t!aMI>WQ»« W II IIIM II I II *Wll l ) lll llW»M ' « * l' l l|»W»> >' l '» ' « WI ' M< l i" l WWWM I I «« »iffi ^ tl«^ Jt^'JL" ■l ll l|il lMH I IHl|W I|i lll>lmfJI« Woi t»WM*mMIIIWaM.'Vii/i|liWi< l i>e av i nlt lTi WM ll lTITr i n i ir i-nimiilll l l ll lllllllll l l lHI i r '" '■'-"i'-nu,n.nr,,in.|.- nrr . S^e gaaHa«iW!a»iB»wtttijigwg ww»t^^ r w:M"M mm ^5* ^ ■ i- ' y72>i^ta.^^^<>-;Q '^Z^k^ . MADAME DE STAEL. VOL. I, I.OSrOX ! PRIXTKI) BY sroTTisnooDK AXD lO., nkiv-stuket squaeis AND PAULIA51KXT STRKKT ^■' Jii MADAME DE STAEL A STUDY OF HEE LIFE AND TIMES: THE FIRST REVOLUTION and THE FIRST EMPIRE. By A. STEVENS, LL.D. /! IN TWO V O L U M E 8. — V L. I WITH PORTRAITS. LONDON : JOHN MUKEAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1881. AU rights vesfrved. LK2-ii\l^\ PEEFACE. I HAVE NOT been able to find, in any language, anything like an adequate biography of Madame de Stael — a woman who, more than any other, (not excepting Madame Eoland) represents her epoch, and that the epoch of the modern history of Europe. The best of French critics, Sainte- Beuve, has accorded to her this pre-eminence. ' How incomplete,' exclaims Geffroy (Eevue des Deux Mondes, tome vi. 1856), ' are the biographies of Madame de Stael ! ' Her gifted cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure, prepared for the first edition of her collected works (CEuvres Completes de Madame de Stael, 17 vols. Paris, 1820-21) a ' Notice ' on her ' Character and Writinijs ' which is the best memoir of her yet given to the world ; nearly all tlie facts of her early life, recorded by other writers, are borrowed from it ; yet, of it;; more than three hundred and seventy pages, seven- eifrhths are devoted to general remarks on her [6] Preface. (^luiracter and critical remarks on her works. Slie complains of the paucity of lier data, the difficulty of constructing a connected history of her friend. The writings of Madame de Stael, particularly her ' Ten Years of Exile,' her ' Considerations ' on the French Eevolution, and her sketch of her father introductory to his 'Manuscripts ' (a sketch which Benjamin Constant pronounced lier best self-reve- lation), are replete with allusions to lier own life ; but these are mostly detached and vague. The superabundant 'Memoirs' of her times, and the histories of the French Eevolution, of the Litera- ture, and of the Society of tlie epoch, abound in similar allusions, but they seem equally intractable to any attempt to reduce tliem to the correlation and consistence requisite for a biography of the usual form. Hence, probably, it is that, with almost innumerable biographical sketches, we have as yet no real biography of tliis greatest of literary women, greatest by the events of her life, if not by lier literary productions. Besides tlie elaborate ' Notice,' by Madame Necker de Saussure, Sainte-Beuve lias given us (Portraits et Critiques Litteraires, 3 vols., Paris,- 1841) a sketcli of more tlian a luiudred and twenty pages; Fr. Schlosser, a vohime on ]\hidaine de Stael et Madame Roland (Frankfurt, 1830) ; Lydia Marin Cliild, n work with the same title (Auburn, Preface. [7] Me., 1861) ; Maria Norris, a Life and Times of , Madame de Stael (London, 1843) ; Cousin (d'Avalon) 'Staelliana' (Paris, 1820) ; Hortense AUart, ' Lettres sur les QEiivres de Madame de Stael' (Paris, 1824) ; Henri Baudrillart, an ' Eloge de Madame de Stael ' (Paris, 1850), crowned by the French Academy. Philarete Chasles has made out an excellent resume of lier life and writings in the ' Nouvelle Biographic Generale,' and tlie sketch in the ' Bio- graphie Universelle ' is equally well done. Vinet has estimated, from his religious standpoint, her relations to the moral tendencies of our age ; Villemain, Bonald, Querard, Bauguelet, Chenier, and, indeed, nearly all other authorities on French Literature, have treated of her works and her character. Important pubhcations, affording new materials for her history, have been multiplied in our day, but have been little used for the purpose — such as Madame Lenormant's ' Souvenirs and Correspondence of Madame Eecamier,' and ' Tlie Friends of her Youth and her Intimate Corre- spondence ; ' also ' Weimar and Coppet ' (attributed to the same editor), with a considerable introduc- tory sketch and numerous letters ; Taillandier's ' Unpublished Letters of Sismondi,' and his ' Coun- tess of Albany ; ' Geffroy's researches respecting her first husband, the Baron de Stael, and her own correspondence with Gustavus III. of Sweden, [8] Preface. contributed to the ' Keviie des Deux Mondes ' (1856 and 1864-65), and others. I gratefully acknowledge my obligations to Professor Albert Eilliet de Candolle, of Geneva, a relative of the companion of her childhood, Mdlle. Huber (afterwards Madame Eilliet-Huber), for some original data, and important suggestions ; and most especially to Monsieur Pictet de Sergy (former Councillor of State, and author of a History of Geneva &c.), the only survivor of the personal friends of Necker whom I have been able to dis- cover. His father (Pictet-Diodati) and his father- in-law (Pictet de Eochemont) were among the dearest friends of Madame de Stael, and familiar guests of Coppet. He, himself, was a still more habitual guest there, from the time of Necker down to the death of his disting-uished dau^^hter, and also of the salon of her friend, Madame Ee- camier, at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, Paris. He knew intimately the most noted characters of the Coppet coterie., and has entertained his extreme but i^enial old age by recording his ' Souvenirs ' of them. This unpublished woik, as also his manuscript 'Etude' on an important cliapter of the 'Alle- magne,' he has generously placed at my command, together with many other aids. Besides the cita- tions from his manuscripts Avhicli will be found in my pages, I owe to him the right statement and Preface. [9] proper colouring of many facts already given to the public with more or less inaccuracy. But with all these abundant ' sources,' it has seemed impossible to make a satisfactory biography except on the plan I have adopted, as implied by my title — A Study of her Life and Times. Viewed en famille, and in her relations to her times — the era of the First Eevolution and the First Empire — its Society, Literature, and Politics — her person- ality appears more distinctly, and in ampler and juster proportions, than it could be presented in any possible narration of the exclusively personal facts of her life. She has been known abroad chiefly as the author of a couple of ' fictions,' or by French party criti- cisms and anecdotal disparagements ; but critical students of her works and her times know that she was a profound ethical thinker ; a political leader whose persistent liberal teachings have again ascendency in her country ; a ' Queen of Society ; ' an oracle of the first minds of her age ; the leader, as Lacretelle records, of the spiritualistic reaction against the materialistic philosophy of the Eevolu- tion ; one of the principal promoters, as Lerminier asserts, of the literature and criticism of the Eom- antic school, in France, as contrasted with its old rigorous Classicism ; the first, as Goethe affirmj. effectively to break open the way for the outspread [lo] Preface, of German literature over Western Europe ; the most genuine heroine of the Eevolution ; the most steadfast opponent of the despotism of Bonaparte — ' the last of the Eomans,' as Lamartine says, ' under this Ca2sar, who dared not to destroy her, and could not abase her ; ' the greatest woman of her times, as Macaulay asserted ; the greatest woman in litera- ture, as Byron said ; the greatest woman yet pro- duced by Europe, as Galiffe believed — a superb intellect, and a woman of loving and most lovable soul. In a period of illness and retirement, amidst scenes consecrated by her memory, I have found agreeable occupation in attempting to reinstate her in her real historical position ; to restore her salon at Paris, crowded with representative personages of the times ; to revive her brilliant hterary court at Coppet ; to disinter, from old publications, the contemporary and later criticisms on her works ; to trace her travels, and relations with distinguished men and women, in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Eussia, and England ; and, above all, to ascertain her own intellectual (her interior) life. The task is beset with serious critical embarrass- ments, especially tlie liability that the frame may be too large for the picture. I have endeavoured to guard against this error, if not always with suc- cess, 5^et sufficiently, I trust, to obtain the indulgence Preface. [ii] of tlie reader. My work must necessarily be a mosaic ; but tlie mosaic legitimately belongs to Art. All writers on the life of Madame de Stael, especially her early hfe, are indebted to her cousin for a large proportion of their data ; and, in any other til an the French language, would naturally reproduce them in a style very like a free render- ing of her narrative ; there is, therefore, among them not a little similarity, of not only facts but of language. This should not, liowever, expose them to the suspicion of mutual plagiarism ; it shows, rather, their common fidelity to the best original authority. In my use of her ' Xotice sur le Carac- tere et les Ecrits de Madame de Stael,' I have not liesitated to follow their example. As more than nine-tenths of my data have never before been presented in any consecutive form, I have given abundant marginal verifications, Geneva : JuJxj 14, 1880. CONTENTS THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION PARENTAGE. ^^ PAGK Coppet — Chateau de Necker-\3^arne de Stael — The Necker Family — James Necker — The Mother of Madame de Stael — Gibbon's Love — Character and Writings of Madame Necker — Moultou — Bonstetten — Voltaire— Salons of Paris — Madame Necker's Salon — Madame du DefFand — Marmoutel — Madame Necker and Madame Roland ....... 