."
Among the many portraits of Mme. de Maintenon,
the one in my opinion which gives us the best idea of
her in that last studied attitude of veiled greatness, is a
portrait [No. 2258] which may be seen at Versailles, in
one of the Queen's apartments. She is more than fifty,
dressed in black, still beautiful, grave, and moderately
stout, her high and noble forehead shaded by a veil.
Her eyes are large and almond-shaped, very expressive,
and wonderfully sweet. The nose is well formed and
pleasing ; the slightly dilated nostril indicates strength
of mind. The still fresh mouth is small and gracious,
and the chin, almost a double chin, well rounded. The
sombre dress is just lightened by a drapery of white
lace on the arms and shoulders. A high stomacher
hides the neck. Such was Mme. de Maintenon, almost
a queen, imposing, yet modest and self-restrained,
she who has said of herself : " My condition never
MADAME DE MAINTENON: 15
shows me its brilliant aspect, but always its dark and
painful side."
In that exalted position, \vhat service has Mme.
de Maintenon rendered to Louis XIV. or to France ?
To France, none if we except the day that she re-
quested Kacine to write a sacred play for Saint-Cyr.*
To Louis XIV. himself she rendered the service of
weaning him from love intrigues which age would have
made discreditable ; she interested herself in every-
thing she considered necessary for his best welfare :
BO far as human being could, she filled his time, amused
him, and, as far as circumstances would allow, she pro-
vided hourly occupation for him ; once admitted into
the royal family circle, she displayed with even increased
energy and exactitude that inexhaustible adaptability
which, as a younger woman, had made her so useful
to the Montchevreuils, the Heudicourts, and the Riche-
lieus. She was indispensable in every difficulty,
advising, consoling, always accessible and pleasant, in
that royal home, amid all afflictions, amid all State
affairs. This, rather than any political part, was the
influence she wielded, although she may have inter-
meddled too much once or twice when family interests
clashed, as in the preferment of the Due du Maine.
We know that Louis XIV. was possessed of sound
judgment ; but, as he advanced in yeare, that justice
remained but inactive, un inventive, and was exercised
only iu affairs submitted to him, and according to
the terms in which these matters were laid before him
on the Council table ; he took no trouble to search
into affairs. Mme. de Maintenon, equally just, was
also equally circumscribed ; her interests were con-
fined to social matters, or things of a purely private
or family nature, she neither saw nor prognosticated
* Esther. TR,
1 6 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
outside things. To sum up, neither of them was large-
minded ; they observed little outside the bounds of
their own horizon, and the consequence was, that this
horizon contracting with advancing years, this king,
with all his sound judgment, committed many mistakes,
which this woman of equal rectitude allowed him to
commit, nay, even approved.
Mine, de Maintenon's judgment was quite propor-
tionate to the king's ; but his judgment inclined to
the sombre side, whilst hers took the more cheerful
view.
Did she love Louis XIV. ? It would be cruel to
raise any absolute doubt on this point. It seems, how-
ever, that of the two, he loved her the most, or, at all
events, she was the more necessary to him. Dying,
and when he had lost consciousness, we know that she
withdrew before he had ceased to breathe ; but, before
leaving the expiring king, she desired, her confessor to
see him, and to tell her if there was any hope of his
regaining consciousness. " You may depart," said the
confessor ; " you are no longer necessary to him." She
believed him, and obeyed, immediately leaving Versailles
for Saint-Cyr. This act, for which she has been blamed,
proves one thing only, that she was a woman, who,
in such a moment of supreme separation, trusted the
advice of her confessor rather than the prompting of
her own heart. Never for one moment in her whole
life did Mine, de Maintenon lose control of her heart ;
there lies the' secret of that certain degree of indiffer-
ence she inspires. Her nature was altogether un-
sympathetic. We admit that, during her long life, in
the midst of all the secret satisfactions to her self-love,
she was constantly required to suffer, to restrain her
wishes. The descriptions she has given us of the
almost slavish tortures she was called upon to endure,
MADAME DE MAINTENON. 17
in the midst of all her grandeur, are true pictures, nn<l
make us almost pity her. From the moment she
awoke till the moment she retired to rest, she had no
respite ; she was at everybody's service, the princes to
whom she sacrificed herself, the king who would not
have sacrificed his smallest convenience even for the
sake of her he loved and honoured more than all. By
no means young, she suffered great discomfort from
the cold draughts in these vast rooms, but she could
not take it upon herself to order a screen to be placed
behind her chair, because the king came there, and any
irregularity in the coup d'ceil would have displeased him :
"Rather perish, than destroy the general symmetry."
All the quarrels, complications, dissensions, of the royal
family fell on her shoulders. " I have not been racked
by four horses, but by four princes," she said one day,
in an excess of fatigue ; and she was obliged -to employ
all the skill on which she piqued herself to turn aside
all such annoyances in her own pleasant, charming
manner ; she kept only the thorns for herself. Add to
all this, the multitude of business matters which passed
through her hands, especially affairs of religion, and
conscientious scruples ; for, as Saint-Simon says, she
believed herself the universal abbess ; she used to call
herself the bishop's business woman. She was the
target for demands of all kinds, although she evaded aa
much as she could, calling herself a cipher, a nonentity,
an Agnes* in politics; but she was not believed, and
importunate petitions arrived from all parts, intercept-
ing even her passage to and fro, in spite of the pre-
cautions she took to render approach to her difficult.
"Truly, my head is sometimes almost turned," she said
once, when she had nearly broken down ; " and I believe
Agnes, in Molic-re's comedy, L'ecole des Femm.es, pretends to
be wholly unsophisticated. TRANSLATOR'S NOTB.
B
1 8 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
that if my body were opened after my death, my heart
would be found hard and twisted like that of M. de
Louvois." Let us not be too severe, then, in our judg-
ment of this poor heart, which she lays bare to us.
She is right, in one sense, to compare herself to a
Louvois, to great statesmen, ambitious men : I do not
think any one has ever carried the spirit of perseverance
further than she did, or the art of circumspection, or
the power of self-restraint.
Woman-like, she used strong language to describe
that weariness of worry and annoyance which she was
forced to endure, and obliged to conceal with a smile.
" I am sometimes gorged with worries, as one might say."
We recall her expression as she one day stood looking
at some unhappy little fishes, very restless and un-
comfortable in their clean basin of clear fresh water :
" They are like me, they yearn after their obscurity."
But it was at Saint-Cyr that Mine, de Maintenon
especially preferred to take refuge when she had a
short interval of leisure, to hide herself, to give way to
her feelings, to complain, and to be pitied, to reflect on
her incomprehensible elevation, to pose as a victim
bearing the weight of the kingdom's troubles. " Oh !
say," she would exclaim, "is not the condition of
Jeanne Brindelette d'Avon " (some little peasant pupil)
" preferable to mine ? "
Are not these the plaints of an ambitious woman,
greedy of praise, complaining like the usurer of Horace,
who, after extolling the charms of the country, quickly
returns to town, and plans his money out at larger
interest ?
Listening to these royal wailings from Mme. de
Maintenon's lips, and calling to mind her early
prospects, we sometimes find ourselves quoting, with
a smile, from Tartufe, " The poor woman ! the poor
MADAME DE MAINTENON, 19
irnwan ! " And, after we have listened to her a little
longer, we end by saying with her seriously, " Yes, poor
woman, indeed ! " Towards the end, it was apparent
that she required such pity, for physical fatigue over-
balanced all else, and the death of Louis XIV. was, to
a certain degree, a relief to her.
There are two things for which, in the eyes of
posterity, she must ever be commendable : first, the
founding of Saint-Cyr ; and secondly, her talent as an
excellent writer. Saint-Cyr would' require a separate
study. Mme. de Maintenon stamped it with her own
individuality, and she there shines as if set in a frame-
work made expressly for her. It was there she was
able to satisfy her craving to train and educate the
young around her, Minerva-like or Mentor- like tastes,
which developed more and more as years advanced ;
she was also able there to unbend to tendeniess. It was
her own scheme, her cherished, almost maternal work.
" Nothing is dearer to me than my children of Saint-
Cyr ; / love them all, even the very dust they make" It
is always so beautiful, so noble a thought to found
a school destined to educate and train, in pure and
regular principles, the children of the poor, that we
hesitate to express even the most respectful criti-
cism. Louis XV., however, who was not deficient
in common sense, was severe in his judgment of Saint-
Cyr. " Mme. de Maintenon," he said, " with the most
excellent intentions, made a mistake. These girls are
brought up in such a way, that it will be necessary to
make them all ladies of the palace, or else they will
be useless and unhappy." It would indeed be sur-
prising, if, in an institution formed under the sole
influence of Mme. de Maintenon, some vain-glorious
pride had not slipped in. Let it, however, suffice now
to remember, to the honour of Saint-Cyr, that it waa
20 MADAME DE MAINTENON.
the cradle of Esther and Athalie; its birth was the
occasion of these immortal works.*
Yet it is as a writer that we accord to Mine, de
Maintenon all enduring reputation. There is no com-
plete and altogether accurate edition of her Letters,
but what we have allows us to establish a judgment,
and confirms what Saint-Simon has so aptly said
of her " gentle, just, expressive language, naturally
eloquent and concise." This brevity, or happy concise-
ness of style, is peculiar to Mine, de Maintenon, or is
shared only by Mme. de la Fayette. Neither indulged
in the tedious, careless, irregular style common to all
women (who were not Mme. de Sevignd) in the seven-
teenth century. Mme. de Maintenon deserves much
of the credit of the reformation in style which the eigh-
teenth century inherited. " I shall correct the faults in
style which you remark in my letters," wrote the Due
du Maine to her ; " but I believe that long sentences
will mean with me long imperfections.'' Mme. de Main-
tenon spoke faultlessly. Words dropped from her lips
as from her peri, correct, apt, with never a syllable of
discord ; one word added might make a perfect sentence
dry and .stiff. Mine, du Deffand, who in literature is of
the same school, has very ably expressed the effect
of Mine, de Maintenon's Letters ; they could not be
better defined :
"Her Letters are thoughtful," she says; "there is much
intellect expressed in simple language ; but they are not anim-
ated, and they are far from being as cheerful and pleasing as
those of Mme. de Sevigne : the latter are all passionate feeling
and energy ; she takes her part in everything, is interested in,
affected by everything. Mme. de Maintenon is the extreme
opposite : she tells of the greatest events, in which she played
her part, with the most perfect calmness ; one can see that she
* fly Racine. TR.
MADAME DE MAINTENON. 21
loves neither the king, nor her friends, nor relations, nor even
her position ; devoid of sentiment and imagination, she has
formed 110 illusions, she knows the intrinsic value of every-
thing ; she is tired of life, and says, ' Only death will put an
end to vexation and unhappiness.' . . . The result of my read-
ing is, that I have a high estimation of her virtue, and little of
her heart, and no liking for her person ; but I repeat, I still
persist in believing that she is not false."
She does not indeed appear to be false ; in her Letters
she is only a little too discreet and cautious. In order
to form a correct idea of Mine, de Maintenon, it is
advisable, in reading her Letters, to supply them with
a certain sprightliness of wisdom, a peculiar grace,
which characterized her to the last, in the midst of her
austerity, and which was part of her desire to please
people when beside them, but which was not strong
enough to reflect in her written words.
I have, however, only approached the subject of
Mme. de Maintenon ; she is a study one must not pro-
ceed too hurriedly with : I shall hope to return to it
some day, when I discuss her along with Mine, dcs
Ursins.
MADAME DE SEVIGN&
CRITICS, and particularly foreign critics, who in these
later years have been the most severe judges of our two
literary centuries, agree in acknowledging that the
features which most distinguished them, the influences
which we find reflected in a thousand ways, lending
brilliancy and &lat to these epochs, was, first, the
wit of social intercourse, the knowledge of the world
and of men, the shrewd intelligence displayed in
courtesy and in ridicule, the ingenious delicacy of
sentiment, the piquant grace and the refined courtli-
ness of the language. And, indeed, with certain reserva-
tions, and not including such names as Bossuet and
Montesquieu, these are the most marked characteristics
of French literature as compared to all other European
literature. This honour, which has almost been made
into a reproach against our nation, is fertile enough,
and fair enough, for those who are able to understand
and interpret it.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, our
civilisation (and consequently, our literature and our
language) was immature and uncertain. Europe, just
emerging from religious difficulties, and still influenced
by the effects of the Thirty Years' War, had laboriously
"
MADAME DE SEV1GNE. 23
created a new order of politics. France hud exhausted
herself with civil discord. In court circles there were
salons and ruelles* and the wits who frequented them
were already the fashion ; but as yet nothing great or
original had been produced by them, and people feasted
to satiety on Spanish romances or Italian sonnets and
pastorals. It was not till after Richelieu's time, after
the Fronde, under the queen-mother,t and Mazarin, that
suddenly, from the midst of the fetes of Saint-Hande"
and Vaux, from the salons of the Hotel de Rambouillet,
or from the antechambers of the young king,J arose as
if by miracle, three great intellects, three geniuses,
diversely gifted, but all endowed with pure original
talent, perfect sympathy of taste, and a happy gift of
language, embellished by natural grace and delicate
refinement, destined to usher in an epoch of such glory
and brilliancy as has never been surpassed. Moliere,
La Fontaine, and Mme. de Sevigne belong to a literary
generation which preceded that of which Racine and
Boileau were the chief lights ; and they are distin-
guished from these latter by several marked features,
which belong as distinctly to the nature of their genius
as to the date of their appearance. We feel that in the
place they hold, as in their peculiar turn of wit, they
have much more in common with the France which
preceded the reign of Louis XIV., with the old
language, and the old French humour ; their education,
* Ruelle, a word in daily us'i in the seventeenth century,
probably reqviires some explanation in the present day. The
bed, a magnificently adorned structure, occupied the middle of
one end of the room ; near the foot, and dividing the apartment,
stood a gilt balustrade, such as may still be seen in the room of
Louis XIV. at Versailles. Each side of the bed within that
rtsorved space was called the ritelle. TR.
f Anne of Austria. TK. J Louis XTV. TR.
24 MADAME DE S&VIGN&.
and their literary knowledge altogether, belongs more
to that epoch, and if they are less appreciated by
foreigners than certain subsequent writers, this is due
in reality to the particular and indefinable charm
which for us exists in the purity of their style and
diction. Therefore, at the present time, we are reason-
ably anxious to revise and refute many of the judgments
and opinions which, during the last twenty years,
have been set for the professors of the Athenaeum ;
and we declare relentless war against many who have
been greatly overrated, and uphold those immortal
writers who first gave to French literature its origin-
ality, and encouraged those characteristic features which,
up to the present day, assure for it a distinct place
among all other literatures. Moliere drew from the
moving game of life the vices and eccentricities of man-
kind ; he depicts everything which could possibly be
worthily expressed in poetry. La Fontaine and Mine,
de Sevigne", in a narrower sphere, had each in their way
an exquisitely true preception of all which concerned the
spirit of their time. La Fontaine represented nature,
Mme. de Sevigne was more the interpreter of society ;
and this delicate feeling they have both so clearly
expressed in their writings, that quite naturally we
compare them with, and scarcely rank them below,
their illustrious contemporary. At present we desire
to speak only of Mme. de Sevigne", and it seems as if
nothing new could be said of her, details regarding
her are, in fact, almost exhausted ; but we think that
hitherto, in studying her, she has been too much isolated,
just as La Fontaine was for a longtime, and to him
she bears a strong resemblance. At this distance of
time, when the society of which she represents the most
brilliant aspect is distinctly and harmoniously revealed
to our eyes, it is easier, as at the same time it becomes
HAD A ME DE SEVIGNE. 25
more necessary, to assign to Mme. de SeVign her rank,
her importance, and especially her relation to other
writers ; this, and the difference of tlie times, has not
been sufficiently borne in mind by themanydistinguished
writers of our own day, who are disposed to judge with
equal carelessness and severity one of the most charming
geniuses who ever existed. We shall be glad if this sketch
help to dissipate some of those unjust prejudices.
The excesses of the Regency have been much censured ;
but before the regency of Philippe d'Orleans there was
another regency, not less dissolute, and still more atroci-
ous, by reason of the cruelties with which it is associated,
a kind of hideous transition state between the flood of
abuses perpetrated by Henri III. and those of Louis XV.
The low morality of the Ligue, which had smouldered
under Henri IV. and Richelieu, revived again, being no
longer restrained. Licentiousness became as excessive
as it had been in the days of the miynons, or as it was
later in the time of the roues; but what makes this
epoch most resemble the sixteenth century, and dis-
tinguishes it from the eighteenth, is chiefly the assassina-
tions, poisonings, and other Italian vices due to the
influences of the Medicis, and the insane rage for duel-
ling a heritage of the civil wars. Such, to the im-
partial reader, appears the regency of Anne of Austria,
and such was the dark and bloody basis 'on which, one
fine morning, loomed the Fronde, which it is considered
proper to call une plaisanterie d main armtfe.* The
conduct of the women of the time, those most distin-
guished by their birth, their beauty, and their wit,
seems incredible, and we are forced to believe that
historians have slandered them. But as excess always
produces its contrary, the small number of them who
escaped corruption embraced sentimental metaphysics,
* The trick of an armed hand.
26 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
and became Pre'cieuses.* The Hotel de Rambouilk't
was tlie abode of good morals within the pale of the
highest society ; whilst its good taste must now be
admitted, since it has produced Mme. de Sevigne.
Mile. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was the daughter
of the Baron de Chantal, whose uncontrolled passion
for duelling led him, one Easter Day, to quit the
Holy Table to go and act as second to the famous
Comte de Bouteville. Brought up by her uncle,
the good Abbe de Coulanges, she early received very
solid instruction, and learnt, under Chapelain and
Menage, the Latin, Italian, and Spanish languages. At
eighteen she married the Marquis de Sevigne", little
worthy of her ; who, after grossly neglecting her,
was killed in a duel in 1651. Widowed at five-and-
twenty, the mother of a son and daughter, Mme. de
Sevigne had no idea of marrying again ; she loved her
children, especially her daughter, almost foolishly, and
other persons remained unknown to her. She was fair
and gay, a smiling picture of virtuous womanhood ; the
brilliancy of her wit gaA'e lustre to her expressive eyes,
shone from her ever-changing pupils, and, as she her-
self said, was luminous even behind the curtain of her
transparent eyelids. She became a Pre'cieuse ; she went
into society, was beloved, courted,f an object of un-
heeded passion, brave enough to preserve as friends
* A term of eulogy bestowed upon the circle of intellect and
beauty which surrounded the Marquise de Rainbouillet, who
herself received from her admirers the title of the Incomparable
Arthenice. To be styled a PrScieuse was a high mark of dis-
tinction, although afterwards ridiculed by Moliere's " Pr^cieuses
ridicules."
t Mme. de la Fayette wrote to her : " Your presence adds to
diversion, and diversion enhances your beauty. In short, joy
is the natural state of your soul, and sorrow is more unnatural
in you than in any other."
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 27
those she would not listen to as lovers. Her cousin
Bussy, her tutor Menage, the Prince of Conti, brother
of the Grand Conde,Fouquet, the powerful Surintendant,
all sighed in vain for her, although she remained
courageously faithful to the latter in his disgrace ; and
when she tells M. de Pomponnel of his prosecution, we
must observe how tenderly she speaks of "our dear
unfortunate." Still young and beautiful and unassum-
ing, she appeared in society only as the devoted mother,
caring for no greater happiness than that of exhibiting
her daughter and seeing her admired.* Mile, de
Sevigne' took part from 1663 in the brilliant ballets
of Versailles ; and Benserade, court poet, who then
held at court the place which Racine and Boileau took
after 1672, wrote more than one madrigal in honour
of that shepherdess and nymph, who was called by
her idolizing mother the loveliest maiden in France.
In 1669, M. de Grignan obtained her hand in marriage,
and sixteen months afterwards she accompanied him
to Provence, where he acted as lieutenant-general
during the absence of M. de Vendome. From hence-
forth separated from her daughter, whom she saw
only at long irregular intervals, Mine, de Sdvigne
sought to make her loneliness less irksome by a constant
correspondence, which lasted till her death (in 1690),
and which extends over twenty-five years, excepting
the gaps which are filled in by the transient reunions
" There is a beautiful portrait of Mme. de Sevigne in her
youth by the Abbe Arnauld, who says in his Memoires that he
was introduced to the illustrious Mme. de Sevigne. ... "I can
fancy that I see her still," he says, " as she appeared to me the
first time I had the honour of beholding her. She arrived in an
open chariot, on either side of her sat her son and daughter, all
three such as poets paint, Latona with the young Apollo and the
chilil Diana, so striking was the beauty of mother and children."
28 MADAME DE S&VIGN&.
of the mother and daughter. Before this separation
\ve have only a very few letters of Mine, de S^vigni's
addressed to her cousin Bussy, and some to M. de
Pomponne about the prosecution of Fouquet. It is,
therefore, only from this date that we possess any
intimate knowledge of her private life, her habits, her
favourite books, and even minute details of the society
she lived in, and of which she was the soul.
And from the very first pages of this correspondence
we find ourselves in quite a different world from that
of the Fronde and the Regency ; we recognise that
what is called French society is at last constituted.
Doubtless (and beside the numerous me'moires of the
time, the anecdotes related by Mme. de Sevigne" herself
are our authority), horrible licentiousness, gross orgies,
were indulged in by the young noblesse, on whom Louis
XIV. imposed, as the price of his favour, the exercise
of politeness, elegance, and dignity ; no doubt, under
this brilliant superficiality, this gilding of the Carrousel,
there was quite enough inherited vice ready to manifest
itself anew in another regency, especially when the
bigotry of the last years of this reign should have
caused it to ferment. But at least outward propriety
was observed ; public opinion began to disparage things
ignoble or dissolute. Moreover, as disorder and vicious
passion became less scandalous, decency and refined wit
gained in simplicity. The title Pr&ieuse went out of
fashion, or was remembered with a smile. People no
longer declaimed in private, and commented on the
sonnet of Job, or of Uranie on the map of Tendre * or on
the Roman character ; but they conversed, Jhey talked
over the news of the court, conversed of the siege of
Paris, or of the wars of Guienne : the Cardinal de Ret/,
* In the love stories of the seventeenth century, Tendre v;aa
the name given to an allegorical Kingdom of Love. Til.
MADAME DE SEl'IGNE. 29
described his travels ; M. dela Rochefoucauld moralized ;
Mine, de la Fayette made sentimental reflections ; and
Mine, de Sevigne" interrupted them all to quote some
clever saying of her daughter, some roguish trick of her
son, some absent-mindedness of the good D'Hacqueville
or of M. de Brancas.
In 1829, with our regular habits and occupations, we
have some difficulty in faithfully picturing to ourselves
this life of leisure and conversation. The world goes
on so fast in our time, and so many things are in turn
brought upon the scene, that it takes us all our time to
behold and apprehend them. Our days are passed in
study, our evenings in serious discussions, friendly
intercourse, and conversation. The nobility of our day,
which has preserved most of the leisurely habits of the
two last centuries, seems to have been able to do this
only at the cost of remaining strangers to the thoughts
and customs of the present time.* At the date of
which we write, far from there being any difficulty in
following the literary, political, or religious spirit of
the day, it was the correct mode and purpose of life ; a
glance of the eye was sometimes enough, an aside whilst
indulging in familiar friendly talk. Conversation had
not then become, as in the eighteenth century, in the
open salons, under the presidency of Fontenelle, an
occupation, a business full of pretension ; no one speci-
ally aimed at making clever hits, or at ostentatiously
displaying his eloquent knowledge of geometry,
philosophy, or sentiment ; but people conversed of
* Since these pages were written, I have frequently had
occasion to remark to myself, and with great pleasure, that this
decay of conversational power in France has been rather
exaggerated ; no doubt, it is absent as a general rule in society,
but there are still remnants of it, an after-glow, which is all the
more enjoyable that it seems the revival of a lost art.
30 MADAME DE SEVIGNE,
themselves, of others, of little or of nothing at all. It
was, as Mine, tie Sevigne said, endless conversation.
"After dinner," she writes in one letter to her
daughter, " we went and chatted in the most pleasant
wood in the world ; we remained there till six o'clock,
engaged in every variety of converse, kindly, pleasing,
amiable, and affectionate, both for you and for me,
so that I was much impressed." In the midst of this
impulsive society, so simple and easy, and so gracefully
animated, a visit, a letter received, was an event from
which much pleasure might be extracted, and in which
every one eagerly took part. The most trifling things
were valued according to the mode or the form in which
they were presented ; this was the art which uncon-
sciously and carelessly pervaded life. Let us recall to our
minds the visit Mme. de Chaulnes paid to the Rochers.
It has often been said that Mme. de SeVigne was
curiously careful of her letters, and that, in writing
them, she thought, if not of posterity, at least of the
people of her time whose approbation she sought.
This is untrue ; the time of Voiture and of Balxac was
already far distant. She usually wrote with great
fluency, allowing her pen to run on, on all kinds of
subjects ; and, when, pressed for time, scarcely ever
re-reading what she wrote. " Truly," she has said,
"between friends we nmst let our pens wander at
will ; mine always has a loose rein." But there are
days when she has more leisure, and when she fuels
more in the mood ; then quite naturally she arranges
and composes her letters with almost as much care as
La Fontaine bestows on one of his fables.
Such was the letter to M. de Coulanges, on the
marriage of Mademoiselle ; such the one about the
unfortunate Picard, who was dismissed because he
refused to join in the haymaking. Letters such as
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 31
these, brilliant as works of art, and in which there are not
too many little secrets nor slanders, made a sensation in
society ; every one wished to read them. " I cannot help
telling you what happened this morning," writes Mme. de
Coulanges to her friend : " I was told that one of Mme.
de Thianges' pages had called ; I gave orders for his
admission. This is what he had to say to me : ' Madame,
my mistress begs you to send her two letters of
Mme. de Se"vign6's, the letter du cheval and the one of
the Prairie' I told the page that I would take them
to Mme. de Thianges, and so got rid of him. Your
letters are as famous as they deserve to be, as you see.
They certainly are delicious, and you are like your
letters." Correspondence, therefore, like conversation,
was of great importance ; but neither the one nor the
other was composed, they were spontaneous utterances
of heart and mind. Mme. de Sevigne constantly praises
her daughter's letters. "Your ideas are beautiful, your
sentences incomparable," she says ; and she tells how
she reads here and there from them, chosen passages, to
those she considers worthy to hear them, " Sometimes I
also read a little bit from them to Mme. de Villars, but
she is so much touched by the tender parts that tears
come into her eyes."
m If the unaffected simplicity of Mme. de Sevigne's.
letters has been disputed, so also has the sincerity of
her love for her daughter been doubted ; and, in judging
of this affection, allowance has not been made for the
time she lived in, and we are apt to forget that, in that
luxurious age, passions were like whims, and over- fond-
ness often became a passion. She idolized her daughter,
and at once made this understood in society. Arnauld
d'Andilly called her, on this account, a pretty pagan.
Separation but increased her tenderness ; it almost
entirely filled her thoughts, and the inquiries and
32 MADAME DE SEVIGNE,
compliments of all her friends continually reverted to
this absorbing subject: this cherished and almost
unique affection of her heart at length became 'a very
part of her demeanour, as necessary in her deportment
as the fan she carried. After all, Mme. de Sevigne
was perfectly sincere and open, and despised pretence,
a real woman, an expression she would doubtless
have invented for her daughter, had not M. de la
Rochefoucauld already discovered it for Mme. de la
Fayette ; she, however, pleased herself by adopting it
for her she loved. When we have thoroughly analyzed
and examined in every light this boundless inother-
love, we simply return to M. de Pomponne's opinion
and explanation : " Mme. de Sdvigne appears to
have loved Mme. de Grignan passionately. Would
you like to know the real fact of the matter ? Well,
she loves her passionately." It would, in truth, be very
ungrateful to carp at Mme. de Sevigne on account of
this innocent and most legitimate passion, to which we
are indebted for our power of accompanying, step by
step, this most brilliantly clever woman during twenty-
six years of the most agreeable epoch of French social
history.*
La Fontaine, nature's painter, does not altogether
neglect and ignore society ; he frequently depicts it
with subtle malice. Mme. de Sevigne, on her part, loved
* M. Walckenaer aptly remarks in his Memoires of Mme. de
Sevignd : " She in whom the maternal sentiment was so strongly
developed, never had the opportunity of possessing the filial
sentiment, having been so early orphaned. All the love of her
heart was held in reserve, to be showered on her daughter.
Widowed in the spring-time of her youth and beauty, she seems
never to have cared for any of those who courted her. What a
treasury of love ! And her daughter inherited it all, with its
accumulated interest."
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 33
nature ; she delighted in the country, and made long
sojourns at Livry with the Abbe" de Coulanges, or on her
own estate, the Rochers, in Brittany ; and it is very in-
teresting to observe her impressions of nature. We at
once perceive that, like our good fabulist, she had early
read L'Astree, and we find traces of girlish dreams under
the mythological shades of Vaux and St. Mande. She
loves to wander under the bright rays of Endymion's
mistress, or spend hours alone with the hamadryads
(wood nymphs). Her trees are covered with inscrip-
tions and curious mottoes, as in the landscapes of Pastor
fido and the Aminte. " Bella cosa far niente, says one
of my trees, and the other replies, Amor odit inertes
(Love hates idlers). We know not which to listen to."
And elsewhere she remarks : " They are not disfigured
by our sentences ; I often visit them ; they are even
augmenting, and two neighbouring trees will often say
quite contrary things : La lontananza ogni gran piaga
salda, and Piaga d'amor non si sana mai. There are
five or six thus contradictory." These reminiscences
of pastoral romances, a little insipid though they are,
flow quite naturally from her pen, and pleasantly
relieve the many fresh and original descriptions
she so charmingly writes. " I have come here "
(to Livry) "to see the end of the fine weather, and
bid adieu to the leaves. They are still on the trees, and
have but changed colour ; instead of being green, they
are golden, of so many varied tints that they form a
brocade, so gorgeous and magnificent that we are
tempted to prefer it to the green, if only by way of
change." And again, when she is at the Rochers, she
writes : " I should be so happy in these woods, if the
foliage would but sing ; oh, how lovely it would be to
listen to the warbling leaves ! " And again, how glowing
is her description of the rapturous month of May, when tiw
C
34 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
nightingale, the cuclcoo, and the warbler usher in the spring-
time in our woods and forests! how intensely she can
make us feel, nay, how she permeates our being with
the very touch of those beautiful crystal days of autumn,
which are no longer warm, and yet not cold ! When her
son, to meet his foolish extravagances, causes the old
woods of Buron to be cut down, she rebels, and grieves
with all the banished dryads and ousted fauns ;
Ronsard could not more worthily have deplored the
disappearance of the forest of Gastine, nor M. de
Chateaubriand the hewing down of his paternal woods.
Because we often find her in a gay and sportive
mood, we must not be unjust, and judge that Mme.
de Se'vigne' is frivolous or unfeeling. She was serious,
even sad, especially during her sojourns in the country ;
all her life she was subject to long fits of reverie. Only,
we must understand, she did not dream under the
shade of those thick dark avenues after the manner of
Delphine, or in the mood of Oswald's sweetheart : that
peculiar form of reverie had not yet been invented ;
Mme. de Stael had not yet written her admirable book,
The Influence of Passion upon Happiness. At this time
reverie was a simpler matter, a personal and quite
unconscious condition of mind ; it meant thoughtful
musing of her daughter far away from her in Provence,
of her son in Candia or with the king's army, of her
distant or dead friends ; it suggested thoughts expressed
as follows : " As regards my life, you know what it is :
passed with five or six friends, whose society is pleasing
to me, in the exercise of a thousand necessary duties,
which require time. But what vexes me is, that in
doing nothing, our days pass, and our poor existence is
composed of such days, and we grow old and die. I
find this very cruel." The exact and regular religious
observances which governed her life did much at that
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 35
time to temper the free play of her imagination, which
afterwards on religious subjects she did not curb,
although she carefully guarded herself against some
thoughts which we must pass over. She earnestly
sought after Christian doctrines and Christian prin-
ciples, and more than once accused her daughter of
being tainted with Cartesianism.* For herself, as
regards the unforeseen, she bowed her head, and took
refuge in a kind of providential fatalism, with which
her connection with Port-Royal, and her studies of
Nicole and St. Augustin had inspired her.
This resigned religious element in Mme. de Se"vigne's
character increased with years without changing in
the slightest degree the serenity of her disposition ; it
often communicated to her language a graver, more
judicious tenderness. This is especially observable in
a letter to M. de Coulanges on the death of Louvois,
in which her sublime eloquence equals Bossuet, as in
other days and in other circumstances she had almost
surpassed the humour of Moliere.
M. de Saint-Surin, in his esteemed work on Mme.
de Sevigne\ lost no opportunity of comparing her to
Mine, de Stael, and invariably gave her the advantage
over that famous woman. We agree that it is both
* There have been many disputes as to the merits of Mme. de
Grignan, and probably her mother has harmed her a little in
our eyes by praising her too much ; it forces one into a difficult
position with uninterested persons to be made an object of too
much love. The son, who was rather rakish, seems to us much
more amiable. According to my ideas, we can easily under-
stand how the good sense and gaiety of Mme. de Sevign6's
nature were divided, and, as it were, distributed between her
children : one, the son, inherited her gracious ways, but not
much sense or solidity ; the other, the daughter, had the sense,
but her apparent brusqueness was not softened by any charm-
ing sprightliness of temper.
36 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
interesting and profitable to make this comparison, Imt
it need not be to the detriment of either. Mine, de Stael
represents an entirely new society, Mme. de SeVigne
a banished society ; from this fact arises the stupendous
differences, which one is at first tempted to explain
solely by the dissimilarity of mind and nature. How-
ever, and without any desire to deny this profound and
original dissimilarity between two hearts, one of which
understood only maternal love, while the other had
experienced every passion the most generous and the
bravest, we find in them, on close examination, many
common weaknesses, many common virtues, which owe
only their different development to the difference of
time. What genuine ability, full of airy grace, what
glowing pages of pure wit, in Mine, de Stael, when
sentiment does not play a part, and when she allows
philosophy and politics to slumber! And Mme. de
Sevignd does she never philosophize, never declaim 1
If not, of what use her study of such books as the
Morale of Nicole, the Socrate chrdien, and St. Augustin ?
For this woman, who has been looked upon as shallow and
frivolous, read everything, and read with perfect com-
prehension and sympathy : " It gives," she said, " a pale
colour to the mind to take no pleasure in solid reading."
She read Rabelais, Montaigne and Pascal, Cleopatra
and Quentilien, Saint Jean Chrysostom, and Tacitus
and Virgil, not travestied versions, she enjoyed them
in all the majesty of the Latin and Italian. In rainy
weather she would get through a folio in less than a fort-
night. During Lent, she loved to listen to Bourdaloue.*
Her attitude towards Fouquet, in his disgrace, makes
us realize the devotion she was capable of displaying in
the days of revolution. If she shows a little vanity or
conceit, when the king one evening dances a minuet
* An eloquent preacher of the day. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 37
with her, or when he pays her a gracious compliment
at Saint-Cyr, after the performance of (Racine's) Esther,
who among her sex would, in her place, have been more
philosophical ? Did not Mme. de Stae'l herself take a
great deal of trouble to obtain a word, a glance, from
the conqueror of Egypt and Italy (Napoleon). Surely
a woman who, from her earliest youth, had associated
with such men as Menage, Godeau, and Benserade, her
own good sense alone protecting her from their insipid
compliments and witticisms ; able playfully to evade
the refined, seductive attentions of such as Saint-
Evremond and Bussy ; a woman who was the friend
and admirer of Mile, de Scuddry and of Mme. de
Maintenon, and who yet preserved her own individu-
ality, as far removed from the romantic sentiment of
the one as from the too reserved severity of the other ;
who, connected by many ties with Port- Royal, fed, as it
were, on the works of these Messieurs, and who modestly
hid her knowledge of Montaigne, never even quoting
Rabelais, and desiring no other inscription for what
she called son convent, than Sainte liberte', or Fais ce que
voudra, as at the Abbey of Theleme, such a woman is
free to indulge in sportive, playful moods, to allow her
thoughts to glide, to amuse herself by seeing things
from their most familiar aspect ; she proves her pro-
found energy and the rare originality of her wit.
There is only one occasion on which we cannot help
regretting that Mme. de S4vign6 allowed herself to
indulge in frivolous, mocking expressions ; an occasion
on which we absolutely refuse to enter into her badin-
age, which, indeed, even after taking into consideration
every extenuating circumstance, we can scarcely pardon.