1 CHAPTER n. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. Madame Necker's System of Edncation — Rousseau's Theory — Anecdotes of the Childhood of Mademoiselle Necker — Bonstetten — Raynal — Mademoiselle Necker in the Salon — Her first Literary Compositions — Grimm's Account of one — Morbid Effect of her Precocity — Necker's Resignation of Office — Tronchin's Prescription for his Daughter — Her Emancipa- tion — Love for her Father — Her Mother — Madame de Genlis 32 CHAPTER in. YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS. Fust Travels — Visit to Buffbn — His Egotism — His Rule for Style — Fine Sayings of Madame Necker — Journey to Switz- [ 1 4] Contents of the First Volume. PAGE erland — Lake Leman — The South of France — Retirement at Marolles — Early Literary Compositions — Dramas — Fictions — Criticism 60 CHAPTER IV. EARLY WOMANHOOD. Necker — His Dauj^hter with him in Exile — Her Account of his Book on the Importance of Religious Opinions — Her Develop- ment — An early Portrait of her — Description of her in her Eighteenth Year — In her Twentieth Year — Her Manners in Company — Her Bonhomie — Her Conversational Powers — Her Religious Tendency — A Literary ' Portrait ' of her . , .74 CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE — CORRESPONDENCE WITH GUSTAVUS III. Baron de Stael — Count Fersen — Interest of the French Court in the Marriage — Stael's subsequent Career — His Wife's Cor- respondence with his King — French Court Life — Necker's Restoration to Office 86 CHAPTER VI. LITERATURE — THE REVOLUTION. Necker again in Office — First Publication of Madame de Stael — i^etters on Rousseau — Her Opinion of Literary Life — Madame Necker de Saussure's Estimate of the Letters — Grimm's Criticism — Madame de Stael's Sympathy with the Revolution — Her Account of the Opening of the States- General — Necker's Dismissal — His Triumphal Return — Letter from Mile. Huber — Riots of the People — Necker finally retires lOO CHAPTER VII. MADAME DE STAEL's HEROISM IN THE REVOLUTION. Necker at Coppet — His Daughter's Correspondence with him — Parisian Society at this epoch — Influence of Woman — Contents of the First Volume. [15] PAGE Madame de Stael iu the Perils of the Revolution — Heroic Eflbrts for her Friendf- — She is arrested — Terrorism in Paris — Her Escape to Coppet . 121 CHAPTER VIII. AT COPPET. ("oppet — Madame de Stael rescues Achille du Chayala — Mathieu de Montmorency — Fate of his Family — Scenery of Lake Leman — Lacretelle on the Heroism of Madame de Stael . 13Vt CHAPTER IX. IN ENGLAND THE ROYAL EXECUTIONS. The French Mickleham Colony — Fanny Biu'ney — Life at Mickle- ham — The Burney Letters — Necker and the King's Death — Madame de^tael pleads for the Queen — Execution of the Queen— [Madame de Stael writes for Peace— (Hfer Politics . 146 CHAPTER X. DEATH OF HER MOTHER. Madame Necker's Sufferings— Last Interview with Gibbon — Letter to bim — Her Character — Posthumous Letters to her \ Husband — His Devotion to her — Moral Beauty of the Last Scene 165 CHAPTER XL IN PARIS AGAIN. Political Condition of France — M. de Stael— ^kJcial Reaction iu Paris— Madame Tallien— The Salon again— Madame de Stael and Talleyrand — She rescues Dupont de Nemours and Narvins de Montbreton— Her Efforts for Lafayette— Her Womanly Sensibility — Education and Career of her Son, Auguste — Her Treatise on the Passions . . . . . . i; ' VOL. I. a [ ] 6] Contents of the First Volu7ne. CHAPTER XII. JIADAME DE STAEL AND BONAPARTE. PAGB A new Epoch in her Life — Her Relations to Napoleon — The Cause of his Hostility— His Character — Anecdotes — Sophie G av — Invasion of Switzerland— Scenes at Coppet . . . 194 CHAPTER XIII. LIFE IN PARIS BENJAMIN CONSTANT. Xecker — Madame de Stael's Separation from her Husband — Her Daughter Albertine — Lacretelle — Benjamin Constant — Madame de Oharriere — Madame de Stael's Salon — Con- stant's Speech against the Government — Its Consequences — r^adame de Stael's Work on Literature — It restores her Social Position in Paris 214 CHAPTER XIV. HER WORK ON LITERATURE. Its Scope — The Perfectibility of Man — Contemporary Criticism on the Book — Fontanes — Chateaubriand — Christianity — What she meant by Perfectibility — Vico's Theory — Noble Thoughts 230 CHAPTER XV. DK OtKANDO, THE PHILOSOPHER — MADAME DE KRUDNER, THE MYSTIC. Her Relations with De Gerando — Annette de Gerando — Spiritu- alism — Madame de Kriidner — Letter from De Gerando — Her Salon in Paris — Necker's ' Last Views ' — Napoleon's Resent- ment — Conversation with Lacretelle — Kant — Return to Paris 247 Cotitenls of the First Volume. [ i 7] CHAPTER XVI. LITERATURE — ' DELPHINE.' PAGB Publication of 'Delphine' — Criticism on it — Madame de Genlis attacks it — Sophie Gay defends it— Madame de Stael's De- fence of it — Talleyrand a Character in it — Ilis hon mot re- specting it — Madame de Kriidner's Criticism . . . 275 CHAPTER XVII. COPPET AND ITS SOCIETY. Glimpses of Ooppet — Its Society — Madame Rilliet-Huber — Madame Necker de Saussure — Sismondi in Love — Madame de Stael initiates his Historical Studies — Bonstetten — Frede- rica Brun — Madame de Stael as a Mother — Daily Life at Coppet ' . .280 CHAPTER XVIII. EXILE — MADAME R^CAMIER. Madame de Stael returns to France — Her Persecution by Bona- parte — Madame Recamier — Her extraordinary Beauty and Character — Her first Interview -udth Madame de Stael — The latter seeks shelter with her — A Gendarme takes charge ot Madame de Stael — Joseph Bonaparte — She departs for Ger- many — Madame de Beaumont — Letter of Madame de Stael to Chateaubriand 300 CHAPTER XIX. MADAME DE STAEL AT 'WEIMAR. Weimar— The Duchess Amelia— The Duke Charles Augustus— The Intellectual Circle of Weimar-A>^land, Goethe and Schiller— The Duchess Louise— liters of Goethe and Schiller respecting Madame de Stael-^^Jfgr Estimates of Goethe, Schiller and Wieland— Life at Weimar .... 318 [i8] Co7itents of the First Volitme. CHAPTER XX. BERLIN — RETURN DEATH OF NECKER. PAGE Madame de Stael at Berlin — Her Reception at Court — Its Page- antries — Kotzebue — Augustus William Sclilegel — Execution of the Due d'Enghien — Death of Necker and Return of Madame de Stael — EHect of his Death on her — Her Publica- tion of his 'Manuscripts ' — Society at Ooppet . . . 331 CHAPTER XXI. LIFE AT COPPET. Moral Effect of the Death of her Father — Her Religious Views — Letter to Gouverneur Morris — Her Sketch of Necker's Character and private Life — Society at Coppet — Bonstetten — Schlegel — Miiller, the Historian — Her Opinion of him — Madame Necker de Saussure — Letter to Madame Recamiei- . 34o CHAPTER XXII. ITALY ART. Madame de Stael goes to Italy — Her Love of Music — Schlegel's connection with her Works — Her Italian Tour — Observations on Art — ' Corinne ' 366 Madame de Stael. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION PARENTAGE. Coppet — Chateau de Necker — Madame de Stael — The Necker Family — James Necker— The Mother of Madame de Stael— Gibbon's Love — Character and Writings of Madame Necker — Moultou — Bonstetten — Voltaire— Salons of Paris — Madame Necker's Salon — Madame du Deffand — Marmontel — Madame Necker and Madame Roland. The tourist in Switzerland, passing on Lake Leman from Lausanne to Geneva, sees on the north- western shore a small village, nearly all the habit- ations of which seem clinging to a central stately structure : it is famous as the hamlet of Coppet, and the parent edifice is the Chateau de Necker, the ' home of Madame de Stael.' As the steamer ap- proaches the pier, all eyes, of educated foreigners at least, are turned from the subhmer scenery of the opposite shore to gaze on the uiemorable site. Guide books are eagerly consulted, and it is seldom that groups of travellers do not leave the boat to pay their homage at this shrine of the genius of the greatest woman in hterary history. VOL. I. B 2 Madame de Stael. ch. Colonnades of ancient oaks, horse-chestnuts, and sycamores extend from the landing up to the mansion. The latter is spacious, but presents an aspect more of comfort and good taste, than of magnificence. Its principal court, formed on three sides by the building, on the fourth by a lofty grilled fence with ample gates, is adorned with flower beds, and flowering vines chnib its angles to the roof. From its open northern side extends a simple picture of landscape beauty, designed more by nature than art : a combined Enghsh garden and park, with sward, clumps of flowering shrubs, and stately trees ; a crystal brook (flowing down from the Jura) on one side ; a fish-pond in the centre ; and gravelled walks, with stone seats, winding among the trees. The interior of the mansion still retains, intact, not a few mementoes of its celebrated mistress, objects of eager interest to innumerable pilgrmis, — a bedroom, with its antique furniture and tapestried hangings ; a hbrary with its crowded book-cases, writing desk, and pictures ; a salon with works of art. Scattered through these apartments are busts and portraits, of herself, of her first husband, and her children ; of Necker her father, of her mother, of Rocca her youthful lover and second husband, of Augustus William Schlegel, and other hterary friends. West of the chateau lies the family cemetery, entirely shut in from the sight of the visitor by high I. Coppet. 3 walls, and a dense copse of aged trees and entangled shrubs and vines. In its centre stands a small cliapel, within which sleeps the illustrious authoress, with her parents, and around it rest her children and grandchildren — four generations of the family of Necker. It is a sombre enclosure, but the night- ingales delight to sing in its deep shades, and the vine-clad Juras on the one side, the lake and snow- crowned Alps on the other, frame about it a picture of exceeding beauty befitting the memory of its chief tenant. Far more interesting by its social and literary memories than by its picturesque scenery, this charming locality will be a centre of our narrative. It was an intellectual centre of Europe in one of the most eventful periods of modern history. We shall have occasion incessantly to return to it ; we begin with it, and must end with it. Madame de Stael was unquestionably one of the ' / principal figures in the history of French literature I and society, if not indeed of French pohtics, during Y the era of the first Eevolution and the first Empire. Coppet, like Voltaire's neighbouring Ferney in the preceding period, was a sort of European court, a gathering place of hterary and poUtical notabilities; and the great captain of the day was as jealous of the pen of its chatelaine as of the sceptre of any regal court. Her character is a study of rare interest. She combined the heart of a woman with the intellect of a man. Her ' Corinne ' is the ideal B 2 4 Madame de Sta'eL cil. of woma;iliood endued with genius, while her ' Allemagne ' is, says Sir James Mackintosh, ' the most elaborate and mascuhne production of the faculties of woman.' Mackintosh gave her pre- cedence of all other women who have won a name in authorship. Byron said, ' She is a woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them together, intellectually ; she ought to have been a man.' Both knew her, and judged her from personal intercourse as well as by her writings. AHson estimated her as ' the first of female, and second to few male authors.' Jeffrey expressed the same opinion of her literary rank. Macaulay still more emphatically said that 'she was certainly the greatest woman of her times.' Schlegel, intimately associated with her for years, pronounced her 'a woman great and magnanimous even in the inmost recesses of her soul.' ' She was,' says another authority, ' probably the most remarkable woman that Europe has produced.' ^ Her idolatrous filial affection, culminating in the elegiac pathos, the almost lyrical enthusiasm, of her biographical introduction to the ' Manuscrits ' of Necker, is as unique in hterature as the maternal passion which is immortalised in the Sevigne Letters. Her con- versational powers have probably never been sur- passed, and she was the Queen of the Parisian ' Salon ' of her age. Her activity in the pohtics, ' Galiffe's Notices Gen6alogique8, tome ii. (4 vols.). Geneva, 1829- 1857. The Necker Family. and in some of the most perilous scenes, of the French Eevokition, invests her character mth ro- mantic heroism, and connects her name with the greatest epoch of modern European history. The travels of her long exile rendered her cosmopohtan in the hterary and social life of Europe, and the j^ study of her hfe must be a study of the politics, the y literature and society of her times. Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Stael Holstein, was born at Paris on the 22nd of April, 1766.^ Her father, James Necker, was a native of Geneva, and was educated according to the strict regimen estabhshed there by Calvin. His own father, Charles Frederick Necker, was a native of Prussia, but early became a citizen of Geneva, and distinguished himself as Professor of Law in the city ' Academy ' or University, and as author of several elaborate publications. Another son, Louis Necker, became Professor of Mathema- tics in the same institution, was later a banker at Paris and Marseilles, but finally returned to his native city, and devoted the remainder of his Hfe to physical and mathematical studies ; he also ^ There are two records of her baptism in the city archives : in ■one of them her parents bear the title * noble.' Jahl's Diet. Crit. et Bio(j. Paris, 1872. The ' de ' (d' Albert) belonged to the .^Id French Huguenot family of Madame Necker's mother. It belonged also to the wife of Samuel Necker (advocate, of Custrin) Marguerite Saphrasine de Labahache de Stettin — the parents of the grandfather of Madame de Stael, Charles Frederick. Galitfe's A'o^j'ces Genealogiques, tome ii. 6 Madame de Sta'el. ch. attained some rank as an author. A son of this brother (James Necker) was sometime Professor of Botany in the Academy, and a city magistrate, but is better known as the husband of the accom- phshed daughter of the ' physicist ' De Saussure (Madame Necker de Saussure), the authoress of an able work on Education, which was ' crowned ^ by the French Academy, and one of the dearest friends and best biographers of her cousin, Madame de StaeL She will also be one of the most inte- resting characters of our narrative. Charles Frederick Necker founded, then, the Genevan family with good Teutonic blood, ^ and the best education of the times, invigorated rather than impaired by the more than Lacedemonian rigour of the contemporary Genevan life — a rigour which survived, with but shght relaxation, the first, if not the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The Neckers were nearly all eminent for their intellectual culture, their moral character, and their success in life. James, the father of Madame de Stael, gave historical distinction to the family — a distinction immeasurably enhanced by the genius of his only child. Though his domes- tic and academic training had predisposed him to hterary and philosophic studies — including theo- logy, the dominant intellectual tendency of his native city — his parents early destined him to ' The family has Ijeen traced to Ireland, where it had, however, an Ano-lo-Saxon orio-in. Her Father. mercantile life, and sent him, when about fifteen years old, to Paris, where he passed his noviciate iii the banking-house of Vernet, a member of the distinguished Genevese family of that name, with whom the Neckers maintained intimate relations. It is said that ' the clerk soon became master,' by his brilliant superiority in all the problems of the business. A fortunate altercation with the chief of the house led to his crowning success. Vernet lived in the country, and appeared in the bank only at certain hours. A letter arrived from Hol- land in his absence, proposing a negotiation which was quite foreign to the usual transactions of the firm. The chief clerk revealed it to Necker, who forthwith wrote out its details, and calculated its probabihties, with elaborate fulness. Vernet, on arriving, was astonished and indignant at the pre- sumption of the young subordinate, who thrust under his eyes voluminous documents sketching an immense scheme of business, as if he were master of the estabhshment. High words passed between them. Necker, afiirminor that, as nothino^ had been consummated, there could be no conse- quence to justify the severity of Vernet, suddenly threw his documents into the fire and retired. Vernet saw, after brief reflection, that the youth had mastered the whole subject with astonishing abihty, and immediately promoted him to the head clerkship. Necker acquired, in three months, a knowledge of the Dutch language in order to be 8 Madame de Stael. ch. able to deal with the capitalists of Holland, and, when Vernet closed his successful business, he put at his command sufficient funds to enable him to join the Thellusons, as partner, in founding the most celebrated French banking-house of the times. He devoted twenty years to the making of his fortune, and then gave his attention to more general and public interests. A syndic of the old East India Company, he so conducted its affairs as to attain an unrivalled fame for financial skill, and a large increase of his own Avealth, which was further augmented by extensive negotiations in the corn market. The repubhc of Geneva was proud of the ability and integrity of her son, and ap- pointed him her resident minister at the Court of Versailles, where his talents were highly appreci- ated, especially by the Due de Choiseul. He had not only become one of the ablest financiers of the age, but had cultivated literature. The collected works of his pen fill fifteen volumes, and are cha- racterised by profound reflection and a vigorous though somewhat peculiar style. His first publica- tions were ' Memoires ' relating to the affairs of the Indian Company. His ' Eloge de Colbert ' com- manded much attention, and was crowned by the French Academy. His treatise ' Sur la Legislation et le Commerce des Grains ' produced a remarkable impression, and led, at last, to his elevation to the royal cabinet. His ' Compte Eendu au Eoi ' threw Neckers Writi7igs. all France into agitation, and effectively helped to bring on the Revolution. His ' Administration des Finances ' excited a still greater sensation. His * Importance des Opinions Eeligieuses ' was an able though cautious attempt to check the anti-Christian tendencies of his age, and an admirable expression of his own deeply religious character. If somewhat defective in its theology, it is nevertheless pure and subhme in its ethics. Buffon sent, from his death- bed, his emphatic thanks to the author. It was the last book read by the naturahst, and his letter was the last that he ever wrote or dictated. ' The book of Necker,'says Sainte-Beuve, ' had the honour to draw from this great mind the last words in which he recognised the Supreme Being and im- mortality.'