It is when she so gaily describes to her daughter the
revolt of the Breton peasants, and the horrible severities
with which it was repressed. So long as she confines
38 MADAME DE SE VIGNE.
herself to mocking the States, the country squires,
laughing at their amazing feasts, and enthusiastic haste
to get over the voting between mid-day and one o'clock,
and all the other follies of her Breton neighbours after
dinner, it is all very well, a proper and legitimate kind
of fun, which in some places recalls the flavour of
Moliere. But as soon as the trenches are opened in
the province, and a colique pierreuse is reported from
Rennes that is to say, when the governor, M. de
Chaulnes, wishing to disperse the people by his presence,
has been driven back to his house by stones ; from
the moment M. de Forbin arrives with six thousand
soldiers against the rioters, and when the poor devils,
seeing the royal troops in the distance, disband and try
to escape through the fields, or throw themselves on
their knees, crying Mea culpa, for they know no French,
only their own patois ; when, to punish Rennes, its
Parlement was removed to Vannes ; when five-and-
twenty or thirty men, taken haphazard, were hanged ;
when they drove into banishment all the inhabitants
of one great street, sick women, old men, and little
children, forbidding any one to shelter them under pain
of death, torturing by the rack and the wheel, and then
setting the victims free by hanging them, in the
midst of such horrors, perpetrated against poor, inno-
cent, homeless people, it pains us to find Mme. de
Sevigne' making playful remarks, almost as on some
ordinary subject. We should expect her to be full of
generous, angry indignation ; but above all we should
like to erase from her letters lines like these : " The
rebels of Rennes escaped long ago, so the innocent suffer
for the guilty ; but it is all right, provided the four
thousand soldiers who are at Rennes, under MM. de
Forbin and de Vins, do not hinder me from wandering
about in my woods, which I find marvellously grand
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 39
and solemnly beautiful." And elsewhere : " They have
arrested sixty townsmen, and to-morrow they begin to
hang. This province is a good example to others,
particularly to teach respect for governors, not to insult
them, nor to throw stones in their gardens." And
again, and lastly : " You speak very complacently of our
distress ; we are no longer si rouds* the rack once a week
is sufficient for justice, mere hanging seems a refreshing
process now." The Due de Chaulnes, who urged all this
vengeance because some one had thrown stones in his
garden, and said some insulting things to him, of which
the mildest was fat pig, was not lowered an atom in
the good graces of Mme. de Se"vignd ; he remained to her
always, and to Mme. de Grignan, who was as devoted
to him, " our good Duke ;" more than this, when he was
appointed ambassador at Eome, and left the province,
all Brittany was overwhelmed with sorrow. Certainly,
we have here matter for much reflection on the customs
and civilisation of the great century ; our readers can
easily fill in the gap. We can only regret that on this
occasion Mme. de Sevigne was not superior to her time ;
she might worthily have been so, for her kindness of
heart equalled her beauty and grace. It happened
occasionally that she desired to recommend a convict
to the merciful consideration of M. de Vivonne or M.
de Grignan. The most interesting of these proteges
was certainly a gentleman of Provence, whose name has
not been preserved. "This unfortunate youth," she
wrote, " was attached to the service of M. Fouquet, and
was convicted of having rendered him the service of
transmitting a letter from him to Mme. Fouquet ; for
this he has been condemned to the galleys for five years.
This is a rather unusual case. You understand, he is
one of the most honest fellows one could meet with,
* So much broken on the wheel as we were.
40 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
and as fit for the galleys as to try and take the moon
by the horns."
Mme. de Sdvigne's style has been so often and so
ably judged, analyzed, admired, that it is difficult now
to find any words of praise which would be at the same
time new and suitable to apply to her ; and, on the
other side, we do not feel at all disposed to revive the
commonplace by cavil and criticism. A single general
observation will suffice ; it is, that we may ascribe the
grand and beautiful styles of Louis the XIV.'s time to
two different methods, two distinct and opposing man-
nerisms. Malherbe and Balzac endowed our literature
with its learned, masterly polish, in the creation of
which the faculty of expression arose, though gradually,
slowly, after many hesitating efforts. This careful style
Boileau took every opportunity of encouraging : " Revise
your work twenty times," he says ; " polish and repolish
it unweariedly." He boasts of having with difficulty
taught Racine to make fluent verses. Racine may be
considered the most perfect model of this highly polished
style. Fiddlier was less happy in his prose than Racine
as a poet. But, distinct from this manner of composition,
in which there is always a certain academical uniformity,
there exists another very different style, fickle, uncon-
strained, and versatile, following no traditional method,
conformable to all diversities of talent and to every
variety of genius. Montaigne and Regnier havefurnished
us with excellent examples of this style, and Queen
Marguerite * has given us one charming specimen in her
familiar Me"moires, the work of a few after-dinner hours.
This is the full, wide, flowing style, which better suits
the present taste, impulsive, off-hand, so to speak,
like Montaigne himself; the style also of La Fontaine,
Moliere, of F<;neloii and Bossuet, of the Due de Saint-
* Of Savoy.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 41
Simon and of Mme. de Sevigne". A style in which the
latter excels, she allows her pen to run along with a
very loose rein, and as she goes on, she scatters her wealth
of imagery, of comparison, and glowing colour, while
wit and sentiment slip from her unawares. Thus,
without effort, and with no suspicion of it herself, she
takes first rank among the great writers in our
language.
"The sole artifice of which I dare suspect Mme. de
SevigneY' says Mme. Necker, "is that of frequently
using general and consequently rather vague expressions,
which, from her manner of arranging them, may be
compared to a flowing robe, a shapeless garment, the
fashion of which an artistic hand may model at will."
The comparison is ingenious, but there is not necessarily
any author's artifice in this style, common to her epoch.
Before exactly adjusting itself, or adapting itself to such
a vast variety of dissimilar ideas, the language has
amplified its powers in all directions, and has thus
become possessed of a rich facility of diction and a
singular grace of phraseology. As soon as the epoch of
analysis is past, and a language has been cut and carved,
and elaborated into use, the indefinable charm is lost,
and it is in the attempt to return to former conditions
that real artifice consists.
And now, if in all we have said, we appear to some
prejudiced minds to have carried our admiration for
Mme. de Sevigne* too far, will they allow ITS to ask
them a question : Have you read Mme. de Sevigne" ?
And by reading we do not mean running through some
chance collection of her letters, not merely forming an
opinion from two or three which enjoy a classical renown,
such as her letters on the intended marriage of Made-
moiselle, on the death of Vatel, of M. de Turenne, of M.
de Longueville, but going thoroughly, page by page,
42 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
through the ten volumes of letters (and we specially
recommend the edition of M. Monmerqu^ and M. de
Saint-Surin), following, to use her own expression, every
thread of her ideas. Read her, in fact, as you would
Clarissa Harlowe, when you have a fortnight's rainy
leisure in the country ; and after this test, not a very
terrible one, you will share in our admiration, if you
have the courage to confess it, always supposing that
it has been still remembered.
MADAME DE STAEL.
1835-
I.
WHEN revolution has changed society, no sooner has
the lowest depth been reached, than we begin lovingly
to turn our thoughts backward, and to distinguish
among the varied pinnacles soaring on the horizon,
certain giant forms which hold themselves apart as the
divinities of certain places. This personification of the
genius of times in illustrious individuals is not a pure
illusion of perspective ; distance certainly favours such
points of view, separates, perfects, but does not create
them. There are true and natural representatives of
every moment of social life ; although, from a little
distance, the number decreases, and detail becomes
less complex, till at last only one prominent summit
remains. Corinne, from afar, stands out distinct and
clear on Cape Misene.*
The French Revolution, which in every crisis had its
great men, possessed also its brilliant and heroic women,
whose names are associated with the experiences of each
successive phase. As the old society died out, it had
its innocent victims, its captives, who were crowned
with a brilliant halo of glory in prisons or on scaffolds.
The bourgeoisie, rising rapidly, produced very quickly
An allusion to a scene in Cerinne. TR.
43
44 MADAME DE STAEL.
their heroines, and also their victims. Later on, ere
the storm had lulled, groups of famous women arose,
who have glorified that reanimation of social life and
the enjoyments of wealth. The Empire also had its
distinguished women, exercising, however, at that time
but little influence. At the Restoration we discover
the name of some noble woman who worthily represents
the manners and dispassionate opinions of the Empire.
But the many successive celebrities who are closely
connected with every phase of the Eevolution, all at
last find themselves grouped round one single celebrity.
who includes them all within herself, reconciles them
aH together, participates in the brilliancy and devotion
which appertains to them, takes her part in raising
the standard of politeness and energy, sentiment and
courage, inspiring intellect with noble aims, then en-
circling all these gifts by the genius which obtains for
them immortal honour.
A child of the Reformation through her father, Mine,
de Stael was linked by education, and by the traditions
of her early youth, to the salons of the old world. The
personages among whom she grew up, and who smiled
on her precocious flight, were those who formed the
most intellectual circle of these waning years of former
times : reading about 1810, at the time she was most
persecuted, the Correspondence of Mine, du Deffand
and Horace Walpole, she found herself wonderfully
moved at the remembrance of that great world, in which
she had been acquainted with many famous people, and
in which every family was known to her. If her early
attitude, then, was remarkable for a kind of sentimental
animation, which certain envious aristocrats censured,
she was destined by the very impulsiveness of her elo-
quence to convince her hearers always and everywhere.
But even in this quiet, peaceful circle she had already
MADAME DE STAl-.L. 45
become an undoubted ornament, and she went forth to
continue, on a less stereotyped but grander model, a series
of salons as illustrious as were those salons of the old
French regime. Mme. de Stael had inherited sufficient
of the charm and of the manner of these former times ;
but she did not depend on that heritage, for, like most
geniuses, she was distinguished in an unusually eminent
degree for the universality of her intelligence, her
capacity for affection, and a constant necessity for new
sensations. Besides the traditional and already classic
success of Mme. du Deffand and Mme. de Beaxivau,
which she had adopted as her style, blended with her
own originality, she was inspired by the fresh energy,
the plebeian genius, and the courage of the republican
spirit. The heroism of Mme. Roland and Charlotte
Corday found its echo in her heart ; her exquisite
sympathy with noble aspirations never failed. True
Bister of Andre Chenier by instinct and devotion, she
had her eloquent cry of sorrow for the queen, as he
uttered his for the king (Louis XVI.), and she would
have gone to the bar of justice to defend her had there
been a remote chance of saving her. She suffered soon ;
and in her book on The Influence of the Passions, she
expresses all the sadness of virtuous Stoicism in these
times of oppression when one could do nothing but die.
Under the Directorate, her writings and her con-
versation, without excluding the preceding qualifications,
are more severe in tone ; she supports the cause of
philosophy, of perfectibility, of a moderate and liberal
republic, just as the widow of Condorcet might have
done. It was a little later than in the preface to
Literature considered in connection with Social Institutions,
that she expressed this bold idea : " Some of Plutarch's
lives, a letter of Brutus to Cicero, some of the words of
Cato of Attica in the language of Addison, some reflcc-
46 MADAME DE STAEL.
tions with which hatred of tyranny inspired Tacitus,
revives the spirit which contemporaneous events would
blast." This did not hinder her from, at the same time,
showing the pleasure she took in the renewal of old
friendships as soon as they reappeared from exile. And
at this time she welcomed, and with all her heart appre-
ciated, the fame of the most highly esteemed woman of
her time,* the purest, and the most accomplished ; she
encircled herself with these friends as with a garland,
while Les Lettres de Brutus are still half read, and M. de
Montmorency smiles pityingly on her. Thus, step by
step, or at once, the intellectual impulse of the salons of
the eighteenth century, the vigour of new hopes and
large enterprises, the sadness of Stoic patriotism with
the renewing of gracious friendships, and the access to
modern elegance, influenced in various ways that soul
as changeable as it was truly complete. And later,
on her return to France, after the Empire, in the too
few years she lived, we find her grasping with equal
promptitude the meaning of necessary transactions,
while her frequent friendships in these times, with
persons like Mine, de Duras, furnish the last touch
required to give to her life every characteristic shade
of the social phases through which she passed, from the
half philosophical and innovating salon of her mother,
to the liberal royalty of the Restoration. Regarding it
from this point of view, Mme. de StaeTs existence is
altogether like a great empire, which she is ceaselessly
occupied, no less than that other conqueror, her con-
temporary and oppressor, in completing and augment-
ing. But it is not in a material sense that she acts, it
is not province after province, and one kingdom after
another, that her indefatigable activity covetously re-
quires ; it is in the ordering of her mind that she
* Mme. R6camier.
MADAME DE STAEL. 47
ceaselessly expands ; it is the multiplicity of noble ideas,
of profound sentiments, of enviable intercourse, that
she seeks to organize in and around herself. Yes, during
these years when her life was complete and powerful,
instinctively, and as a consequence of the sympathy and
impetuous curiosity of her nature, she aspired, and
we say it in her praise, she aspired to a vast court, to
an empire increasing in intelligence and affection, where
nothing gracious or important was omitted, where all
degrees of talent, of birth, of patriotism, and of beauty,
were enthroned under her own eyes : empress of thought,
she loved to confine within the limits of her free dominion
all the appanages of her state. When Bonaparte perse-
cuted her, he was vaguely angry at that rivalry which,
unconsciously to herself, she assumed.
The dominating charm in Mme. de Stael's character,
the chief point in which all the contrasts of that
character were united,. the quick and penetrating faculty
which, passing from one thing to another, supported
that marvellous medley, was most certainly conversa-
tion, an impromptu eloquence, which sprang quick
and sudden from the divine depths of her soul, this,
properly speaking, was what constituted for her la vie,
a magical expression which she has used so often, and
which, following her example, we must employ very
often in speaking of her. Her contemporaries are all
unanimous on this point ; if you admire or are touched
by some clever or brilliant pages of her books, it may
always be said of her, as of the great Athenian orator :
" Imagine how grand that would have sounded spoken
in her own voice." Adversaries and critics, who so
readily assume to themselves a superiority fit to contend
against the pre-eminence of any individual who seems
too great and perfect in their eyes, who take some
already acknowledged work of talent and bring it into
48 MADAME DE STAEL.
competition against the new claimant for honour,
render on this point due homage to Mme. de Stael, an
interested homage, it may be, and even rather treacher-
ous, but quite equal to that of her admirers. Fontanes, in
1800, ended the famous articles of the Mercure by these
words : " In writing she still supposed herself to be
conversing. All who heard her applauded. I had not
heard her when I criticised her." For a very long
time, indeed, Mme. de Stael's writings reflected the
mannerisms of her conversational style. Reading her
fluent and sparkling productions, one might almost
believe one heard her voice. A slightly careless manner
of sketching her subject, a flighty style quite allowable
in conversation, but noticeable to a reader, alone forces
one to observe a change in the mode of expression,
which requires more conciseness. Still, superior as
Mme. de Stael's conversation may have been to her
writings, at least as far as her earlier works are con-
cerned, we do not find her like some great debaters and
orators, such as Mirabeau and Diderot, who, after the
mariner of Talma, powerful and famous though they
were in their display of eloquence, have left us no
written testimony at all equal to their influence and
their glory ; she, on the contrary, has left us plenty of
enduring work to testify most worthily of her talent,
and posterity has no need of borrowed explanations,
nor of a long array of contemporaneous testimony in
her favour. Perhaps, and M. de Chateaubriand has
remarked this in the judgment he pronounced on her
about the time she died, to make her works more
perfect, it would be quite sufficient to deprive her of
one of her talents, namely, conversation. However,
just as we find her in reality, so she very beautifully
accomplishes her task as an author. Despite some
faults of style, M. de Chateaubriand has said in the
MADAME DE STAS.L. 49
same place, she will add one more to the list of names
which can never die. Her writings, indeed, even with
all their imperfections in point of detail, their quick,
hurried glimpses, their looseness or want of continuity,
often serve the better to interpret the rare conception
of her impulsive, sensitive heart ; 'and then, as a work of
poetic art, Corinne alone will stand as her immortal
monument. In Corinne, Mme. de Stae'l displays artistic
qualities of the highest order, while otherwise she will
for ever be eminent in virtue of her talents as politician,
moralist, critic, and writer of memoires. It is this
uniform yet varied life, the soul breathing through her
writings, stirring about them, and the circumstances
under which they were composed, which we would try
to conjure up, in some places to concentrate, in order to
convey to others the profound impression we ourselves
have formed of them. We know how delicate a task it
is to make this half-conjectural and altogether poetic
impression accord with the still freshly remembered
reality, how immediate contemporaries have always
some peculiarity to oppose to the idea we desire to
conceive of the person they have known ; we also know,
that in the arrangement of such a stormy, changeful
life, there are many slips in the general design which
distance of time adjusts ; but this is rather a sketch
than a biography, a reflex of moral portraiture in the
form of a literary critique ; and, moreover, I have
tried, in describing the general characteristics of this
noble-minded woman, to remember, and to take into
consideration, many more minute details than it is
possible to mention.
Mile. Germain Necker, growing up betwixt the rather
rigid severity of her mother, and the half-playful,
half-encouraging criticism of her father, naturally was
more influenced by the latter, and she early became an
D
SO MADAME DE STAEL.
infant prodigy. She had her place in the salon, on a
little wooden stool close to Mine. Necker's chair, who
made her hold herself very straight and stiff ; Mme.
Necker, however, was unable to constrain the child's
replies to the questions put to her by celebrities such as
Grimm, Thomas, Raynal, Gibbon, and Marmontel, who
enjoyed crowding round her, provoking opinions from
her, and never finding her at fault. Mme. Necker de
Saussurehas graphicallydescribed her wonderful powers,
at this early age, in the excellent sketch of her cousin
she has written. Mile. Necker then read books much
beyond her age, went to the play, and afterwards wrote
down her recollections of it ; when quite a child, her
favourite game was to cut out paper figures of kings and
queens and make them perform tragedies ; these were her
marionettes, as Goethe had his. The dramatic instinct,
the craving for emotional sensation, was apparent in
everything she did. When only eleven, Mile. Necker
wrote portraits and character studies, according to the
fashion of the time. At fifteen, she had written extracts
from the L'Esprit des Lois, with marginal notes ; and at
the same age, in 1781, after the publication of the
C&mpte-rendu, she wrote an anonymous letter on the
subject to her father, who, however, recognised his
daughter's style of writing. But her ruling character-
istic was that extreme sensibility, which, towards the
end of the eighteenth century, and chiefly under the
influence of Jean-Jacques, began to dominate youthful
hearts sensibility which afforded such a singular
contrast to the excessive analysis and the incredulous
pretension of the waning century. In that rather
inordinate recoil upon the powerful instincts of nature,
reverie, melancholy, pity, enthusiastic admiration of
genius, virtue, and misfortune, the sentiments which
La Nouvelle Hdlo'ise had propagated, took a strong hold
MADAME DE STAEL. 51
of Mile. Necker, and impressed all the first part of her
life and her work with a tone of ingenuous exaggeration,
which is not without its charm, even when it draws
forth a smile. This disposition was first manifested
in her enthusiastic admiration of her father, an en-
thusiasm which time and death only increased, but
which sprang up in these early years, and which at
certain moments almost took the form of jealousy of
her mother. In her life of M. Necker, when speaking of
the long time he spent in Paris when still young and
unmarried, she says : " Sometimes in his conversations
with me in his exile, he would describe to me that
period of his life, the thought of which moved me
deeply, that time when I could imagine him so young,
so loveable, so lonely ! at an age when, if fate had made
us contemporaries, our destinies might have been
united for ever ; " but she added : " My mother required
a husband who could not be compared with other men ;
she found him, spent her life with him, and God
preserved her from the misfortune of outliving him . . .
she deserved happiness better than I did." This
adoration of Mme. de Stael for her father is, with more
solemnity and certainly not less depth, the inversion
and counterpart of the sentiment Mme. de Sevigne had
towards her daughter; it is refreshing to meet with
such pure and ardent affections in such brilliant minds.
As regards Mme. de Stael, one can account for the
warmth and continuity of her filial worship ; in all the
disappointments of her life, in the gradual extinction of
all illusions of the heart and of the imagination, only
one human being, one alone among all this so beloved
of old, was for ever in her thoughts, a pure and stainless
love, which time never diminished ; on that revered head
rested, immortal and already glorified, all the otherwise
vanished passion of her youth.
52 MADAME DE STA&L.
At that age of enthusiasm, romantic, dreaming love,
and the obstacles it encountered, and fearlessness of
suffering and death, were, next to her peculiar adoration
of her father, the cherished sentiments of her heart, of
that heart so quick and sensitive, which even joy moved
to tears. She preferred to write on such subjects, and
did so surreptitiously, as also by stealth she read certain
books which Mme. Necker would have forbidden. I
can almost see her in the study, under her mother's
very eyes, walking up and down the room, a volume in
her hand, reading the book she was obliged to read
as she approached her mother's chair, and then, as she
slowly walked away again, replacing it by a sentimental
romance, perhaps some novel of Mine. Riccoboni's.
In after years, she said that the abduction of Clarissa
was one of the events of her youth, an expression which
sums up a whole world of first emotions ; whether it be
Apropos of Clarissa or of some other hero or heroine,
every tender and poetic imagination ought to echo this.
The earliest printed work of Mile. Necker's, if it was
really hers, must have been a volume called Letters
from Nanine to Simphel, which M. Beuchot seems to
attribute to our authoress, but which was, in course
of time (1818), disowned. This little romance, which
treats of nothing unusual for an enthusiastic and
innocent young girl to have imagined, and the plot of
which scarcely differs from those of Sophie, of Mirza,
or of Pauline, and other early productions, shows even
greater inexperience as regards style and composition.
I find nothing remarkable in it, either as regards the
style of language or the rustic colouring, peculiar to a
heroine of fourteen, except these words of Nanine :
" I succeeded yesterday morning in going to the tomb ;
there I wept a torrent of tears, precious tears, which love
and sorrow lend to unhappy people like me. A heavy
MADAME DE STAEL. 53
shower which came on made me think that nature felt
my grief. Each leaf seemed to weep with me ; the
birds were silenced by my sighs. This idea made such
an impression on my soul, that I uttered aloud my
earnest prayers to the Eternal Being. Unable to
remain longer in that deserted place, I returned home
to hide my sorrow," etc.
Sophie, or Secret Sentiments, written when Mme. de
Stae'l was twenty, about 1786, or rather earlier, is a
dramatic poem, the scene of which is laid in an English
garden, shaded by cypress trees, and with a funereal
urn in the distance. Cecile, a child of six, runs up to
the melancholy Sophie, whom a silent passion devours,
and addresses her thus :
"Why then so far away from us do you remain?
My father is distressed.
Sophie. Your father?
Clcile. Yes, dearest ; he fears that you are melancholy.
Explain that word to me."
This was just how Mile. Necker abruptly asked the
old Marechale de Mouchy, one day, what she thought of
love ; a joke which M. Necker was fond of relating
about his daughter, and which she was fond of
recalling to his memory.
There was, even if not visible in her earlier writings,
certainly, in Mme. de StaeTs nature, a vivacity closely
allied to sadness, a spirituelle petulance along with the
melancholy, a piquant tendency to turn herself into
ridicule, which saved her from the least approach to
heaviness, and testified to the vigorous strength of her
mind.
It is in that poem called Sophie that we find the
charming lines which, the author's personal friends still
recall with pleasure : when heard for the first time, one
marvels at not knowing them, asking where could
54 MADAME DE STA&L.
Mine, de Stael have said them, no one dreama of
finding that beautiful, half-buried pearl where it is.
Mais un jour vous saurez ce qu'eprouve le cceur,
Quand un vrai sentiment n'en fait pas le bonlieur ;
Lorsque sur cette terre on se sent delaissee,
Qu'on n'est d'aucun objet la premiere pensee ;
Lorsque Ton peut souffrir, sur que ses douleurs
D'aucun mortel jamais ne font couler les pleurs.
On se desenteresse a la fin de soi meme,
On cesse de s'aimer, si quelqu'un ne nous aitne ;
Et d'insipides jours, 1'un sur 1'autre entasses,
Se passeut lentemeut et sout vite effaces.*
Acte II. Scene viii.
The three novels published in 1795, although written
ten years earlier, Mirza, Adelaide and Theodore, Pauline,
are exactly in the same style as Sophie, and their easy
prose makes them more attractive. They are invariably
(whether the scene is laid among African savages or in
the depths of an English forest) about unfortunate
people enveloped in a cloud of sentimental misery,
lovers reduced to shadows by the disastrous tidings of
infidelity, or there is a tomb half buried among trees.
As I read of these blighted hopes and untimely deaths,
I think of the good Abbe" Prevost and his very similar
characters ; or, more correctly speaking, I find myself
really walking in the woods of Saint-Ouen, where
* Perhaps you soon will know the aching of a heart,
When even noble thoughts no happiness impart ;
When in this world we feel ourselves forsaken,
And of our woes no tender heed is taken ;
When one must suffer, certain that one's grief
From friendship's tears will find no sweet relief:
And so, at length, of one's sad lot made weary,
Beloved by none, and palled by life so dreary,
The dull, insipid days pass one by one ;
And time's slow sands to quick oblivion run. TR.
MADAME DE STARL. 55
Mile. Necker dreamed, or in the gardens of
Ermenonville, where her many pilgrimages brought
inspiration. I know under which shady alley one
heroine strolled, from which leafy avenue another
rushed in tears. Yet the time spent here must have
been very short, and in her early youth. Later, still
quite soon enough, stricken by the spectacle of public
passion, perhaps also warned by some wound, she
would experience a reaction against that development
of extreme sensibility of which she was conscious. In
her book on The Influence of the Passions, she tries to
combat them, she would suppress them ; but even her
accusing accents are full of it still, and that forced tone
only appears the more passionate. However great the
tendency to stoicism may appear to be in Delphine, she
will for ever remain the most bewitching genius of love.
M. de Guibert wrote a sketch of Mile. Necker j\ist
as she reached her twentieth year, a brilliant portrait,
quoted by Mme. Necker de Saussure. The study is
said to be borrowed from a Greek poet, and very aptly
expresses the prevailing taste of society at that time ;
it is known that the portraits of the Duke and Duchess
de Choiseul were written by the Abbe" Barthelemy
under the names of Arsame and Ph^dime. Here are
a few of the characteristics of M. de Guibert's Zulmd :
"Zulm is only twenty years old, but she is already
one of the most honoured priestesses of Apollo ; it is
she whose incense is most pleasant to him, and whose
voice he prefers to any other. . . . Her great black
eyes sparkle with the light of genius ; her ebony locks
fall in rich profusion on her shoulders ; her features
are more marked than gentle, there is something in
them which promises more than the usual fate of her
sex." I have myself seen a portrait* of Mile. Necker
* Portrait by Rehberg. TR.
56 MADAME DE STAEL.
in her youth, which comfirms this description. She
had wavy hair, a clear and frank expression, a high
forehead, and lips apart as if about to speak, the blush-
ing cheeks spoke of quick and sensitive feelings ; the
neck and arms were bare, her dress gathered together
in loose folds by a sash. This picture might be the
Sophie in Emile, the author of the Lettres sur Jean-
Jacques accompanying her admirable guide in his
Elysian fields, pleased with all his efforts, at one time
following in his footsteps, at another going on before.
The Lettres sur Jean-Jacques, written in 1787, really
form the first of Mine, de Stael's serious works, the
production in which she makes it apparent that her
intellectual inclinations are already armed with the
eloquence and solidity till then only vaguely tried.
Grimm, in his Correspondence, gives extracts from this
charming work, as he calls it, of which there were only
twenty copies printed at first, yet notwithstanding the
cautious reserve maintained in its distribution, it did
not long escape the honour of a public edition. Before
giving any extracts from the book, the gifted habitud
of Mine. Necker's salon bestows much praise on the
authoress, describing her as "this young lady, sur-
rounded by all the illusions of her age, all the pleasures
of the city and of the court, all the homage which her
own celebrity and her father's fame brought her, all
this without taking into account her desire to please,
which of itself would probably have been as effective
as all the accessories which nature and art have lavished
on her." The Letters on Jean-Jacques are her grateful
homage to the admired and favourite author, to him
with whom Mme. de Stael had so much in common.
Many writers are careful to keep silent about, or else
they criticise, the literary parents from whom they
spring : it shows a noble candour to appear in public
MADAME DE STA1LL. 57
for the first time acknowledging and glorifying him to
whom we owe our inspiration, from whom to us has
flowed that broad stream of beautiful language, for
which in olden times Dante rendered thanks to Virgil ;
thus also, in her literary life, Mme. de Stael displays
her filial passion. The Letters on Jean-Jacques are a
poem, but a poem nurtured on grave thoughts, while at
the same time varied by delicate observations, a poem
with the bold, sustained rhythm recognisable in Corinne
as she descends the steps of the Capitol. All the future
works of Mme. de Stael of every description, whether
romantic or political, or relating to social morality, are
shadowed in the rapid, harmonious eloquence of that
eulogy of Rousseau's work, just as a great musical
composition manifests all the latent depth of its con-
ception in the overture. The success of these Letters,
which corresponded with the sympathetic impulses of
the time, was immense and universal.
Grimm agrees with this (but according to a com-
municated manuscript), and gives an extract from the
Eloge de M. de Guibert (1789), since printed in the com-
plete edition of the works. Mme. de StaeTs admiration
for the object of this Eloge is not less enthusiastic than
it had been immediately before for Jean - Jacques,
although in the latter case the sentiment may seem less
impartial ; but in this work she has propagated new and
daring political views, and is too lavish in her persuasive
deification of and belief in genius. Through all the
exaggerated pathos with which she pleads the cause of
moderation, she yet succeeds in enlisting our pity and
esteem for that distinguished man, so much admired
and envied in his time, though quite forgotten since,
and who henceforth will be remembered only through
her. M. de Guibert, in his discourse on his admission
to the Academy, very often used the word glory, thus
58 MADAME DE STAEL.
involuntarily betraying, she says, his majestic spirit.
For my own part, I have to thank that nobly ambitious
and misunderstood man of genius for my earliest
comprehension of the means and ideas of reform, of
the States- General, and of a force of citizen soldiers,
but I render him special thanks for having, with such
sure and certain confidence, foretold the coming great-
ness of Corinne.
Worldly honour and literary fame brought upon
Mine, de Stael about this time the impertinent banter
of the wits, just as, a little later, in 1800, we again find
them in league against her. Champcenetz and Rivarol,
who, in 1788, had published the Petit Dictionnaire des
(hands Hommes, compiled two years later another Petit
Dictionnaire des Grands Hommes de la Revolution, which
they solemnly dedicated to the Baroness de Stael,
^Ambassadress from Sweden to the Nation? This pamphlet
gave the tone to the criticisms which were subsequently
circulated against her. Rivarol and Champcenetz pos-
sessed, indeed, the same wonderful faculty for irony and
caricature, which Fiev^e, Michaud, and others after-
wards displayed against Mine, de Stael. But by this
time, as Grimm says, the object of those attacks had
gained such celebrity that criticisms of such a nature
were harmless. The terrible events of the French
Revolution occurred to cut short that first part of a
literary life, so brilliantly inaugurated, and to suspend,
usefully, I believe, for thought, the whirl of worldly
pleasures, which gave no respite.
Notwithstanding her absolute faith in M. Necker,
her complete adoption of his views, and the detailed
vindication of his political opinions which she sets
forth in her book of Reflections on the French Revolution,
it must be remembered that Mme. de Stael, in her youth
and enthusiasm, at that time ventured even further than
MADAME DE STAEL. 59
he did in the same theories. She did not agree with the
complications of the English constitution ; and on
many points she was more advanced than even the
constitutional royalists of that enlightened generation,
Narbonne, Montmorency, or even La Fayette himself.
Indeed, if from this date it is necessary to assign a
particular line of politics to a judgment so swayed by
sentiment, we should be more correct to say that Mme.
cle Stael was influenced rather by the constitutional
royalists of '91, than by the group composed of MM.
Malouet, Monnier, and Necker. We find, besides, in a
journalistic article of hers which has been preserved,
the only written expression of her opinions at this
epoch ; she there, under the immediate impression of
his loss, extols the departed Mirabeau, a favourable
judgment which, however, she afterwards retracts.
Mme. de Stael left Paris, though not without some
danger and difficulty, after the 2nd of September. She
spent the year of Terror in the department of Vaud,
with her father and some refugee friends, M. de
Montmorency and M. de Jaucourt.
From the terrace gardens of Coppet, on the banks of
the Lake of Geneva, her thoughts were chiefly occupied
in comparing the glorious sunshine and the peaceful
beauty of nature with the horrors everywhere per-
petrated by the hand of man. Excepting her eloquent
cry of pity for the queen,* and the poem on Misfortune,
her genius observed a scrupulous silence : like the regular
stroke of the oars on the surface of the lake, there came
from afar the hollow echo of the axe upon the scaffold.
The condition of agonized depression in which Mine.
de Stael existed during these terrible months, left her,
in the intervals of her devoted exertions for others, no
desire for herself but death, a longing for the end of
* The Defence of the Queen, published in 1793. Tit.
60 MADAME DE STA&L.
the world, and of that human race which could permit
such horrors. " I would," she says, " have made even
thought a reproach to myself, because it was separate
from sorrow." The 9th Thermidor gave her back
that faculty of thought more energetic after its
paralysis, arid the use she promptly put it to was the
composition of her Reflections upon Peace, the first
part addressed to Pitt, and the second to the French.
As a display of profound commiseration and of calm
justice, and as an appeal to opinion not lost in fanati-
cism, to forget the past, to seek conciliation, and as an
expression of apprehension of the evils born of extremes,
this latter contains sentiments at once opportune and
generous, and indicates elevation of soul and of ideas.
There is an attitude of ancient inspiration in that
youthful womanly figure springing up and standing
on the still smoking ashes to exhort a nation. There is,
moreover, great political wisdom, and a thorough under-
standing of the real situation in the prematurely wise
counsel which her passionate accents unfold. As an
eyewitness of the daring success of fanaticism, Mine, de
Stael declares it to be one of the most formidable of
human weapons ; she considers it an inevitable element
in every struggle, and in times of revolution necessary
for victory, but she now desires to restrict it to her
own personal circle. Since fanaticism inclines towards
that republican form which it at last attained, she
invites all who are wise, all friends of honest liberty,
whatever views they may hold, to join together sincerely
in that new membership ; she solemnly implores the
bleeding hearts not to rise against an accomplished
fact. " It seems to me," she says, " that vengeance
(even if it is necessary in irreparable afflictions) cannot
bind itself to any particular form of government,
cannot make those political shocks desirable which
MADAME DE STAEL. 61
affect the innocent as well as the guilty." According
.to her, there is no period of a revolution more critical,
more opportune for intelligent effort and sacrifice, than
when fanaticism seeks to make popular the establish-
ment of a government purely democratic, and without
prestige if by any new misfortune, sober minds
should lend their consent to it. We perceive that she
treats fanaticism entirely as a physical power, as she
would speak of weight, a grand proof that her mind
rose superior to disaster. Convinced that action is the
result of diverse opinions, we find Mme. de Stae'l, in this
work, strenuously endeavouring to convince the French
in her own rank, the old constitutional royalists, of
the necessity for freely rallying round the established
order, so that they may bias temperately without
attempting to flatter. She says to them : " To oppose
yourselves to an experience as novel as was that of the
republic in France, when there were so many chances
against its success, so many evils to endure in order
to obtain it, is a very different thing from trying by
another kind of presumption to make as much blood
flow as has already been spilt, so that you may recover
the only government you consider possible, namely,
monarchy."
We feel that such conclusions must have appeared
too republican to many among those to whom she
addressed herself; they must also have seemed weak
to the pure conventionalists, and to those who were
republican from conviction. In her other works,
published up to 1803, we find Mme. de Stae'l becoming
more and more attached to that form of government,
and to those essential conditions which alone can
maintain it. Most of the philosophical principles
which helped in their development under the well-
composed and much-respected constitution of the year
62 MADAME DE STAL.
III., had in her a brilliant mouthpiece, during that ill-
appreciated period of her political and literary life.
It was not till later, and more especially towards the
latter years of the Empire, that the notion of the
English constitution seized upon her imagination.
In the volume of short pieces which Mme. de Stael
published in 1795, we find, besides three stories which
date from her girlhood, a charming Essay on Fiction, of
more recent date, and a little poem, called Misfortune,
or Adcle and Edouard, written while under the influence
of the Terror. It is remarkable that at such a time,
when all her usual talents were, as it were, suspended
or crushed, the art of song, of poetry, should have
visited her, coming as a comfort and occupation ; and
this manifests the wonderful power of poetry to soothe
even the most secret grief, of which it is the instinctive
plaint, the melodious sigh which nature craves, a
language of surpassing sweetness, in which, when other
language fails, we can still pour out our sorrows. But
in this poetic romance, as in every attempt of this
description, intention with Mme. de Stael is better
than result ; sentiment prevails, is, as we have already
indicated, its chief aim, but she exclaims :
"Souvent les yeux fixds sur ce beau paysage
Dont le lac avec pompe agrandit les tableaux,
Je contemplais ces monts qui, formant son rivage,
Peignent leur cime auguste au milieu de ses eaux:
Quoi ! disais-je, ce palme ou se plait la nature
Ne peut-il penetrer dans mon ccsur agite ?
Et 1'homme seul, en proie aux peines qu'il endure,
De 1'ordre general serait-il excepte.''*
* Often when my eyes rest on that beautiful landscape, which
the lake reflects in all its grandeur, I contemplate those moun-
tains, which, rising from its banks, paint their summits in the
midst of its waters : Why ! I ask, can this calm which nature
MADAME DE STAZL. 63
This conception of the discord between a glorious
smiling nature and human suffering and death, has
inspired most of the poets of modern time to express
themselves in accents of bitterness or melancholy :
Byron, in the powerfully satirical introduction to
the second canto of Lara (" But mighty nature bounds
as from her birth ") ; Shelley, in the strained and pain-
ful ending of Alastor (". . . And mighty Earth, from
eea and mountain, city and wilderness," etc.) ; M. de
Lamartine, in the Dernier Pklerinage de Childe Harold
(" Tiiomphe, disait-il, immortelle Nature," etc.) ; and
M. Hugo, in one of the sunsets of his Feuilles cCAiitomne:
"Je m'en irai bientot au milieu de la Fete,
Sans que rien manque au Monde immense et radieux. "
Has not Corinne herself, on Cape Misene, uttered these
nobly inspired words, " Earth ! all bathed in blood
and tears, thou hast never ceased to bring forth fruit
and flowers ! Art thou, then, pitiless towards man 1
when his dust returns to thy bosom, dost thou not
thrill and tremble?" Now, how is it that a poet at
heart, as this poetic expression undoubtedly proves
Mme. de Stae'l to have been, yet renders her profound
sentiment in prose 1 Does it mean, as Mme. Necker de
Saussure explains, that the structure of poetry was an
art so perfected in France, that the labour it involved
to one not early accustomed to it, quenched the poetic
spirit ? Or does it mean, as a less indulgent critic has
conjectured, that being seldom able to subject herself,
even in her prose, to strict rules, Mme. d.e Stael was
probably less fit than any of her contemporaries to
yield herself gracefully to the bondage of rhyme.
so delights in, not penetrate to my restless heart ? Is man
only a prey to the torments which he bears, is he alone to be
exempt from nature's rule ? TR.
64 MADAME DE STAEL.
Besides, we find many eminent writers severely correct,
accomplished, and artistic in their prose, who are yet
unable, in consequence of that new individuality of
style, to express themselves skilfully and fluently in
verse. And again, does not one of our greatest and
most melodious poets offer us the singular example of
intentional carelessness, in his poetry as well as in his
prose writings? It is better, therefore, to recognise,
that quite independently of either natural or acquired
style, poetry is a gift, like singing. Those whom the
Muse has destined to reach her beauteous realms,
arrive there as if on wings. With Mme. de Stael, aa
with Benjamin Constant, attempts of this kind were
indifferent. Thought, which with both is unconstrained
and distinguished in prose composition, does not spon-
taneously lend itself to the winged flight of poetry,
which to be properly conceived ought to take form
with the birth of the thought.
All Mme. de Stael's faculties were kept in constant
activity by the storms through which her impetuous
nature passed, and in every sense she made a rapid
flight. Her imagination, her delicate sensibility, her
penetrating power of analysis and judgment, mingled,
united,, and contributed all together in the production
of celebrated works. When the Essay on Fictions was
composed, it already included all the poetry of Delphine.
Wounded by the spectacle of reality, Mme. de StaeTa
imagination is touched, and she yearns to create things
happier and better ; troubles, even the remembrance of
which, or, at least, the story of them, will cause our
softest tears to flow. But, at the same time, every one
of Mme. de Stael's fictions, besides containing genuine,
natural romance, manifests her power of analyzing the
workings of human passion ; this is her aim, and it is
a purpose destitute of mythological, or allegorical, or
MADAME DE STA&L. 65
supernatural conceit, or of any philosophical intention
beyond the depth of ordinary readers.
Clementine, Clarisse, Julie, Werther, are the witnesses
she quotes to prove the infinite power of love, " be-
loved comforters," she calls them, and from the emotion
which the mention of their names inspires, it is easy to
foresee that a sister will very soon be born to them.
A note to this essay mentions, in terms of praise,
V 'Esprit des Religions, a work begun about this time
by Benjamin Constant, though not published till thirty
years later. Mme. de Stael became acquainted with
the author for the first time in Switzerland, about
September 1794 ; she had read several chapters of this
book, which, let us remark in passing, was in its first
draft more philosophic, and much more in accord with
the issues of the analysis of the eighteenth century,
than it afterwards grew to. The Essay on Fictions, with
its rapid fancies, gives us even at that time admired,
intense, and profound ideas, those delicious touches of
sentiment peculiar to Mme. de Stael, which, properly
speaking, form a poetry which is hers alone, her own
dreamy melody ; as she utters them, there seem to be
tears in the very accents of her thrilling voice. Yet
they are mere nothings, it is the tone alone which
strikes us ; as, for example : Dans cette vie qu'il faut
passer plutot que sentir, etc. II n'y a sur cette terre que
des commencements. . . . And this thought, so applicable
to her own works, "Yes, it is true, the book which
provides even a day's distraction from grief, is useful
to the best of men."
But this style of sentimental inspiration, this mys-
terious reflection from the depths of the heart, illumines
all her book on the Influence of the Passions, giving it
an indescribable charm, which, to certain melancholy
natures, and at a certain time of life, is surpassed by no
66 MADAME DE STAEL.
other literature, neither by the sadness of Ossian nor
the gloom of Oberman. Besides this, the first part of
the book is very remarkable from a political point of
view. The author, who has indeed discussed in full
only the influence of the passions on the happiness of
individuals, designed in the second part to try to examine
as to the influence of the same motives on the wel-
fare of societies, and the principal questions which
prognosticated that wide research are approached in an
eloquent introduction. In the beginning, held in check
by memories of that terrible past which still pursued
her, Mme. de Stael exclaims that she does not wish her
thoughts to dwell on it. " At that dread picture every
throb of anguish is revived ; one shudders, and hot
anger burns ; we would fight and die." Coming genera-
tions may be able calmly to study these last two years,
but for her it is impossible ; she does not wish to reason
about them, therefore she turns to the future ; she
separates generous ideas from evil men, and clears
certain principles from the crimes with which they
have been soiled ; she still hopes. Her judgment
on the English constitution is explicit ; she believes
that henceforth in France we might be satisfied with
some fictions hallowed by that aristocratic establishment
of our neighbours. She is not in favour of the antagon-
istic equilibrium of powers, but of their co-operation
in one uniform direction, through different rates of
progress. In all sciences, she says, we begin by the
most compound in order to arrive at the simplest ; in
mechanics, we had the water-wheels of Marly before
pumps came into use. " Without attempting to turn a
comparison into a proof, perhaps," she adds, " when,
a hundred years ago, in England, the idea of liberty
again dawned, the combined organization of the English
government was at the highest point of perfection it
MADAME DE STAEL. 67
could then attain ; but to-day, after the Revolution,
we in France, from a simpler basis, can show results
similar in some respects and superior in others."
France, then, from her own showing, ought to profit
from this grand experience, the misery of which lies in
the past and the hope in the future. " Allow us," she
says to Europe, " allow us in France to fight, conquer,
suffer, die, in our affections, in our most cherished
traditions, to be born again, it may be, afterwards for
the wondering admiration of the world ! . . . Are you
not glad that a whole nation should place itself in the
foremost rank of civilisation to bear the brunt of
all prejudices, to try all principles?" Marie- Joseph
Ohenier ought to have called to remembrance many
passages inspired by the generous and free spirit of
these hopeful years, rather than attack our author,
as in his Tableau de la Literature, he has done, for
a dubious expression which escaped her in regard to
Condorcet. Towards the end of the introduction, Mme.
de Stae'l speaks again of the influence of individual
passion, that science of mental happiness, that is to say,
of the least possible misery, and she finishes in language
of touching eloquence. The craving for devotion and
development, the pity to which the experience of grief
gives birth, the forethought and the anxiety to comfort, if
possible, the trials of one and of all ; as one might express
it, the motherly compassion of genius for all unfortunate
humanity, are very striking in these pages ; they over-
flow in words, the tone and accent of which cannot be
qualified. Nowhere so distinctly as in these admirable
pages, does Mme. de Stae'l manifest herself to be, what
she will remain for all time a cordial, kindly genius.
In her writings, her conversation, and in herself
personally, there was a healthy, soothing emotion, which
those who came in contact with her experienced, which
68 MADAME DE STAEL.
still survives, and will unfold itself to those who read
her works. Very different are such lofty geniuses, male
or female, as Lara or Le"lia (I speak of Lelia only, and
not of you, Genevieve ! Lavinia !)* In Mine, de
Stael, we find nothing arrogant or satirical against poor
humanity. Notwithstanding her penchant for match-
less symbols, which everywhere come flashing out in her
romances, she believed in the equality of the human
family : Mine. Necker de Saussure tells us that, even
as regards the intellectual faculties, the very small
original proportion of superior talent, which the most
eminent men possess over the average generality of
mankind, is of little real importance. But, whether from
theory or not, her natural impulse was not stayed ; her
impressive voice appeals first to all the good qualities
within us, rouses them, and puts new life into them.
Her intention is always sociable, her words always
conciliatory, influencing us to love our fellows. In this
book, The Influence of the Passions, she has expressed
many ideas which are also to be found in the Considdra-
tions sur la Revolution francaise of M. de Maistre,
written and published precisely at the same time ; but
what a different tone ! The scornful aristocrat, with
his hard, paradoxical orthodoxy, likes to set forth to
contemporaries and victims their posterity, who will
dance upon their tombs ; his powerful intellect judges
calmly, and with offensive rigidity. Mme. de Stael,
through some illusive vapours, frequently penetrates into
the future as deeply as M. de Maistre, but with the
spirit of one who feels her own part in it. I shall not
* In studying George Sand, I applied myself betimes to
discern the delicacy and pathos which I desired to see triumph-
ing over the passionate element and the bombastic style.
As the years passed, this great genius, without growing weak,
became much more refined.
MADAME DE STAEL. 69
analyze the book : let any one re-peruse the chapter on
Love ; it is the story of her heart, a throbbing yet half-
veiled heart, which has beat for thirty years, and it is
enough to let us know her. We can hear all round
her there the echoes of a thousand thoughts which will
nevermore be forgotten. One little passage among
many others which I often repeat, is in my memory :
The life of the soul is more active when on the throne
of a Caesar. If I linger too long on these older writings
of Mme. de Stael's, on this book, The Influence of the
Passions, and presently on that on Literature, it is
because through them she first became known to me ;
because I have read them, especially Influence, not at
five-and-twenty, as she advises, but earlier, at that time
of life when all is severe simplicity in politics as in
love, and full of solemn resolves ; when, believing
oneself the most unfortunate of beings, we ardently
dream of the progress and felicity of the world ; at
that age, which we ever more and more regret, when
the violence of confused hopes and disturbing passions
hides itself under a stoicism which we think will
last for ever, under the influence of which we could
renounce everything, because we are on the threshold
of feeling everything. Even now, these two works of
Mme. de Stael's, The Influence of the Passions and the
book on Literature, seem to me illustrious productions,
altogether peculiar to an epoch which was in its glory
during the time of the Directorate, or, as we may better
express it, of the constitution of the year III. They
could not have been written before ; nor could they
have been written afterwards, under the Empire. They
present to me, with an appearance of inexperience,
the poetry, and the exalted, enthusiastic, and pure
philosophy, of that republican period, the literary
counterpart of such a march as that of Moreau over
70 MADAME DE STAKL.
the Rhine, or of some early Italian battlefield. M. de
Chateaubriand, and all the reactionary movement of
1800, had not yet begun hostilities ; Mme. de Stael
alone propagated sentiment and poetic spiritualism,
but in the midst of the philosophy of the century.
Her book, The Influence of the Passions, was favourably
received : the Mercury, not yet revived as it was in
1800, gave extracts from it, accompanied by kindly
criticisms. Mme. de Stael had returned to Paris after
1795, and up to the period of her exile, she continued
to make long and frequent sojourns there. We do not
require to enter into details as to her political conduct,
the chief lines of which she has sketched in her
Considerations sur la Revolution francaise, and it would
be rather uncertain to try to supplement with particu-
lars from equivocal sources what she has not told us
herself. But in a very discriminating and very clever
article on Benjamin Constant, which the Revue des Deux-
Mondes has published, we are given an idea of Mme.
de Stael and of her then existing connections which
is quite incorrect, although consistent with general
prejudice, and which for these reasons we cannot help
correcting. Mme. de StaeTs salon in Paris is repre-
sented as the rendezvous of a cCterie of discontented,
blase" men, belonging both to the old and new regime,
quite incongruous in a pure republic, and hostile to
that honest establishment which was being so vainly
attempted. By way of contrast, Benjamin Constant is
made to appear as an ingenuous novice, inclined senti-
mentally towards moderate republicanism, and in
sympathy with these same patriotes, who in Mme. de
StaeTs salon are described to him as bloodthirsty
monsters. Correct and careful in his handling of
Benjamin Constant's politics, the ingenious writer has
not rendered equal justice to Mme. de Stael. Whatever
MADAME DE STA&L. 71
may have been, indeed, the unavoidable mixture in her
salon, as in all salons of that motley period, her wishes
were most manifestly in favour of the honourable and
reasonable, relative to the establishment of the year III.
Without paying too much heed to the opinion she
expresses thereupon in the Considerations, which might
possibly be suspected of after-rearrangement, we require
no further proof than her writings from 1795 to 1800,
and the visible results of her actions. As a rule, there
are two sorts of people whom it is unnecessary to
consult or believe either in regard to Mme. de Stael's
connections, or the part she herself played at this
period : on one side, the royalists, firmly adhering to
their old malice against her, accused her of absurd
confederacies, of Jacobin tendencies, indeed, of adher-
ence to the 18th Fructidor, and of I know not what ;
on the other side, there were those whose evidence
on the subject we ought not to challenge, the Con-
ventionnels, more or less ardent, who, themselves
favourable to the 18th Fructidor, and afterwards
adherents of the 18th Brumaire, finally served under the
Empire, they had never met this independent woman
except in the ranks of the opposition. The truest
political friends of Mme. de Stael at this time are to be
found in the enlightened and moderate group in which
we distinguish Lanjuinais, Boissy-d'Anglas, Cabanis,
Garat, Daunou, Tracy, and Che"nier. She esteemed
them, and courted their society ; the bond of friendship
which united her to some among them was very strong.
After the 18th Brumaire, keener interests bound them
to each other ; the opposition of Benjamin Constant to
the Tribunat was the last and strongest link.
When the book on Literature and Delphine appeared,
it was, as we shall see, only in that tribe of political
friends that she found zealous defenders against the
72 MADAME DE STA&L.
spite and fury of the opposite party. And now, allow
me to say at once, it is never my intention to make
Mine, de Stael out to be more cautious in thought,
more circumspect in regard to her friendships,* or more
exclusive, than she really was. She has always been
quite the contrary of exclusive. As her bold young
reason declared itself for that republican cause, her wit
and her tastes had a thousand sympathies with opinions
and sentiments of different origin, of a nature either
more frivolous or more delicate, but profoundly dis-
tinct ; it is one of her weaknesses, though redounding
to her honour, that she was able thus to reconcile
contrasts. If Garat, Cabanis, Che'nief, Ginguene,
Daunou, dined together at her house once a week, or
rather, once a de'cade (as it was still usual to say), the
other nine days were devoted to other friends, other
social customs, other shades of sentiment, which never
intruded upon those graver friends. All this, I can
well believe, was arranged by her with a certain degree
of order, of authority, perhaps : M. de Montmorency,
or any member of his set, was never by any chance to
be met at her house on the day that the writers of the
* An English poet and moralist, William Cowper, who is in
turn kindly and austere, although in speaking of France he is
at times severe almost to the extent of injustice, is not altogether
wrong when he describes the French (at the time of the American
War) as that nation of a restless, meddling disposition, which in-
terferes with everything at least, with most things. Mme. de
Stael could not help being even more French than most of her
compatriots. It therefore often happened that her eagerness for
development, her penetration, astonished people in England and
Holland ; eminent men of those reserved and prudent races were
surprised when they met her for the first time in society. (See
p. 88 of the book entitled Notice et Souvenirs Biographiques
de Comte Van Der Duyn, etc., collected and published by the
Baron de Grovestins, 1852.)
MADAME DE STAZL. 73
Decade philosophique met there to dine. Gingueu4
sometimes remarked this when leaving, and did not
seem to be too well pleased at this very particular
drawing of the line, which, in his opinion, was rather
suggestive of aristocratic exclusiveness. His com-
panions soon, however, soothed him into tolerance ;
while Mme. de Stael's high-bred amiability and
courteous gravity charmed all.
The book on Literature considered in connection with
Social Institutions, appeared in 1800, about a year before
that other glorious and rival publication, which was
already announced under the title of Beauties Moral
and Poetic of the Christian Religion. Although the book
on Literature may not since have had the direct effect
or the influence which might have been expected, its
appearance was at the time a great event in intellectual
circles, and it raised very violent discussion. We shall
try to review it, and to reanimate some of the actors in
the work, to call them up from those vast cemeteries
called journals, where they lie nameless.
We have frequently remarked upon the striking
difference which exists between the advanced political
principles of certain men, and the principles they
obstinately adhere to in literature. The liberals and
republicans have always scrupulously displayed classic
taste in their literary theories, and it is from the other
side that the brilliantly successful poetic innovation
has chiefly come. The book on Literature was destined
to precede this grievous inconsistency, and the intellect
which inspired it would certainly have borne fruit in
all directions, if the institutions of political liberty
necessary to natural development had not been suddenly
torn asunder, with all the ideas, moral and literary,
which resulted therefrom. In a word, the younger
generations, if they had had time to grow up under a
74 MADAME DE STAKL.
government either honestly directorial, or moderately
consular, might have been able to develop in themselves
an inventive, poetic, sentimental inspiration, which
would have harmonized with the results of modern
philosophy and enlightenment, even had there been
no literary advance except that catholic, monarchical,
and chivalric reaction, which has divided the noblest
i'aculties in all modern thought a divorce which has
not yet ceased.
The idea which Mme. de Stael never loses sight of in
this work is the spirit of modern progress ; each advance
she makes, each success, each hope, is for the undefined
perfectibility of the human race. This idea, the germ
of which we find in Bacon when he says, Antiquitas
sceculi juventus mundi; which M. Leroux (Revue
Encyclope'dique, March 1833) has explicitly demon-
strated as existing in the seventeenth century, by
quoting more than one passage from Fontenelle and
Perrault ; and which the eighteenth has propagated
in all senses, till Turgot, who made it the subject of his
Latin discourse at the Sorbonne, or Condorcet, who
preached most enthusiastic Lenten discourses on it,
this idea animated and directed all Mine, de StaeTs
energies. " I do not think," she says, " that this great
working out of the moral nature has ever been relin-
quished ; during the epochs of enlightenment, as in the
dark ages, the gradual progress of the human intellect
has never been interrupted." And again she says : " In
studying history, it appears to me that one acquires
the conviction that all the principal events tend to
the same end, universal civilisation. . . . With all my
faculties I adopt this philosophical belief: its chief
advantage is that it inspires to noble sentiments."
Mme. de Stael did not subject to the law of perfecti-
bility the fine arts, those at least which belong more
MADAME DE STAttL. 75
particularly to the imagination ; but she believes in
the progress of the sciences, and especially philosophy
and history, also to a certain extent poetry, which,
being among all the arts the one which depends more
directly on the imagination, admits in its modern
expression of an accent of deeper thoughtful melan-
choly, and an analysis of the passions unknown to
the older poets : from this point of view she declares
her predilection for Ossian and Werther, for the
Holoise of Pope, Rousseau's Julie, and Amenaide in
Tancrtde. Her numerous allusions to Greek literature,
not very trustworthy in consequence of the levity with
which the subject is treated, and the paucity of detail,
still tend to give a general idea, which remains correct
in spite of the mistakes and deficiencies. The im-
posing, positive, and eloquently philosophic character
of the Latin literature we find firmly traced : and we
feel that in order to write of it she must have studied
Sallust and Cicero, and that she is conscious of existing
or possible similarities with her own epoch, with the
heroic genius of France. The influence of Christianity
on society at the time when the invading Barbarians
mixed with the degenerate Romans, is not altogether
ignored ; but this appreciative homage is never in-
consistent with philosophy. A new and fertile idea,
which is very strongly urged in these later days,
developed by the Saint-Simonism, and other influences,
belongs, properly speaking, to Mme. de Stael ; namely,
that the French Revolution having caused a veritable
invasion of Barbarians (into the domestic relations of
society), the question then arose of civilising and
blending the still rather rude issue of this invasion,
under a law of liberty and equality. At this present
time it is easy to perfect this idea : in 1789 it was the
bourgeoisie alone who invaded ; the people of the
76 MADAME DE STAEL.
lowest ranks who forced the breach in 1793, have been
several times driven back since then, while the bour-
geoisie have vigorously maintained their position.
At this present time there is a pause in the invasion
as in the time of the Emperor Probus, or some similar
hero. New invasions threaten, however ; and it has
yet to be discovered if they can be directed and con-
trolled amicably, or if it is impossible to evade the
path of violence. In either case the consequent inter-
mingling must at last blend and co-operate. Now, it
was Christianity that influenced that combined mass
of Barbarians and Komans : where is the new Chris-
tianity which will in our day render the same moral
service ?
" Happy would it be," exclaims Mme. de Stael, " if
we could find, as at the period of the invasion of the
northern nations, a philosophical system, a virtuous
enthusiasm, a strong and just legislation, which would
be as the Christian religion has been, the sentiment
in which conquerors and conquered could unite ! "
At a later time, with advancing years, and less faith,
as we shall see, either in new devices or in unlimited
human power, Mme. de Stael would have trusted in
nothing beyond the ancient and unique Christian
religion for the means of moral regeneration which her
prayerful cry invokes. But the way in which Chris-
tianity will set to work to regain its hold upon the
society of the future, remains yet veiled ; and for the
most religious thinking minds, anxious consideration
of this great problem is undiminished.
As soon as the book on Literature appeared, the
Decade Philosophique published three articles or extracts,
unsigned and uninitialed, giving a very exact and
detailed analysis, with critical remarks and arguments,
in which praise and justice were equally distributed.
MADAME DE STAEL. 77
The writer of these articles remarked that Ossian is
but an imperfect type of the poetry of the north, and
that the honour of representing northern poetry belongs
by right to Shakespeare. Apropos of Homer's poems,
we also read this passage, which points to a writer
familiar with the various systems : " Mme. de Stael
admits, without any possibility of doubt or discussion,
that these poems are the work of one man, and belong
to an earlier date than any other Greek poem. These
facts have often been disputed, and one of the con-
siderations which point to the possibility of their
being disputed again, is the difficulty one has of
reconciling them with several well-established facts
of the history of human knowledge." The critic
considers the book defective in plan and in method.
He adds : " Another objection is the extreme subtlety in
the combination of certain ideas. In some cases clear
and well-recognised general facts are explained in a
manner which is too far-fetched to be probable, and
too minute to be in proportion to the ascertained
results." But the power and originality he praises
highly. "These two qualities," he says, "are all the
more pleasing because we feel that they proceed from
a delicate and deep sensibility, desirous of discovering
in objects their analogy to the highest intellectual
ideas, and to the noblest sentiments of the soul."
In the Clef du Cabinet des Souverains, a miscellaneous
periodical published by Panckoucke, some Observations
on the work of Mme. de Stael appeared from the pen
of the learned doctor, Roussel, author of the book on
Woman, but chiefly a criticism of Daunou, or at least a
favourable analysis, cleverly accurate, with the criticisms
hinted at rather than expressed, in the discreet style of
this learned author, whose judgment carried so much
weight, and who has a reputation for calm excellence in
78 MADAME DE STA&L.
all he writes.* The Journal des De'bats (11 Messklor,
year VIII.) accepted, though somewhat curtailing it,
a friendly article by M. Hochet. Three days later, aa
if recovered from this unexpected event, it published,
under the title of " Varietes," an article, unsigned, in
which, without naming Mme. de Stae'l, the system of
perfectibility, and the disastrous consequences with
which it is credited, are forcibly, even violently opposed.
It said : " The genius which now presides over the
destinies of France is a genius of wisdom, which has
before its eyes the experience of centuries, as well as
that of the Revolution. It does not lose itself in vain
theories, nor is it ambitious of the glory of systems ; it
knows that men have always been the same, that their
nature will never change ; and it seeks in the past
lessons wherewith to regulate the present. ... It does
not incline to throw us into fresh troubles by trying
new experiments, by following up the shadow of a
perfection which in the present day one tries to oppose
to that which exists, and which may greatly favour the
schemes of factionists, etc."
But on the subject of Mme. de Stae'l, the most
celebrated articles of the day were the two extracts
from Fontanes in the Mercure de France.
The monarchical, religious, and literary reaction of
1800 was indeed represented in every subject, and was
displayed in all directions. Bonaparte looked favour-
ably upon this movement, because he would necessarily
profit by it, and the agitators in this progress kept on
good terms with Bonaparte, who was not opposed to
them. The Journal des Debats solemnly re-established
literary criticism, and declared in an article by Geoffroy
* The letter of thanks which Mme. de Stae'l wrote to him
may be read at page 94 of the Documents Biographiques sur
Daunou, by M. Taillandier.
MADAME DE STAEL. 79
(30 Prairial, year VIII.), that " the extinction of factions,
public tranquillity established on solid foundations, and
a strong, wise, and moderate government, had at length
given the French nation leisure to recover itself, and
to collect its ideas." Dussault, Feletz, Delalot, FieVee,
Saint- Victor, and the Abbe" of Boulogne, wrote fre-
quently in this journal. Le Mercure de France had
been revived, or rather reproduced, and it was in the
first number of this re- publication that the first article
by Fontanes against Mme. de Stael appeared. The
other contributors to it were La Harpe, the Abbd of
Vauxcelles, Gueneau de Mussy, M. de Bonald, M. de
Chateaubriand, and several of the writers to the
Debats. Each member of the Mercure was announced
with loud praises by its daily auxiliary, which gave
long extracts from it. The Lycee in the Rue de Valois
had been opened again, and La Harpe delivered * there
his brilliant, earnest recantations on the eighteenth
century and against the Revolution, which the Debats
of the next day, and the Mercure that week, reproduced,
or commented on. " The chaos caused by ten troublous
and confused years is being day by day dispelled,"
said the Ddbats; "and in order to remedy the defects
in taste, which are the most lasting and difficult to
eradicate, it is proposed to re-establish the old Academie
franfaise" M. Michaud having returned from the
exile to which the 18th Fructidor had condemned him,
published his letters to Delille on PitiJ, while pre-
paring his poem on the Printemps d?un Proscrit, from
which he caused quotations to be circulated in advance.
* I have a doubt about this : it had not been in the Lycee
itself, which remained faithful to the spirit of the Revolution,
that La Harpe professed his anti-philosophical recantations, or
at least his last. I have heard contemporaries speak of some
place in the Rue de Provence, near the Rue de Mont-Blanc.
So MADAME DE STAEL.
On the occasion of the reprint in London of the Polme
des Jardins, the Virgile franfais was persuaded to put
an end to his already voluntary exile, and to look
again as speedily as possible upon that France now
worthy of him : Voltaire's example was quoted to him,
he who was also in his time a refugee in London, but
who had not wantonly prolonged a painful absence.
The appearance of the Genie du Christianisme, a year
before it was expected, added incomparable e'clat to a
restoration already very brilliant, and surrounded it
with what is, after all, for us, at this distance of time,
the sole glory which redeems it from oblivion.
Mme. de Stael, who was a child of the Revolution,
who was inspired by philosophy, who spoke harshly
of the reign of Louis XIV., and dreamt of an ideal
republic, must have been considered then by all the
men of this party, as an enemy, an adversary.
In the very first lines Fontanes displays an unfriendly,
fastidious criticism. He extols the early work of Mme.
de Stael, consecrated to the glorification of Rousseau :
"Since that time Mme. de StaeTs essays do not appear
to have called forth the same amount of approbation."
He first attacks the system of perfectibility ; he indicates
that Mme. de Stael is affected in her excited desire for
the successive and continuous perfection of the human
intellect, in the midst of her plaints about the sorrows
of the heart and the corruption of the times, and points
out, that in this she is something like the philosophers
of whom Voltaire speaks :
"Who cried All is well, in a voice of misery."
He makes a great deal of. this contradiction, which is
but a seeming one. The partisans of perfectibility, as
one can understand, are specially severe on the present,
at their mildest they abuse it ; unbelievers in perfecti-
MADAME DE STAEL. 81
Lility are less censorious of existing things, they accept
them in a better spirit, endeavouring to accommodate
themselves to circumstances. Fontanes, following up
this piquant inconsistency, maintains that every time the
dream of perfectibility takes possession of minds, empires
are threatened with the most terrible scourges. " The
learned Varron reckoned in his time two hundred and
eighty-eight opinions upon the supreme good . . . from
the time of Marius and Sylla ; it is a compensation
which the human mind allows itself." According to
Fontanes, who quotes on this subject an expression of
Condorcet's, it is to Voltaire, in the first place, that we
owe the consoling idea of perfectibility. From this
point the critic begins cleverly to reduce the question,
till he gradually brings it to the dimensions of the
following line from the Mondain :
" Oh, this happy time, this age of iron !"
which, in his opinion, is the best and most elegant
epitome that can possibly be made of all that has been
uttered on this subject.
The grave, masculine spirit of Mme. de Stael found
it specially hard to endure this scoffing, paltry, foolish
style of harping back to a quotation from the Mondain.
She boiled with impatience, and exclaimed among her
intimates : " Oh ! if I could make myself a man, even
a very little one, I would settle matters once for all
with these anti-philosophers ! " The first article in
the Mercure ends with this memorable post scriptum:
"When this article was going to press, chance threw
into our hands a still unpublished work, the title of
which is Some Moral and Poetic Beauties of the Christian
Religion. "We give a few fragments from it, in which it
will be seen that the author has discussed in a novel
manner the same questions as Mme. de Stael." In
F
82 MADAME DE STA&L.
this way a kind of rivalry was at once established
between Mme. de Stael and M. de Chateaubriand, who
were first set at variance chiefly by their friends.
Fontanes, the patron and upholder of M. de Chateau-
briand, attacked the author of La Literature in the
De'cade ; Ginguene, who had taken it upon himself to
praise Delphine, attacked the Gdhie du Christianisme, and
boldly declared that that work, so immoderately praised
in advance, had been eclipsed at its birth. But we
shall resume at greater length the subject of the true
relations between these two illustrious contemporaries.
In his second extract or article, Fontanes avenges
the Greeks against the irruption of the melancholy
and sombre style, a style peculiar to the spirit of Chris-
tianity, and which nevertheless is very favourable to the
progress of modern philosophy. It seems that, in the
first edition, Mme. de Stael had used this expression,
afterwards modified : " Anacreon is many centuries
behind the philosophy which suits his style." " Ah ! "
exclaims Fontanes, "what woman worthy to inspire
his muse ever expressed such sentiments regarding the
poet-painter of love and pleasure ? " As regards the
dreamy sadness in the impressions solitaires, a kind of
inspiration which Mme. de Stael denies the Greeks, he
asks where it was ever better depicted than in the
subject of Philoctetes : could he have already forgotten
the confidential perusal he had just had of Rene"?*
The most venerable classical ancestor of the dreamy,
melancholy recluses, is certainly Bellerophon. Homer first
mentions them ; Ausonius, the latest of the ancient writers, says :
"Cen dicitur olim
Mentis inops, ccetus hominum et vestigia vitans
Avia perlustrasse vagus loca Bellerophontes."
Bellerophon has a better claim than Philoctetes to be styled the
"Rene and the Oberman of the Greek fable.
MADAME DE STAEL. 83
These articles are, however, full of accurate and delicate
details. When he upholds Homer against Ossian, he
has little difficulty in triumphing ; and in this quarrel
of North versus South, he aptly remembers that the
most melancholy poems were composed by the Arab
Job more than three thousand years ago. Here he
stops short, deferring, as he says, a more extended
examination till a time when the most innocent
questions "will not be treated as affairs of State ; but it
appears that it was rather Mme. de Stael who had to
complain that her philosophical doctrines were con-
strued into factious opinions.
Fontanes' articles caused great excitement, and roused
the passions of those whose opinions differed from his.
Mme. Joseph Bonaparte abused them to Morfontaine
the next time she saw him. But Bonaparte henceforth
kept this clever writer in view as a convenient and
moderate mouthpiece acquired for his future enter-
prises.
Is it necessary, after these articles of Fontanes', to
mention two short articles of Geoffrey's, which only
bring forward the same ideas, minus the worldly
charm ? *
In issuing a second edition of the book of Literature,
which appeared six months after the first, Mme. de
Stael tried to refute Fontanes, and to clear the question
of all the cavillings under which it had been obscured.
Her only active revenge on the critic was to quote in a
laudatory manner his poem, Jour des mcrts dans une
* These articles of Geoffrey's, dated December 1800, and
inserted in I know not which newspaper or Collection (probably
in his revived essay, L' Annie Litteraire), were reproduced in vol.
viii. of the Spectateur fran$aise au dix neuviimc stecle ; in the
same Collection there are other articles relative to the polemics
on perfectibility.
84 MADAME DE STAEL,
campagne ; but she is pitilessly vehement against that
i'alse taste which may be represented as an exact and
common style, serving to clothe ideas still more
common. "Such a system," she says, "is much less
exposed to criticism. The well-known phrases are like
the intimate friends of a household ; they are allowed
to pass unquestioned. But no fluent or thoughtful
writer exists whose style does not contain expressions
astounding to those who read them for the first time,
or at least to those who are not carried along by
sympathy with the ardour of the noble thoughts
expressed."
Mme. de Stael was not so easily satisfied as Boileau,
writing to Brossette, " Bayle is a great genius. He is a
man of a good stamp. His style is very 'plain and
clear ; one understands all he says." She considered,
and with justice, that there is a still better stamp, a
distinction of style superior to that. Her second
edition was the occasion of an article in the De'bats,
which concluded by saying, as if in reply to the pre-
ceding passage of the new preface : " All good writers
agree that the form of our language was fixed and
determined by the great writers of the last centuries.
In an idiom it is necessary to distinguish what belongs
to taste and imagination from that which has another
origin. In our day there is nothing to prevent the
invention of new words when they become absolutely
necessary ; but we ought not to invent new figures of
speech, lest we should alter the nature of our language
or offend against its genius." To this strange assertion
there was a direct reply from the Decade, which seems
to me to have been written by Ginguene" ; the philo-
sophical critic is led to introduce a novelty in literature
in order to refute the critic of the Debats, whose mind
does not desire perfection : " If there had been journalists
MADAME DE STARL. 85
in the time of Corneille, had they used such language,
and had Corneille and his successors been foolish
enough to believe them, our literature would never
have reached a higher standard of excellence than
Malherbe, Requier, Voiture, and Brdbeuf. The writer
of that article is the man who wishes to continue
L' Amide Litte'raire of Fr^ron ; he is worthy of it." We
can, of course, see that it is to Geoffroy that Ginguene
imputes, perhaps wrongly, the article in the Dtfbats.
He is naturally led to quote a remarkable note of
Lemercier's, added to the Homeric poem which had just
appeared. " Pedants," said that innovator of the time,
" animadvert on words, and do not discern things. In
writing they give themselves a great deal of trouble to
produce what they call negligence of style. Subligny
discovered four hundred errors in Racine's Andro-
maque; they immortalized the many verses in which
he found them. Some criticisms (which were published)
accused Boileau of not writing French ! Genius makes
a language of its own. Who does not know that
through Ennius and Lucretius, Horace and Virgil have
been attacked ? Their Latin was unknown on the
eve of the day on which their works appeared. People
might say, as usual, that this remark opens the door to
bad taste, if that door can ever be shut."
Do not these quotations give us an idea of how the
men of the political and republican movement were led
on by degrees to become organs of the literary progress,
if the spontaneous development which began to be
apparent had not, along with all their hopes, been
crushed by the shocks of despotism which followed.
In the Bibliothtq'iie universelle et historique of Le
Clerc (1687), with regard to the Remarques of
Vaugelas, we find (for such disputes have always
occurred) a learned and judicious protest by an anony-
86 MADAME DE STA&L.
mous writer, against the rigorous regulations imposed
on phraseology, and against those restrictions of
metaphor on which the force of the law had been
brought to bear. Intelligent literary people will read
with agreeble surprise this fragment, as it is pleasant to
find some presage of 1789 in Fenelon.
I confess that I am glad to be able to reply in words
which are not my own, to what I consider the rather
narrow-minded literary theories accepted by our bold
politicians, and remodelled by some of otir obstinate
young critics. The defenders of an exclusive taste
and a fixed language, are the Tories of literature ;
their cause is daily losing ground. Their business is
to obstruct, to preserve ; well, so be it ! After each
advance, when a talent forces itself into notice, they
'would silence it ; they quickly raise up some obstacle
which new talents will soon surmount. Thirty years
ago, they (or their fathers) disclaimed Mme. de Stae'l
and M. de Chateaubriand, and M. Lamartine fifteen
years ago ; now they support them, are engrossed by
them, make them their defence against chance comers.
This is an influence which may have its use and its
value, for all talent requires to be tested, to be held in
quarantine ; but we must admit that the officer of this
literary quarantine requires a much smaller share of
intelligence and imagination to play his part, than
would be necessary in contrary circumstances.
The most remarkable article which the book on
Literature produced, was a long letter from M. de
Chateaubriand, inserted in the Mercure .de France,
Niv6se, year IX. The letter addressed to Citizen
Fontanes is signed The author of the Ge"nie du Chris-
tianisme ; which book, although so long heralded, had
not yet appeared. The young author, with perfect
politeness and frequent compliments to the imagination
MADAME DE STAEL. 87
of her against whom he contends, takes his stand as
opposed to the system and the principles professed by
her : " Mme. de Stae'l ascribes to philosophy what I
attribute to religion. . . . You are not unaware that it
is my whim to see Jesus Christ everywhere, as Mme.
de StaeTs is to see perfectibility. ... I am sorry that
Mme. de Stae'l has not, in a religious sense, unravelled
for us the system of the passions ; perfectibility was
not, in my opinion, the instrument it was necessary to
make use of in order to measure weaknesses." And
again : " Sometimes Mme. de Stae'l seems a Christian ;
a moment later, and philosophy resumes its sway.
Sometimes, inspired by her natural sensibility, she
allows her soul to speak ; but suddenly her argument-
ative faculties awake again, and thwart the impulse of
the soul. . . . Consequently, this book is a singular
mixture of truth and error." The eulogies bestowed
on talent are here and there seasoned with a spice of
galant spite : " On love, Mme. de Stae'l has written a
Commentary on Phtdre. . . . Her observations are acute,
and we see from the lesson of the scholiast that she
understands her text." The letter ends with an
eloquent double apostrophe : " Now this is what I
would venture to say to her if I had the honour of
her acquaintance : ' You are undoubtedly a sxiperior
woman. You have a wonderful head, and your
imagination is sometimes full of charm, as, for
instance, when you speak of Hermione disguised as
a warrior. Your expressions are often noble and
brilliant. . . . But despite all these advantages, your
production is far from being as excellent as it might
have been. The style is monotonous, unanimated, and
too much interspersed with metaphysical remarks.
The sophistry repels, the erudition does not satisfy,
and the heart is made too subservient to the intellect.
88 MADAME DE STAEL.
. . . Your talent is but half developed ; philosophy
stifles it.' This is how I would speak to Mme. de
Stael, with regard to glory. I would add . . . 'You
appear to be unhappy ; in your works you make
frequent complaints that you feel the need for hearts
that understand you. This is because there are certain
souls which search in vain in nature for the sister
souls to which they were formed to be akin. . . . And
how can philosophy fill the void in our lives? Can
the desert be filled with the desert, etc. etc.' "
Mme. de Stael, always accessible to, and eager for,
admiration, desired to know the author of the letter in
the Mercure; this first controversial exploit was thus
the origin of a connection between the two geniuses
whose names and fame we are accustomed to unite.