* The fragments of his ' Manuscrits,' published by his daughter, show much insight and subtlety in his judgment of character, and prove, says his ablest critic, that ' Necker, as a morahst, was a writer very acute, very piquant, and too much forgotten.' ^ He had evidently been a student, though he was no imitator, of Eochefou- cauld and Vauvenargues. His little essay on ' Le Bonheur des Sots ' is not unworthy of La Bruyere ; it amused his generation, and showed that, beneath his habitual gravity, there was a Hving source of humour. His ' Cours de Morale Eehmeuse ' is another proof of his profound interest in religion, ■* Sainte-Beuve, Causeries, tome vii. (14 vols,). Paris, 1862. ^ Ibid. lo Madame de Sta'el. ch. at a time when it seemed to be losing entirely its hold on the mind of Europe. Necker's best re- hgious writings preceded those of the author of the ' G^nie du Christianisme,' and he ranks by the side of Chateaubriand in the reaction in favour of Christianity which followed the disastrous scep- ticism of the Ee volution. Sainte-Beuve admits that his rehgious works are characterised by ' a per- fect sincerity, an unction, a sensibihty profound and persuasive, which pervade his style and which often replace metaphysics by touching moral sen- timent.' ^ When Necker's superior qualities, especially his financial ability and integrity, led to his call to the government of Louis XVI., it was hoped he might rescue the sinking State from the overwhelm- ing financial difficulties which, at last, wrecked it in the Eevolution, and from which no power on earth could save it. His pohcy of retrenchment and rigid integrity, as well as his Protestantism, arrayed against him hosts of courtly and official enemies. He was, as we shall hereafter see, repeate'dly displaced and recalled, amidst the enthusiastic sympathies of the people, who, on his dismissal, closed the theatres, and bore his bust, draped in black, through the streets ; and, on his ® For a detailed account of liis writings, and also those of Madame Necker, see Sayou's Le Dix-huitieme Si'ecle a VEtramjer ; Histoire de la Litterature Franqaise dans les divers Pays de VEurope, tome ii. livre xiv. cliap. iv. Paris, 1861. This author gives some interesting facts respecting Madame Necker in chaps, xiii.-xv. of livre xii. (vol. ii.). I, Necker's Character. ii return, drew his carriage in triumph and made all Paris jubilant. His characteristic excellences were not un- marred by characteristic faults. He was ambiti- ous of popularity, and too self-conscious, especially of his abilities and merits. His sentimentality, a virtue in his writings and conversation, was a fault in his j)ohtics. His style was too complicated, too abstract, too oracular. He has been called the father of the doctrinaire school of pohtics,^ of which Eoyer Collard, Guizot, and the Due de Broglie, have been the most distinguished repre- sentatives in our century — a school which proposed to ' impress a new direction on France, to reform her impetuous temperament, and to give constitutional equilibrium to her political hfe.' This school bore, more or less, the impress of both his AngHcan pohtical ideas and of his Hterary style. In person Necker was as remarkable as in char- acter. ' His features,' says his wife, in a literary ' Portrait,' ' resemble those of no one else ; the form of his face is extraordinary. A high retreating forehead, a chin of unusual length ; vivid brown eyes, full of tenderness, sometimes of melancholy, and arched by elevated brows, gave him an ex- pression quite original.' His statue at Coppet, somewhat theatrical in its attitude, expresses grace and grandeur of both soul and person. Such was the father of Madame de Stael. His ^ Rey's Genhve et les Rives du Lcman, cbap. ix. 1 2 Madame de Stacl. CH. style of both thought and language, relieved of its pecuhar defects, and endued with richer vigour and elegance, reappear in her own writings. Her intellectual legitimacy is indisputable. Her mother was hardly less remarkable than her father, for qualities rare among her sex in that day. Susanna Curchod was the daughter of a humble Swiss pastor of Grassier, a hamlet of the Jura mountains.^ Hardly could a retreat be found better fitted, by its tranquillity, its scenery, or its unsophisticated society, for the training of a pre- cocious child ; and it was said that her father bestowed upon her as complete an education as fell to the lot of any woman in Europe. She was taught thoroughly the classic and modern lan- guages, and became a proficient in most of the learning usually pursued by men destined to the career of science or letters. Her daughter tells us that during all her lifetime it was her dehght to hear the ancient poets read in the original. Gibbon, the historian, says that her occasional visits, in her youth, to Lausanne, where he then resided, led to such reports of her beauty and intellect as befitted only a ' prodigy,' and awakened his curiosity to see her.^ She was a favourite among the highest neighbouring families ; a local ^ Vuillemin's ie Canton de Vaud. Lausanne, 1862. ^ Gibbon's Memoirs of my Life and Writings. See also the Salon de Madmne Necker, apres des documents tires des archives de Coppet, etc., par M. Otbeiiin d'Haussonville, in Revue des Deux Mondes, 1880. Her Mother. 13 writer records that the beautiful and spirituelle girl was often seen riding a mule along the roads, from chateau to chateau, to give lessons, and her charms and talents excited entJiusiasm in the cultivated circles of Lausanne.^ With the characteristic good sense and econo- mical forethought of the Swiss, her father knew that she could have no better provision for the future than a well furnished and well disciplined mind. Gibbon says that she was accomplished in manners as well, and that her wit and personal attractions were the theme of universal interest. She was not without worthy suitors ; but her father chose meanwhile to secure her independence by qualifying her for the office of teacher or governess, assured that if she should never need to use her qualifications in this laborious service, they would not the less fit her for her own household, however opulent it might be. In preparing her to be a teacher, he prepared her to preside in the highest circles of Parisian life ; to command the admiring homage of the Parisian men of letters ; to stand, superior in intellect, as in character, among the courtly women of Versailles ; and, above all, to give to France, in the person of her own thoroughly educated child, the most accomplished female in- tellect of her age. Gibbon's story of his love for her, and its disappointment, is well known ; but it is worth ^ Eey's Geneve, &c. xiii. 14 . Madame de Stael. ch. repeating, as not only characteristic of himself, but of Mademoiselle Ciirchod. ' I need not blush,' he says, ' at recollecting the object of my choice ; and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feehng such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Curchod were embel- lished by the virtues and talents of her mind. Her fortunes were humble, but her family was respect- able. Her mother, a native of France, had pre- ferred her rehgion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived con- tent with a small salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Grassier, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the country of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal and even learned education on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages ; and in her short visits to some of her relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and the erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity. I saw, and I loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and ele- gant in manners ; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to I. Gibbons Love. 15 make her two or three visits at her father's house. I passed some happy clays there, in the moun- tains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connection. In a calm retirement, the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttering in her bosom, she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassier and Lausanne I indulged my dream ^ of fehcity ; but on my return to England, I soon dis- covered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that, without his consent, I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate ; I sighed as a lover, I ■obeyed as a son ; my wound was insensibly healed by thne, absence, and the habits of a new hfe. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquilhty and cheerfulness of the lady herself ; and my love subsided in friendship and esteem. The minister of Crassier soon afterwards died ; his stipend died mth him ; his daughter retired to Oeneva, where, by teaching young ladies, she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her motlier ; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation and a dignified behaviour.