Their connection was not, however, what we should
of our own accord imagine ; their camping grounds had
always, for both of them, boundaries clearly defined
and separate. Across these bounds their friends, less
guarded than themselves, oftentimes pushed their
way. Sneering at Delphine in the same bitter tone
which Chdnier afterwards employed against Atala,
M. Michaud wrote : " You wished to make a duplicate
of the Gtfnie du Christianisme, and you have given
us the Beautds po&iques et morales de la Philosophic ;
you have completely eclipsed that poor Chateau-
briand, and I hope he will consider himself ex-
tinguished." A worshipper of Greek genius, of the
beauties of Homer and Sophocles, the bard of Cymodocee
and Eudore, and of the brilliant pomps of Catholicism,
M. de Chateaubriand, already a finished artist, was not
easily converted to admiration of Mme. de StaeTs
sometimes rather hazy heroes and rather vague out-
lines, the predominance of mind and purpose over
form, that great multitude of clever ideas discussed
MADAME DE STAEL. 89
conversationally ; so he admired Mme. de Stael less
than she admired him. On the other hand, whether
by chance forgetfulness, or from some embarrassment
on the subject, she rarely expresses any opinion of him
in her numerous writings. When, in the evenings at
Coppet, they read and compared Paul and Virginia and
the episode of Velleda, Mme. de Stael rapturously
placed the fierce and powerful beauty of the priestess
far above the, in her opinion, too countrified sweetness
of the other masterpiece ; the celebrated article which
caused the. suppression of the Mercure in 1807, also
drew from her exclamations of admiration,* but in
her works there is scarcely any trace of such an
admiring testimony. In the preface to Delphine,
the Genie du Christianisme is referred to as a work the
originality and extraordinary brilliancy of which, even
its enemies must admire.
M. de Chateaubriand, in an article in the Mercure
on M. de Bonald (December 1802), returns the com-
pliment by a few lines of eulogy of Mme. de Stael ;
but through all this mutual homage they always
maintained the same position, an antagonistic one.t
Can we not still imagine to ourselves, these two great
names, like two summits on opposite shores, two
threatening heights, under which hostile groups attack
and fight, but which from afar, from our point of
view as posterity, seem to unite, almost to join
together, and become the double triumphal column at
the entrance of the century? We, the generation
* The Souvenirs of M. Meneval (vol. i. page 29) show her to
us the eager patroness and admiring reader of A tola and Rent,
in the society of Joseph Bonaparte at Morfontaine (1801-1802).
t M. de Chateaubriand is, however, mentioned honourably,
but with neither blame nor praise, in two places in the book on
Germany, Part II. chap, i., and Part IV. chap. iv.
90 MADAME DE STAEL.
which has sprung up since the Martyrs and since
Corinne, bow before these two inseparable geniuses,
and are influenced by the filial sentiment of which M.
de Lamartine has made himself the generous interpreter
in his Destinies de la Po&ie.
If, as regards depth and artistic style, there are great
and important differences between M. de Chateaubriand
and Mme. de Stael, we are yet struck by the many
essential resemblances they present : both loving
liberty, impatient of the same tyranny, capable of
feeling the incalculable greatness of popular destinies
without abjuring aristocratic traditions and inclina-
tions ; both working for the revival of religious
sentiment, in ways which are rather different than
contrary. The Restoration brought them together
again. Mme. de Duras was a kind of bond,* and it
was to M. de Chateaubriand that in her last illness
Mme. de Stael was able to say those beautiful words :
" I have always been the same, ardent and sad ; I have
loved God, my father, and liberty." However, in
politics they were then opponents, just as, in former
times, philosophy had separated them. In her Con-
side'rations sur la Revolution francaise, which was
published shortly after the death of its author, M. de
Chateaubriand is not mentioned ; and in an article of
his in the Conservateur (December 1819), we again find
one of those compliments to Mme. de Stael, always
* Mme. de Stael had a singular liking for Mme. de Duras,
whom she found, as she was herself, a true person in an arti-
ficial society. I have read a touching note which she addressed
to her on the 26th of June 1817, that is to say, eighteen days
before her death, and which she had dictated to her son (Auguste
de Stael), being by that time too weak to write. She had
added below, in her own hand, in large, uneven, shaky writing :
Bien dcs compliments de ma part a Rent.
MADAME DE STAEL. 91
respectful and seemly, but in which admiration is
tempered by reserve, the homage, in short, of a
courteous and finished adversary.
This too- prolonged discord has ceased ; a woman *
who, by a singular chance, had met M. de Chateau-
briand for the first time at Mme. de Stael's house in
1801, who had seen him again for the second time at
the same place in 1814, became the bond of sympathy
between both. In his honourable affection for the
intimate friend of that high-souled genius, for the
confidante of so many loving thoughts, M. de Chateau-
briand modified his j udgments, and exalted his opinions
on a character and talent better known to him when
all formerly existing barriers had broken down. The
preface to the Etudes Historiques gives proof of this
wider communion ; but more especially his last me-
morial will comprise a portrait of Mine, de Stael, and
a judgment, which will remain the noblest, as it is
certainly the highest and the most worthy of her.
This is, at all events, with so much that is sad, in
surviving his illustrious contemporaries, one advantage
for a man who is himself celebrated, if he possesses the
true reverence for glory ; it enables him at leisure to
crown their image, restore their statue, and reveren-
tially to solemnize their tomb. M. de Chateaubriand's
touching eulogies on Mme. de Stael, his pilgrimage
to Coppet in 1831, with the sympathetic friend who
forms the sacred bond between the two, with' her
whom nevertheless he did not accompany to the depths
of that mournful sanctuary, and who, with the modest
shyness of grief, desired to penetrate alone to that
grave among the cypress trees, this, by the banks of
that Lake of Geneva, so near the places celebrated by
the author of Julie, will form in the eyes of posterity
* Mme. Recamier.
92 MADAME DE STAEL.
a mournfully pathetic commemoration rite. Carefully
remember, for they honour our century, these devout
affinities of rival geniuses, Goethe and Schiller, Scott
and Byron, Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stae'l.
Voltaire insulted Jean- Jacques, and it was the voice of
human nature alone (to speak like Chenier) which
reconciled them. Racine and Moliere, who did not
love each other, were silent about each other, and we
feel pleased to know of this social politeness. There is
indeed much poetic greatness in the world.
II.
At the period when the book De la Litter ature was
published, Mme. de StaeTs intellectual cravings inspired
her with a noble public ambition, which she followed
more or less earnestly till about 1811, at which time
a great and serious change took place in her. In the
former more exclusively sentimental disposition from
which we have considered her, Mme. de Stael had
scarcely thought of literature except as the organ of
sensibility, the mouthpiece of sorrow. She desponds ;
she complains of false accusations ; she passes from ill-
sustained stoicism to eloquent lamentation ; she wished
to love ; she thought to die. But she then became
conscious that although one suffers very much, one does
not die ; that the faculties of thought, the power of the
soul, increase in grief ; that she would never be loved
as she herself loved ; and that, therefore, she must find
for herself some great employment for her life. She then
thought seriously of making a full use of her talents,
of not allowing herself to be discouraged ; and since
there was yet time, for the sun had scarcely begun to
go down, her spirit resolved to walk proudly in the
years of middle life. " Let us at last arise," she cries in
the preface to the book so often quoted, " let us arise
MADAME DE STAEL. 93
ixnder the burden of existence ; let us not give to our
unjust enemies, nor to our ungrateful friends, the
triumph of having crushed our intellectual faculties.
They compel those to seek glory who would have been
contented with affection ; ah, well ! we must attain it 1 "
From henceforth glory and sentiment openly and
equally shared the longings of her soul. Society had
always been much to her ; Europe henceforth became
something, and this was the great theatre in sight of
which she aspired after vast enterprises. Her beautiful
ship, beaten by the tempest outside the harbour,
weary with long waiting in sight of the shore, ex-
asperated by the delay and the wreck signals, departed
full sail for the high seas.
Delphine, Corinne, the book De L'Allemagne, 'were
the successive conquests of this most glorious adventure.
In 1800, Mme. de Stael was still young, but that youth-
fulness of over thirty years was neither an illusion nor
a future for her ; she therefore substituted, while it was
yet time, the boundless horizon of glory for that of the
youth which was already fading, the limits of which
she could perceive, but which was .thus perpetuated
and prolonged ; and thus, in the enjoyment of all her
powerful talent, she advanced during these, the most
brilliant but unvalued years.
Corinne, and the time immediately after its appear-
ance, mark the dominant point in the life of Mme. de
Stael. Every human life, possessed of even a little
greatness, has its sacred hill ; every existence which
has shone or reigned has its Capitol. The Capitol, the
Cape Misenum of Carinne, is also that of Mme. de Stael.
From this time, the lingering youth which fled, the
increasing persecution, the broken or changing friend-
ships, even sickness itself, all contributed, as we shall
see, to mature still more her talent, to introduce thia
94 MADAME DE STAEL.
genius, majestic and crowned with fame, into the sombre
years. Dating from 1811 especially, and searching
deeply into Mme. de Stael's thoughts, we shall gradually
discover the calm which religion brings, the sorrow
that matures, the strength which restrains itself, and
that heart, till then stormy as an ocean, submissive
also like it, and returning with meritorious reluctance
to its determined limits. We shall see at last, at the
end of this triumphal path as at the end of the most
humbly pious, we shall see a cross. But as we leave
the dreams of sentiment, of hope, and romantic decep-
tion, we only reach the years of full activity and of
triumph.
If the book De la Literature produced such a great
effect, the romance Delphine, published in the end
of 1802, did not cause less excitement. We may
imagine how fascinating this book was to a society
excited by political vicissitudes and all the conflicts of
life, when the Gdnie du Christianisme had just restored
religious discussions to honour, about the same period
as the Concordat and the modification of the divorce
laws ! Benjamin. Constant has written, that it is
perhaps in the pages she has dedicated to her father,
that Mme. de Stael reveals herself most to us : but
we always have this feeling with every book of hers
we read ; the last volume we open is the one in which
we think we recognise her best. This does appear to me
specially true in regard to Delphine. " Corinne," says
Mme. Necker de Saussure, "is the ideal of Mme. de Stael ;
Delphine is the real counterpart of her youth." Delphine
became to Mme. de Stael a pathetic personification of
the years of her pure sentiment and tenderness, at a
time when she was weaning herself from them, a last
distracting, backward glance of farewell at the com-
mencement of her public reign, on the threshold of
MADAME DE STAZL. 95
European glory, like the statue of a heart-broken
Ariadne in the court of a temple of Theseus.
In Delphine, the author intended to produce a
perfectly natural romance, full of analysis, of moral
observation, and passion. To me, delightful as I find
nearly every page, it is still not as natural, as real a
romance, as I expected to find it from Mme de Stael's
own prognostics in the Essai sur les Fictions. It has
some of the defects of La Nouvelle HeTo'ise, and the
letter form introduces too much conventionality in the
literary arrangements. One of the inconveniences of
novels in the form of letters is, that at once the char-
acters have to assume a tone in accord with the part
they are to play. From Mathilde's first letter, her
hard blunt nature has to be portrayed, and we see her
quite inflexible even in her devotion. And that no
misunderstanding may arise, Delphine, in replying,
speaks to her of that rigid rule, perhaps necessary to
a kss sweet nature; things which are neither said nor
written just at once between persons accustomed to the
ways of the world, like Delphine and Mathilde. Leonce
begins in his very first letter to M. Barton, to enlarge
very fully about his prepossession for honour, which is
his characteristic. In real life such traits are shown
only proportionately, and brought out by degrees
through facts. The other method stamps the most
bewitching romance with a tone of conventionality, and
gives it a peculiar style ; thus, in La Nouvelle Heloise,
all the letters written by Claire d'Orbe are necessarily
gay and playful ; from the first line a tone of frolic-
someness is the correct thing. In one word, the char-
acters of romances in the form of letters, from the
moment they take up the pen, are always considering
how they can present themselves to the reader in the
most expressive attitudes, under . the most significant
96 MADAME DE STAEL,
aspects : tliis forms a rather unnatural classical style
of grouping, unless the plot is worked out very slowly
and with much profusion of language, as in Clarisse.
Add to this the necessity (which is a very unlikely one,
and unfavourable for emotional feeling), that those
personages have to shut themselves up to write, at
moments when they have neither the leisure nor the
strength for such employment, when they are in bed,
or recovering from a fainting fit, etc. etc. But after we
have once admitted this defect in regard to Delphine,
what delicacy and what passion are mingled ! what
frank sensibility, and subtle penetration of character !
With regard to these characters, it was difficult in the
world of that time to prevent people finding portraits
in them. I have little belief in perfect portraits from
novelists of fertile imagination ; the copy does not go
beyond the first more or less numerous characteristics,
which are soon transformed and finished off differently ;
only the author who creates the characters could
distinguish the invisible and tortuous line which
separates recollection from invention. But at that
period people insisted on discovering some existing
model for each figure. If in Delphine there was an
obvious resemblance to Mme. de Stael, who were
portrayed by, not perhaps the ideal Leonce, but at
least M. de Lebensei, Mme. de Cerlebe, Mathilde, and
Mme. de Vernon? It has been said that Mme. de
Cerlebe, devoted to domestic pursuits and the placid
uniformity of duty, and experiencing infinite delight in
the educating of her children, was very much like Mme.
Necker de Saussure, who besides, like Mme. de Cerlebe,
also worshipped her father. People have thought they
recognised in M. de Lebensei, the Protestant gentleman
with the manners of an Englishman, the man who was
the most remarkably talented man it iuas possible to meet,
MADAME DE STAEL. 97
a most remarkable likeness to Benjamin Constant ;
but in this case, only one part of the portrait, the
brilliant side, would have been true ; and at least half
of the solid virtues with which M. de Lebensei is
credited could not apply to the presumed original,
excepting by way of counsel, or as expressing regret
over their absence.* As regards Mme. de Vernon, the
best drawn character in the book, according to Chenier
and all the critics, people imagined they discovered
there a portrait, changed and disguised as a woman, of
our most famous politician, of him whom Mme. de
Stael had first caused to be struck off the list of political
&nigr& whom she had pushed forward into power
before the 18th Fructidor, and who had rewarded her
for that active warmth of friendship only by the most
carefully polite selfishness.t
When Delphine was composed, the incident of the
dinner which is mentioned in the Dix Annies de Exit
had already taken place. "The day," says Mme. de
Stael, " on which the signal of the opposition was given
in the Tribunate, by one of my friends, I had invited
to my house several persons whose society pleased me
much, but who had all joined the new Government. I
received ten notes of excuse at five o'clock ; I was not
put about by the first or the second, but as the notes
succeeded each other, I began to be anxious."
The man she had so generously served, avoided her,
then, in that perfectly polite way in which one sends an
excuse for not accepting a dinner invitation. Admitted
to new greatness, he would in no way commit himself
to support her who was so soon to be exiled. He does,
perhaps, justify her in ffdros, but in that same doubt-
* This other aspect of the character of M. de Lebensei really
resembles M. de Jaucourt.
t Talleyrand. Tr.
G
98 MADAME DE STAL.
f ul manner which succeeded so well when Mme. Vernon
justifies Delphine to Ldonce. Mme. de Stael, like
Delphine, could not live without forgiving : she wrote
from Vienna in 1808 to this same personage as to an
old friend on whom one can rely ; * she recalls the past
to him without any bitterness. "You wrote to me
thirteen years ago from America, If I remain here a
year longer, I shall die ; I can say the same of my
absence abroad, I am overcome with grief here." She
added these words, so full of indulgent sadness : " Adieu,
are you happy 1 With talents so superior, do you
not sometimes sound the depth of everything, that is to
say, even sorrow 1 "
But without venturing to contend that Mme. de
Vernon may be in all ways a slenderly disguised
portrait, without having too strong a desire to identify
with the model in question that clever woman, whose
seductive amiability makes one feel by comparison harsh
and discontented, that woman whose acts are so com-
plicated and her conversation so simple, whose speech
is so soft and her silence so dreamy, whose talent is
only for conversation, neither for reading nor thinking,
and who escapes from ennui by gambling, etc. etc.,
without going so far as this, it has been impossible to
help being at least influenced by the application of a
more innocent feature. "No one knows better than
myself," says Mme. de Vernon in one place (Letter xxviii.
Part I.), " how to make use of indolence ; it helps me
naturally to baffle the activity of others. ... I have
not four times in my life given myself the trouble of
insisting, but when I have gone so far as to take this
fatigue, nothing turns me from my aim, I attain it ;
take my word for it." In this passage I saw myself a
trait applicable to the clever indolence of the personage
* See Revue Retrospective, No. 9, June 1834.
MADAME DE STAEL. 99
BO much extolled, when, one evening, I heard a clever
diplomatist, of whom some one asked if he intended
soon to appear at his post, reply, that he was in no
hurry, he was waiting. " I was still quite young," he
added, " when M. de Talleyrand instructed me in one
essential line of conduct : Do not be zealous ! " Is not
this exactly Mme. de Vernon's principle ?
Since we are on the subject of the possibly real traits
of character portrayed in Delphine, do not let us over-
look, among others, one which (artlessly) reveals to us
the devoted heart of Mine, de Stael. In the chief
catastrophe of Delphine (I speak of the older event,
which remains the iinique and beautiful one), the
heroine, after having exhausted every supplication to
the judge of Leonce, perceives that the child of the
magistrate is ill, and she exclaims, with a sublime cry,
" Very well ! your child, if you deliver up Le"once to
the tribunal, your child, I say, will die ! he will die ! "
This cry of Delphine's was really uttered by Mme. de
Stael, when, at the end of the 18th Fructidor, she rushed
up to General Lemoine to plead with him for the
pardon of a young man she knew to be in clanger of
being shot, and who was no other than M. de Norbins.
The sentiment of compassion impetuously governed
her, and, once roused, left her no peace. In 1802,
uneasy about Chenier menaced with proscription, she
hurried at daybreak to offer him shelter, money, and a
passport.* How often in 1792, and at all times, do we
not see her thus ! " My political opinions are proper
names," she said. Not ! . . . that her political opinions
were strong principles ; but proper names, that is to
eay, persons, friends, the unknown, all who lived and
suffered, were considered in her generous imagination
* See notice on M. J. Chenier, heading his works, by 51,
Dauuou.
loo MADAME DE STA&L.
and she did not know what an abstract principle of
justice meant, with one who silenced his human
sympathies.
When Delphine appeared, criticism was boundless, for
it had found a fruitful subject. Indeed, all the opinions
on religion, on politics, or on marriage, although dating
in the romance from 1790 and 1792, were singularly
appropriate in 1802, depicting as they did old passions
and new problems. The Journal des Debats (December
1802) published an article, signed "A," said to have
been written by M. de Feletz, a bantering kind of
article, full of stinging, waspish remarks, but at the
same time strictly polite ; the critic of the salon became
also the reproachful mouthpiece of reviving society
circles. "Nothing could be more dangerous or more
immoral than the principles set forth in this book. . . .
Forgetting the principles in which she has been brought
up in a Protestant family, and as the daughter of M.
Necker, the author of Religious Opinions profanes
revelation ; the daughter of Mme. Necker, who is the
writer of a book against divorce, makes long arguments
in favour of divorce." Altogether, Delphine was styled
" a very bad book, written with cleverness and talent."
This article appears to have been insufficient, for the
same paper inserts, a few days later (4th and 9th of
January 1803), two letters addressed to Mme. de Stael,
and signed L'Admireur; they were from the pen of M.
Michaud. The man of talent and taste who was
induced to make these attacks was young, and carried
away by party feeling thus to revenge himself for
political defeat, but, having gracefully withdrawn his
accusations, he will excuse us for noticing his too hurt-
ful vehemence. The first letter confined itself to a
discussion of the characters of the romance judged to be
immoral. Delphine is compared with the heroine of an
MADAME DE STARL. 101
unwholesome romance, in the same way as in our own
day Lelia has been styled pernicious. The second
letter attacks the style more particularly ; the fault-
finding is at times legitimate, and of a free and easy,
rather pleasant kind. " What a powerful sentiment love
is ! What else is worth living for ! When your char-
acters make , melancholy reflections on the past, one
exclaims, I have spoiled my life ; another says, / have
missed my object in life ; while a third, trying to outdo
the two first, says, / believe that I alone have properly
understood life." * The high principles, the imagery based
on thoughts of eternity, the strata of the centuries, the
limits of the soul, the mysteries of fate, the souls exiled
from love, this kind of phraseology, half sentimental,
half spiritualistic, and certainly allowable, partly
Genevese, incoherent, and very contestable, is in this
article lengthily scoffed at. M. de Feletz had himself
abstracted a few inaccuracies of style, such words as
insistence, persistence, vulgarity, which, notwithstanding
his condemnation, have passed uncensured. If we
were to criticise the detail of Delphine, we could pick
out many repetitions, many incongruities, a thousand
oft-recurring little faults, from which Mme. de Stael
was not exempt, and into which an artistic author
never falls.
Mme. de Stael, on whom the malice of the remarks
made had no effect, afterwards graciously pardoned the
* The impartial or inquiring critic will be able to read a
justification of Mme. de Stael on this point, and also a very
high appreciation of Delphine in general, in the book I have
already quoted, Notice et Souvenirs Biographiques du Comte
Van Der Duyn (1852). At page 386 of the Journal de
Lecture by this estimable Dutchman, there is an article full
of sound judgment, entitled De certainea Hardiesses de Style
reprocMes d Mme. de StaeL
102 MADAME DE STA8L.
writer of these letters when she met him at M. Suard's,
in that neutral and conciliating salon of an intellectual
man, whom age and experience, and the learning
acquired from famous contemporaries, had sufficed to
render great in his turn. The journal which M. Suard
then edited, Le Publiciste, although from a literary point
of view it might have made captious remarks on several
points in Delphine, did not take part in the dispute,
and spoke very favourably of it in an article inspired
by the good feeling of M. Hochet.
About the same time, Le Mercure published an article
signed "F,"* but so bitter and personal that the
Journal de Paris, which, through the pen of M. de
Villetergue, had judged the romance severely enough,
especially its morality, was unable to help expressing
its astonishment, that an article written in such a style
should be found in the Mercure side by side with an article
signed La Harpe, and under the initial letter of a man
dear to the friends of good sense and decorum. The
words were these (and I do not choose the worst to
quote) : " Delphine speaks of Love in the manner of a
Bacchante, of God in that of a Quaker, of Death in that
of a grenadier, and of morality as a sophist." Fontanes,
who was suspected on account of the initial, wrote to
the Journal de Paris to repudiate the article, which
was in reality written by the author of Dot et Suzette,
and Frederic. Have we not in our own day witnessed
an outburst of a similar description, against a woman, t
one of the most eminent the literary world has beheld
since the authoress of Delphine ? In the D&ats of the
12th February 1803, Gaston gives a sketch of a pamphlet
of 800 pages (was this only a joke of the journalist ?),
entitled (The Converted) Delphine; he gave extracts from
it : one of the characters is supposed to say to Mme. de
* Fievee. f Georges Sand.
MADAME DE STA&L. 103
Stael, "I have just entered on the career which many
women have pursued successfully, but I have taken as
my model neither the Princess de Cloves, nor Caroline,
nor Adele de Se'nange." This malicious pamphlet, if
indeed it ever existed, in which envy swells into a large
book, appears only to be a collection of incongruous
phrases pirated from Mme. de Stael, and strung together
in the most unnatural style. Mme. de Genlis, returning
from Altona to preach morality, wrote for the Biblio-
thtque des Romans, a lengthy novel, in which, by the
aid of truncated explanations and artificial interpreta-
tions, she manages to represent Mme. de Stael as
defending suicide. Mme. de Stael revenged herself by
praising warmly Mademoiselle de Clefmont, " She attacks
me," she remarked, " and I defend her ; thus our
intercourse ceases." Mme. de Genlis, after this, in her
Memoires, accused Mme. de Stael of ignorance, as before
she had called her immoral. But we pardon her, for
she made amends in the end, in a kindly novel entitled
Aihenais, of which we shall have occasion to speak
again. A friendly influence, accustomed to work such
gentle miracles, had appealed to her.*
In. speaking of a work so pathetic ae Delphine, we
ask to be excused that we have not chosen to confine
ourselves to the touching scenes of Bellerive or the
Gardens of the Champs-Elysees, rather than recall these
bitter clamours, and raise up so much old dust ; but it
is a good plan, when we wish to follow or retrace a
triumphal march, to endure the crowd as well, to show
the car just as it was, encompassed with difficulties,
and also applauded.
The violence of the attacks drew out justification ;
Mme. de Stael's friends were indignant, and she was
most energetically defended. Of two articles inserted
* Mme. Recnmier.
104 MADAME DE STAEL.
in the Decade, the first begins as follows : " No work
for a long time lias so engrossed public attention as this
romance ; it is a kind of success which it is not a
matter of indifference to obtain, for it is one which has
to be paid for. Several journalists, whose opinion of a
book we can guess from the name of the author, have
inveighed against Delphine, or rather, against Mme. de
Stael, like people reckless of their words. . . . They have
attacked a woman, one with the rudeness of a Collegiate
(Ginguene" seems to have imputed to Geoffroy, against
whom he had a spite, one of the hostile articles we have
mentioned above), another with the persiflage of common
wit, and all with the boasting security of cowardice."
After numerous appreciative quotations, coming to the
part in which there are certain strained modes of
expression, certain new words or terms, Ginguend
judiciously remarks: "These are not really errors of
the language, but blunders which a woman of so much
wit and true talent will have no difficulty in overcom-
ing if she wishes to do so." What Ginguene^ did not
remark on, and what he might well have opposed to
the vulgar accusations of impiety and immorality which
the coarse or priggish critics talked so loudly about, is
the exalted eloquence of the religious thoughts which
we find expressed in many pages of Delphine, as if in
emulation of the Catholic theories of the Genie du
Christianisme : for instance, the letter of Delphine to
L^once (xiv. Part III.), where she tries to persuade him
to a belief in natural religion and the universal hope
of immortality ; and again, when M. de Lebensei (xvii.
Part IV.), writing to Delphine, combats the Christian
idea of sorrow perfecting the religious life, and invokes
the law of nature, as leading men to goodness by gently
alluring the inclinations. Delphine is not convinced ;
she does not believe that the attractive system put
MADAME DE STAE.L. 105
before her responds to all the real combinations of fate,
and that happiness and virtue go hand in hand on this
earth. Unquestionably it is not the Catholicism of
Therese d'Ervins which triumphs in Delphine ; the
design here is Protestant, a Unitarian Protestantism,
differing very little from that of the Savoyard Vicaire ;
but among the Pharisees who exclaim of its impiety,
I have difficulty in discovering any among them for
whom even these philosophic and natural beliefs, if
seriously adopted, would not have been, as compared to
their own faith, an immense moral and religious gain.
As for the accusation that Delphine attacks the sanctity
of marriage, it has seemed to me, on the contrary, that
the most conspicuous idea in the book is the desire for
happiness in the married state, and a profound convic-
tion of the impossibility of obtaining happiness other-
wise. I also remark her recognition or acknowledgment
that the most frequent cause of the wreck of this
happiness, even with the most tender and virtuous love,
is the want of social harmony in life. This idea of
happiness in the married state has always haunted Mme.
de Stael, as romantic fancies importunately haunt the
minds of those who have no actual experience of
romance. In the Influence of the Passions, she speaks
with great pathos of an old married couple who were
still lovers, whom she had met in England. In the
book on Litte'rature, we mark the pleasure with which
she quotes the beautiful verses which terminate Thom-
son's song on Spring, where that perfect union, which
in her case is conspicuous by absence, is glorified. In
one of the chapters of Germany she returns to this
subject with such a virtuous, almost grateful, tone in
her reflections, that we are touched, especially when we
compare that page with the hidden facts which inspired
it. In Delphine, the happy picture of the Belmont
io6 MADAME DE STA&L.
family is neither more nor less than that domestic Eden
always longed for by her among all her trials.
M. Necker in his Cours de Morale religieuse, loves
also to dwell on the subject of happiness secured by
the sanctity of the marriage bond. Mme. de Stael, in so
frequently returning to this dream, had not far to seek
for her imagery ; setting aside her own experiences, her
imagination found its model close at hand ; failing her
own, she could recall to her memory her mother's
felicity, and plan and prophesy her daughter's.*
But, after all, with all our partiality, we must acknow-
ledge that Delphine is a disturbing study, and one
which we do not counsel perfect innocence to test,
although for minds to whom real trouble has come,
and who are like to be overwhelmed by prosaic dis-
enchantment, it may often effect a healthy awakening
from sentimental brooding. It is a fortunate disturb-
ance which tempts us back to the emotions of love, and
restores to us the faculty of youthful devotion !
In return for the gracious manner in which the
D&ade had spoken, and for the support given to her by
the writers, litterateurs, and philosophers of that school,
Mme. de Stael has always spoken well of them in her
works. Excepting Chenier, about whom she makes a
few rather severe remarks in her Considerations, she
has never mentioned one of this literary and philo-
sophic group but with generous recognition of old ties of
friendliness and kindly feeling. But her exile in the
end of the year 1803, her travels, her existence as the lady
paramount at Coppet, her connections in Germany,
and her aristocratic relations, from this time brought
her into another sphere, which soon dispelled that
Mme. la Duchesse de Broglie was ver,y early enraptured with
ideas of family felicity, and always retained an instinctive
respect for those who had once experienced it.
MADAME DE STAEL. 107
suggestion inspired by the events of the year III., of
which we have tried to catch a glimpse. Forced to
leave Paris, she at once directed her steps towards
Germany, practised reading and speaking German,
visited Weimar and Berlin, and made the acquaintance
of Goethe and the Prussian princes. She collected the
first materials for the work, which a second visit, in
1807-8, enabled her to complete. To launch forth thus
suddenly beyond the Rhine was her brusque way of
breaking with Napoleon, who was greatly irritated.
It was breaking also with the philosophical customs of
the eighteenth century, which, to all appearance, she
had just so gloriously espoused. Thus do great minds
act ; they are already at another pole when we suppose
them to be still at the opposite one. Like the rapid
strategy of indefatigable generals, they kindle their
fires on the heights, and are supposed to be encamped
behind them, when they are already many miles on
their march, and will attack the enemy's flank.
The death of her father brought Mme. de Stael back
very suddenly to Coppet. When her first mourning
had calmed down, and after the publication of some of
M. Necker's manuscripts, she left again (1804), to visit
Italy. A love of nature and of art awoke in her under
new skies.*" Delphine confesses somewhere that she
does not care for pictures, and when she walks in the
gardens she is much more interested in the urns and
* Mme. de Stael's love of art was always an acquired taste,
exotic, like a plant which never grew in the open air. Her
nature is very well described in a letter which Goethe wrote
from Weimar, on the 27th of February 1804, to his friend, Zelter
the composer, who lived in Berlin. "Professor Wolf and
Counsellor Miiller have stayed a fortnight at Weimar ; Woss
spent several days ; and we have already had Mme. de Stael four
weeks. This extraordinary woman is going to Berlin soon, and
1 shall give her a note of introduction to you. Go and see her
108 MADAME DE STAEL.
monuments than in nature pure and simple. But that
autumnal haze which envelopes the horizon of Bellerive
fades under the purity of Roman skies ; all the gifts of
the muses which are to adorn the train of Corinne now
hasten to develop.*
Having returned to Coppet in 1805, and being
occupied with the writing of her Roman romance,
Mme. de Stael could no longer remain at such a distance
from Paris, that unique central point, where she had
shone, and in the sight of which she aspired to greater
glory. It was at this time she displayed that increasing
restlessness, that mal de la capitale, home sickness, so
to speak, which no doubt detracts a little from the
dignity of her exile, but which at the same time betrays
the passionate sincerity of all her impulses. An order
from the police compelled her to remain forty miles
from Paris. Instinctively and stubbornly, like the noble
steed attached to a stake, who strains his tether in
every direction, or like the maligned fly, which inces-
santly dashes itself against the window-pane, she reaches
the settled limit, she goes to Auxerre, to Chelons, to
Blois, to Saumur ; and within the boundaries which
she is for ever disputing and encroaching upon, her
unexpected visits to her friends become a knowing
strategy, a game of chess, which sheplayed with Bonaparte
and Fouchd, or th eir representatives, more or less rigorous.
When she was allowed to settle at Rouen, we see her at
first triumphant, for she has gained a few miles in the
geometrical radius. But such provincial towns offered
soon ; she is easy to get on with, and your music will certainly
give her great pleasure, although literature, poetry, philosophy,
and things akin, interest her more than art."
* It must have been during her stay at Rome (in 1805) that
M. Aug. Wil. Schlegel, who accompanied Mme. de Stael,
addressed to her the Elegy entitled Home.
MADAME DE STAEL. 109
little by way of resource to a mind so active and so envi-
ous for the accent and the words of the pure Athenes.*
Contempt for every description of meanness or of medi-
ocrity was distasteful to her, choked her. She was able to
confirm and make her own comments on the amusing
play of Picard. Even Benjamin Constant's wonderful
conversational powers were scarcely able to charm
away her vapours. " Poor Schlegel," she said, " is half
dead of ennni; Benjamin Constant comes off better
with his animals." Travelling at a later date (1808) in
Germany : " All I see here is better, more learned, more
enlightened, perhaps, than France ; but the smallest
inch of France is worth more to me." Two years after-
ward, in provincial France, she did not hold to that ;
or did she mean it only of Paris, which was the only
place in the world for her ?
At last, thanks to the toleration of Fouche, who acted
on the principle of doing the least possible amount
of evil when it was useless, a way was found to
allow her to settle eighteen miles from Paris (what a
conquest !) at Acosta, an estate belonging to Mme. de
Castellane ; from there she superintended the publish-
ing of Corinne. In returning her proof-sheets, she must
often have echoed Ovid : " Go, my book, happy book,
which goest to town without me ! " " Oh, the gutter of
the Rue du Bac ! " t she would exclaim, when the mirror
of Leman was pointed out to her. And at Acosta as at
Coppet, so she felt ; more longingly than ever, she
stretched her arms towards that bourn so near to her.J
The year 1806 seems to have been too long for her
* Parisian.
t Before her exile, Mme. de Stael lived in the Rue Crenelle-
Saint-Germain, near the Rue du Bac.
J A liking for the country was never an essential part of Mme.
de Stael's nature, and her obstinate yearning for the Rue du
no MADAME DE STAL.
imagination to endure such a punishment, and she
arrived in Paris one evening, only allowing a few of
her friends to know. She walked out every evening
and part of the night by moonlight, not daring to
venture out by day. But during this adventurous
incursion, she was seized by a violent desire, very
characteristic of her, to see a great lady who was an
old friend of her father's, Countess Tease", the same
who said of her, " If I were a queen, 1 would command
Mme. de Stae'l to talk to me all day long." She was
very old, however, at this time, and terrified at the
idea of being compromised by Mme. de Stael's visit ;
the result of the escapade was a series of indiscretions
which at last reached Fouche's ears. It was necessary,
therefore, to depart in all haste, to risk no more of
these moonlight walks along the quays, by the favoured
stream, and round that Place Louis XV., so familiar
to Delphine.
Soon after this came the publication of Corinne, to
confirm and increase the rigour of Mme. de Stael's first
exile.* We find her next taking refuge at Coppet,
Bac quite spoiled her pleasure in it. Walking out one day at
Acosta with the two Schlegels and M. Fauriel, the latter, whose
arm she had taken, began unconsciously to admire a view. "Ah,
my dear Fauriel," she said, " I see you are still prejudiced in
favour of the country." Then, seeing at once that she had said
something unusual, she smiled by way of qualifying her remark.
A long time after this, after the Empire, conversing one day
with M. Mole, and expressing her surprise that a man of so
much talent should care for the country, she ingenuously
remarked to him, " Were it not for the sake of appearances, I
would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the
first time, while I would go five hundred miles to speak to a
learned man I don't even know." An unaffected and at the
same time flattering way of expressing how much she preferred
conversation and society to nature.
* The proofs of the' severity with which she was treated are
MADAME DE STAEL. in
where, after all, she appears to us in her true dignity,
the centre of her stately court
What the sojourn at Ferney was for Voltaire, the
life at Coppet was for Mme. de Stael, but with a more
romantic halo round her, it seems to us, more of the
grandeur and pomp of life. Both reigned in their
exile ; Voltaire, in his low flat plain, his secluded,
poverty-stricken castle, with a view of despoiled, un-
shaded gardens, scorned and derided. The influence
of Coppet is quite different ; it is that of Jean- Jacques
continued, ennobled, installed, and reigning amid the
same associations as his rival. Coppet counter-
balances Ferney, half dethrones it. We also, of this
younger generation, judge Ferney by comparing it
with Coppet, coming down from Coppet The beauty
of its site, the woods which shadow it, the sex of its
poet, the air of enthusiasm we breathe there, the elegant
company, the glorious names, the walks by the lake,
the mornings in the park, the mysteries and the
inevitable storms which we surmise, all contribute to
well known and indisputable. We read in the published Cor-
respondence of Napoleon, at the beginning of a letter from the
Emperor to Cambaceres, dated from Osterode, 26th March
1807 : "I have written to the Minister of Police to send Mme.
de Stael back to Geneva, with permission to go to any foreign
country she chooses. That woman still pursues her profession
of intrigante. She went to Paris against my orders, she is a
perfect pest. My desire is that you speak seriously to the
Minister about this, for I see I shall be forced to have her
apprehended. Keep an eye on Benjamin Constant also, and at
the least (political) interference on his part, I shall send him to
Brunswick, to his wife (!). I shall tolerate nothing from that
clique. I do not wish them to make converts, and bring down
my wrath on good citizens." Napoleon affects to consider
Mme. de Stael as practically a foreigner, just as at the same
time he pretended to see only a foreigner in Benjamin Constant :
this was put right during the Hundred Days.
112 MADAME DE STAEL.
idealize the place for us. Coppet is the Elysium which
every disciple of Jean-Jacques would gladly give to
the mistress of his dreams. Mme. de Genlis, awaken-
ing from her early errors, and wishing to repair them,
has tried in a novel, called Athenais, ou le Chateau de
Coppet en 1807,* to reproduce the habits and some of
the delicate complications of that life which from afar
we can only distinguish through an enchanted glass.
But we must not expect to find a faithful picture in
that otherwise pleasant production : the dates are
confused, the characters are grouped with an object,
and their parts are arranged to fit in ; M. Schlegel
is made to seem grotesque, sacrificed without scruple
and regardless of good taste ; the whole situation,
indeed, is represented under a false romantic light,
which in our eyes spoils true romance as much as it
would spoil reality. For my part, I would much
rather have some exact details, on which the after
fancy of those who have not seen, might indulge in
pleasant dreams of what might have been.
The life at Coppet was the life of a country mansion.
There were often as many as thirty guests there,
friends and strangers ; the most constant visitors were
Benjamin Constant, M. Auguste Wilhelm de Schlegel,
M. de Sabran, M. de Sismondi, M. de Bonstetten, the
Barons de Voght, de Balk, etc. ; also once, or perhaps
several times a year, M. Mathieu de Montmorency, M.
Prosper de Barante, Prince Auguste of Prussia, the
celebrated beauty of the day, designated by Mme. de
Genlis under the name of Athenais, and a crowd of
fashionable people, acquaintances from Germany or
Geneva. The literary and philosophical conversations,
always high-toned, clever and witty, began as early as
eleven in the morning, when all met at breakfast ; and
* Published by Jules Didot, 1832.
MADAME DE STAEL. 113
were carried on again at dinner, and in the interval
between dinner and supper, which was at eleven at
night, and often as late as midnight. Benjamin
Constant and Mme. de Stael engrossed the conversa-
tion. It was then that Benjamin Constant, whom we
younger men have only seen rather blase", exchanging
his too inveterate habit of raillery for a slightly
affected enthusiasm, a prodigiously amusing talker
always, but whose wit was influenced by his other
more powerful passions and faculties, it was here at
Coppet that he showed to the greatest advantage,
proving himself to be, as Mme. de Stael uncontradicted
has proclaimed, le premier esprit du monde, the greatest
wit of the day : he was certainly the greatest of dis-
tinguished men. Their intellects were in accord ;
they always understood each other. Witnesses tell
us that the sparkling brilliancy of their conversation
in this chosen circle could not be surpassed ; like
a magic game of racket and ball, conversation was
thrown from one to the other for hours without a
single miss.
But we must not suppose that everybody there was
always either sentimental or solemn ; very often they
were simply gay ; Corinne had days of abandon, when
she resembled the signora Fantastici. They often acted
plays at Coppet, dramas and tragedies, or the chivalric
plays of Voltaire, Zaire and Tancrede, favourites of
Mme. de Stael's ; or plays composed expressly by her
or her friends. These latter were sometimes printed
at Paris, so that the parts might more easily be learned ;
the interest taken in such messages was very keen ;
and when in the interval some important correction
was thought of, a courier was hurried off, and some-
times a second to catch him up, and modify the
correction already en route. The poetry of Europe
H
H4 MADAME DE STA&L.
was represented at Coppet by many celebrated men.
Zacharias Werner, one of the originators of that court,
whose Attila and other dramas were played with a
considerable addition of German ladies, wrote about
this time (1809) to Counsellor Schneffer (we delete,
however, two or three expressions to which the in-
voluntarily sensual and voluptuous imagination of
the poet is too apt) : " Mme. de Stael is a queen, and
all the intelligent men who live in her circle are
unable to leave it, for she holds them by a magic spell.
They are not all, as is foolishly believed in Germany,
occupied in forming her literary character ; on the
contrary, they receive a social education at her hands.
She possesses to admiration the secret of uniting the
most unlikely elements, and all who come near her,
however different their opinions may be, agree in
adoring this idol. Mme. de Stael is of middling
height, and, without possessing the elegance of a
nymph, is of noble proportions. . . . She is healthy,
a brunette, and her face is not exactly beautiful ; but
this is not observed, for at sight of her eyes all else
is forgotten ; they are superb ; a great soul not only
shines in them, but shoots forth flame and fire. And
when, as so often happens, she speaks straight from
her heart, we see how this noble heart is hedged round
by all that is great and profound in her mind, and then
one must adore her, as do my friends A. W. Schlegel
and Benjamin Constant," etc.
It is not difficult to imagine to oneself the sprightly
author of this picture. Werner, in his uncouth dress,
purposely besmeared with snuff, furnished as he was
with an enormous snuff-box, which he used plentifully
during his long, erotic, and platonic digressions on
androgyne; his fate was, he said, to be dragged hither
and thither in fruitless search for that other half of
MADAME DE STAEL. 115
himself, and from one attempt to another, from divorce
after divorce, he never despaired of, in the end, re-
constituting his original self. The Danish poet CEhlen-
schleeger* has given a detailed account of a visit he
paid to Coppet, and he mentions the good Werner
quite in this tone ; we shall horrow from (Ehlen-
schlseger's story a few other facts :
" Mme. de Stae'l kindly came to me and invited me
to spend some weeks at Coppet, joking me at the same
time ahout my mistakes in French. I took refuge in
German. She, and also her two children, understood
that language well, and spoke it also very well. At
Mme. de Stael's house, I met Benjamin Constant,
August Schlegel, the old Baron Voght of Altona,
Bonstetten of Geneva, the famous Simonde de Sis-
mondi, and Count de Sabran, the only one of the
company who did not know German. . . . Schlegel
was, in my opinion, polite but cold. . . . Mme. de
Stael was not pretty, but in the glance of her dark
eyes there lay an irresistible charm ; and she pos-
sessed in a high degree the gift of subduing obstinate
natures, and by her own amiability drawing together
men quite antipathetic to each other. She had a
loud voice and rather a masculine face, but a delicate
and tender heart. . . . She was then engaged on her
Allemagne, and used to read a part of it to us every
day. She has been accused of never having studied
the books of which she speaks in this work, and is
said to have been entirely submissive to the judgment
of Schlegel. This is false. She read German with
the greatest ease. Schlegel had, however, a certain
influence over her, but she very frequently differed in
opinion from him, and reproached him for his pre-
* Danish national poet ; his first great poem was Aladdin;
or, The Wonderful Lamp.Tn.
Ii6 MADAME DE STAEL.
judices. Sclilegel, for whose learning and intellect
I have a great respect, was in truth steeped in prejudice.
He placed Calderon above Shakespeare ; he severely
criticised Luther and Herder. He was, like his brother,
infatuated with the aristocracy. ... If we add to all
the virtues ef Mme. de Stael that she was rich and
generous, no one will be surprised to hear that she
lived in her enchanted castle like a queen or a fairy ;
and her magic wand was perhaps that little twig
which it was a servant's duty to place by her plate
each morning, and with which she toyed during the
conversation." Failing the laurel twig or the sacred
mistletoe, it was her fan, an ivory or silver paper-cutter,
or simply a morsel of paper, her fingers played with,
that hand impatient of a sceptre.
As for portraits of Mme. de Stael, we see how all
who try to limn her agree in the chief points, from
M. de Guibert to (Ehlensehheger and Werner. Two
faithful and trustworthy portraits from the brush
allow us to dispense with literary word-painting,^ the
portrait painted by Mme. Lebrun in 1807, which
presents Mme. de Stael to us as Corinne, bare-headed,
her hair in curls, a lyre in her hand ; and the picture
by Gerard, painted after her death, but from perfect,
unerring remembrance. However, in collecting together
several sketches from various contemporaneous pens,
we think we have not done a useless thing ; one is
never weary of harmonizing many reminiscences of
those beloved and admired ones who are no more.*
* One distinctive characteristic of the vast hospitality of
Coppet was the order which reigned 'amidst so much variety
and amusement ; one enjoyed the ease of wealth without any
of the profusion which causes the degeneration of many a
brilliant life. Here a guiding hand made everything go
smoothly, and by a wise economy of the means at hand,
MADAME DE STAL. 117
English poetry, which, during the Continental wars,
was unrepresented at this long congress of thought
of which Coppet was the abiding-place, appeared there
in 1816, in the persons of Lewis and Byron. The
latter has spoken of Mine, de Stae'l in his Memoirs in
an affectionate and admiring manner, despite a certain
levity the oracle indulges in. Blast as he is, he admits
that she has made Coppet the most pleasant place in
the world, through the society she chooses to receive
there, and which her own talent animates. On her
side, she pronounced him to be the most seductive
man in England, always adding : " I credit him with
just sufficient tenderness to destroy the happiness of a
woman." *
But the inexpressible charm of Coppet during these
its most brilliant years, that which you would now
like to grasp, oh ye hearts, whether ye be still young
plenty of leisure was left for the enjoyment of romance and the
drama ; the springs of household government were never visible,
but all enjoyed the skilful result.
* About the same time that she expresses this opinion of
Byron, she remarked, as if from some association of ideas : " I
do not like B. Constant's book. I do not believe that all men
are like Adolphe, but men are vain." From Byron's own
Memoirs we read : "I send you Adolphe by B. C. ; it contains
some painful truths, although in my opinion it is too sad a
book ever to be popular. The first time I read it was in
Switzerland (1816), by Mme. de Stael's desire ; " and he adds
a contradiction of an erroneous supposition which had been
spread. The original of E116nore was Mme. Lindsay, she
whom M. de Chateaubriand in his MSmoires calls the last of
the Ninons. This, however, is no proof that more than one
feature applicable to the author's liaison with Mine, de Stae'l
may not have crept into the picture. These heroines of
romance are very complex. Sismondi, however, has said too
much about them in his Letters, since published ; and we are
able to penetrate the mask better than is desirable.
n8 MADAME DE STA&L.
and fresh, or disillusioned, rebellious of the present,
passionately fond of the past, thirsting for an ideal
which you no longer hope to find ; oh, all you who
are still, it has been justly said, what is best in the
world after genius, inasmuch as ye have power to
admire it, and with tearful eyes to feel it, it is the
seclusion, the interchange of thoughts and ideas among
these guests beneath the leafy shades, and the noon-
day talks by the brink of these lovely waters clothed
with verdure. A frequent guest at Coppet, knowing
my deep interest (he is not one of those I have named
above),* told me : "One morning I had come out of doors
early to enjoy the fresh air. I lay on the thick grass
by a pond in a remote part of the park, gazing dreamily
at the blue sky. Suddenly I heard voices, two persons
drawing near and nearer, talking. The conversation
was loud and excited, and of a private nature. I tried
to make a noise to warn them of my presence, and as
I hesitated to get up, they came so near that it
was too late to interrupt, and I was obliged to re-
main and hear everything reproaches, explanations,
promises, unseen, and scarcely daring to breathe."
" Happy man ! " I said ; " and whose were the two
voices? and what did you hear?" Then since the
delicacy of the strolling guest evaded my questions,
I was careful not to persist. Let us leave to romance,
or to the poetic imagination of our descendants, the
fresh colouring of such mysteries ; we are still too
close to them. Let time roll on, let the nimbus
gather on these hills, let the hoary summits murmur
forgetfully of long-past voices, and one day imagination
can embellish at will the sorrows and the anguish of
hearts in such hallowed Edens.
Corinne appeared in 1807. Its success was instan-
* I may now give his name, he was Catruffo, the composer.
MADAME DE STAEL. 119
taneous and universal ; but it is not from the criticisms
of the press that we must prove this. Critical freedom,
even literary criticism, had almost ceased to exist ;
Mme. de Stael about this time was not able to persuade
the Mercure to insert a clever but simple analysis of
the remarkable essay by M. Barante on the Eighteenth
Century. When Gorinne appeared, we were on the eve
of, or threatened with, that absolute censorship. The
sovereign's displeasure at the book,* probably because
its ideal enthusiasm was not helpful to his aim, was
sufficient to paralyse published praise. The PuUiciste,
always the moderate organ of M. Suard and of philo-
sophic freedom in matters intellectual, had three good
articles, signed "D. D.," which were probably written
by Mile, de Meulan (Mme. Guizot). On the other hand,
M. de Feletz continued his curtly polite, but fault-
finding, remarks in the Dsbats.^
* " If we are to believe an anecdote," says M. de Villemain in
his beautiful studies on Mme. de Stae'l, " the ruler of France was
so annoyed at the noise this romance made, that he himself
wrote a critique for the Moniteur. He strongly censured the
interest centred in Oswald, and characterized it as want of
patriotism. Any one may read this clever and bitter criticism."
I have tried in vain to find the article, which is probably not
published under the direct heading of Corinne. I leave the
pleasure of discovering it to those admirers of Napoleonic
literature who are beginning to discover in their hero the first
writer of the century (Thiers, Carrel, Hugo, etc.). Render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but do not lay all
crowns at his feet.
t Since I had the honour of knowing this talented repre-
sentative of the old art of criticism, I have better understood
how much real goodness there was in him, and how his honest
rectitude was consistent with those sharp, cutting remarks so try-
ing to the amour propre of authors. When M. de Feletz had a
grain of humour on his tongue, he could not help expressing it ;
his connection with journalistic criticism explains this. His
120 MADAME DE STAEL.
M. Boutard praised, and judiciously reserved his
opinions in respect to art. One, " M. C." (whose name
I do not know), had an article in the Mercure which
was well intentioned but valueless. And what did all
this continued criticism matter now to Mine, de Stae'l ?
With Corinne, her empire of fame was won. There is
one decisive moment for genius, a moment in which it
so firmly establishes itself, that for all time coming
praise is interesting only to the vanity of those who
bestow it. They are thankful to have the honour of
commending, for so their names gain lustre in society,
as a borrowed vase of gold will embellish our abode.
Thus with Mme. de Stae'l ; from the time Corinne
appeared, Europe crowned her with the name she had
immortalized. Corinne is the personification of the
sovereign independence of genius at the very moment
of its geatest oppression, Corinne, who was crowned at
Rome, in that Capitol of the Eternal City into which
the conqueror who exiled her might not put his foot.
Mme. Necker de Saussure (Notice), Benjamin Constant
(Melanges), M. J. Chenier (Tableau de la Litte'rature),
have appreciatively analyzed the book, and have done so,
so thoroughly that our task is curtailed. " Corinne,"
says Chenier, "is Delphine still, but idealized and
independent, giving free play to all her talents, and
mistake as regards his satire, which usually hit home, was that
he did not recognise the grand and serious passages, and thus
detracts from the effect. He wrote too purely for society, and
never went deeply into anything ; his jests also were carried
too far, which made him seem unamiable. Mme. de Stae'l, who
so seldom cherished resentment, made M. de Feletz the
exception. On one occasion, when she observed him enter a
salon, she went out by the other door. His crime was the. only
unpardonable one in her eyes : he had spoken ill of M. Necker.
(See Melanges by M. de Feletz, vol. vi. p. 280, and the volume
subsequently published, Judgments, p. 352.)
MADAME DE STAZL. 121
always under the double inspiration of love and
intellect." Yes ; but for Corinne even glory is but a
brilliant distraction, a grand opportunity to conquer
hearts. " In seeking fame," she says to Oswald/' I have
always hoped it would gain me love." The scheme of
the book lays before us that struggle between nobly ambi-
tious or sentimental faculties and domestic happiness,
that perpetual aspiration of Mme. de Stael's. Corinne
is simply resplendent at times as priestess of Apollo,
while in the common relations of life we find her the
simplest of women, gay, lively, with many charms,
capable of the most gracious, unaffected abandon ; but
with all these attractions she is yet unable to escape
from herself. From the moment passion touches her,
when she feels herself seized by that vulture's claw,
beneath which happiness and independence sinks, I love
her helpless efforts to find comfort, I love her sentiment,
which is more powerful than her genius, her ever
recurrent invocations to the sanctity and continuity
of the bonds which alone prevent sudden rendings
asunder, and I love to hear her, in her dying hour,
avow in her chant du cygne (swan-song) : " Among
all the faculties I owe to nature, grief alone is
exhausted." This counterpart of Delphine which I
find in Corinne is very seductive, and is the charm
of the book to me. The severe situations in which
this ardent, sensitive being is placed, are admirably
calculated to enhance the picture. Lovers' names,
not inscribed on the bark of some beech tree, but
engraved on the eternal ruins, harmonize with the
gravity of history, and become a living part of its
immortality. The divine passion of a being whom we
cannot believe to be only imaginary, introduces into
the amphitheatre of antiquity one more victim who
will never be forgotten ; the genius which tore her
122 MADAME DE STA&L.
away is another conqueror, and not the least, in that
city of conquerors.
When Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was walking one
day with Rousseau, he asked him if Saint-Preux was
not himself: "No," replied Jean- Jacques, "Saint-Preux
is not at all what I have been, but what I would like
to have been." Almost all writers of poetic romance
would speak thus. Corinne is what Mme. de Stael
would have wished to be, and what, after all, except in
the difference between the artistic grouping and her
scattered life, she has been. She not only had the
Capitol and the triumph of Corinne; she also had death
through suffering.
That Rome, that Naples, which Mme. de Stael
depicts in her own style in the poetic romance of
Corinne, M. de Chateaubriand, about the same time,
represents to us in his epic poem, The Martyrs. In this
there is not the slightest interposing shade of German
influence ; with Eudore we go back to the simplicity
of youth, while throughout we discern the masculine
firmness of the design, the natural, spontaneous
splendour of the glowing pen. For the comparison of
all the different modes of feeling and of depicting
Rome, since Rome began to be a city of ruins, we
know nothing more complete than the shrewd and
learned essay of M. Ampere.*
Rome, Rome ! thy marbles and thy skies, vaster
surroundings to lend support to less fleeting ideas !
A talented woman once wrote : " How I love certain
poems ! It is with them as with Rome, all or nothing :
we either live in them, or we cannot understand."
Corinne is but an imposing variety of this worship of
Rome, of this reverent power of entering in other
epochs and with diverse minds, into the Eternal City.
* Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1835, vols. ii. and iii.
MADAME DE STAEL. 123
One delightful part of Corinne, and all the more
charming because unusual, is the conversational style
which is so often introduced, and the hankering after
French society which the Count d'Erfeuil is made to
express. Mine, de Stael mocks that too thoughtlessly
witty society, but in such moments-she is herself more
French than she supposes : what she can express best,
she, as it so often happens, disdains.
As in Delphine, there are portraits : Mme. d'Arbigny,
that Frenchwoman who plans and calculates everything,
is one, as is also Mme. de Vernon. It is privately
whispered that she is Mme. de Flahaut, just as we also
know the rather contrary individualities of which the
noble figure of Oswald is a type, and as we recognise
the truthfulness of the parting scene, and can almost
realize the agony of Corinne during absence.
However, although in Corinne there are conversations
and pictures of fashionable life, it is not, as regards this
book just, to blame Mme. de Stael for incoherence or
inconsistency of style, and for a degree of preference in
the disposition of her ideas. For the general execution
of this work she has quite abandoned the witty volu-
bility which she sometimes indulged in (stans pede in
uno) as she leant against the marble chimney-piece.
If here and there incompleteness of style may be
detected, it is only by rare accident ; I have seen
pencil jottings in a copy of Corinne, picking out the
great number of metis (but), Avhich give rather a
monotonous effect to the first pages. Careful attention
presides over every detail of this monument ; the
authoress has written in artistic, measured, and majestic
language.*
* Heading a reprint of Corinne in 1839, \ve added : "Even
as time passes, the interest which attaches to these works, once
recognised as subsisting and durable, may vary, but is not lew
124 MADAME DE STA&L.
The book on Germany, which appeared in London
only in 1813, was on the eve of being published in
Paris in 1810 : the edition submitted to the imperial
censors, Esmenard and others, was completed, when, by
the sudden tactics of the police, the sheets were sent to
be waste paper, and the whole annihilated. The Due
de Rovigo's letter is well known ; that disgraceful story
is still fresh in our minds. Germany having become
better known, and having besides made great advances
since that time, Mme. de StaeTs book may now seem
less complete in the historical part ; public opinion is,
however, in these later times, more sensible in regard
to such defects. But apart from the honour of initiat-
ing what no one else was capable of undertaking at the
time, and which Villers alone, if he had had as much
talent in writing as in conversation, could have divided,
with her, I do not believe that we could now find
elsewhere such a vivid picture of that sudden birth of
German genius, such a brilliant picture of that poetic
age which may be called the century of Goethe ; for
the beautiful German poetry seems almost to have been
great. Their very faults become characteristic of the descrip-
tion, and are not without their charm as the expression of a
former taste which has given way to another, which in its turn
will also pass away. Something has perished from the bosom
of what continues to exist ; that tinge of sadness is very
appropriate in the midst of the admiration. It would be more
suitable at this moment, when a recent mournful memory is
associated with that immortal figure of Corinne, and when, our
attention being drawn to Mme. de Stael, we involuntarily think
of what the grave has but now taken from us. This book, which
a father's death sent her to Italy to ponder over, this book,
scarcely thirty years old, has already seen her and her son and
her daughter buried ; it may well be read again in presence of
these grave thoughts of death ; for if it does not speak of the
real mystery of the things of life, at all events we can extract
from it nothing but what is generous, beautiful, and good."
MADAME DE STAKL. 125
born and to have died with that great man, and to
have lived only the life of a patriarch ; since then, there
is already a falling off, a decadence.
In her introduction to L'Allemagne, Mme. de Stael lays
great stress on the philosophical talent, on the nature of
the doctrines as opposed to those of French ideology ; at
such moments she shows us that she is herself far
enough from her earlier philosophy. Here (and let us
carefully note this) we find indications of a growing
anxiety for morality in her writings. A work is not
in her opinion sufficiently moral unless it in some part
aims at the perfectibility of the soul. In the admirable
discussion which she makes Jean-Jacques carry on
with a religious hermit, it is set forth that "genius
ought only to manifest the supreme goodness of the
soul." In some passages she appears very anxious to
combat the idea of suicide. " When one is very
young," she excellently says, "the degradation of
existence being still unrealized, the tomb seems only
poetic imagery, a sleep, and kneeling figures weeping
round us ; towards middle life it is no longer thus,
and one understands then why religion, that science
of the soul, has put the horror of murder along with
the crime of suicide." Mme. de Stael, in the unfortunate
position in which she was then placed, did not abjure
enthusiasm, and her book closes with a glorification of
it, although by the influence of religion she endeavours
to restrain herself.
The Essai sur le Suicide, which appeared at Stockholm
in 1812, was composed about 1800, and signs of a moral
revolution in Mme. de Stael are there even more apparent
than before.
The grief which the unexpected suppression of her
book caused her was great. Six years of hopeful study
wasted, and a redoubling of persecution at the. moment
126 MADAME DE STAL.
when she had expected a truce ; other painful and con-
trary circumstances made her situation at this time both
a violent crisis and a decisive ordeal, which ushered
her into those unending years which I have called her
darkest. Let it pass ! let it pass ! She is far beyond
them now, there is henceforth nothing for her but glory
which will never leave her ; there is neither position
there, nor the chant of the Capitol. Till then the
tempests of life had always left her a gracious reflex of
light in these transitory allurements of fame, to use
her own charming expression, some air ecossais (Scotch
melody) in her life. But from this time everything
becomes more hard and bitter. First, youth that
grand and natural consoler flies. Mme. de Stael had a
perfect horror of age, of the idea of getting old ; one day,
when she frankly expressed this sentiment before Mme.
Suard, the latter said to her : " Never mind, you will
get resigned to it, and be a very amiable old lady."
But she shuddered at the thought : the word youth had
a musical charm in her ears ; she loved to clothe her
phrases with the sentiment of youth, and such simple
words as We were young then, filled her eyes with tears.
" Do we not often see," she exclaims (Essai sur le Suicide),
" the spectacle of the torment of Me"zence repeated by
the union of a living soul with a ruined body, in-
separable enemies 1 What is the meaning of that sad
avant coureur which nature causes to precede death, if
it is not the order to exist without happiness, to abdicate
daily, flower after flower in the crown of life ? " She
kept herself behind as long as possible far from these
latter days which echo with hoarse voice the brilliant airs
of youth. The sentiment of which, at this time, she was
the object on the part of M. Rocca, rather helped to
increase her self-delusion in regard to youth ; she saw
herself in the magic mirror of two young eyes blind to
MADAME DE STARL. 127
the ravages of years. But her marriage with M. Rocca,
broken down by his wounds, the adoring love with
which she gratefully devoted herself to him, her own
impaired health, all inclined her for more home-like
duties. L'air ecossais, I'air brillant of earlier times,
became a grave hymn, holy and sad. From henceforth,
religion breathed not only in her conversation, but in
the practices of her daily life. When she was younger,
less loaded with sorrow, it had sufficed for her to go in
certain hours of sadness, to visit her father's tomb at
the other side of the park, or with Benjamin Constant
or M. de Montmorency, to engage in some deeply
mystical conversation ; as life advances, when courage
is crushed by positive and increasing suffering, when
all fails and fades day by day, and everything is
colourless, passing inspirations are no support ; we
require a firmer belief, one more continually present
with us : Mme. de Stael did not seek for it except where
she could find it, in the gospel, in Christian religion.
Before her complete conversion, her most critical time
was during that long year which preceded her flight.
The faithful constancy of some friends comforted her
for the neglect, the cowardly excuses, the fear, disguised
under the plea of ill-health, which others had hurt her
by, wounding her heart in diverse ways. She felt her-
self surrounded by some contagion of fate, which affected
all who were dearest to her ; her spirit rose to the
danger. " I am the exiled Orestes" she exclaimed to the
intimate friends who were so devoted to her. And
again : " In imagination I am in the tower of Ugolcn.'
Too much under restraint at Coppet, especially with her
tormenting imagination, she longed with all her strength
to enjoy a freer air, a larger space. The prefect of
Geneva, H. Capelle, who had succeeded M. de Barante
senior, pressed her to write something to celebrate the
128 MADAME DE STAEL.
birthday of the king of Rome :* a few words would have
smoothed all ways for her, opened every capital ; she
did not think for a single instant ; in her well-known
prompt reply she found nothing better to wish for the
child than a good wet-nurse. The Dix Annies d'Eocil
gives a natural description of the vicissitudes of that
disturbed period ; she represents herself as ceaselessly
studying the maps of Europe, regarded as the plan of a
vast prison, which she was trying to escape from. Her
earnest longing was towards England, but she would be
obliged to reach it by St. Petersburg.
It was in this brooding disposition, and after that
profound crisis resolved upon after mature thought,
that the Restoration found Mme. de Stael, and brought
her back (to France). She had seen Louis XVIII. in
England. " We shall have," she announced then to a
friend, " a king who will be a friend of literature." She
liked this prince, whose moderate opinions reminded
her of some of her father's. She was altogether con-
verted to the political ideas of England, in that country
which seemed to her the land of family life and public
liberty. We see her returned from it appeased, soothed,
no doubt full of the generous impetuosity which
endured till her last day, but fixed in some half-
aristocratic opinions, which from 1795 to 1802, she
had by no means professed. Her hostility against the
Empire, her absence from France, her association with
the allied sovereigns and foreign society, the extreme
craving for rest which impels the mind to take refuge
in less daring impressions, all these contributed to
this metamorphosis in her. As she grew older, Mme.
de Stael was very ready to reproach herself for some of
her father's old ideas. Just so we have observed that
character changes, and as people grow older they return
* Napoleon's son. TE.
MADAME DE STAEL. 129
to the primitive type which distinguished them in
childhood, casting off by degrees the formal habits con-
tracted in the interval. It is the same in revolutions ;
after the outbreak, people fall back on more moderate
demands, simpler aims than they at first thought of
attaining, or of being contented with ; and so we see
Mme. de Stael towards the end of her life taking refuge
in a more miscellaneous system, more temperate, and
for her almost domestic : this, for the daughter of M.
Necker, was simply returning to Saint-Ouen, accepting
altogether the charter of Louis XVIII.
The Considerations sur la Revolution franpaise, Mme.
de Stael's last work, is the one which has established
her fame, and which naturally classes her name in
politics between the honoured names of her father
and her son-in-law. It allows us to know her from a
liberal point of view, Anglified, and rather doctrinaire,
as they say, much better than we could otherwise have
known her. Immediately after her return to France,
she began to see in her own mind the unreasonableness
of party spirit, and all the difficulties and complications
which accompany restorations. Caution, and prudent,
conciliatory measures were from the first indicated, coun-
selled by her. In her connection with Mme. de Duras and
M. de Chateaubriand, she sought to come to an understand-
ing with the generous enlightened portion of a royalism
keener than her own. " My system," she said in 1816,
" is always absolutely opposed to that which is popular,
and my most sincere affection is with those who follow
it." She had from this time to suffer much and un-
ceasingly in many of her private affections and relation-
ships, which she had to sacrifice to the divergencies of
opinion which arose ; the cluster of human friendships
relaxed and loosed around her ; some new and precious
acquaintances, like M. Mackintosh, only imperfectly
I
130 MADAME DE STAEL.
compensated her. Painful days, but which come sooner
or later in every existence, in which one sees the chosen
ones who have been enfolded in the sacred shrine of an
ideal love grow cool, then gloomy, one after the other,
finding no pleasure in our society, failing altogether in
that delicacy of affection which at first they showered
on us ! These inevitable disappointments, which the
dearest friendships do not preclude, had a singular
effect on Mme. de Stae'l, and weakened her hold,, if not
on life, at least on its vanities and perishable pleasures.
She at last began to find less pleasure even in writing to
M. de Montmorency, I'admirable ami, himself, on account
of these unfortunate differences of opinion, to which he
held too firmly. M. de Schlegel had a great grudge
against this invading policy, and was less comfortable,
or at times more sarcastic, in these troubled reunions,
which no longer represented to him the delightful
literary society of Coppet.
Mme. de Stae'l was quite sensible of this, and, already
suffering from an increasing malady, consoled herself
either in her family, or looking higher in faithfulness to
One ivho can never be unfaithful to us. She died, however,
surrounded by all those chosen friends whose names
we love to see united with hers ; she died in Paris,* in
1817, the 14th of July, on that day of liberty and sun-
shine, full of genius and sentiment, with undimmed
faculties, and at a still early age. The evening before
her death she made them wheel her chair into the
garden, and distributed to those loved ones she was
about to leave for ever, roses and blessed words of
comfort as her last remembrances.
The posthumous publication of the Considerations,
which took place in 1818, was a great event, and con-
stituted for Mme. de Stae'l a brilliant political anni-
* Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins.
MADAME DE STAEL. 131
rersary. In this work she suggests to the Revolution,
and to the Restoration itself, a political interpretation
destined to echo long, and to exercise an enduring
influence. It was a monarchic sdon la Charte, according
to her. Outside this, and exclusive of M. de Chateau-
briand's policy, safety was almost impossible for the
Restoration : on the contrary, the harmony between these
two extremes might possibly be prolonged indefinitely.
Each faction, therefore, in the excitement of novelty,
rushed to find in the book of Considerations weapons
wherewith to defend its system. The praises were
just, the censure passionate. Benjamin Constant in the
Minerve, M. de Fitz- James in the Conservateur, wrote
very strongly, and from very opposite points of view,
as one may suppose. M. Bailleul and M. de Bonald
wrote pamphlets on the work, each interpreting it in
a contrary sense ; and there were many other pamphlets
written on the subject. The thoughtful influence
which through this work Mme. de Stael exercised on
the younger liberal philosophical party, that which
later on was represented by the Globe, was direct.
The conciliatory, expansive, irresistible influence which
would have resulted from her personal influence, was
more than once much missed by the political party
which, so to speak, emanated from her, and would have
continued to be hers.
But it is in the domain of art that her influence
would, I imagine, have been more and more delicately
effective, cordial, intelligent, and untiringly encouraging
to new talent, seeking it out, and moulding it with
profit to itself and posterity. Among all those who
at the present day are burning with unrecognised talent,
scattered here and there, loose, unbound, she would
perhaps have been a bond, the domestic hearth round
which ideas could have been exchanged, enthusiasm
132 MADAME DE STA&L.
rekindled ; interpreting each other's thoughts, they
would with her have perfected the union of art and
imagination. Yea, if Mine, de Stael had lived, ap-
preciative and sincerely affectionate as she was, how
especially she would have delighted in that eminent
woman's talent, which I cannot yet compare to hers !
And after the publication of Le'lia, how she would
herself have hurried, full of tender dismay and indulg-
ence, to comfort the authoress under the unfriendly
severity and hypocritical morality of public criticism !
Delphine, alone among all the women of the salon,
went and sat by Mme. Recamier. Instead. of vulgar
curiosity or malicious flattery, how cordially she would
have taken to her heart that womanly genius more an
artist than she herself, I grant, but so far less philo-
sophic, less wise, less convinced, less deeply imbued
with sound political views and quickened sensibilities !
how she would have made her love life and glory !
how eloquently she would have spoken to her of the
clemency of heaven, and of the beauty of the universe,
ivhich does not exist to defy man, but to typify for him a
'better life! And lastly, how she would have praised
her, and encouraged her to seek after more placid
inspirations !
Oh you whom public opinion has already with one
voice proclaimed first in the path of literature since
Mme. de Stael, you have, I well know, in the admira-
tion you display for her, a deep and tender gratitude
for all the good she desired for you and may have done
you ! There will ever be in your glory an early bond
which binds you to hers.*
"* It will be understood that this refers to Mme. Sand. During
the thirty years since this study of Mme. de Stael appeared
(May 1835), many letters and documents have been published
which have thrown more and more light on some of her ideas,
MADAME DE STAEL. 133
and made her better understood. I must content myself with
drawing attention to the article on Mme. de Slael, Ambassadrice,
published by M. Geoffrey in the Revue des Deux-Mondes of the
1st November 1856 ; the volume entitled Coppet et Weimar,
published by Mme. Lenormant in 1862 ; a work the title of
which is La Comtesse d' Albany, and the collection of Lettres
inedites by Sismondi, published by M. Saint-Rene Taillandier
in 1862 and 1863. But except for a few corrections in regard
to details which might be added to our first idea, the essential
and the principal features of the study which has just been
read remain as true at this present time as they were thirty
years ago. Let us guard against undoing, or even tainting, the
worthy admirations, the well-grounded traditions of our youth.
JEANNE D'ARC*
1850.
THE Socidd de VHistoire de France, the labours of which
have not been interrupted by the painful circumstances
against which it has had to contend, has just completed
a work of great national importance, the compilation
of which had been entrusted to the painstaking and
enthusiastic zeal of M. Jules Quicherat. This young
and conscientious savant has collected and compiled, in
five volumes, all the authentic documents which illus-
trate clearly the history of Jeanne d'Arc, particularly
the full-length texts of the two lawsuits, the first
called the Proems de condemnation, and the other the
Proems de rehabilitation, which latter occurred twenty-
five years later. The analysis of these proceedings, and
the extracts from both documents, which had already
appeared in various publications (especially in the
Collection des Mtfmoires, edited by M. Michaud and M.
Poujoulat), had attracted public attention ; but extracts
which give only the poetic and beautiful side of a
question are very different from a literal reproduction
of the exact purport of the Latin texts, and the so-called
" instruments " of a voluminous legal procedure. We
* Proces de Jeanne d'Arc, published for the first time by M.
J. Quicherat (6 vols. m. 8vo).
JEANNE D'ARC, 135
may say, indeed, that the memory of Jeanne d'Arc has
been half buried in the dust of the recorder's office,
from which it has only now been rescued. The com-
piler has been careful to quote, at the end of his work,
testimonies from the historians and chroniclers of the
time, regarding the Maid of Orleans, and he has also
added some collateral articles which the careful student
may like to see. So now we know all we shall ever
learn regarding this marvellous being. As a finishing
touch to his work, M. Quicherat has just added a
separate and introductory volume, in which he gives
modestly, but very precisely, his opinion on the new
points which this complete development of the indict-
ments in the proems brings out more clearly ; it is a
subject on which one is tempted to be led away by
enthusiasm and legend, but we shall endeavour to be
guided solely by love of truth.
Even after her death, the reputation of Jeanne d'Arc
seems to have been subjected to every possible distortion ;
while within the circle of literary criticism, what sudden
revolutions, what misadventures have befallen her !
Chapelain's La Pucelle almost turned the heroine into
ridicule ; this poem, to quote the remark of M. Quich-
erat, was nearly as fatal to the memory of Jeanne d'Arc
as a second verdict of condemnation would have been.
It was so tedious that it incurred the cruel lash of
Voltaire, who was the first to satirize this work, thereby
gaining universal applause. It was then believed that
such a subject could never again be treated seriously.
It does not beseem xis now to reproach Voltaire with
a wrong so universally felt, and of which he himself
would now be ashamed. Let us mention only that, in
the eighteenth century, every one was charmed with
this licentious Pucelle, and in my time the most decent
people could recite long extracts from it ; quite lately
136 JEANNE D'ARC.
I have heard some recited. "We are told that M. de
Malesherbes himself knew his Pucelle by heart. Each
century has these currents of contagious moral influence ;
they are unavoidable. Now we have passed to another
extreme, and he would be a bold man who would
venture to turn this subject into a vulgar jest. The
present tendency, even if exaggerated, is, after all,
infinitely more respectable ; it is more true and more
just, and I do not presume to condemn it.
From whatever point of view we may regard it, and
however carefully we may guard ourselves against
undue enthusiasm, we must admit the pathos of that
figure, Jeanne d'Arc ; no other in history is more
worthy of pity and admiration. France, at the time
she appeared, was at its lowest depths of misery.