^ A ^ She had previoiisly maintained herself and her mother by teach- ing schools in Lausanne and Neuchsitel ; it is doubtful that she taught in QeneA-a, though she was there in the family of her friend Moultou some time before she went to Paris. See Lettrcs diverses recueillies m Suisse, par le Oomte Golowkin. Paris, 1821. This writer gives some forty letters from her pen. 1 6 Madame de Sta'el. ch. rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune to discover and possess this inesti- mable treasure ; and in the capital of wealth and luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The iXenius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe. In every change of prosperity and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom of a faithful friend, and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of Monsieur Necker, the Minister, and perhaps the legislator, of the French monarchy.' ^ Gibbon never married. He main- tained throughout his hfe an intimate friendship, full of delicacy and esteem, for Madame Necker and her husband ; he frequented their home in Paris, corresponded with them, and was proud of Madame Necker 's appreciation of his great work. Madame Necker de Saussure describes her as endowed with firmness of character, strength of intellect, and a remarkable capacity for labour ; as not only educated to an extraordinary degree in both science and letters, but as especially having that ' spirit of method ' which serves for the acqui- sition of all things } With brilhant faculties and personal attractions she combined the highest moral qualities. Her religious principles were never shaken by the scepticism and Hcensed im- ^ Memoirs &c. * Notice sur le Caractere et les JEcrits de Madame de Sta'el, vol» i. of her Q^uvres comidetes (17 vols.). Paris, 1820. Madame Necker. 1 7 morality, which prevailed around her Parisian home. The lessons of the humble parsonage of Grassier remained ever vivid in her soul, sanctif}^- ing her life and consoling her death. Her essay entitled ' Eeflexions sur le Divorce' is an example of luminous reasoning and original style. It is a plea for tlie sacredness of marriage, against the loose opinions regarding it which characterised the epoch of the Eevolution. Its last chapter, on the mutual succours and consolations of the aged in married life, is pathetically eloquent. She wrote from her own experience, and, as she says, to lead others to desire and attain a happiness which she herself enjoyed. Her ' Melanges ' ^ are distinguished by good sense, acute and epigrammatic observa- tions on almost every subject that she touches, and by a moral elevation quite in contrast with the tendencies of opinion around her. Necker said of her, that, ' to render her perfectly amiable, she only needed some fiiult to pardon in herself.' Her greatest fault was perhaps her moral rigour ; the forbearance which she needed not herself, she was slow to accord to feebler characters. ' She could captivate,' says Madame Necker de Saussure, ' when she wished ; she freely gave praise where it was merited ; her blue eyes were soft and caressing, and her face had an expression of ^ Miscellaneous Papers, published by Necker 2 36 Madame de Stael. ch. resumed their seats at the board with the utmo&t sobriety.^ Never has paternal or fihal love been stronger, down even to the grave, than between Necker and his daughter. The caresses of the father encour- aged the child to act, and especially to speak, Avith a freedom quite contrary to the severe notions of the mother ; and, says Madame Necker de Saus- sure, ' the applause which the salHes of her humour called forth inspired her continually to indulge it in new ways, and already she responded to the pleasantries of Necker with the mingled gaiety and affection which characterised all her later relations with him. The desire to give pleasure to her parents was an extremely active motive of her affectionate nature. For example, at the age of ten years, observing their great admiration for Gibbon, she imagined it to be her duty to marry him, in order that they might enjoy constantly his conversation.' She made seriously tlie proposition to her mother, in spite of the grotesque corpulence of the historian, the ' ugliest man of the United Kingdom.'^ Notwithstanding tliese childish sim- ^ Charles- Victor de Bmistetten : Etude Biographique et Litteraire, par A. Steinlen. Lausanne, 1860. ■^ Gibton was hardly five feet in height, but in revenge of his short stature nature gave him an almost spherical shape ; he could not have been less than ten feet in girth, as M. de Bievre remarked. ' "When I need exercise,' said De Bievre, ' I make three times the tour of M. Gibbon.' His physique was a burlesque on humanity. While in Lausanne he became amorous of Madame de Crauzas, afterwards Madame de Montolieu, and declared his love. His figure, kneeling II. He7^ Childhood. 37 plicities, Madame Necker de Saiissiire says she ' lias seemed always young, yet never a child. In all that has been recounted to me about her early life, I remember but one trait which bears the charac- ter of childhood, and even this showed the dawn of intellect. She amused herself by making paper kings and queens, and setting them to act scenes of an improvised tragedy. Wlien this entertain- ment was prohibited by her scrupulous mother, she would conceal herself in order to enjoy it. To this early amusement was attributed the only sin- gular habit she ever had, that of twisting a bit of paper, or a leaf, between her fingers.' In her tenth year she was exceedingly attrac- tive. Her natural gaiety was extreme, though at times touched by that poetic melancholy which ever after tinged her soul. Her manners, especially when reheved of the restraints of her mother's presence, were the simple outbursts of her natural sensibihties and frankness. She was fascinating to many of the thinkers who frequented her mother's before her, was so ludicrously grotesque, that she could not repress her smiles. At last she exclaimed, ' Do, Monsieur, do rise, and sajno more.' ' Alas ! Madame,' he replied, ' I cannot.' ' What ! ' she rejoined, * can you not get up ? ' In fine, he was so enormous that, even with the aid of Madame de Crauzas, he could not rise ; she had to call a valet de chamhre to replace him on his legs. Duchesse d'Abrantes' Hist, des Salons de Pai-is, tome ii. Paris, 1837. The English jjMIo- sophes generally made awkward figures in the French society of these times. Hume's grim pleasantries are well known. Gibbon's etateliness was anything but French. Franklin's unaffected simplicity, nevertheless, made him a favourite in the most fashionable circles, «xcept in his occasional taciturn moods. 38 Madame de Stael. ch. salon, and could foresee the luxuriant genius and beauty with which her nature was already unfold- ing. The Abbe Eaynal, the 'Historian of the Indies,' holding her little hand in both of his, would prolong her conversation with wondering interest. Her impromptu remarks already flashed with somewhat of the Hght with which her con- versation, in later years, illuminated the best circles of Paris, Coppet, Weimar, Berhn, Vienna, St. Petersburg and London. She was a brunette, her countenance shone with animation, and her ' great black eyes were dazzhng with intelhgence and kindliness.' Her parents were fortunate in procuring for her a household companion in Mademoiselle Huber (of the distinguished Genevese family of that name), afterwards Madame Eilhet-Huber, who now became, and ever remained, one of her dear- est friends.^ Mademoiselle Huber has recorded her first interview witli the brilliant young girl, the ' transports ' with which she received her as her habitual associate, and the promises she made ' eternally to cherish her friendship.' ' She spoke ^ George Ticknor says, under date of Geneva, Sept. 10, 1817: * This evening I passed at Madame Rilliet's, to whom the Duchesse de Broglie gave me a letter. She was a particular friend of Madame de Stael's, and is a lady of large fortune, much talent, and elegant manners. Benjamin Constant said of her, with that kind of wit peculiar to the French, and which he possessed heyond any Frencliman I met in Paris, " Madame Rilliet has all the virtues which she affects," for there is a certain stateliness and pretension in her manners that remind you of affectation.' — Life kc. of Ticknor, i. 7. II. Mademoiselle Huber. 39 to me with an ardour and fluency which made her already eloquent, and greatly struck me. We did not play as children ; she immediately asked what were my lessons ? If I knew any foreign lan- guages ? If I ever went to the theatre ? When I rephed that I had been there three or four times, she broke forth in exclamations of delight, and promised me that we should frequently go there together, adding that, on our return, it would be necessary to write out the subjects of the pieces, especially those parts which had most interested us ; that this was her habit. " And then," she ex- claimed, " we shall write every morning." We entered the aalon ; by the side of the arm-chair of Madame Necker was a little wooden seat, where she had to sit, obhged to hold herself erect, without support. Scarcely had she taken her place, when three or four venerable personages approached her, speaking to her with the kindliest interest. One of them, who wore a small round perruque, detained her in a long conversation, talk- ing with her as to a person of twenty-five years. This was the Abbe Eaynal ; the others were, Mar- montel, Thomas, the Marquis of Pesay, and Baron Grimm. We were called to the table ; it was a wonder to see how she listened there. She spoke not a word, but seemed to share in all the discus- sions by the vivid and varying expression of her features. Her eyes followed the looks and move- ments of each speaker. You could see that she 40 Madame de Sta'cl. ch. anticipated his ideas. All topics were familiar to lier, even those of politics, which were already among the chief subjects of interest in the Parisian salons. After dinner many more guests arrived. Each, in approaching Madame Necker, had some- thing to say to her daughter — a comphment or a pleasantry. She always responded, not only with ease, but with grace. Some would entertain them- selves in trying to embarrass her, or to excite the young imagination which already displayed so much brilhancy. The men who were most dis- tinguished by their talents were those who hov- ered most about her, prompting her conversation. They inquired about the books she was reading, reported new ones to her, and inspired her love of study by discussing with her what she knew and what she did not know.' The severity of Madame Necker's domestic rule was by this time so far relaxed as to allow more indulgence to her child's dramatic tastes. Minor or ' domestic theatricals ' were even admitted among the entertainments of her villa at St. Ouen, as we have seen in the citations from Madame du Deffand. Among her daughter's earliest literary essays were attempts at dramatic composition. She had shown extraordinary talent in the Por- traits, Characters and Eloges, which were a sort of social literary recreation of the day. Grimm had sent examples to his princely correspondents, in various parts of Europe, as marvels of intel- First Writings. 41 lectual precocity. He now wrote them an account of a drama, produced in her twelfth year, and acted by her and her young companions in the draw- ing-room at St. Ouen. ' While Necker,' he says, ' covers himself with glory in the government, and renders himself eternally dear to France, and his wife devotes herself to her charitable hospital in the parish of St. Sulpice, their young daughter, who has evinced extraordinary talents, amuses her- self by writing small comedies, after the manner of the semi-dramas of M. St. Marck. She has just completed one, in two acts, entitled " The Incon- veniences of Life in Paris," which is superior to her models, and astonishing for her years. Its char- acters' are well dehneated, its scenes well adjusted, and the unfolding of its plot is natural and fuU of interest.' He adds that Marmontel, who was ever enthusiastic for the daughter, though he could never appreciate the mother, was affected even to tears on seeing this juvenile performance at St. Ouen.^ At fifteen years of age her faculties, if not her style, showed the maturity usual with cultivated minds at twenty-five. In 1781, when Necker's * Compte Eendu ' first appeared, exciting all France, ^ Grimm's CmTespondance , 1778. Many allusious to the Necker family, and several letters from them, are scattered thi'ough this curious collection — a work almost as important for the history of France in the eighteenth century as the Memoires of St. Simou are for the preceding age. Grimm and Diderot's Correspondance (15 vols.), Paris, 1829-31 ; and Correspmdance medite (8 vols.), Paris, 1829. 42 Madame de Stael. ch.. she, proud of his trhimph in his defeat, wrote him an anonymous letter of such remarkable ability that he recognised its authorship by its talent. Her genius had already its stamp/ At this early age she had mastered some of the profoundest works of French literature, studying, not merely reading them. She had made ample extracts from Montesquieu's ' Spirit of Laws,' and had commented on them with her own acute reflections. Raynal, then rejoicing in the extraordinary but temporary fame of his ' Histoire Philosophique,' sohcited her to contribute to one of his works an essay which she had written on the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes. Necker himself discouraged these prema- ture efibrts ; but the training to which she had been addicted by the system of her mother, her elaborate though versatile studies, her participation in the discussions of the salon, and in the perform- ances and criticism of the ' domestic theatricals,' could not fail to prompt her faculties beyond their normal and healthful growth. Everything about her ministered to her intellectual life. ' Her pleasures as well as her duties,' says Madame Necker de Saussure, ' were all exercises of her mind. Her mental faculties, naturally energetic, underwent thus a prodigious expansion.' The wonder is that they became not as prodigiously morbid. Nothing but her native vivacity — the na- tional temperament whicli she so abundantly shared ^ Philarete Ohasles, Nouudle Biographic Generale, tome xliv. II. Early Character. 43 — could have saved her from the worst effects of such mental excesses. Thoroughly French as she was, in the fiexibihty and elasticity of her nature, her sensibihties nevertheless began to suffer by this unintermitted tension of her intellect, and we may trace to this period that poignant sensitiveness to the miseries of human life, that ever-recurring strain of sadness, which characterise nearly all her writings, and which, in spite of wealth, fame, talent, travel, ' troops of friends,' and a career splendidly successful in most respects, rendered her hfe a con- tinuous scene of restlessness, if not of melancholy, and led her to say on her death-bed, that but one of the capabiUties of her nature had been developed to its utmost, the capability of suffering.^ Her cousin remarks that her sensibihties were, at this early period, as excessively developed as her mind, so that the praises which she heard given to her parents would melt her to tears. ' That which amused her,' says her companion. Mademoiselle Huber, ' was that which made her weep.' Her attachment to Mademoiselle Huber became a sort of passion. The presence of celebrated persons would make her heart palpitate. Her reading, wliich Madame Necker, more severe than vigilant, did not always prescribe, often produced on her extraordinary impressions ; years later she said that Eichardson's description of tlie carrying off of ^ Chateaubriand's Memoires d' Outre-Tombe, tome viii. (12 vols.). Paris, 1849. 44 Madame de Stacl, ch. Clarissa made an epoch in her young Hfe. Her faculties, of mind as well as body, began to yield under this excessive stimulation. Lonss; sustained attention was ever afterwards difficult to her ; and the success with which she always seemed to master elaborate intellectual tasks was more the effect of genius than of continuous labour. ' A singular sagacity bore her to a distant end, without your seeing her on the route.' Her father's relations with the Court, about this time, particularly the events which prompted her anonymous letter to him, exasperated the excite- ment which was preying upon her health. Her extreme filial sympathy made his anxieties her own ; and now fell upon the family a greater affliction than any which had thus far marred its prosperity. Though Necker was not formally ' dismissed,' he was forced by his enemies to retire from office. During five years he had administered the finances Avith a success unapproached by his predecessors for years. It would be irrelevant to discuss here the principles of his policy, his disputes with the economists at a period when pohtical economy was yet mostly undefined as a science ; his alterca- tions with Turgot, the ostensible representative of its principles in the government. Partisans have applauded or disparaged him, according to their partialities for antagonistic theories ; but his ad- ministration was at a time, and amidst exigencies, which should, in our day at least, relieve him from II. Neckers Policy. 45 such criticism, Necker was a practical mau, and he attemj^ted practically to grapple with the diffi- culties which had overwhelmed his predecessors. His great personal credit enabled him to command loans for the government which perhaps no other man in the realm could have obtained ; and he re- trenched expenses on every hand. More than six hundred unnecessary charges on the Treasury were cut off. The policy of loans — in our day the pohcy of States generally — is inherently fallacious, and can be safe only when based on economical re- trenchments, and the prospective creation of new resources. Necker's scheme comprised these con- ditions. It was the only conceivable policy. That it failed is attributable, not so nuich to his lack of talent, as to the invinc^ible vices of the govermnent and of the times. Other experiments were made, by the frequent change of the financial administration, but they were all failures, and worse than failures. He had to be called in repeatedly to reheve them. But his stringent reforms had raised up enemies all around him. His position in the court was liardly tolerable ; he had but a quahfied title as Mnister, and was not admitted to the Eoyal Council, for his rehgion was in the way. He saw that he could not have the power necessary for his measures, unless he were reheved of these disabihties. Full powers were offered him if he would abjure his Protestant fiiith. He refused to do so. He retired from office with the maledictions of most of the nobihty, but 46 Madame de Stael. ch. with the benedictions of the suffering people. He had effectively, though not permanently, relieved the national finances. He had incurred the hostil- ity of his aristocratic enemies by cutting off sinecures and superfluous pensions, and by reducing excessive salaries. He had accepted no compensation for his services ; had given no office to his kindred or personal friends.