During fourteen years of war, which began by the
disaster of Agincourt, nothing had occurred conducive
to the moral elevation of the invaded country. The
English king owned Paris ; the Dauphin held his
ground with difficulty on the Loire. One of his
secretaries, Alain Chartier, who was one of the most
able writers of his time, was among those who accom-
panied him. He has graphically described the state
of distress, during which there was not a single place
ol refuge for any man of wealth and learning save
behind the ramparts of a few cities. For "even the
mention of the fields inspired one with a feeling of
terror, and the country seemed to have become an
ocean, where no other right but that of brute force
predominated, and where each held possessions in pro-
portion to his strength." It was at this time that, in
a village situated in the valley of the Meuse, on the
borders of Lorraine, a young girl, the daughter of
simple, pious labourers, believed she heard a voice. She
first heard this voice in her father's garden one day in
JEANNE D'AKC. 137
midsummer, when she was about thirteen years of age
(1425). She had fasted during the whole of the
previous day, nor had her fast been broken on that
morning. Thenceforth the voice continued to be heard
by her several times each week, very regularly, but
most frequently at particular hours, exhorting and
advising her. It counselled her to continue in good
behaviour, to attend church regularly, and to enter
France. The latter exhortation was continually re-
peated with great and still greater emphasis, and the
girl felt she could no longer remain at home. The
mysterious and solitary communications, and her
inward struggles, went on for two or three years.
Every fresh echo of her country's distress increased
her anguish. The voice never ceased- to exhort her to
enter France at any price ; and the exhortation became
even more impressive after the day on which the
English began the siege of Orleans, that siege during
which every heart throbbed with the agony of suspense.
It commanded her to go instantly and raise the siege,
and when the child answered, " I am only a humble
girl, and know not how to ride or fight," the voice
responded, " It matters not thou must go nevertheless."
This adventurous idea which tempted Jeanne had
become known, and was very displeasing to her father,
an honest, good-living man, who declared he would
rather see his daughter drowned than behold such
things. The voice gave Jeanne permission to disobey
the commands of her father, and, under the pretext of
visiting an uncle who lived in the neighbourhood, she
left her native village. She then induced this relative
to take her to Robert de Baudricourt, who was in
command at Vaucouleurs. At first Robert received
her rudely, roughly telling her that "her uncle should
box her ears and take her back to her father." But at
138 JEANNE D'ARC,
last, influenced by her determination to go in spite of
all opposition, he yielded to her entreaties. She then
insisted upon an interview with the Duke of Lorraine,
who gave her some money. The inhabitants of
Vaucouleurs themselves, full of interest on her behalf,
undertook the expense of providing her with an
equipment. Her uncle and a neighbour bought her a
horse, the cost of which Robert de Baudricourt offered
to reimburse. The latter, not without some soldier-like
jests at the young girl's expense, as he helped her to
mount, in her soldier's dress, wished her a safe journey
to the Dauphin, saying, " Go, and come of it what may."
After a successful journey of eleven days, she found
the Dauphin, who was then at Chinon (March 1429).
Her public career now began, she being only seventeen
years of age. Having made herself known to the king,
and obtaining his consent, she resolutely followed the
vocation that her faith in God and the mysterious
voice prompted her to pursue ; she told every one
what had to be accomplished, and took command.
At the end of April she reached the ramparts of
Orleans ; entered the town, and raised the siege, after
a series of manoeuvres that were very remarkable,
according to the military tactics of those days. She
appears to have been gifted with that peculiar prompti-
tude of action which is a military intuition. The
following months were filled with her victories and
exploits, Jargeau ; Beaugency ; the battle of Patay,
where Talbot was made prisoner ; Troyes, which she
compelled to surrender to the king ; Rheims, where she
had him crowned, four months of glorious success !
Wounded before Paris on the 8th of September, fortune
for the first time failed her, and the exhortations of the
voice were for once misleading, or, at least, its counsels
were rendered useless by the unwillingness and obstinate
JEANNE PARC. 139
hesitation of her men. From this moment she had
only flashes of success ; her star had set, although
neither her courage nor her devotion were extinguished.
After divers mishaps and fruitlsss attempts, she was
taken in a raid on Compiegne, the 20th May 1430, a
little less than three months after her glorious appear-
ance at Orleans. She was cast into prison, and given
up by the Burgundians to the English, who in their
turn consigned her to the mercy of the Inquisition.
Jeanne's prosecution commenced at Eouen, in January
1431, and ended with the atrocious scene at the stake,
where she was burnt alive, as a relapsed heretic, the
30th of May of the same year, being convicted of
schism, idolatry, and witchcraft. She was then scarcely
twenty years of age.
Now, are we not at once struck by this rapid transit
of Jeanne d'Arc 1 do we not feel that life to her was
but a momentary flash, as it nearly always is with
beings so marvellously bright ?
After our first impression of pity and admiration for
this young and generous and innocent victim, we feel
that, in order to admire her better, we must obtain a
clearer insight into her character, and more fully realize
her sincerity and the motives that prompted her to act ;
our thoughts go even beyond this, and we are inclined
to ask ourselves, To what extent was her inspiration
founded on truth ? In short, the question resolves itself
into this : Can we solve the mystery of Jeanne d'Arc
by describing her as a natural being of great heroism
and sublimity, who believed herself inspired, though
really not otherwise than by human feelings ? Or
must we absolutely abandon the idea of obtaining any
solution, unless by admitting, as she did herself, a
supernatural intervention ?
M. Quicherat's work gives us a clearer idea on this
140 JEANNE D'ARC.
subject, and provides us with nearly all the elements
requisite for future treatment of this delicate question.
Unluckily, an important paper is missing, and has
never been found. If it existed, it would enable us to
judge Jeanne in her true light, and give us a better
insight into her early character. When Jeanne first came
to Charles VII., he caused her to be interrogated and
examined at Poictiers, in order to be convinced of her
truthfulness and candour. It is this first simple state-
ment, on the day of her arrival at the court, which
would be of such inestimable value, because, though
later on she answered the same questions before the
judges who condemned her, she no longer spoke with
the artless eloquence of that early deposition. How-
ever, in spite of this irreparable loss, we possess answers
from her own lips which bear witness to her real con-
dition from childhood. Without wishing to approach
a question which entirely belongs to physiology and
science, I will say only that the mere fact of habitually
hearing voices, of believing what in reality are simply
delusions to be spiritual manifestations, is a pheno-
menon, since proved in science, a rare phenomenon
certainly, but one which does not constitute a miracle,
nor does it necessarily constitute madness ; it is absolute
hallucination.
M. Quicherat very judiciously remarks : " In review-
ing the evidence afforded by the documents, the idea
I form of the Maiden of Domremy is that of a serious
and religions child, endowed to the utmost with that
intelligence peculiar to the superior beings of primitive
society. She was nearly always alone, at church
or in the fields, and became profoundly absorbed
in communication with the saints whose images she
contemplated." Her father's cottage was near the
church. A little further, on an incline, was a spring
JEAXNE D'ARC. 141
called the Currant Bush, under a beech tree entitled
the Beautiful May, the tree of the Ladies or Fairies.
The belief in these fairies, to which Jeanne's judges
attached so much importance, in order to convict her of
intercourse with evil spirits, and whose names she scarcely
knew, demonstrated, however, the idea of religious
mystery with which this place was surrounded, and the
atmosphere of vague fear and respect with which it
was imbued. Further on was the Oak Forest, whence
would proceed, according to tradition, a woman who
would redeem the kingdom lost by a woman (Isabel of
Bavaria). Jeanne knew this legend of the forest, and
repeated it often, applying it to herself. On certain
fete days the young village maidens assembled at the
tree of the fairies with cakes and garlands of flowers to
dance and play. Jeanne went with them, but not to
dance ; and she often sat there alone indulging in secret
dreams. But from the day the enemy brought murder
and devastation into the valley, her inspiration became
clearer. One idea emanated from her like an ardent
prayer, and came to her again as an echo. The voice
would speak to her as the voice of some superior being,
a being distinct from herself, and whom, in her
simplicity, she adored. The sublime and touching
thought is that this humble girl's illusion was inspired
by the vast pity she felt for her country and the
persecuted Dauphin. Fostered by the ideas of the
times, she had gradually accustomed herself to hear
these voices, and to distinguish them as the voices of
God's angels and of those saints who were dearest and
best known to her. Her familiar angels were St.
Michael and St. Gabriel ; and St. Catherine and St.
Margaret were her counsellors. During her prosecu-
tion, on being questioned regarding the doctrine taught
her by St. Michael her principal guide and patron,
142 JEANNE D'ARC.
she answered, that the angel, in order to arouse her,
woxild relate the calamities that had befallen the
kingdom of France.
Jeanne's inspiration came through her intense pity,
not the pity of a woman who expends her feelings in
tears, but the compassion of a heroine who feels that
she has a mission, and who wields the sword to succour
the unfortunate.
It seems to me that in history two distinct Jeannes
have existed, who have been confounded one with
the other, and it is difficult now to restore the first
and original one. M. Quicherat's book gives us the key
to the distinction. The original Jeanne is not quite
like the heroine of tradition and legend ; she is not so
gentle or so demure, but she is truer and more energetic.
When, twenty or twenty-five years after her condemna-
tion, inquiries were made by Charles VIL, in his
somewhat tardy gratitude, the old witnesses were
questioned, of whom a good number still existed. But
these survivors were already under the influence of
the universal legend, and were unable to reject it
entirely. in their statements. The majority appeared
anxious not only to avenge the memory of Jeanne, but
to idealize her, to show her off to advantage in every
way, to represent her as the most blameless and
exemplary of girls ; and we can readily believe they
have suppressed a good many characteristic points in
her nature. For instance, there is a vast difference
between the modest, gentle Jeanne and the one who is
supposed to have jested with Captain Kobert de Baudri-
court, answering, in a somewhat off-hand way, respect-
ing matrimony : " Yes when I have accomplished all
that God has commanded me, I shall have three sons
one of whom shall be a pope, one an emperor, one a
king." This was but a playful war of words with the
JEANNE D'ARC. 143
captain, and no doubt she only gave him his change, as
one might say, and he replied like a real old soldier in
similar tones.
When this girl of sixteen left her native village
determined to win France, she was full of daring
vigour both in word and action, though to a certain
extent this quality failed her during her long months
of imprisonment at Eouen. Her voice rang with light-
hearted confidence. When she held neither a sword
nor a banner she carried a baton in her hand, according
to the custom of the period, and this baton she used for
many purposes. " By my baton I will make them
bring provisions," she would swear, in speaking of the
citizens of Orleans. This word baton she continu-
ally made use of was, according to our best-informed
historian, her ordinary oath. On hearing the worthy
knight La Hire take the name of the Lord in vain, she
reproved him, telling him to do as she did, and swear
by his baton. She was quite delighted, when informed
by Dunois at the siege of Orleans, that an English
troop, commanded by Falstoff, was approaching to
bring help to the assailants ; and, fearing not to be
warned in time, so as to be prevented going, she
exclaimed to Dunois : "Bastard, Bastard, in the name
of God" (she may have said, "by my baton," but
probably the witness who stated this, considered the
word too ignoble), " I command you, as soon as you
learn that Falstoff has arrived, to let me know ; should
he come without your informing me, / will have your
head cut off." Even were this said only in jest, we see
the kind of jest characteristic of the real Jeanne.
She is supposed to have had a horror of blood ; and
when asked by the judges which she preferred, the
banner or the sword, she replied : " The banner, a
thousand times. I carry the banner in the midst of
144 JEANNE D"ARC.
the enemy tliat I may not slay ; " and, it is reported,
she never killed a single being. This evidence is very
explicit ; it harmonizes with legend, with poetry, and
with the graceful statuette that a young and talented
princess has left of Jeanne d'Arc, representing her
stopping her horse at the first sight of a corpse. Jeanne
was not a Judith, nor can we suppose she was too
gentle or compassionate. She is said to have uttered
the following words : " At the sight of a Frenchman's
blood my heart stands still." But we must admit she
considered the blood of the English and Burgundians
to be of far less value. As a child she knew but one
Burgundian, and it would have delighted her to see his
head cut off, " always supposing that it had been the wish
of God." According to the account of D'Aulon, her
steward, at the siege of Orleans, she was seen vigorously
attacking the enemy. After assailing the Bastille of St.
Loup, where there were about three hundred English-
men (others say one hundred and fifty), she planted
her banner on the edge of the trenches. The besieged
wished to surrender to her; but she refused to 'take
them at a ransom, crying, " I will capture you fairly."
She then ordered an attack, and nearly every one was put
to death. Speaking of a certain sword taken from a
Burgundian, she said she used it because it was an
excellent war sword and inflicted good cuffs and blows.
This would show that, if she did not cut or thrust, and
if she used the point as seldom as possible, she was
rather fond of striking with the flat side of the blade,
as she was wont to do with her baton. I do not
mention this to detract in any way from the beauty of
the figure, but in order not to disguise her characteristic
vigour and frankness.
A young nobleman (Guy of Laval), who saw her at the
time of her glory, wrote of her to his mother, describing
JEANNE PARC. 145
her from head to foot. " I saw her mount her horse," he
says, " arrayed entirely in an armour of white, with
a small battle-axe in her hand. Her black steed had
pranced and shied at the door of his stable, and would
not let her mount. ' Lead him to the cross,' she said.
This cross was near the church, by the road-side. On
seeing the cross, the horse became tractable, and she
was able to mount him." The young narrator saw a
miracle in this occurrence. All narrators and eye-
witnesses of that period come to the same conclusion in
speaking of her, and the most minute and natural
incidents appear to them miracles. " Once on her
steed, the maiden," continues Guy of Laval, "turned
to the door of the church, and exclaimed, in her clear,
feminine voice, ' Ye priests and people of the church,
make your processions, offer up your prayers to God ; '
then she went on her way, crying, ' Forward ! forward 1 '
A graceful page marched before her, bearing a furled
banner, while in her hand she held her battle-axe."
This is a picture of Jeanne in all her military grace
and beauty, speaking in a woman's voice, though in*
tones of command, whether addressing her pages, or
giving orders to the clergy.
We do not doubt that the day after the siege of
Orleans, she may have had a moment of wild exaltation.
In the fulness of her accomplished mission, she was
tempted to say, like all visionaries, " I am God's voice."
She wrote to the towns, commanding them to open
their gates to the Maid of Orleans ; and she thus issued
her commands to the Dukes of Bedford and Burgundy :
" In the name of the King of Heaven, my Guide and
Sovereign Saviour:" When, afterwards, in cooler
moments, her letters were shown to her in prison, she
had difficulty in recognising them, though there is no
doubt they were thus dictated by her. She wrote to
K
146 JEANNE D'ARC.
the heretics of Bohemia, exhorting them to return to
their duty : " I, the Maiden Jeanne, to tell you the real
truth, would have overtaken yoii long ago with my
avenging arm, had not the war with the English de-
tained me here. But should I not soon hear of your
amendment, your return to the bosom of the Church, I
may perhaps leave the English and turn against you, to
extirpate your frightful superstitions." Probably the
style was that of her secretary, but the ideas must
certainly have been her own. The Count of Armagnac
wrote to her from the confines of Spain to ask which of
the three popes then reigning was the legitimate one.
She answered : " I am too much taken up with the war
to satisfy you at once. But when you know I am in
Paris, send me a message, and I will then tell you
truthfully in whom you should believe, and all I shall
have learnt concerning this matter, through the counsel
of my Guide and Sovereign Saviour, the King of the
whole world." Such letters as these, produced during
the prosecution, strongly supported the accusation
'brought against her, of having attempted to usurp the
functions of the angels of God and His ministers on this
earth. It appears certain that, however unfavourable
fortune might have been to her, she would have
ventured further still, with the counsel of her voices ;
and that she did not consider herself merely destined
to raise the siege of Orleans and to accomplish the
coronation at Rheims. The young and ardent soul
would readily have entered on a wider field ; and there,
again, I fancy I perceive the primitive Jeanne d'Arc
possessed by a Demon or Genius (whatever you like to
call it), but a Genius in the garb of that period ; the
natural Maid of Orleans, with no undue softness about
her bright, proud, rather rough, swearing by her
baton, and using it when necessary ; a little intoxicated
JEANNE D'AXC. 147
by the success of her mission ; full of confidence in her
own powers, exclaiming, " I am the voice of God ; "
speaking and writing in the name of God to the princes,
lords, and citizens of the different towns, and to heretics
in foreign countries ; inclined, too, to go into questions
of orthodoxy and Christianity, if only allowed leisure
to listen to her voices. Already the people, in their
extreme devotion, urged her on iu her convictions ; they
were predisposed to believe in her, to reverently render
her their devoted homage. But alas for her great and
glorious career, which she was able only to rough-hew,
for she hardly gained a glimpse of it during the few
months of her triumph, and this is not to be regretted ;
it is in the peculiar heroism of her mission that she is
so touching and sublime. Her contemporaries felt this
after her death. Therefore, nearly all those in her
favour (and all were more or less so in the prods de re-
habilitation) cling to the belief that she never professed
to be destined to perform more than the special acts of
raising the siege of Orleans, and conducting the king to
Rheims ; consequently, she accomplished all that the
voices told her. This is an illusion of the national
imagination, which would like to render Jeanne
infallible. But we have positive evidence that her
voices promised much more from her than she would
perform, and in her death-agony, her faith and supreme
confidence in God must have been great to enable her to
exclaim, in the midst of the flames, " My voices have
not, after all, misled me ! "
In emphasizing the energetic and somewhat rough
characteristics of the noble* shepherdess, far be it from
me to deny her the quality of gentleness, a gentleness
all the more deep and true that it was not excessive.
During the march from Rheims to Paris (August 1429),
as she was arriving -with the king from the neighbour-
148 JEANNE D'ARC.
Iiood of La Ferte-Milon and Crepy-en-Valois, the people
came out in crowds to meet her, crying Noel.* Jeanne,
who was riding between the Archbishop of Rheiins and
the Count Dunois?, remarked, " These are good people ;
I have never seen any so glad to welcome the arrival of
such a noble king. God grant that when I end my
days I may be buried in their midst." To which the
Archbishop replied, "Jeanne, where do you hope to
die 1 " She replied, " Wherever it shall please God, for
I am not more certain of time and place than you are
yourselves ; and may it please my Creator to let me ,
retire now from warfare to serve my father and mother
in tending their sheep."" Here we see the real gentleness
of Jeanne's nature after her momentary enthusiasm,
when the excitement of war had passed.
It is superfluous to say she was perfectly chaste ; all
witnesses are unanimous on this point. The old Squire
Bertrand de Poulengy, who in his youth had the honour
of escorting Jeanne from Vaucouleurs to Chinon, and
the Duke d'Alen^on, her favourite among all the
captains, both testify strongly that, notwithstanding the
dangers of close companionship, no immodest thought
ever shadowed the purity of her simple, modest virtue.
The judges who condemned her were insulting, and
the Bishop of Beauvais, who conducted the case,
united the most consummate craft with his brutality.
But that which is the most striking in these days,
when we read the entire procedure, is the outrageous
materialism of those theological practitioners, who
understood nothing of Jeanne's vivid inspiration, who
in all their questions strove to debase her elevated and
simple meaning, though they were unable to render it
coarse. They appeared, above all, extremely anxious
* A popular exclamation of delight, used at that time by the
Freiich people in welcoming a sovereign. TE.
JEANNE D'ARC. 149
to ascertain under what form she had seen St. Michael.
" Did he wear a crown ? Had he any clothes 1 Was
he not entirely naked ? " To which Jeanne replied,
much to their discomfiture, " Do you think that God
could not clothe him 1 " They always returned to
this foolish question. She at last silenced them by
saying, " He appeared to me in the form and vesture
of a truly honest man." Once, at Poictiers, during the
early days of her arrival at court, when one of the
doctors of the place wished to know absolutely from
her what kind of dialect the Archangel used in address-
ing her, she answered the provincial doctor, "He
speaks much better French than you do." It is re-
markable that the .proch of condemnation, organized
with the object of dishonouring the memory of Jeanne,
has been rather the means of sustaining it. We are
inclined to think with M. Quicherat that, though
carried on by the judges and her enemies, it redounds
more to the honour of the real Jeanne d'Arc, is more
conducive to our full understanding of her life, more
trustworthy in all that concerns her, than the proems de
rehabilitation, already to some extent tainted by idle
legend. Jeanne's finest sayings, her most simple, true,
and heroic words, have been recorded by the judges,
who have handed them down to us. This proems was
much more en regie (according to the inquisitorial law
then in force) than has since been believed, though it
was none the less odious and execrable. But these
judges, like all the Pharisees of the world, like those
who condemned Socrates, like those who condemned
Jesus, did not thoroughly know what they were doing,
and their authentically written exposition of the case
forms the immortal and avenging gospel of the victim.
Those judges, anxious to convict her of idolatry,
questioned her incessantly about the picture on her
ISO JEANNE D'ARC.
banner, whether she did not think that such a banner
possessed magical power. To which she replied, that
her only magic lay in the following words addressed
to her men: "Throw yourselves boldly among the
English ; I shall lead you on ! " She was severely
censured for having had the same banner conveyed to
the church at Rheims for the coronation, in preference
to any other. Her answer was the following oft-quoted
speech : " It had been all through the misery, it. was
but right it should also have the glory and honour."
There is an admirable passage in Homer. Hector
having driven the Greeks from the walls of Troy, is on
his way to besiege .them in their camps, and attack
their retrenchments, determined also to set their ships
on fire ; when suddenly a miracle takes place. An
eagle appears in the sky, grasping between its claws a
serpent, which, mutilated as it is, tears open the breast
of its imperious enemy, forcing it to relinquish its
hold. At this sight, a certain Trojan (Polydamas by
name), wise in omens, approaches Hector, and, after
interpreting the sign to him, advises him to relinquish
the field that he already considers his own. At these
words, Hector is furious, and threatens to pierce
Polydamas with his lance, saying, " It matters little
to me what the birds portend ! My orders come direct
from mighty Jupiter, the only god whose will is
omnipotent. There is but one supreme augury, and
that is, fight for one's country."
In the attack upon Paris, which occurred the 8th of
September (a festival in honour of the Nativity of
Our Lady), Jeanne was wounded, and this was the end
of her success. This ordering of the attack on a festival
of the Church was made a chief point against her ; the
doctors and judges accused her of irreverence and lack
of religious devotion. In questioning, her, they said,
JEANNE PARC. 151
"You knew it was a Church festival, was it right on
your part to fight on such a day ?" She eluded further
questions on the subject, and answered, with downcast
eyes, " Pass on to something else."
The noble girl, thus in the serpent's coils, dared not
answer like Hector, though she thought as he did.
Like him, she had direct commands from the Almighty
God. What mattered other auguries to her ! Direct
inspiration gave her faith and strength ; yet this very
inspiration was a crime in the eyes of her judges.
She had firm belief in the reality of her voices, and,
like all visionaries, she believed she drew her inspira-
tion from its very source, from the Holy Spirit of God.
The ecclesiastical order, the Church, organized as it
was in these days, appeared to her to be probably
worthy of respect, but her voices held the first place
in her consideration. She felt that she possessed the
moral power to command both priests and churchmen,
to rouse them and lead them back to the right path,
just as she had led princes and captains. Therefore,
in the proems de rehabilitation, we do not find that
Roine was so eager or so well-disposed as might have
been imagined. The king was obliged to put pressure
on the pope ; and Jeanne, who had every qualification
for being canonized, was never more than the saint
of the people and of France.
Historians understand her at last ; they present the
simple maiden in a proper light, and we cannot help
recalling to our remembrance what M. Michelet says
in vol. v. of his Histoire de France. Nevertheless, a
severely precise criticism might detect many errors and
deviations from the exact truth in that brilliantly
written sketch. The author, as usual, strives after
effect, he forces his colouring, he makes mere buffoons
of the intervening characters, trifles in the wrong
152 JEANNE PARC.
places, adopts an unnatural gaiety and smartness,
and is too dramatic and fond of metaphor. The
impression he leaves with one, of the proces, does not
agree with the original interrogatories, which are much
more grave and simple. With these reservations, how-
ever, we must admit that M. Michelet has grasped the
spirit of the chief personage, that he has vividly pour-
trayed the impulsive excitement of the populace, the
shouts of enthusiasm, which, truer and more powerful
than any set doctrine, rose in honour of the noble
maiden, an enthusiasm which, in spite of Chapelaiu
and Voltaire, has enshrined her ever since. The Jeanne
d'Arc of M. Michelet is truer than any former one.
There remains, I believe, in the volumes just published
by M. Quicherat, yet another Jeanne d'Arc to discover,
a heroine so skilfully yet simply pourtrayed, that she
must satisfy every generously reasonable mind. Even
should philosophical criticism find that there are some
inexplicable points which can never be reconciled, I
do not consider this a very grave misfortune. Shake-
speare's Hamlet admirably says, "There are more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in
our philosophy." If we read M. Quicherat's volumes
attentively, and take into consideration the difficulties
he himself admits, I do not think it will be impossible,
after such careful and unprejudiced study, to evolve
from them a Jeanne d'Arc at once sincere, sublime,
and unpretending.
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
1851.
AMONQ all the books and papers which may happen to
give a correct idea of Queen Marie Antoinette, and of
her character in her youthful years of prosperity, I do
not know any which better convinces the reader's mindj
than the simple notes from the Comte de La Marck's
diary, inserted by M. Bacourt into the introduction of
the work he has recently published on Mirabeau. In
a few clearly expressed pages, the Comte de La Marck
reveals to us the true character of the Queen ; in them
we find a Marie Antoinette real and natural, and not
overdrawn in any way. We anticipate the faults to
which her surroundings will not fail to impel her,
those which will be attributed to her, and the weapons
which unwittingly she will furnish to the malice
of her enemies. It is to be regretted that such an
impartial and skilful observer did not draw a like
portrait of the Queen, at different stages of her life, up
to the supreme hour of her immolation, when all the
noble qualities and virtues of her heart were so
courageously revealed, that they must interest and
impress every human being.
It is a way of approaching Marie Antoinette which
to me appears just, and which I would wish to define,
153
154 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
because I consider that all historical judgment should
be concluded from the same data. From a feeling born
of compassion, some are charmed into an ideal interest
in Marie Antoinette ; they wish to defend her from all
attacks, constitute themselves her advocates, her knights-
errant ; are indignant at the mere idea of faults and
weaknesses which others think they discover in her life.
This r6le of defender is highly honourable if it is sincere ;
it is easily to be conceived as existing among those with
whom the old order of royalty is a creed, but among
the newer, modern-minded men, it impresses me less,
as I doubt its sincerity. Such views and feelings are
not mine ; they can scarcely be the views and feelings
of men who have not to any great extent been educated
in the tradition of the old monarchy, and this we can-
not deny to be the case with the great majority of the
present and also of the coming generation. What
appears to me the safest course, and the most desirable,
for that touching memory of Marie Antoinette, is to
try to detach from the great heap of writings and
testimonies, of which she has been the subject, the
beautiful, noble, gracious figure, with all its weaknesses,
frivolities, frailties perhaps, but with all its essential
good qualities preserved and acknowledged in their
integrity ; the virtues of wife, mother, and, at certain
moments, of queen, kind-hearted and generous at
all times, and finally displaying the merits of resig-
nation, courage, and sweetness, which crown great
misfortunes. When such a fair and even judgment"
is once historically established, she will continue,
through all the ages, to excite the interest of those who,
becoming more and more indifferent to the politics of
the past, will still cherish those delicate and humane
sentiments which are a part of civilisation, and the
source of that sympathy which, weeping over the mis-
' MARIE ANTOINETTE. 155
fortunes of Hecuba and Andromache, will deplore her
similar but greater miseries.
But there is this difference, that poetry alone is
responsible for the tradition of Andromache and
Hecuba, and we have no memoirs of the court of
Priam, whilst we do possess those of the court of
Louis the XVI., and by no means can they be ignored.
And what do those memoirs say of Marie Antoinette 1
I speak of faithful, not of libellous memoirs. What
says the Comte de La Marck, who sums up very ably
the spirit of that earlier time 1
Fifteen when she arrived in France, the young
Dauphiness was not nineteen when she found herself
the Queen of Louis XVI. This prince had received
solid instruction, and was endowed with good moral
principles, as we know ; but he was feeble, timid,
brusque, and rude, and particularly ungracious towards
women, possessing none of the qualities necessary to
direct and guide a young wife. She, the daughter of
an illustrious mother, Marie Thdrese, had in her early
training at Vienna been sadly neglected, as her mother
was too much occupied with State affairs to superintend
the education of her daughter. No one had ever tried
to cultivate in her mind a taste for serious reading ; so,
although she was by no means deficient in intelligence,
and "quickly grasped and understood things told her,"
she had no great capacity ; and, in fact, was too indolent
to repair the defects of education, and the want of
experience. Amiable, gay, and full of innocent fun,,
she was especially kind-hearted, and always anxious
to oblige any one who appealed to her. She had a
great craving for intimate friendship, and immediately
sought some closer acquaintanceship than is usual in
courts. Her idea of happiness (we each form our own)
was to escape from ceremonial, which wearied her, and
156 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
to create for herself a little world of kindly, happy,
devoted, chosen followers, among whom, to outward
seeming, she forgot that she was a queen, although in
reality her royal dignity was not forgotten. She loved,
so to speak, to give herself the pleasure of this oblivion,
not to recall her own identity till some opportunity
arose for showering good gifts around her ; just as, in
pastorals and comic operas, we have seen disguised
queens who in this way charm and delight all who
surround them. Marie Antoinette might have been
able to realize this ideal life without any inconvenience,
had she remained a simple arch-duchess at Vienna, or
had she reigned over some small domain like Tuscany
or Lorraine. But in France this kind of life could not
be tried with the same freedom ; and her Petit Trianon,
with its dairies, its sheep-folds, and its comedies, was
too near Versailles ; Envy prowled around those favoured
spots, Envy beckoning on Calumny and Slander.
M. de La Marck has shown us how injudicious it was
on the part of the Queen to confine herself so exclusively
to the circle of the Comtesse Jules de Polignac, to confer
on her, along with the position of a friend, the appear-
ance of a favourite ; and to allow all the men of that
coterie (men like Vaudreuil, Besenval, and Adhemar) to
assume pretensions and privileges, which each, accord-
ing to his disposition or ambition, so quickly abused.
Although she never understood the full extent of this
inexpediency, she did perceive it to some extent ; and
began to feel that where she sought to find repose and
refreshment, and relaxation from the duties of exalted
rank, she was still beset by importunity ; and when
some one remarked to her that she showed too great a
preference for the distinguished strangers who sojourned
in France, and that this was prejudicial to her own
popularity among the French people, she replied
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 157
sadly, " You are right, but they at least ask me for
nothing."
Some of those men thus admitted to the intimate
favour of the Queen, and bound by gratitude and
respect, were the first to speak lightly of her, because
they did not find her submissive enough to their aims.
When on one occasion she seemed to withdraw a little
from the Polignac circle, and to frequent oftener the
salon of Mine. d'Ossun, her lady of the bedchamber,
a habitud of the Polignac circle (whom M. de La
Marck does not name, but who seems to have been an
important member of the circle), composed a very
wicked couplet against the Queen ; and this couplet,
founded on an infamous lie, was soon circulated in
Paris. Thus did even the Court and the Queen's
intimate circle furnish the first leaven which was to
mingle with the coarseness and infamy of the outside
world. As for the Queen herself, she knew nothing of
what was going on, and never suspected the cause of
her disfavour at Versailles, any more than of her
estrangement in Paris.
Even at the present day, if we wish to quote some
testimony against Marie Antoinette, we go to the Memoirs
of the Baron de Besenval to find it Ordered to appear
before the Queen in 1778, at the time of the duel between
the Comte d'Artois and the Due de Bourbon, M. de
Besenval was introduced by Campan (the private
secretary) into a secret room which he had not known
of before, " simply but conveniently furnished. I was
astonished," he added, " not that the Queen required so
many facilities, but that she had dared to procure
them." This phrase spread abroad, was suggestive, and
enemies were not wanting to take it up.
We now approach the most delicate part of the
subject, and as I am not afraid, I shall not affect
158 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
more reticence than is necessary. There are persons
who are most anxious to deny absolutely all levity,
and all heart weakness, on the part of Marie Antoinette.
But, assuming that either were apparent at this time of
her life, for my part I boldly affirm that the interest
attached to her memory, the pity which her misfortunes
and her noble manner of bearing them excites, the execra-
tion which her judges and jailors deserve, must in no way
depend on any discovery relating to former womanly
weaknesses, nor be in the smallest degree invalidated
by such a discovery. Now, taking into account all our
actual historical information and trustworthy testimony
regarding Marie Antoinette, and remembering also
what we have been told by well-informed contempor-
aries, it is quite permissible to suppose that this young
creature, with all her lively, tender feelings, ready to be
impressed by elegant manners and chivalrous attentions,
craving for sympathy and support, had, during her
youth, some preference ; it would be the contrary rather
which would be strange. Many ambitious men, many
coxcombs, tried to gain her good graces, and were dis-
appointed ; the innumerable attempts had only begin-
nings. We heard Lauzun the other day describe his
adventure ; but although he tells his story in his own
way, he breaks down. The Prince de Ligne often came
to France at this time, and was one of those strangers,
altogether French and altogether agreeable, with whom
the Queen was particularly well pleased. He had the
honour of accompanying the Queen in her morning
rides. " It was," he says, "in such rides alone with the
Queen, although accompanied by her brilliant royal
escort, that she told me a thousand interesting anecdotes
concerning herself, and all the traps which had been
laid to give her a lover. At one time it was the house
of Noailles which wished her to take the Vicomte ; at
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 159
another, the Choiseul /action destined Biion (Lauzun)
for her. La Duchesse de Duras, when it was her week
to be in attendance, accompanied us in our rides, but
we left her with the equerries ; and this was one of the
Queen's blunders, one of her greatest crimes, since she
never committed any other, that bores and tiresome
persons, who are always implacable in their resentment,
considered themselves neglected." So this is the Queen's
version of Lauzun's story : I would always have it
remembered, that it is improbable that Lauzun acted
for the Choiseul faction, with whom he was never on
good terms ; but it was the interest of the Queen's
entourage to present him in this light to ruin him
definitely. It was this same Prince de Ligne who
elsewhere said of the Queen, " her pretended gallantry
was never anything more than deep friendship, with
which she distinguished one or two persons " (I retain his
style of Grand Seigneur), "and the womanly coquetry
natural in a young Queen who desired to please every-
body.'"' This impression, or conjecture,* which I find
shared by other keen observers who have written of
Marie Antoinette, is, I believe, most likely to be
correct. The two persons whom she so particularly
distinguished at different times, appear to have been,
first, the Due de Coigny, a sensible, prudent man of
mature years ; and, secondly, M. de Fersen, colonel in
the regiment of Swedish Guards in the service of
France, a man of high character and chivalrous nature,
who, in days of misfortune, betrayed himself only by
his absolute devotion.
Now, when we discuss matters of such very peculiar
and intimate secrecy, matters about which it is so
very easy to form many suppositions, and so difficult
to acquire any certain knowledge, I think it well to
recall to mind the apt expression of Mme. de Laesay
160 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
(the illegitimate daughter of a Conde), who, when
she heard her husband discussing very plainly the
virtue of Mme. de Maintenon, looked at him with amaze-
ment, and with admirable coolness remarked, " What
did you do, monsieur, that you seem so perfectly sure
about matters of that kind 1 " The remark, which was
very sharp from a wife to a husband, who challenged
it by his claim of authoritative judge of disputed
virtue, is true in other senses, and might with equal
justice be addressed to those who are so sure of the
errors of others, even when those errors had no
witnesses.
The beauty of the Queen in her youth is famous,
although it was not the kind of beauty where each
feature might be examined and criticised apart ; her
eyes, although expressive, were not very beautiful ; her
aquiline nose was perhaps too pronounced. " I am not
quite sure that her nose really ought to have belonged
to her face," said one witty observer. Her lower lip
was thicker than we care for in a beautiful woman,
her figure was also a little too full ; but the whole was
a beautiful woman, with an air of noble dignity. Even
in deshabille it was a regal beauty rather than the
beauty of a woman of the world. " No woman," said M.
de Meilhan, " carried her head better ; it seemed poised
so perfectly that each of her movements was full of
grace and majesty. Her carriage was noble, her step
light and firm, and recalled the expression of Virgil,
Incessu patuit dea. The most uncommon thing about
her, was a most imposing union of grace and dignity."
Add a complexion of dazzling whiteness, lovely hands
and arms, a charming smile, a winning gift of language
which expressed more heart than wit, and showed her
desire to please and to be pleased. She could enjoy
and permit, as she liked, liberty of speech, and freedom-
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 161
from restraint in pleasures and amusements ; she could
play at being a. shepherdess or a woman of the world,
for she had only to rise up, and with one little motion
of her head she was at once the Queen.