^ He had advanced two millions of his own money, as a loan to the government, which was not repaid during his life, and was recovered by his daughter only after the downfall of Napoleon. His ' Compte Eendu au Eoi ' was his vindication. In that famous work he gave a complete account, to the Kjng, of the financial dis- orders of the country. It was a bombshell thrown into the Court, and the explosion that followed resounded throughout the kingdom and over all Europe. No such report on the administration of the finances had ever been made. The country had been kept ignorant of this, one of its most vital interests. Its kings themselves had been habitually deceived regarding it. The nation had been reefing on the verge of hopeless bankruptcy ; Necker alone had thus far prevented its precipitation into the abyss. The Eevolution was inevitable, though few then perceived either its proximity or its terrible significance. His work on the ' Administration des Finances,' a sort of reproduction and justification ^ Louis Blanc, Hid. de la Revolution Frangaise, ii. 66 (12 vols.). Paris, 1847. II, Mademoiselle Necker, 47 of the ' Compte Eendu,' deepened and widened immeasurably the impression of the latter. Eighty thousand copies were quickly sold, six thousand on the' day of its publication, besides a simultaneous edition in England. The people were maddened by discovering how their debauched rulers had been for years wasting their resources. Necker showed that twenty-five milhons of francs were yearly thrown away on useless or licentious gratifications and pensions ; that the collectors received more than one-fifth of all the revenue ; and that nearly all the national institutions of charity and penal reform were mismanaged — the prisons, hospitals, asylums. In many of these, six invahds slept in the same bed, and sometimes the slightly attacked patient found himself with a dying man on one side and a dead one on the other. ^ Necker proudly alluded to his wife's good work in hospital reform. She had not frequented the Court, though she received some of the courtly ladies at her salon ; the depravity which still lingered from the Regency and from the reign of Louis XV. about the royal precincts was a sufficient reason to keep her away, though Louis XVI. had soHcited her presence, and Necker had mentioned only her feeble health as the reason of her absence. She appeared now, like himself, as a true friend of the people amidst the immense crew of courtly and official depredators ^ De Tocqueville's Coup-d'ostl sur le Rkgne de Louis XVI. cliap. ii. Paris, n. d. 48 Madame de Sta'cL ch. on the public resources. They were outraged. What right had this untitled foreigner, this Protes- tant heretic, to invade their luxurious places, and abridge their revenues ? What a national disgrace tliat this ' Swiss schoolmistress ' (for so they called his wife) should be able to hold up her pedantic head, pre-eminent above the aristocratic, free-hving ladies of the court, the daughters of the old noble famihes of France? Pampered, infatuated para- sites of power, they knew not that they were refus- ing the only help which could mitigate their coming fate — a fate which was soon to sweep them from the face of their country and shake to its founda- tions the whole civil and ecclesiastical world of Europe. decker's daughter observed his anxious preoc- cupation, notwithstanding his seeming tranquiUity. The evening before his resignation he accompanied her and her mother to the hos23ital of Madame Necker in the parish of St. Sulpice. ' He was in the habit of going to this asylum,' she writes, ' to take fresh courage against the cruel difficulties of his situation. The Sisters of Charity, who had charge of the place, loved him and Madame Necker, not- withstanding they were Protestants, and welcomed them now with flowers and the chanting of verses from the Psalms, the only poetry they knew. They called them their own benefactors, because they succoured the poor. My father this day was deeply affected, more so, I remember well, than ever he II. Meckel's Resignation. 49 had appeared to be by similar testimonies of grati- tude. Without doubt he regretted the power to serve France which he was about to lose. Alas ! who at that time could have supposed that this man would one day be accused of hardness of heart, of pride, of arrogance ? Never a soul more pure has traversed the region of storms ; and his enemies, in calumniating him, committed an im- piety ; for the heart of a good man is the sanctuary of God in this world.' ^ The next day he returned from Versailles no long;er JMinister. Necker retired to his country seat at St. Ouen with the sympathies and applause of the nation. Not a few of the higher classes, able to appreciate him — the Prince of Conde, the Dukes of Orleans and of Ghartres, the Prince of Beauvais, the Duke of Luxembourg, the Archbishop of Paris, and, above all, the Hterary men of the Necker aalon — hastened to visit and sustain him there. ^ Such moral support was grateful to his heart, but assuredly not more so than the sympathy of his ''■ Considerations sur la Revolution Franqaise, i. 8 : CEuvres completes, tomeiii. Paris, 1861. ^ Marmontel was one of tlie most eager to proffer his doubtful sympatliies. lie hastened to St. Ouen before the family arrived ; then hastened back, and meeting them on the road, mounted their carriage, and accompanied them to the house, not without something like relentings towards Madame Necker. ' I had always,' he says, ' for her the most sincere veneration, for I had seen in her only kindness and wisdom and virtue ; and the particular aflection with which she had honoured me weU merited that I should share the sorrow which I doubted not deeply affected her.' — Mnnoires &c. VOL. I. E 50 Madame de Stacl. ch. devoted daughter, expressed in the anonymous letter, the authorship of which he had identified by indications the most consoling that could touch a father's affections — its proofs of the superior in- tellect and overflowinfy heart of his child. Ag;ita- tin£f as these circumstances were to her sensitive nature, she was cheered by the demonstrations of almost universal regard for him which she witnessed at St. Ouen. 'All France,' she writes, ' seemed anxious to visit him ; the great nobles, the clergy, the magistrates, the merchants, the men of letters. He received upwards of five hiuidred letters of sympathy from towns and provincial corporations, expressing a respect and affection surpassing any ever received before by any public man of France.' 'There was,' says Grimm, 'for some days a continual procession of carriages on the two leagues of road from Paris to St. Ouen. Never has a Minister borne in his retreat a purer fame.' Meanwhile all Paris was struck by the event. ' Consternation,' adds Grimm, ' was painted on all faces. The promenades, the cafes, all public places, were crowded, but everywhere an extra- ordinary silence reigned. The people gazed at one another, and pressed one another's hands sadly as in view of a coming public calamity.' ^ It was the murmuring lull that precedes tlie tempest. Before these exciting events tlie health of Ma- demoiselle Necker had seriously declined, and had ^ Corresiiondance &c., 1781. II. Tronchin. 5 1 added miicli to her father's anxieties. Tronchin, of Geneva, an old friend of the Necker family, was the medical oracle of the day ; his removal to Paris, as physician to the House of Orleans, pro- duced a sensation in fashionable circles, among Avhicli ennui and the ' vapours ' prevailed as epidemics, in spite, if not in consequence, of the frivohty and licence of the times ; and his prescrip- tion of fresh air and early walks for the ' great dames ' of the city had led to the adoption of a convenient walking dress which bore his name. Fortunately he was at hand to save the child of his old friend ; and his authority was too great with Madame Necker, as with all her feminine associ- ates, to be countervailed by her prejudices for her favourite theory of education. He prescribed no medicine for the young invalid ; for he avoided drugs as much as possible in his practice ; and it was a maxim with him that ' jDositive sins in medicine are mortal, while negative ones are venial.' He saw at a glance the fatal tendency of Madame Necker's system, in a case of such pre- cocious development, such superabundant power and sensibility. He ordered its immediate and total suspension. All serious studies must be laid aside. The child must be allowed to grow, for some time at least, spontaneously, in mind as well as in body, in the open air, amidst the landscapes of St. Ouen. Never was prescription more accept- able to an invahd ; her native vivacity burst into E 2 5 2 Madame de Sta'el. ch. full liberty. The caged bird, let loose, took to wins' tliroiio'h the surrounding? oToves and meadows. Accompanied by her young companion, Mademoi- selle Huber, she exulted in her freedom, and roamed from morning till night. Madame Necker de Saussure (who, for many years, was more her sister than her cousin) believed that this rural freedom and gaiety had the happiest effect, not only on the health, but on the genius of the young girl.