For a long time the gracious woman, secure in the
prestige of her royal dignity, and thinking only of
tempering with kindness the etiquette which surrounded
her, paid no attention to politics ; or, if she did, it was
only incidentally, or when, in a manner, forced to it by
the advice of her intimates. She continued her life of
fairy-like illusion, while already odious reports, satirical
couplets, and infamous pamphlets were circulating in
Paris, imputing to her a systematic, secret influence
which she had not assumed. The Collier affair was the
first signal of misfortune ; the bandage, which till then
had covered her eyes, was torn off. She began to emerge
from her enchanted hamlet, and to discover the world
as it is when it has a mind to be wicked. When she
was at length persuaded to interest herself habitually
in politics, and to form opinions of her own on the
extraordinary events which day by day enforced atten-
tion, she brought the most unpolitical mind imaginable
to bear upon them ; I mean indignation against acts of
baseness and personal prejudices, which, being very
evident, did not always help to make her cause triumph ;
resentment of wrong which did not declare itself in any
desire for vengeance, but rather by the delicate and
proud forbearance of wounded dignity. If Louis XVI.
had been different, if he had yielded to any impulse of
active energy, there is no doubt that at one moment or
another, under the inspiration of the Queen, he would
have attempted some enterprise, which might probably
have been a rash deed, but which, on the other hand,
might probably have established firmly, for a time, the
disturbed order of monarchy. But he did not do this ;
L
162 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
it was the character of Louis XVI. which failed, and
through his very virtues he disappeared from his rtile
of king ; his nature, a compound of piety and human
weakness, even bent towards self-sacrifice, and as his
character became gradually weaker and weaker, he
could have recovered his greatness only by becoming a
martyr. The Queen had not power to triumph over
this royal indolence and incapacity ; she did make
several attempts, but was not persistent enough. This
is the ever-recurring plaint which issues from the pen
of the Comte de La Marck, in the secret correspondence
which is j ust published. " The Queen," he writes to the
Comte de Mercy- Argenteau (30th December 1790), "the
Queen certainly possesses strength of mind, and sufficient
firmness to enable her to do great things ; but it must
be confessed, and you have had better opportunities of
remarking it than I have had, that, be it on business
affairs, or simply in ordinary conversation, she does not
always display that amount of attention and persever-
ance which are necessary for the thorough understand-
ing of what one ought to know to prevent mistakes and
to ensure success." And elsewhere we find from the
same to the same : " I must speak out, the King is
incapable of reigning ; and the Queen, well seconded,
might alone make good this incapacity. But even this
would not be enough ; it would be more than ever
necessary for the Queen to recognise the need of
applying herself to business with method and persever-
ing attention ; she would have to make it a rule with
herself not to make half-confidences to several people,
but, instead, to give her whole confidence to whoever
she might choose to second her." And again, on the
10th of October 1791 : " The Queen, with some intelli-
gence and courage, which has been proved, still allows
all the occasions on which she might seize the reins of
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 163
government, to escape her ; and continues to surround
the King with faithful people, devoted to her service,
and to the salvation of the State, by her and through
her. A long-continued habit of frivolous thoughtlessness
cannot be thrown off in a day ; it would have been
more like the genius of a Catherine of Russia to struggle
against such unforeseen dangers and difficulties, than of
one who, like Marie Antoinette, had never opened a book
of history in her life, and had dreamt only of royal
indolence and of village leisure at Trianon ; it is enough
that this past frivolity had in no degree degraded or
soiled the heart, which was proved to be as generous, as
proud, as loyal, and as nobly gifted, as if it had come
straight from nature's hand."
I shall not, as may be well supposed, dispute the line
of politics to which Marie Antoinette thought it best
to return when she was left to herself. We are not
constitutional purists ; what she wished was certainly
not the constitution of '91, it was the salvation of the
throne, the salvation of France, as she believed, the
honour of the king, and her own honour, and that of
her nobility, the integrity of the heritage which would
be her children's ; do not expect anything else from her.
Those of her letters which have been already published,
and others which will one day be published, will allow
this portion of history to be established with certainty.
She desired the safety of the State, through her
brother, the Emperor, or through some other powerful
foreign aid, but not by the aid of the 4migr& t against
whom she could not restrain her indignation. " The
cowards, after having abandoned us," she exclaimed,
" would exact that we run all the risks, and serve their
interests." In an excellent letter which she wrote to
the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, we find her saying,
after disclosing a desperate plan, " I have listened, aa
1 64 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
attentively as I could, to people of both sides, and from
the advice of both I have formed my own opinion ; I
do not know if my advice will be followed, you know
with whom I have to deal" (the king); "the moment one
believes him to be persuaded, a word, an argument,
makes him change before you can suspect it ; this is
also the reason why so many things cannot be attempted.
Now, whatever happens, let me retain your friendship'
and attachment, I have much need of such support ; and
believe that, whatever may be the misfortune which
pursues me, I may yield to circumstances, but I shall
never consent to anything unworthy of myself ; it is in
misfortune that I feel most who I am. My blood flows
in the veins of my son, and I hope that one day he will
fhow himself worthy of being the grandson of Marie
Thdrese."
Her last gleam of joy and hope was the journey to
Varennes. When this oft-delayed journey was at last
about to be accomplished, towards midnight the Queen
was crossing the Place du Carrousel, on foot, to reach
the carriage prepared for the royal family by M. de
Fersen, when she was met by the passing carriage of
M. de La Fayette ; she observed it, " and she had the
spirit, even at such a moment, to try to strike the wheels
of this carriage with a little cane she carried in her
hand." It was an innocent revenge, and that little
switch with her cane may be called her last act of
playfulness. Three days later, how the aspect of affairs
had changed. The instant Mme. Campan came into
her presence, after the return from Varennes, the Queen,
uncovering her head, told her to behold the effect grief
had produced on her hair ; " in one single night it had
turned as white as the hair of a woman of seventy, and
she was thirty-six."
The two last years of the Queen's life would redeem
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 165
a thousand times as many faults as tins gracious lady
could have committed in her thoughtless years, and
must perpetuate through all time a reverend pity for
her sad fate. A prisoner in her own palace, a prey
to constant agony of mind, we see her nature being
purified day by day, beside that sainted sister, Mme.
Elizabeth, her principles and her affections fortified and
concentrated, to such an extent as would have been im-
possible had her heart not been naturally good and true
and incorrupt. On those fatal days of riot and insur-
rection, when even her private apartments were invaded,
she remained firm at her post of duty ; she bore the out-
rage proudly, nobly, even with gentle indulgence, whilst
with her own body she protected her children. In the
midst of her own peril, she was, in her tender goodness,
only troubled about others, and she showed herself
most careful not to compromise needlessly those in-
terested in her cause. On that last day, the supreme
day of royalty, the 10th of August, she made one la.-t
attempt to inspire Louis XVI. with the courage which
would have made him die a king, a worthy son of
Louis XIV. ; but Louis was to die a Christian, the son
of Saint Louis.
Then she, in her turn, entered on this path of heroism,
full of patience and of resignation. Once actually
confined in the Temple, she filled up her time with
tapestry work, and occupied herself with the education
of her children, composing for them a prayer, and
accustoming herself to drink the cup in silence. Her
first chill warning of death was when the head of the
Princess de Lamballe was presented to her at her
prison grating. As she was leaving the Temple to be
transferred to the Conciergerie, she struck her head
against the lintel of the door, having forgotten to stoop ;
and when some one asked if she had hurt herself, ' Oh
166 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
no," she replied, "nothing could hurt me now." But
has not each hour of her agony been described 1 and it
is not our task to tell it over again. I do not believe
it possible that there exists a monument of more
atrocious and ignominious stupidity, than the Proces de
Marie Antoinette, as it is reproduced for any one to
read in vol. xxix. of the Histoire parlementaire de la
Revolution frangaise. Most of the replies made by her
to the accusations, are either cut short or suppressed
entirely ; but, as in all iniquitous trials, the text of the
imputations itself bears witness against the murderers.
When we consider that a century, said to be enlightened
and highly cultivated, lent itself to public acts of such
barbarity, we begin to mistrust human nature, and to
feel appalled at its brute ferocity, savage and fierce in
reality, though kept within bounds, and only requiring
opportunity to break forth unrestrainedly. Immediately
after her condemnation, when brought back from the
tribunal to the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette wrote a
letter, dated the 16th October, half-past four in the
morning ; it was addressed to Mme. Elizabeth. In
this letter, a fac-simile of which has recently been
published, and the tone of which breathes the greatest
simplicity, we read : " It is to you, my sister, that I write
for the last time. I have just been condemned, not to a
shameful death, that is only for criminals, but to go and
rejoin your brother. Like him, innocent, I hope to dis-
play the same firmness he displayed in his last momenjts.
I am calm as one is when conscience utters no reproach ;
my one deep regret is to abandon my poor children. You
know that I lived only for them ; and you, my good
and tender sister, you who in your devoted love have
sacrificed everything to be with us, in what a position I
leave you!. . ." The truest sentiments of wife, of friend,
and of a submissive Christian, breathe through this
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 167
testamentary letter. We know that Marie Antoinette,
a few hours later, gave proof of that calmness and firm-
ness which she hoped to possess at the last moment,
and the official report of her executioners acknowledges
that she mounted the scaffold with sufficient courage.
I do not believe that we are yet in possession of all
the elements necessary to enable us to write with
fitting simplicity the life of Marie Antoinette ; there
exists a collection of her manuscript letters to her
brother, the Emperor Joseph, and to the Emperor
Leopold, and among the State papers at Vienna there
must be a store of such treasures. But I venture to
predict, that when these confidential communications
see the light of day, they will only confirm the idea
which careful reflection and attentive reading of her
Memoirs can give us now. The noble mother of Marie
Antoinette, from whom she inherited her eagle nose
and her queenly bearing, stamped her with the cachet
of her race ; but the imperial nature, which showed itself
only at critical moments, was not her usual disposition,
nor the product of her education, nor the spirit of her
dreams. She was a daughter of the Caesars only in
emergencies. She was constituted to be the peaceful,
pastoral heiress of an empire, rather than to reconquer
for herself a kingdom ; before all, beneath her august
dignity, she was constituted to be a kind woman, a
constant, faithful friend, a tender, devoted mother. She
possessed every virtue, every grace, and some of the
weaknesses of a woman. Adversity drew out her
virtues ; the high - souled dignity of her character
revealed itself with more striking pathos because her
natural disposition was not so elevated as, through
circumstances, it became. Such as she is, the victim of
the most hateful, the most brutal sacrifice, an example
of the most deplorable vicissitudes, it needs but a little
1 68 MARIE ANTOINETTE.
survival of veneration for the old race, to excite a feeling
of sympathy and of delicate pity in the breast of every
one who reads the story of her brilliant years, and of
her later anguish. Every man whose breast contains
a spark of the generosity of a Barnave, will be as deeply
impressed ; and, if it must be said, will be as com-
pletely transformed, as he was, when they study
closely this noble, outraged woman. As to women,
Mme. de Stael long ago put this subject before them,
in the way best calculated to touch their hearts, when
she said in her Defense de Marie Antoinette, " I appeal
to you women, who are each and all of you sacrificed
in this most tender mother, sacrificed by this outrage
perpetrated on weakness ; your empire ceases when
ferocity triumphs."
Marie Antoinette is more a mother than a queen.
We know the prompt reply she made when, being then
Dauphiness, and as yet childless, some one in her
presence censured a woman who, to obtain the pardon
of her son, compromised in a duel, appealed to Mine,
du Barry herself : " In her place I would have done
the same ; and if that had failed, I would have thrown
myself at Zamora's feet " (Mme. Du Barry's little negro)
"to save my son." And we also remember the last
words Marie Antoinette uttered, before that atrocious
tribunal, when questioned on shameful imputations
regarding the innocence of her son, her sole response
was the exclamation, " I appeal to every mother 1 "
This last cry rises above all her life, it is the cry which
makes us yearn over her, and which will re-echo through
all future time.
One day, at the Temple, an escape was planned, and
she had even given her consent. But next day she
wrote that she was unable to consent, since flight would
necessitate separation from her son. "However great
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 169
the happiness it would be to me to be far from here, I
could not consent to separate from him ... I could
find pleasure in nothing if I left my children, and I
do not even regret that I cannot go." This, some one
will doubtless say, is a very simple sentiment; and it is
exactly for that reason that it is beautiful.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
1836.
IN Mme. de SJevigne's time, living near her, and one
of her dearest friends, was a woman whose history is
very closely blended with that of her amiable friend,
the same whom Boileau has described as " the woman
who in all France possessed most wit, and who wrote lest."
This woman wrote but little, however ; in her leisure
moments only, for her amusement, and with a degree of
careless freedom in which there was nothing approach-
ing style. She so specially disliked letter-writing, that
only a very few very short letters of hers remain
now ; it is through Mme. de SeVigne's letters rather
than through her own that we are able to form an
opinion of her. But she had in her time a distinct
influence, grave, delicate, solid, and charming, an
influence certainly very considerable, and in its way
equal to the best. To deep tenderness of heart and a
romantic imagination was united great natural accuracy,
or, to quote the words of her talented friend, a divine
raison which never failed her ; it is displayed in her
writings as in her life, and serves as a model for our
consideration in this century, which provides us with
such a medley of good models. In restoring the Hotel
de Rambouillet, it has recently been attempted to
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 171
demonstrate that Mine, de Maintenon was its accom-
plished and triumphant inheritrix : an expression of
Segrais rather decides the dispute about this succession
in favour of Mine, de la Fayette, since all those who
were called precieux had disappeared. After a rather
lengthy portrait of Mrne. de Rambouillet, he adds at
once : " Mnie. de la Fayette learned a great deal from
her, but Mme. de la Fayette possessed the most intel-
lectual mind," etc. This accomplished disciple of Mine,
de Rambouillet, the constant, unchanging friend of
Mine, de Sevigne, and also for some time of Mine, de
Maintenon, has her assured date and rank in our
literature ; for she reformed romance, and, through that
divine raison which was her characteristic, she directed
and fixed that tender style which had been excessive,
but which it only required her to handle in order to
raise it to public favour in comparison with the taste
for gravity which had apparently abolished it.
In that subordinate style in which delicacy and a
certain degree of interest are sufficient, although genius
(should it chance to be encountered) is not unappreci-
ated ; which Vart poe'tique does not mention, but which
Prevost, Le Sage, and Jean Jacques have exalted
(although in the time of Mme. de la Fayette it was
confined, at least in her highest conceptions, to the
sad passages of Berenice or Iphige'nie), in that style,
I repeat, Mme. de la Fayette has done precisely that
which her illustrious contemporaries, in more highly
esteemed and graver styles, tried to accomplish. L'Astre'e,
in implanting, to speak accurately, romance in France,
was soon made the parent of an endless offspring,
Cynis, ClJopatre, Polexandre, and GUlie. Boileau checked
their increase by his sarcasms, as he also repressed that
progeny of epic poems, Mo'ise sauve", Saint Louis, and La
Pucelle. Mme. de la Fayette, without seeming to
172 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE,
ridicule, and, if we may so express it, supported by, or
following in the train of these predecessors whom
Segrais and Huet confounded with her and wrongfully
included in the same cloud of praise, gave them their
most successful death-blow in the Princesse de Cttves,
and what she did accomplish she certainly did inten-
tionally and with due consideration. She was wont to
say that one sentence left out in a work was worth a
louis d'or, and one word twenty sous '; this saying is
most valuable from her, if we consider the romances
in ten volumes it was necessary first of all to peruse.
Proportion, propriety, and moderation ; simple, in-
spired methods substituted for great catastrophes and
grand expressions, these are the distinct signs of the
reform, or, to speak less ambitiously, of the improve-
ment she effected on romance ; she is a worthy
representative of pure Louis XIV. century in this.
The long unbroken tie which existed between Mme.
de la Fayette and M. de la Eochefoucauld made her
own life like a romance, a calm romance, yet always a
romance, though not so regular as Lime, de Sevignd's, for
she loved only her daughter ; and not calculating and
scheming like Mme. de Maintenon's, whose sole aim
was to marry the king. It is interesting to see this
tender heart uniting with bitter, disenchanted reason,
which it soothes, a late but faithful love between two
earnest souls, the more sensible correcting the misan-
thropical tendencies of the other, a delicate sentiment,
gentleness and mutual comfort rather than delusion and
the fire of passion ; a delicate and rather saddened
Mme. de Cleves, in short, beside a M. de Nemours grown
old and the author of Maximes: just such a life was
Mme. de la Fayette's, and it exactly corresponds with
her romance. That slight illusiveness which we observe
in her, that melancholy raison which is the core of
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 173
her life, has slightly tinted even her romantic ideal,
and seems to me to permeate all other romances
emanating in any way from her influence, and which
may be called her posterity, such as Eugene de
Rothelin, Mile, de Clerrnont, and Edouard. However
deep the tenderness may be which breathes through
these beautiful creations, reason is there also, experience
has whispered promptingly, and cooled all passion.
Beside the loving, yielding heart there is a warning
and restraining something. M. de la Rochefoucauld
is always at the core.
If Mme. de la Fayette reformed romance in France,
chivalrous and sentimental romance, and stamped it
with that peculiar tone which up to a certain point
reconciles the ideal with the practical, we can also say
that she gives us the first and an altogether illustrious
example of an enduring attachment rendered sacred
and legitimate by its constancy* through days and
years till death. Such connections belonged to the
morals of the old society, and with that society became
extinct, or nearly so ; but they could never have existed
till after that society was established and fully con-
stituted, which was not till about this time. La
Princesse de Clhes, and her attachment to M. de la
Rochefoucauld, are the two nearly equal titles Mme.
de la Fayette possesses to pathetic or serious celebrity ;
they are two points which form landmarks in the
literature and society of Louis XIV.
I would, however, have left the pleasure and the
fancy of rebuilding that life, so simple in events, to the
readers of Mine, de Sevigne, if a little unpublished but
very intimate document had not enticed me to make
a framework for the picture.
* Exemplum cana simus uterque coma, the old Latin poet
has said.
174 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
The father of Mme. de la Fayette, a major-general
and governor of Havre, was, it is. said, a good man, and
carefully directed his daughter's education. Her mother
(nde de Pena) was from Provence, and counted a trouba-
dour poet among her ancestors. Mile. Marie-Madeleine
Pioche de la Vergne had at an early age read and
studied more than most of even the cleverest women
of the preceding generation had read in. their youth.
Mme. de Choisy, for example, had extraordinary natural
talent in conversation or in letter-writing, but could
not even spell. Mme. de Sevigne and Mme. de la
Fayette, younger by six or seven years than her friend,
possessed, in addition to her excellent grounding, a
perfectly cultured mind. Our direct proof as regards
this education is furnished by the raptures of Menage,
who, as we know, generally fell in love with his beau-
tiful pupils : he commemorates, under every form of
Latin verse, the beauty, grace, and elegance with
which Mme. de la Fayette or Mile, de la Vergne spoke
and wrote. At a later period he introduced to her his
friend, the learned Huet, who also became one of her
literary advisers. Segrais, who shares with Mme. de
Sevigne" the honour of making Mme. de la Fayette
known, tells us : " Three months after Mme. de la
Fayette began to learn Latin, she knew more of that
language than M. Menage or Pere Rapih, her tutors.
In expounding it to her, they had a dispute concerning
the meaning of a passage, and when neither would
agree to the rendering of his friend, Mme. de la
Fayette said to them, 'You do not either of you
understand at all ; ' and, in fact, she gave them the
proper meaning of the passage : they were at once
satisfied that she was right. It was one of the poets
she expounded, for she was not fond of prose, and had
not read Cicero, but, having a great love for poetry, she
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 175
chiefly read Virgil and Horace ; therefore, having the
poetic spirit, and understanding the exigencies of the
art, she had little trouble in penetrating the meaning
of these authors." Further on he alludes to the merits
of M. Menage : " Where shall we find poets like M.
Menage, who wrote good Latin, Greek, and Italian
poetry 1 He was an eminent man, let those who were
envious of him say what they like : he did not, how-
ever, understand all the delicate shades of meaning
in poetry ; but Mine, de la Fayette understood them
well." This woman, who so highly esteemed and so
thoroughly understood the poets, was also so pre-
eminently true, that M. de la Rochefoucauld, later on,
told, her so, employing for the first time that expression
vraie, which is still used : a poetic mind, a true mind,
her distinction, like her charm, lies in this union.
At the same time, Mme. de la Fayette was most careful
(Segrais is again our informant as to this) not to allow
anything of her knowledge of Latin to be apparent, so
that other women might not be offended. Menage
tells vis that she one day replied to M. Huyghens, who
asked her what an iambus was, that it was the opposite
of a trochee ; but it is very certain that it required M.
Huyghens and his question to induce her to speak at
all on such a subject as an iambus or a trochee.*
She lost her father when she was fifteen. Her
* Tallemant des Reaux, the common reporter of mischievous
speeches, attributes one of them to Mile, de la Vergne on the
subject of Menage, her master: "This most officious Menage
is coming presently." He repeats the story to the end for the
sake of showing that the pedantic gallant was not the first
thought of all his fair pupils. There is no need of this testi-
mony to prove to us that Mme. de la Fayette was not blind
to the defects of the poor Menage ; I even suspect that she
thought of him and his platitudes when she remarked that
" it was rare to find probity among learned men."
176 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
mother, Eetz tells us, was a good woman, but rather
vain, eager, and bustling. She married again, very
soon, the Chevalier Renaud de Sevigne", so much mixed
up with the intrigues of the Fronde, and who displayed
such zealous activity in aiding the escape of the
Cardinal from the Chateau of Nantes.
In the Memoirs of the Cardinal, we read, apropos of
this prison of Nantes (1653), and of the entertaining visits
he received there : " Mme. de la Vergne, whose second
husband was M. le Chevalier de Se'vigne', and who lived
in Anjou with her husband, came to see me there, and
brought with her her daughter, Mile, de la Vergne, who
is now Mme. de la Fayette. She was very pretty and
very amiable ; and, moreover, had a great resemblance
to Mine, de Lesdiguieres. She pleased me very much ;
but, to tell the truth, I did not please her at all, either
because she simply did not like me, or it might have
been that her mother and step-father, before leaving
Paris, had imbued her with a distrust of me, by telling
her of my fickleness and inconstancy, ami so had pre-
judiced her against me. I consoled myself for her
cruelty with that facility which was so natural to me."
Mile, de la Vergne, at twenty, had need of nothing but
her own good sense to teach her to pay no attention
to the adventurous prisoner and his idle, quickly-over-
come caprice.
Married in 1655 to the Comte de la Fayette, pro-
bably the most remarkable and also the most romantic
tiling about her marriage was that she thus became the
sister-in-law of La Mere Angelique de la Fayette, the
superior of the Convent of Chaillot, and formerly maid
of honour to Anne of Austria, and whose platonic love
for Louis XIII. forms a simple chaste romance, very
much like those represented in Mme. de Cleves. Her
husband having bestowed upon her the name she was
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 177
destined to render famous, and on which a tender halo
already hung, disappears from her life, is blotted out,
BO to speak ; nothing more is heard of him worthy of
remark.* She bore her husband two sons, of whom
she was very fond, one a soldier, whose establishment
in his profession caused her much anxiety, and who
died a short time after her ; and the other, the Abbe"
de la Fayette, who held many good livings, and of
whom the chief thing we know is, that he carelessly
lent his mother's manuscripts to some one, and lost
them.
When very young, Mme. de la Fayette was intro-
duced to the Hotel de Rambouillet, where she learned a
great deal from the Marquise. M. Ecederer, in order to
make sure that Moliere's witticisms should not affect
the Hotel de Kambouillet, makes out that that distin-
guished salon had dispersed rather earlier than is quite
correct. Mine, de la Fayette had been there even
before her marriage, much to her advantage ; and also
Mme. de Sevignd. M. Auger, in the article he has
written on Mme. de la Fayette, which, although other-
wise exact and interesting, is dry and stiff, says in
regard to this : " Received when very young in the
salon of the Hotel de Kambouillet, her naturally correct
and sound judgment might not perhaps have resisted
the contagion of the bad taste of which that Hotel was
the centre, if the study of the Latin poets had not acted
as an antidote," etc. The antidote had surely acted on
Manage first. All this is most unjust towards the
Hotel de Rambouillet, and M. Rcederer is quite justified
in guarding against such criticisms ; but he himself
* "There is a certain lady who seems to have buried her
husband, or at least extinguished him, for there is never any
mention made of him in society ; no one knows if he is alive
or dead." LA BRXJYERE. ^
M
178 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
certainly labours under some misunderstanding if he
makes that Hotel the cradle of good taste, and yet tells
us that Mile, de Scudery was tolerated there instead
of being enthusiastically admired. He forgets that
Voiture, for as long as he lived, engrossed attention
there ; now we know what in regard to wit Voiture
was, but we also know what he was in regard to taste.
As for Mile, de Scudery, we have only to read Segrais,
Huet, and others, to see how they esteem that incom-
parable young authoress and her illustrious Bassa and
the Grand Cyrus, and her poetry, so tender and so natural,
which Despreaux so maliciously attacked and yet was
unable to rival ; and surely that which Segrais and
Huet both equally admired ought not to be more
severely criticised by a circle of which they were the
oracles. Mine, de la Fayette, with her sound sense
and keen understanding, gleaned, like Mme. de Sevigne,
the best from intellectual intercourse. Her youth
brought her into close connection with the young court
circle, and even had her mind been less sensible, she
could not have failed to acquire a correct and courtly
elegance. Since the beginning of her married life, she
had been accustomed to see frequently at the Convent
of Chaillot, the young princess of England, with Queen
Henrietta, who, during her exile, had retired there.
When the young princess became Madame, and the
brightest ornament of the court, Mme. de la Fayette,
although ten years her senior, kept up her old intimacy
with her, had constant private intercourse with her,
and was considered her favourite. In the charming
account she has written of some of the brilliant years
of this princess's life, speaking of herself in the third
person, she thus criticises herself : " Mile, de la Tre-
mouille and Mme. de la Fayette were of this number
(the number of persons who saw Madame frequently). The
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 179
first-named was agreeable to Madame on account of her
goodness, and a certain ingenuous habit she had of telling
her inmost thoughts, which took one back to the sim-
plicity of an earlier age ; the other pleased her by some
good fortune ; for, although she possessed some merit,
it was of such a serious kind that it seemed unlikely
to be pleasing to a princess as young as Madame" Thus,
when she was about thirty years of age, Mme. de la
Fayette found herself in the very centre of that fashion
and gaiety which reigned during the most flourishing
years of Louis XIV.'s time ; she was a guest at all
Madame's entertainments at Fontainebleau .or at St.
Cloud, but a spectator rather than one who took an
active part, as she herself truthfully tells us when
relating certain things, although after the things had
happened and began to be talked about, the princess
told her about them and made her write them down.
" You write well," Madame said to her ; " write, and I
shall furnish you with some amusing memoirs." "This
was a difficult enough task," confesses Mme. de la
Fayette, " for in certain places I had to disguise the
truth in such a way that it would still be recognisable,
and yet not offend or displease the princess." One of the
passages which required all Mme. de la Fayette's most
delicate tact, and which provoked the amused wit of
Madame at the trouble the amiable scribe gave herself,
must, I should imagine, have been this : " She (Madame)
is intimate with the Couitesse de Soissons, . . . and
now only thinks of pleasing the King as his sister-in-
law. I am sure she pleases him in quite another way,
and I am sure also that she thinks he only pleases her
as a brother-in-law, although he probably pleases her
more ; but, to sum up, as they are both innniu-ly
agreeable, and are both endowed by nature with
amorous dispositions, and as they see each other every
1 80 MA DA ME DE LA FA YE TTE.
day in a world of pleasure and amusement, it
appears to all the world that they entertain for
each other that liking which usually precedes a grande
passion."
Madame died in Mine, de la Fayette's arms, who, at
the last, never left her bedside for a moment. The
story she tells of that death equals the most beautiful
account we ever read of the most pathetic death ; it
runs in the following simple words, which illuminate
the scene : " I went up to her room. She told me
she was fretful, and the peevishness with which she
spoke would have sounded beautifully amiable from
another woman, so much natural sweetness did she
possess, and so little was she capable of petulant
temper. . . . After dinner, she lay clown on the floor,
and made me sit beside her in such a way that her
head half rested on me. During her sleep she changed
so much, that, after looking at her a long time, I began
to be surprised, and I thought how greatly expression
beautified her face. ... I was wrong, however, to
make such a reflection, for I had often seen her asleep,
yet never less lovely." And again : " Monsieur was by
her bedside ; she kissed him, saying sweetly, and in
a tone which might have melted the hardest heart,
' Alas ! Sir, you left off loving me a long time ago ;
but this was unjust : I never failed in my duty to-
wards you.' Monsieur appeared to be deeply moved,
and all who were in the room were so much affected
that nothing was heard but the sound of weeping. . . .
When the King had left her room, I was by her bed-
side ; she said to me, ' Mine, de la Fayette, my nose
is already sunken.' I could only answer by my tears ;
and she sank very fast." On the 30th June 1673,
Mme. de la Fayette wrote to Mme. de Sevigne : " It
is three years to-day since I saw Madame die : yester-
MADAME DE LA FAYET'JE. 181
da}", I read over many of her letters ; my thoughts
are full of her."
In the midst of this gay and social circle, still young,
and with a face which, if not beautiful, was pleasant
and aristocratic, was Mine, de la Fayette for ten years
but an attentive observer, with no active personal in-
terest other than her attachment to Madame, had she no
peculiar secret preference of her own 1 About the year
1665, as I suppose, and as I shall explain further on,
she had chosen outside this whirl of gaiety her own
peculiar friend, M. de la Rochefoucauld, at that time
fifty-two.
She began to write early from a natural inclination,
but even then with earnest sense. Portraits were then
in vogue. About 1659, Mine, de la Fayette wrote one
of Mme. de Sevigne, which is reputed to have been the
work of an unknown author. " It flatters me," said the
latter, on finding it among some old dusty papers of
Mme. de la Tremouille's in 1675, "but those who loved
me sixteen years ago would have found some resem-
blance in it." It is these youthful features which her
friend has fixed for all time, which come before our
mind's eye when we think of the immortal Mme. de
Sevigne. When Madame persuaded Mine, de la Fayette
to write for her, saying to her, " You writer-well" she had,
no doubt, read La Princesse de Montpensier, our author's
first short novel, which was published in 1660 or 1662.*
In elegance and vivacity of style it is distinctly superior
to the other novels and stories of the time, and intro-
duces a spirit of justice and reform. In composition,
Mine, de la Fayette's imagination was readily carried
back to the brilliant and polished epoch of the Valois,
* Le Dictionnaire de Moreri says 1662, and Qu&rard 1660.
But it is quite certain that the first edition published with the
King's permission was in 1662, and without any author's name.
i82 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
to the reigns of Charles IX. or Henri II., which she
idealized a little, or embellished after the manner of
those graceful and tactfully discreet tales in which
Queen Marguerite pourtrays them for us. La Princesse
de Montpensier, La Princesse de Cleves, La Comtesse de
Tende, are all within those reigns, the vices and the
crimes of which have perhaps too vividly eclipsed in
our eyes their brilliant intellectual culture. As regards
wit or intellect, intrigue, and also vice, the court of
Madame was not without its resemblance to the courts
of the Valois, and the history of it which Mine, de
la Fayette has written, recalls more than once the
Memoires of the queen, so charming in her time, but
whom we must not therefore always believe. The per-
fidious Vardes and the proud M. de Guiche are in reality
characters who would be quite in keeping with the court
of Henri II. ; and in that court of Madame's, a Chevalier '
de Lorraine was not wanting. Mme. de la Fayette had
an influence of some weight in this society, and exercised
a wise criticism on its tone. Two months before the
unfortunate death of Madame, Mme. de Montmorency
wrote to M. de Bussy by way of jest (1st May 1670) :
"Mme. de la Fayette, Madame's favourite, has broken
her head against the cornice of the chimney-piece, which
had no respect for a head brilliant with the glory lent
to it by the favour of so great a princess. Before this
misfortune a letter of hers appeared, which she made
public, to ridicule what are called fashionable words,
the use of which is unnecessary ; I send it to you." Then
follows the letter, which is entirely composed of the
nonsensical jargon used in the fashionable world, and
which she wished to correct. The letter is from a jealous
lover to his mistress. Boileau could not have surpassed
it in style. Mme. de la Fayette, although a degree
softer, was the Despreaux (Boileau) of courtly language.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 183
In the end of this same year, 1670, Zayde appeared.
It was Mme. <le la Fayette's first real work, for La
Princesse de Montpensier was not a serious effort, and
had not been noticed at the time except by a very few
people. Zayde was published in Segrais' name, and
was something more than a purely transparent fiction.
The public readily believed that Segrais was the author.
Bussy received the book as the work of Segrais, and
anticipated much pleasure from its perusal ; "for
Segrais," he remarked, "could not write what is not
good." After reading it, he criticised and praised it,
still in the same belief. Since that time many persons
have maintained that to Segrais the honour of its crea-
tion belongs, or at all events that a great deal of it was
written by him. Adry, who in 1807 published an edition
of La Princesse de Cteves, in leaving the question rather
vague and doubtful, seems inclined to favour the idea
that it was the production of the talented poet.
But the worthy Adry, who is an authority as a
bibliographer, has a rather slavishly literal mind.
Segrais, however, tells us quite plainly, it seems to
me, in the conversations and sayings of his which have
been collected : " La Princesse de Cleves is by Mme. de
la Fayette. . . . Zayde, which appeared in my name, is
also hers. It is true I had collaborated, but only as
regards the arrangement of the romance, in which the
rules of art are observed with great exactitude." It is,
moreover, true that at another time Segrais said : "After
my Zayde was published, Mme. de la Fayette ordered
one copy to be bound with white paper between each
page, so that she might revise and correct it, particularly
the language ; but she found nothing in it to correct,
even years after, and I do not suppose any one could
improve it even at this date." It is evident that Segrais,
like so many quite honest editors, allowed himself to
184 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
slip into the phrase my Zayde, yet blushed a little when
others spoke of it as his. This confusion of author and
editor is simple and natural enough. In the middle
ages, and even in the sixteenth century, a Latin phrase
copied or quoted was as much a matter of pride to an
author as an original idea, and if he should be the first
to call attention to a romance or a romance writer, he
is even more touchy on the subject : such foster-parents
do not dislike the soft impeachment, and only half
refute it. But without this, through constantly hear-
ing their own name in connection with the praise or
criticism of the work, they cling all the more closely
to their adoption. If I remember rightly, people used
so constantly to identify me with Ronsard, that I had
difficulty in keeping from saying my Eonsard. One
feels nattered also to have been the first to patronise
a good novel, or even a bad one. The worthy Adry,
then, far from having any malicious intention, adopts
without sufficient proof this expression of Segrais, my
Zayde. Huet is explicit enough on the subject in his
Origines.de Caen; he is still more so in his Latin
Commentaire on himself. " Ill-informed people," he
says, " regard it as an insult that I should have chosen
to speak of Segrais as I did in Les Origines de Caen ;
but I can certify the fact on the testimony of my own
eyes and from a number of Mine, de la Fayette's own
letters ; for she sent me each part of the work as fast
as she composed it, and made me read and revise it."
Lastly, Mine, de la Fayette often said to Huet, who had
bound up along with Zayde his treatise on the Origins
des Romans : " Do you know that we have married our
children?"
Certainly, after all, the style of Zayde is not so notably
different from the style of Segrais' novels but that at
the time people might have mistaken them. Zayde
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 185
still belongs to the pure old romantic style, although
it is a gem of its kind ; and if the reform has already
commenced there, it is solely in the detail, in the way
the story is told rather than in the actual conception
itself. Zayde, to some extent, may be said to hold a
middle place between L'Astrde and the romances of the
Abbe Prevost, and is a connecting link between them.
We find the same sudden and extraordinary passions,
unheard-of resemblances, prolonged adventures and
mistakes, resolutions made at sight of a portrait or a
bracelet. Unhappy lovers quit the court and all its
pleasures for dreary deserts, where, however, all their
wants are supplied ; they pass the afternoons in woods,
and recite their miseries to the rocks, and when they re-
enter their homes they find all kinds of beautiful pictures
there. By chance they encounter on the seashore unfor-
tunate princesses lying apparently lifeless, having escaped
shipwreck in magnificent attire, and who languidly open
their eyes only to fall in love with them. Shipwrecks,
deserts, arrivals, and ecstasies ; therefore, still the old
romance of Heliodore or of Urfe, the romantic Spanish
style of Cervantes' novels. The peculiarity of Mme. de
la Fayette is her extremely delicate analysis ; the most
tender sentiments are unravelled by her with the utmost
subtlety. The jealousy of Alphonse, which appeared so
unlikely to her contemporaries, and which Segrais tells
us was taken from real life, and rather lessened than
exaggerated, is depicted with vivid skill both in the
early and later stages of his trouble. Here the excel-
lence of the work makes itself felt, there observation is
displayed. A fine passage, and one which has been
qualified as admirable by D'Alembert, is where the two
lovers, who had been separated less than two months
before, neither knowing the other's language, meet
again, each speaking in the language of the other,
1 86 MADAME DE LA FA YETTE.
which they have learned in the interval : then suddenly
they stop short, blushing as at a mutual confession.
For my own part, I prefer some sentimental remarks
like this, which Mine, de la Fayette certainly did not
write without some secret reference to her own feelings :
"Ah ! Don Garcia, you are right : there are no passions
except those which seize us at once, take us by surprise ;
the others are merely intimacies our hearts are volun-
tarily drawn into. True attachments draw us in spite
of ourselves."
Mme. de la Fayette did not, I think, understand
these passions which fight to overmaster us ; she gave
her heart willingly, impulsively. When her heart's
affections became fixed on M. de la Rochefoucauld,
she must have been, as I have said, about thirty-two or
thirty-three, and he fifty-two. She had doubtless been
acquainted with him for some time, but it is of their
peculiar connection that I mean to speak. We shall
see by the following letter, now published for the first
time, and which is one of the most confidential letters
we could desire, that about the time the Maximes were
published, and just at the time when the Comte de
Saint- Paul first began to go into society, there was a
rumour of this connection between Mme. de la Fayette
and M. de la Rochefoucauld as of an intimacy very
recently established. Now, the publication of the
Maximes and the Comte de Saint- Paul's appearance in
society, allowing him to have been sixteen or seventeen,
exactly coincide, and make the date 1665 or 1666.
Mme. de la Fayette wrote the letter to Mme. de Sable' ,
an old friend of M. de la Rochefoucauld's, and one whose
influence considerably affected the composition of the
Maximes, and who had been for some time a devoted
disciple of Port-Royal, rather through fear of death find-
ing her still unreformed than from any sincere feeling of
MADAME DE LA f'AYETTE. 187
conversion. " Monday Evening," the letter is dated. " I
was unable to reply to your letter yesterday because
I had company, and I fear I shall not be able to reply to
it to-day because I find it too flattering. I am ashamed
of the praise you bestow on me, but on the other hand
I like you to have a good opinion of me, and I have no
wish to contradict your idea of me. Therefore, in
replying to you, I shall only say that the Comte de
Saint-Paul has just gone, and that we have spoken
about you for a whole hour, and yoxi can imagine how
I would speak on such a subject. We also discussed
a man whom I always take the liberty of comparing
with you in intellectual charm. I do not know if the
comparison offend you, but if it should offend you
from another's lips, it is great praise from mine, if all
we hear be true. I soon saw that the Comte de Saint-
Paul had heard these things which are said, and I went
into the matter slightly with him. But I am afraid he
did not take what I said seriously. I beg of you, the first
time you see him, to speak to him of these rumours. This
will come quite naturally, for I have given him the
Maxim.es, and he will tell you so, no doubt. But I
implore you to speak to him of them most certainly, to
give him the idea that the matter is nothing but a joke.
I am not sufficiently aware of your own opinion to be
sure that you will say the right thing ; and I think it
might be best to begin by convincing the ambassador.
I must trust the matter to your skill, however ; it is
superior to ordinary maxims ; only convince him. I
have a horror that persons of his age should imagine
that I am frivolous or a coquette. They seem to think
everybody older than themselves a hundred, and are
quite astonished they should still be considered inter-
esting ; moreover, he would more readily believe what
was said to him of M. de la Rochefoucauld than of
1 88 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
another. So I do not wish him to think anything
about it, except that he is one of my friends, and I pray
that you will not forget to drive this out of his head if
it is in it, any more than I have forgotten, your message.
It is not very generous, however, to remind you of a
service when asking you to do me one." In a postscript
she adds : " I must not forget to mention that I found
the Comte de Saint- Paul terribly quick-witted."
To give additional interest to this letter, let us try to
realize the exact situation : M. de Saint- Paul, the son
of Mme. de Longueville, and probably also of M. de la
Rochefoucauld, coming to call on Mme. de la Fayette,
who is said to be the object of a late and tender passion,
but who would like to undeceive him or to deceive
him, rather. The terrible quick-ioittedness of the young
man went straight, I expect, to Mme. de Longueville's
heart ; no doubt, she was soon shown the postscript, if
not the whole of the letter. The most charming part
of the letter, and which all elderly lovers ought to
inwardly digest, " I have a horror of persons of his age
thinking me capable of coquetry," exactly responds to
this passage in the Princesse de Cleves : " Mme. de Cleves,
who was at the age at which it is impossible to believe
that a woman who is over twenty-five can be loved,
regarded with extreme surprise the king's attachment
to this duchess (de Valentinois)." The idea was Mme.
de la Fayette's own, we see. She specially dreaded
appearing either to inspire or to feel love at an age
when others seek it. Her delicate sense became her
last effort of modesty.
I am more firm in my conviction that the peculiar
and well-known liaison between M. de la Rochefoucauld
and her only began about this time, because it seems
to me so apparent that this affectionate friend's influence
over him was expressly contrary to the Maximes; that
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 189
had she been near him before they were written, as
she was afterwards, she would have made him correct
and simplify them ; and that La Rochefoucauld, the
misanthrope, he who said he had never found love
except in romances, and that for his own part he had
never experienced it, is not the same man almost, of
whom she said at a later period, "M. de la Roche-
foucauld has taught me wisdom, but t have reformed
his heart."
In a short (unpublished) note from her to Mme. de
Sable, who had herself composed Maximes, I read : " It
will disappoint me more than I can express if you do
not show me your Maximes. Mme. du Plessis has
inspired me with an extraordinary desire to see them,
and it is simply because they are honest and sensible
that I have this desire, and because they will convince
me that all sensible persons are not so certain about
universal depravity as M. de la Rochefoucauld is." It
is this idea of universal depravity which she sets herself
to overcome in M. de la Rochefoucauld, and which she
reforms. The wish to soften and brighten this noble
mind was doubtless a kind-hearted and reasonable
excuse for her at the beginning of their close intimacy.
The old chevalier of the Fronde, grown bitter and
gouty, was, besides, not exactly the kind of man his
book alone would lead us to suppose he was. He had
studied little, Segrais tells us, but his marvellous sense
and his knowledge of the world supplied the place of
studious learning. In his youth he had plunged into
all the vices of his time, and withdrew with a mind
more healthy than his body, if we can call such a
cynical mind healthy. His cynicism in no way de-
tracted from the fascinating charm of his society. He
was courtesy personified always, and improved on close
acquaintance. Delightful in close and intimate con-
igo MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
versation, his low-toned voice just suited him. If he
had been obliged to solemnly address five or six
persons, his voice would have lacked strength ; and the
customary oration at the Academy Frangaise deterred
him from seeking admission there. In June 1672,
when in one evening the death of Mine, de Longueville,
that of the Chevalier de Marsallac, his grandson, and
the wound of his son, the Prince de Marsallac, when
his hailstorm of misfortune fell upon him, Mme. de
Sevigne tells us, his grief and his self-control were admir-
able. " I saw his heart bared," she adds, "in that cruel
time ; I never have beheld such courage, goodness,
tenderness, and sense." A short time later, she said
of him that his nature was domesticated, and that he
understood almost as well as she did, maternal love.
This is the real De la Rochefoucauld, such as he became
under Mme. de la Fayette's reforming influence.
From 1666 to 1670, Mine, de la Fayette (who was not
so delicate as she afterwards became), through the favour
in which Madame held her, had occasion and oppor-
tunity of going very frequently to court : it was not
till just after the death of Madame, and also about the
time her health began to fail, that the liaison, as Mine,
de Sevigne points out, became an established fact. The
letters of the incomparable friend, which are written with
uninterrupted regularity from this very time, give us
insight into the most trifling circumstances, and even
allow us to enter into the pleasant monotony of that
deeply tender companionship.- " Their delicate health,"
she writes, " makes them necessary to each other, and
. . . gives them leisure to enjoy each other's good
qualities, to a degree which is unusual in such circum-
stances. ... At court there is no leisure time for
loving : that vortex, so violent for others, was tranquil
to them, and left plenty of time for their delightful
MADAME DE LA FA YETTE. 191
intercourse. My opinion is, that no passion could
be stronger than such a bond." I do not quote all it
would be possible to extract from each letter of Mme.
de Sevigne's in the same strain ; for there are very few
in which Mine, de la Fayette is not mentioned, and
several of them are written from her house with
messages enclosed from M. de la Rochefoucauld himself.
On good days, days of tolerable health and of dinners
en bavardinage, as she expresses it, there is a charming
playfulness, trills of amusing scandal on the eccen-
tricities of Mme. de Marans, the domestic arrangements
of Mme. de Brissac and M. le Due. Then there are
quieter but not less delightful days, when at Saint-
Maur, in the house which M. le Prince had lent to
Gourville, and of which Mine, de la Fayette had free
use, they listened in a select company to the poetry of
Despreaux, which was considered a chef-d'oeuvre. On
another day, despising Despreaux and his poetry, they
went to hear Lulli, and would shed tears at certain
passages in the opera of Cadmiis. " I was not the only
one who could not listen unmoved," said Mme. de
Sevigne ; " the soul of Mme. de la Fayette was also
deeply troubled." Is not that troubled soul tenderness
itself! Oh, Zayde, Zayde! we perceive in the trouble
of your heart that tender romance which is but half
satisfied, and which will not bear to be too deeply
stirred. There are also days on which Mme. de la
Fayette still goes to court, not formally, but to pay a
little visit, and the king makes her sit in his barouche
with the ladies-in-waiting, and points out to her all the
beauties of Versailles, as any private gentleman might
do ; and such visits, and such attentions, wise and
modest as she is, furnish on her return food for long
conversations, and even for letters not quite so short as
usual from Mme. de la Fayette, who is not fond of letter-
192 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
writing ; and Mme. de Grignan, far away, is rather
jealous, and becomes still more so about some little
writing-table made of wood from Saint-Lucie, which
Mme. de Montespan had presented to Mme. de la
Fayette ; * but Mme. de Sevigne puts this all right
again by the compliments she is continually exchanging
between her daughter and her best friend. Even when
Mme. de la Fayette no longer went to Versailles, no
longer with tears of gratitude embraced the king's
knees, even when M. de la Rochefoucauld was dead,
she preserved her respect and consideration. Mme. de
SeVigne tells us that " no woman ever managed her
affairs so well without loss of dignity/' Louis XIV.
always liked her because she had been Madames
favourite ; he always remembered that she was a witness
of that sad death, and also of those happy years with
which she would for ever be associated, for she had
seldom appeared at court since.
But Versailles, and La poetique of Despreaux,t and
the opera of Lulli, and all the fun over Mme. de Marans,
are constantly interrupted by that miserable health,
which, with its accompanying low fever, could not be
* We gather from Mme. de Sevigne's letters that Mme. de
Grignan must frequently have said, " As for your Mme. de la
Fayette, does she love you so marvellously well ? She scarcely
writes two lines to you in ten years ; she knows how to do what
suits her best ; she takes things easily ; but, in the midst of her
indolence, she has an eye to her own interests." Gourville, with
whom unfortunately Mme. de la Fayette was for a long time
very frank and unreserved as with a faithful friend, has written
something of the same kind about her, or more malicious still.
Lassay, in some Memoires he has published, also insinuates
against Mine, de la Fayette that she looked after her own
interests, and knew how to take advantage ; but one must hear
both sides before making up one's mind.
f Boileau. TR,
MADAME DE LA FA YETTE. 193
ignored, and gradually became her chief concern. In
her large and beautiful garden in La Rue de Vaugirard,
so green and perfumed ; in Gourville's house at Saint-
Maur, where she was quite at home ; at Fleury-sous-
Meudon, where she went to breathe the woodland air,
we follow her, ill and sad ; we see that long, melancholy
face getting thin and pinched. Her life for twenty
years is but a slowly consuming fever, and the bulletins
always come to this : " Mine, de la Fayette leaves to-
morrow for a small house opposite Meudon, where she
has been before. She will spend a fortnight there,
lingering as it were between heaven and earth ; with no
desire to think or speak, or to listen or reply ; it tires
her to say good-morning or good-evening ; she is so
feverish every day that repose is the only remedy, there-
fore she must have repose. I shall go and see her some-
times. M. de la Kochefoucauld is resting on that couch
which you remember ; he is miserably depressed, and
it is easy to see what is the cause." The cause was
certainly a worse misfortune than gout or any of his
ordinary troubles, it was the absence of Mme. de la
Fayette.
The melancholy depression which such a condition
naturally induced did not prevent the charm and the
smile reappearing at short intervals. In the nick-
names then in vogue, which made of Mme. Scarron
The Thaw, of Colbert The North, of M. de Pomponne
Rain, Mme. de la Fayette was called The Mist : the
mist cleared off at times, and then the most charming
horizons appeared. A sweet, resigned, and melancholy
nature, interesting and engaging ; a composed voice,
sowing good and impressive words, formed the constant
attraction of her conversation and ideas. " It is sufficient
to love" she would say, accepting her condition of
inactivity. This expression, which exactly describes
N
194 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
her, is worthy of her who also said, d propos of
Montaigne, that it would be a pleasure to have a
neighbour like him.
At times this calmness would suddenly be moved to
tears, like a spring gushing forth from smooth ground ;
stirred to the depths of her sensitive nature, as we
have seen her moved by the power of music. When
Mme. de Sevigne" was going to the Kochers or to
Provence, and went to say good-bye, one might have
supposed that visit was to be her last : Mme. de la
Fayette's tender heart could not bear unmoved the
departure of such a friend. One day, M. le Due
being present, some one spoke of the campaign which
was to begin in six months ; the sudden realization
of the dangers M. le Due would be exposed to at once
drew forth tears. This emotion was both flattering and
charming, we may imagine, in one usually so calm and
sensible.
In the midst of all her weakness, she did not neglect
essential matters; unable to move, she yet attended to
everything. If she reformed the heart of M. de la
Eochefoucauld, she also rectified his affairs. She got
his lawsuit satisfactorily arranged, and prevented him
losing the best of his estates by providing him with
the means of proving that they were entailed. Still, it
is understood, she wrote few letters, and only necessary
ones. This was her only ground of dispute with Mme.
tie SeVigne". Of the few letters of hers which remain,
nearly all are to say that she merely writes two lines,
that she would write more had she not a headache ;
and one day, M. de la Fayette, who conveniently and
unexpectedly arrives from I know not where, is turned
into an excuse. We have but to read the charming
letter, " Well ! well ! my dear, what is the matter that you
scream like an eagle?" etc., to thoroughly apprehend the
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 195
measure of Mme. de la Fayette's life, and to understand
the difference between her style and Mme. de Sevigne''s.
In that letter we read the words, so often quoted : " You
are in Provence, my dear ; your hours are free, and your
head more so ; you like to write to everybody, my taste
for writing to everybody is gone, and if I had a lover
who required a letter from me every morning, I would
break with him."
Mme. de la Fayette was very sincere and very frank ;
one was impelled to trust her word.* She would pay no
honour or respect unless where she was satisfied it wag
due ; and on this account she has been called severe,
whilst she was but discriminating.t Mme. de Maintenon,
with whom Mme. de la Fayette had much in common,
possessed also a very just mind, but her nature was not
so frank ; judicious also, but less sincere ; and these
dissimilarities, no doubt, helped to cool their friendship.
In 1672, when Mme. Scarron was secretly bringing up
the illegitimate children of Louis XIV. in a secluded
part of the Faubourg Saint- Germain, near Vaugirard,
some distance beyond Mme. de la Fayette's house, the
former was still very friendly with her ; she often
enjoyed a chat with her, and al,*o with Mme. de
Coulanges ; they must even have visited together. But
Mme. Scarron's intimacy gradually became less con-
fidential, the result being that tales were repeated, aud
conjectures were made, which caused unpleasantness be-
tween the friends. " The idea of a religious life never
entered my mind," wrote Mme. de Maintenon to the
Abbe Testu ; " therefore you may reassure Mme. de la
Fayette." Giving her brother some hints on economy
Mine, de Maintenon wrote in 1678 : "Even if I had
fifty thousand livres, I should not play the grande dame,
neither could I have a bed with gold lace hangings
* Mme. de Sevigne. t Segraisiana,
196 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
like Mme. de la Fayette, nor a valet-de-chambre like
Mme. de Coulanges. Is the pleasure derived from
such, luxuries worth the sarcasms they rouse ? " I do
not know if Mme. de la Fayette's gold-embroidered
bed lent itself well to such witticisms ; but lying
on it, as too often happened, she was certainly more
simple than her friend in that mantle the colour of
dead leaves which she affected to the end. At last
friendship between them entirely ceased. Mine, de
Maintenon made that known : " I have not been able
to preserve Mme. de la Fayette's friendship, she exacted
too much for its continuance. I have at least shown
her that I am as sincere as she is. The Duke is the
cause of our misunderstanding. We have before mis-
understood each other in small matters."* And in
Mme. de la Fayette's Memoires we find, under the years
1688 and 1689, a propos of the Comedie d' Esther : " She"
(Mine, de Maintenon) " commanded a poet to write a
comedy, but to choose a pious subject, for at present
there is no safety for the court either here or in another
world except in piety. . . . The comedy illustrates in
some way the fall of Mine, de Montespan and the eleva-
tion of Mme. de Maintenon ; the only difference being
that Esther was a little younger and less affected in her
piety." In quoting the words of these two illustrious
women, it gives me no pleasure to rake up again the
bitterness which destroyed a long friendship. The
fact is, Mme. de Maintenon and Mme. de la Fayette
* Letter to Mme. de Saint Geran, August 1684. Of what
Duke does she speak ? Is it the new Due de la Rochefoucauld ?
We see from one of Mme. de Maintenon's letters to the same
lady (April 1679) that she could not endure the Marsallacs,
father and son. All these letters to Mme. de Saint Geran
have become very untrustworthy since the last criticisms on La
Beaumelle's edition.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 197
were both important and influential women, and they
took too little trouble to retain each other's regard.
Mme. de Maintenon's elevation being the latest, she
no doubt gradually changed towards Mme. de la
Fayette, who remained the same as before ; it was this
very consistency of conduct which was irritating to
Mme. de Maintenon, who probably would have liked to
see her change a little with her fortune. Mme. de la
Fayette ill and dying was still the same as when Mme.
Scarron, writing to Mme. de Chantelou on her present-
ation to Mme. de Montespan in 1666, said of her : "Mme.
de Thianges introduced me to her sister. ... I made
my distress apparent . . . without putting it into words ;
... so Mme. de la Fayette would have been pleased
by the sincerity of my expressions, and the brevity with
which they were delivered." Had I been M. Rcederer,
and wished to give an example of amiable and refined
society in which grace mingled with gravity and
sincerity, I should have found it in the circle composed
by Mme. de Sevigne" and Mme. de la Fayette, rather
than in Mme. de Maintenon's successful elevation and
marriage. The latter, in a sense, injured refined society,
as certain revolutionaries have injured liberty by push-
ing it too far, and forcing excesses which call forth
reaction in an opposite direction. She should have
avoided extreme prudishness or over strictness, and so
have delayed the excesses of the Regency.
In July 1677, a year before the publication of the
Princesse de Cleves, we find that Mme. de la Fayette's
health was at its worst, although she still had fifteen
years to pine and suffer before release came, being one
of those who drag out their miserable existence to the last
drop of oil.* It was in the following winter, however,
that M. de la Kochefoucauld and she put the final
* Mme. de Sevign6.
198 MADAME DE LA FA YETTE.
touches to the charming romance which was issued by
Barbier on the 16th of March 1678. Segrais, who again
crosses our path, says, in one place, that he has not
taken the trouble to reply to the criticisms which Were
made on this romance ; and in another place, that
Mme. de la Fayette has not condescended to reply to
them ; so that we are free to speculate as to the extent
of his co-operation. But we shall not discuss this at
present, and the romance is too superior to anything he
has ever written to admit of any hesitation. Besides,
no one was deceived : those who read it in confidence had
spoken of it ; and the book was well received as the
work of Mine, de la Fayette alone, aided by M. de la
Rochefoucauld's good taste. As soon as this Princesse,
so long heralded, appeared, it was the chief topic of
conversation and of correspondence. Bussy and Mme.
de Sevigne' wrote to each other about it ; everywhere
people were full of curiosity about it, stopping each
other in the broad walk of the Tuileries to exchange
opinions regarding it. Fontenelle read the romance four
times, always finding something new in it ; Boursault
composed a tragedy from it, as now it would have been
turned into a vaudeville ; Valincour wrote anonymously
a little volume of criticism which was attributed to
Pere Bonhours ; and an Abbe" de Charnes replied by
another little volume, with which Barbier d'Aucourt,
the celebrated critic of the time, and the habitual enemy
of the spiritual Jesuit, was credited. The Princesse
de Cloves has survived to obtain the reputation it
deserved, and remains the earliest of our most esteemed
romances.
It is pathetic to think of the peculiar circumstances
in which these pure and charming creations were com-
posed, these noble, stainless characters, so healthy, so
accomplished, so tender ; for Mme. de la Fayette
MADAME DE LA FAVETTE. 199
endows them with all her loving and romantic soul
retains of early, ever-cherished dreams. M. de la
Rochefoucauld, too, had been delighted to discover in
M. de Nemours that brilliant bloom of chivalry which
he himself had so abused, a beautiful mirror in which
his own youth lives again.* Thus did those two old
friends return in imagination to that early time when
they neither knew nor loved each other. That well-
known blush of Mine, de Cleves, which at first is almost
her only language, distinctly marks the author's idea,
which is to picture love as all that is freshest and most
modest, most agitating, undecided, and irresistible,
most itself, in a word. There is a constant study of
that delight which youth and beauty give ; of that embar-
rassed agitation in every ad which, in tlie innocence of
early youth, love causes ; in short, she dwells on all which
is most unlike herself and her friend, and their tardy
affection. In the ordinary things of life she was
especially sensible ; her judgment was superior to her
wit, it was said of her, and this praise flattered her
more than anything : here poetry and sensitiveness are
uppermost, though judgment never fails. Nowhere as
in the Princesse de Cl&ves have the contradictions and
the delicate duplicities of love been so naturally ex-
pressed. " Mme. de Cleves had in the beginning been
annoyed that M. de Nemours had been led to suppose
that she had prevented him going to the Marshal
de Saint- Andrews house ; then afterwards she was vexed
that her mother enlightened him as to the truth. . . .
Mme. de Cleves was very much afraid that the prince
would discover her partiality for him ; and his words
* The Abb6 Longuerne tells us M. de la Rochefoucauld re-
mained all his life faithful to his love of romance. Every after-
noon he and Segrais used to meet at Mme. de la Fayette's to
read L'Astree. He retained throughout a taste for romance.
200 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
showed her that she was not mistaken. She was much
distressed to find that she was no longer able to hide
her feelings, and that she had allowed them to be seen
by the Chevalier de Guise. She was also sorry that M.
de Nemours knew of her feelings ; but this last trouble
was not so deep, and it was blended with a certain
degree of sweetness." The action of the plot is always
correct, well concentrated, conversational, unlikely only
in one or two instances, although this is scarcely
discovered on account of the interest one is made to
feel in the story. The episodes are never too lengthy ;
they rather help than retard the progress of the plot.
The most unlikely episode, that of the pavilion, when
M. de Nemours arrives in a very remarkable manner,
just in time to hear from behind a palisade the avowal
made to Mme. de Cleves, this scene, which Bussy and
Valincour pick to pieces, nevertheless, according to
the latter, drew tears from the eyes even of such as would
scarcely be affected by Iphiytfnie. To us who are little
disquieted by unlikely episodes, and who love the
Princesse de Cloves and its rather old-fashioned style,
what charms us most is the want of exaggeration in
those scenes which are so expressive, the ever-present
vein of gentle dreaminess, the lover strolling by tho
willow-shaded stream ; and the vivid description of
the loved one's beauty, her hair carelessly caught up;
again, her eyes slightly dilated by tears ; and, to give a
last quotation, that life which was short enough, the
impression she herself was deeply conscious of. The
language also is charming, delicate, and exquisitely
chosen,* with some careless yet graceful irregularities,
* A critic we are pleased to quote, has said : " It is very
remarkable to observe how, under Louis XIV., the French
language in all its purity, as written by Mme. de la Fayette,
Mme. de Sevigne, and M. de la Rochefoucauld, is composed of a
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 201
and which Valincour only specified in case they should
be condemned by a grammarian of his acquaintance,
but feeling almost ashamed to make them any reproach
to the charming authoress.
The little volume by Valincour, which Adry has
republished in his edition of the Princesse de Cteves, is
a distinguished specimen of polite criticism, such as
amateurs of taste indulged in under Louis XIV.
Valincour was only twenty-five at the time ; he did
not associate with Huet and Segrais ; he belonged to a
later generation, and was the issue of Racine's and
Boileau's teaching. His malice, which was always
temperate, did not prevent him being just, and giving
praise where it was due ; he has not, however, re-
strained from captious cavilling over details. Those who
attributed the criticism to Pere Bonhours, had cause to
find it comical that the censor objects to the first
meeting of M. de Cleves and Mile, de Chartres having
taken place in a jeweller's shop rather than in a
church. However, the whole shows a sharp, discrimin-
ating judgment, discreetly sarcastic, such sarcasm as
Fontanes might have consulted with pleasure and
profit before criticising Mme. de Stael. The Abbe"
de Charnes, who replies to this criticism word for word,
refutes it with scorn, but, in my opinion, in the style of
a provincialist who had not asked Mme. de la Fayette's
permission to defend her ; Barbier d'Aucourt, without
possessing any very delicate powers, would have
acquitted himself otherwise. Valincour, it is apparent,
has a complete theory about the historical romance,
which is so very well exemplified by a scholar whom
few expressions which in conversation constantly recur with a
charm of their own. . . . One can say, especially as regards
Mme. de la Fayette's style, that it was purity and transparency
itself, the liquida vox of Horace."
202 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
he brings forward ; this theory is the same as that
which Walter Scott has partly realized.
Bussy, who in his letters to Mme. de Sevigne speaks
at considerable length of the Princesse de Cleves, adds,
with that incredible self-conceit which spoils the effect :
" Our criticism is the criticism of cultivated people who
possess Esprit; printed criticism is more pungent and
amusing in many instances." To avenge Mme. de la
Fayette for some of the malice perpetrated by that
presumptuous individual, we need only quote from him
the above characteristic remark.
As she progressed with the Princesse de Cleves, Mme.
de la Fayette, after her first retrospective allusions to
youth and its delights, becomes grave again ; and duty
gradually comes to be her chief thought. The austere
ending is in keeping with her idea of death so slowly
approaching, which makes iis see the things of this life with
very different eyes from those through which we see them
in health. She had felt this herself since the summer
of 1677, and, as Mine, de Sevigne indicates, had com-
posed her soul for the end. The extinction of all her
illusions is displayed in the shrinking fear she makes
Mme. de Cleves express, that marriage may be the
tomb of the prince's love, and the beginning of
jealousies : it is this dread, indeed, as much as any
scruple about duty, which operates in the mind of
Mme. de Cleves, in opposition to the idea of marriage
with her lover. In perfecting their ideal romance, it
ia evident that the two friends, M. de la Rochefoucauld
and Mme. de la Fayette, in questioning the supposed
felicity of their hero and heroine, still considered their
own calmly affectionate connection as the most secure
and comfortable.
They did not enjoy it much longer. In the night
between the 16th and 17th of March, two years that
MADAME DE LA FA YETTE. 203
very day after the publication of the Princessc de Cloves,
M. de la Rochefoucauld 'died. "My head is so full of
this misfortune and of the extreme affliction of our
poor friend," writes Mine, de SeVigne", "that I must
speak of it to you. . . . M. de Marsallac is indescrib-
ably afflicted ; however, my child, he will console him-
self with the King and the court ; all his children will
find some one to take his place ; but where will Mme.
de la Fayette find such a friend again, such companion-
ship, such gentleness, such pleasantness, such confid-
ence, such consideration for her and for her son ? She
is infirm, confined to her room, unable to go about.
M. de la Rochefoucauld was also sedentary ; this made
them necessary to each other, and nothing could equal
the confidence and charm of their friendship. Think
of it, my child ; you will find it scarcely possible that
there could be a greater loss, one which time could do
less to repair. I have not left my poor friend all
these days ; she could not join the crowding family,
she needed some one to have pity on her. Mme.
de Coulanges has done very well also, and we shall
remain some time yet." And in every letter which
followed : " Poor Mme. de la Fayette does not know
what to do with herself. . . . They are all consoled
excepting her." This is what Mine, de SeVigne repeats
over and over again, and every time more expressively
than before : " This poor creature, do what she will,
cannot fill that vacant place." Mme. de la Fayette did
not seek to fill it up ; she knew that such losses cannot
be replaced. Even that tender. friendship with Mme.
de Sevigne 1 was not enough, she knew that well ; there
was too much to divide them. To convince oneself
of the incompleteness of such friendships, even the
greatest and dearest, we have but to read Mme. de la
Fayette's letter to Mme. de Sevigne" on -the 8th of
204 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
October 1689, so matchless, so peremptory, and so
urgently unceremonious in its affection, and afterwards
to read the commentary Mme. de Sevigne" makes on it
in writing to her daughter, " Good gracious ! what a
fine proposition, to have no more a house of my own,
to be dependent, to have no equipage, and to owe a
thousand & us ! " and we will understand that it does
not do to expect everything from such friendships
unless they are quite undivided, since even the most
delicate can judge thus. After love, after absolute
friendship with no reservation or thought for any other
besides, there is only death or God.
Mme. de la Fayette lived thirteen years longer : we
have Mme. de Sevigne to refer to for some slender
details regarding her outward life during these lonely
years. A hastily formed intimacy with the young
Mme. de Schomberg awakened the curiosity and the
jealousy of older friends ; it does not appear that this
effort of a heart which had found something to cling
to was an enduring effort. It was probably the same
restless yearning which, in the early months of her
loss, led her to again enlarge her already vast rooms
from the garden side, even as, alas ! her life was
waning. She also seems to have filled up her time
by writing some things which are now lost. La
Comtesse de Tende must have been written during these
years.
Bussy's most severe criticism, and also that of the
world at large, on the subject of La Princesse de Cleves,
was called forth by the extraordinary confession which
the heroine makes to her husband ; Mme. de la Fayette,
in inventing another similar situation, which led to a
still more extraordinary confession, thought that the
first would thus be so far justified. She succeeded in
La Comtesse de Tende, although greater art was neces-
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 205
sary to give the Princesse de Cleves a sister worthy of
her : we feel that the author has a limit, and is drawing
near it.
Les Me'moires de la Cour de France, for the years
1688 and 1689, are remarkable for sequence, precision,
and freedom from prejudice ; no wandering from the
point, scarcely any reflections, even ; a vivid, impressive
narrative, always intelligent. The author of such a
work was certainly capable of more important things. I
have quoted her cutting remark on Mme. de Maintenon
d propos of Esther. Racine, therefore, and his Comedie
de Convent is treated rather slightingly : " Mine, de
Maintenon, to amuse her little girls and the King,
ordered a comedy to be written by Racine, the best
poet of the day, who was taken from his poetry, in
which he is inimitable, to make of it, to his own mis-
fortune, and that of all who can appreciate good plays,
a very imi table historian." Mine, de la Fayette's circle
preferred Corneille to Eacine. In Zayde, she had
imitated that Spanish style so dear to the author of
the Cid, and which Racine and Boileau had super-
seded. She often saw Fontenelle, and her particular
friends were men like Segrais and Huet, who both dis-
liked, almost hated, those two reigning poets, Racine
and Boileau. M. de la Rochefoucauld, who admired
them both as writers, found that they possessed only
one kind of talent, and considered them poor company
outside their poetry. Lastly, Valincour, who had
attacked the Princesse de Cleves, was the pupil and
intimate friend of both. But Mme. de la Fayette was
too talented and too just not to admire as they de-
served, authors whose tenderness and justice found in
her such ready chords of harmony. At the moment
when her reverence for Racine was at its lowest, she
calls him the best poet, and inimitable. We have seen
206 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
that at Gourville's house, in which she was almost at
home, La podique of Boileau was read before her.
We have observed how many qualities she possessed in
common with Despreaux,* upright judgment, incon-
testable criticism ; also, in her way, she was an oracle
of wisdom to her circle. Numerous expressions of hers
have been retained which are exactly in Boileau's style ;
we add the following to those of them we have already
quoted : " He who sets himself above others, however
great his talent, puts himself below that talent."
Boileau, in conversation with D'Olivet, one day said,
" Do you know why the ancients had so few
admirers ? Because at least three-fourths of those who
have translated them have been either ignorant persons
or fools. Mme. de la Fayette, the woman in France
who possessed the greatest talent, and who wrote best,
compared a stupid translator to a servant who is sent
by his mistress to deliver a compliment to some one.
What his mistress has told him in polite language to
eay, he goes and expresses clumsily, he maims the
message ; the more delicacy there is in the compliment,
the less able is the servant to convey its meaning.
This, in few words, is the most perfect image of a bad
translator." Boileau, therefore, seems himself to certify
the fact of this resemblance, this affinity which we have
indicated.
M. Rcederer is quite right with regard to Moliere's
relations with the circle formed by Mmes. de Sevigue
and de la Fayette, when he declares that the femmes
savantes had no reference to them at alL As for
La Fontaine, it is well known that at one time he
was on intimate terms with Mme. de la Fayette ; we
have his very friendly lines addressed to her when
* Boileau. TR.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 207
sending her a little billiard -table, about the same time
that he dedicated a fable to the author of the Maximes,
and another to Mile, de Sevigne.*
After M. de la Rochefoucauld's death, Mine, de la
Fayette's thoughts became more strongly fixed on
religious subjects ; we have trustworthy evidence of
this in a long and beautiful letter from Du Gnet to
her. She had chosen him as her director. Without
being absolutely connected with Port-Royal, all her
inclinations lay in that direction, and the hypocrisy of
the court also influenced this tendency. We have seen
that her stepfather was the Chevalier Renaud de S&ignS,
uncle of Mine, de Sevigne, and one of the benefactors
of Port-Royal-des-Champs, the cloister of which he
* lime, de la Fayette was therefore actually of the same
group, the same Parnassus, so to speak, as La Fontaine, Racine,
and Despreaux ; l and the following little story is simply a
rather childish version of the truth : " In 1675," we are told by
Menage, " Mme. de Thianges gave to M. le Due du Maine, as a
New Year's gift, a gilded room about the siz table. Over
the door was written in large letters, Chambre du Sublime. In
the room was a bed with a balustre,* and a large easy -chair, in
which sat M. le Due du Maine, made in wax, a very good
likeness. Near him stood M. de la Rochefoucauld, to whom
he was handing some verses to examine. Standing round,
were M. de Marsillac and M. Bossuet, then Bishop of Condom.
In a corner of the alcove were Mme. de Thianges and Mme.
de la Fayette, reading some verses. Outside the balustre,
Despreaux, with a pitchfork, was preventing seven or eight
wretched poets from entering. Racine was near Despreaux,
and a little farther off La Fontaine, to whom he was making a
sign to come forward. All these figures were of wax and in
miniature, and each person represented had given his own."
Menage does not inform us if he himself posed as one of the
wretched poets driven away by Boileau.
i Boileau. TR. * A railed-off recess. TR.
2o8 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE.
had rebuilt. He did not die till 1672.* Mine, de la
Fayette knew Du Guet, who had begun to exercise
great influence on the spiritual direction of consciences,
and who, in the decline of Port-Royal, held only to
its righteous traditions, avoiding all shallow conten-
tiousness. Here are some of the earnest words which
this spiritually-minded priest addressed to the penitent
who had requested them from him :
" I have considered, Madame, that you ought to
employ usefully the earliest moments of the day in
which you cease to sleep only to begin to dream. I
know your thoughts are not then connected thoughts,
and that very often your chief endeavour is to have no
thoughts, and it is difficult not to yield to this inclina-
tion when one would willingly let it rule ; it is easier
to give way than to overcome self. It is therefore im-
portant that you should nourish yourself on more solid
food than aimless thoughts, the most innocent of which
are useless ; and I believe you could not better employ
such a peaceful time than in taking thought to yourself
of a life already very long, and of which there remains
to you now only a reputation the vanity of which you
yourself understand better than any one. Till now the
* Towards the last, Mme. de la Fayette's relations with Port-
Eoyal were more direct than I had thought. I read in a letter
from Racine to M. de Bonrepaux (28th July 1693) : " Your
friend Mme. de la Fayette gave us very melancholy entertain-
ment. I had not been fortunate enough to see her during the
latter years of her life. God had cast a salutary shadow over
all her worldly occupations, and she died, after suffering in
solitude and admirable resignation from her severe infirmities,
receiving great support from the ministrations of M. 1'Abbe
Du Guet and some of the Messieurs of Port-Royal, whom she
held in great veneration, and this caused Mme. la Comtesse de
Grammont to praise them very highly, for she openly holds
Port-Royal in high esteem."
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 209
clouds with which you have tried to envelop religion
have deceived even you yourself. As it is by its aid
alone that one can and ought to examine and know
oneself, in affecting to ignore it you have only ignored
yourself. It is time to put everything in its place, and
to put yourself in yours. Truth will be your judge,
and you are here but to follow that and not to be the
judge of it. In vain we defend ourselves, in vain we
deceive : the veil is rent asunder as life and its in-
ordinate desires fade away ; and we are convinced that
we shall lead an altogether new life when we are no
longer permitted to dwell here. We must therefore
begin by an earnest desire to see ourselves as we are
seen by our Judge. Such self-knowledge is grievous
even for such as have been least self -deceived. It
divests us of all our virtues, even of our good qualities,
and of all the esteem they have acquired for us. We
feel that till then we have been living in falsehood and
delusion ; that we have been feeding on painted food ;
that we have used virtue only as a cloak, and neglected
to search our hearts, because that searching means
trusting all to God and to salvation, despising oneself
in all things, not through a wiser kind of vanity, a
more enlightened, more cultivated pride, but because
we are convinced of our wrong-doing and wretched-
ness."
The remainder of the letter is equally admirable, and
in this urgent and appropriate tone : " Thus you who
have dreamed, cease your dreams ! You who have been
esteemed sincere above others, and on whom the world
has bestowed this flattery, you are not so ; you have
never been more than half sincere ; without God,
your wisdom was but a cultivated mind." Further
on I read a sentence on those years "when one has
not yet sincerely repented, because one is minded
o
2io MADAME DE LA FA YETTE.
to excuse one's weakness, and to love what has caused
it."*
A year before her death, Mme. de la Fayette wrote to
Mme. de Sevigne" a short note, in which she describes
her miserable condition, unable to sleep either by night
or by day, her resignation to God's will ; and she ends
in these words : " Believe, my dear friend, that I have
loved you better than any other human being." That
other affection which she no more named, no longer
took into account, was it at last expunged, consumed
away in sacrifice?
There is harmony to the very last, and now it ends.
Mine, de Sevigne writes to Mme. de Guitaud on the
3rd June 1693, two or three days after the fatal day,
deploring the death of that faithful friend of forty years :
"... For two years her infirmity had been extreme ;
I always defended her against those who said she was
foolish not to go out. ' She is sad unto death,' I used
to tell them : still they would insist, saying, ' What
folly ! is she not the most fortunate woman in the
world ? ' Those persons were very hasty in their
censure, and I only replied, 'Mine, de la Fayette is
not foolish,' and I adhered to this. Alas ! Madame,
the poor creature is now justified. . . . She had heart
disease. Was this not enough to account for her par-
oxysms of pain? She was right in her life, and she
is right after death ; and she was never without that
divine raison which was her chief characteristic. -She
remained unconscious during the four days of her last
illness. For our consolation, God granted us a special
favour, a distinct sign of her predestination ; namely,
that she confessed on the festival of Corpus Ghristi with
In his youth, Du Guet had tried to write a sentimental
romance, and he greatly admired L'Astree; he was a most
suitable director for the author of La Princesse de Cleves.
MADAME DE LA FA YETTE. 21 1
an accuracy and sincerity which could have come only
from God, and received the holy sacrament in the same
spirit. Thus, my dear Madame, we regard the com-
munion which she was accustomed to make at Whit-
suntide as God's merciful kindness to console us that
she was not in a state to receive the viaticum."
Thus died and lived in an atmosphere of gentle sad-
ness, painful suffering, worldly wisdom, and Christian
repentance, she whose ideal production enchants us.
What more can we add either for reflection or in-
struction ? Do not the letter to Mine, de Sabl4, La,
Princesse de Cteves, and the letter of Du Guet, contain
the whole story of a life 3
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