^ It was a period of Hving, pastoral poetry in her life, hitherto cramped by mechanical habits of study and the social artificiahties of Paris. It was precisely what such a mind needed. Her imagination, so splendid in its later disciphned power, and one of the richest charms of her works, now flowered healthfully amidst natural scenes. Her remarkable faculty of picturesque description was developed. Her sensibilities, tending to morbid sentimentahsm, and never afterwards entirely ex- empt from a tinge of melancholy, were placed in better harmony with her vigorous powers of reflec- tion and reason — a harmony by which was at last attained the chief distinction of her intellectual character, her almost anomalous union of senti- ment and thought, of enthusiasm and reflection, of the heart of woman with the head of man. ' This liberty accorded to her mind,' says her cousin, ' enabled it to take its best flight. The two young girls, running at large in the woods of St, Ouen, Notice &c. II. Filial Affection. 53 clothed as nymphs or muses, declamied verses, composed poems, made dramas of every sort, which tliey hnmediately represented.' The impression of such a happy season in early Hfe never fades away ; it Hngers a ' thing of beauty,' an azure and radiant interval of sky, in the darkest storms of later life. Her cousin tells us that the heart of the grate- ful girl turned now, in her emancipation, more than ever towards her father. She ' seized the least occasion of approaching him, and found extraor- dinary pleasure and advantage in his conversation. He was surprised, more and more each day, by her remarkable intellect, and never was that intellect more charming than when near him.' Her quick fihal sympatliy perceived his need of amusement and distraction in his trials and the literary labours he now began on his 'Administration of the Fi- nances,' and his ' Importance of Keligious Opinions.' She attempted to ' cheer him in a thousand ways ; she would risk anything to obtain from Jiim a smile.' She would beguile his occasional hours of leisure, at St. Ouen, by leading him to narrate to her his early hfe, especially the twenty years he spent in Paris, before his marriage, strugghng with fortune. A quarter of a century later, when he was in his grave, she Avrites of the ' profound effect ' on her young heart which this story, of labour and almost ascetic self-denial, produced ; ' the story of that period,' she says, ' in which I could only imagine him as so young, so lovable, and so 54 Madame de Sfacl. CH. lonely, — that time in which, perhaps, our destinies would have united us for ever, if fate had only- made us contemporaries.' ^ Strange fancy of filial love ! Her affection for him became a passion, the strongest that ever swayed her heart ; her rever- ence, a worship, an idolatry, which lasted through his life, and wept at his tomb till she herself was laid there by his side. Meanwhile Necker, grate- fully admiring her mental superiority, did not en- danger her by fond flatteries ; ' his looks were more encouraging than his words.' ' He habitually cor- rected her faults by a gentle raillery which was not without its charm ; no exaggeration, no inaptitude of any kind escaped his attention.' He knew the liabihties of such a luxuriant nature, and his very parental pride led him to prune it, and make the most of it. ' I owe,' she frequently said late in life, ' to the incredible penetration of my father the frankness of my character, and the naturalness of my mind. He unmasked all affectations, and I received from him the habit of believing that my heart was clearly seen.' One of the most charming quahties of her womanly character was derived from this treatment — perfect sincerity, a childlike frankness in conversation, and in all her conduct, which, as it left nothing disguised, allowed not only her fjiults, but all the riches of her heart and faculties to be seen and, tlierefore, appreciated. '^ Caructere de M. Necker et sa Vie privee : GJluvres cotnpletes, tome ii. Paris, 1861. n. Mother and D might er. 55 A singular elfect, more curious, however, than serious, attended this extraordinary sympathy be- tween the father and daughter. It led to some- thing very like jealousy between the child and the mother. Necker must have been a man of sur- ])assing fascination in domestic Hfe ; his wife and daughter seemed emulous of each other, not only in affection, but in a species of adoration for him. It may perhaps be soberly said that there is no record of intenser admiration and love, of woman for man, than Madame Necker has left in her ' Melanges ' and letters ; no record of intenser love and reverence of a child for a father, than Madame de Stael has left in her ' Notice ' prefixed to his ' Manuscrits.' '^ They became rivals in an affec- tion so superabundant that it could not escape the infirmities of human nature. The mother seemed to fear that her child, inheriting her own remark- able faculties and deep sensibilities, might take her place in the heart of her husband ; or, as Madame Necker de Saussure says, ' allow her to be loved by him only in her daughter.' The latter, after the death of both her parents, could not allude to this affectionate rivalry without com- mending and yet envying her mother. ' He chose,' she says, ' for his wife a woman of perfect virtue, and of extremely cultivated mind. From the ' Madame Necker's ' Porh-ait ' of him, Melanges, vol. ii. ; and her posthumous letters to him, given in the Introduction to his (Euvres, p. 327 ; Madame de Stael's 'Notice/ introductory to his Manuscrits. 56 Madmne de Sta'el. ch. moment of their marriage to her death the thought of my mother dominated his life. He was not, hke other men in j^ower, attentive to her by occa- sional tokens of regard ; but by continual expres- sions of most tender and most delicate sentiment. My mother, whose affections were passionate, would otherwise have been unhappy. God spared her the affliction of surviving him. Peace to her ashes — she deserved more than I to be happy.' Her own affection for him, like all love when it becomes passion, could never be contented. ' The difference of our ages,' she said, at his death, ' often troubled my happiness during the time I possessed him ; and now, if he could be restored to me, I would give all my remaining years for six months ; ' and she broke out with passionate self-upbraidings, as if under remorse for not lavishing upon him more affectionate attentions. Meanwhile she never forgot her filial duty to her mother. She admired her rare talents and pure character, notwithstanding the disparity of their tastes. In mature life slie remarked to Ma- dame Necker de Saussure, ' The longer I live, the more I understand my mother, and tlie more my heart feels the need of her.' This good authority assures us that ' the extreme sweetness of the character of Mademoiselle Necker was always manifest when her mother addressed to her any reproaches. Her respect for her was always pro- found and declared. Endowed from childhood n. Madame de Genlis. 5 7 with a rare power of apt and vivid repartee, slie never said a word, even on the most trivial occa- sions, which could show her under an unfavour- able aspect.' ^ " Still later she spurned with violent indignation the reflections of Madame de Genlis on Madame Necker. This lady, the authoress of the day, had been a guest of the Necker salon, but never a cordial one. (Duchesse d'Abrantes' Histoire &c., tome i.) She afterwards found in Madame de Stael a literary rival whose transcendent success she could not pardon, but pursued her with bitter and harassing criticism, especially during her persecutions by Napoleon. Madame de Stael bore all patiently till the jealous critic attacked the memory of her mother, when, says her cousin, ' she showed the greatest irritation that I ever witnessed in her.' ' Does she imagine,' she exclaimed, ■* that because I do not defend myself, I will not defend my mother ? Let Madame de Genlis attack my works, and my character, as much as she pleases, but not my dead mother, my mother who has only me in the world to take her part. She preferred my father to me, and she had reason, without doubt ; I feel the more that I have her blood in my veins, and so long as this blood runs in them, I will not allow her to be outraged.' She would have appealed to the public, had she not been convinced that any publication of the kind would have been obnoxious to the actual government of France, and would only in- crease its persecutions of her family and friends. Madame de Genlis' attack on Madame Necker was made in her De Tlnjluence ties Femmes sur In Litterature Fran<^aise, Paris, 1811. Neither Madame Necker, nor any of her friends, ever pretended that she belonged to the class of literary women ; her little essay on Divorce was the only production of her pen published during her life ; her Melanges were but fragments published by her husband after her death. Yet of her volume of nearly four hundred pages, Madame de Genlis gives more than one eighth to Madame Necker, more than twice as many as she gives to Madame de la Fayette, five times as many as to jNIadame de Sevigne, six times as many as to Madame Dacier, sixteen times as many as to Madame Riccobini. She gives to her, in tine, more space than to any other character in the A"olume, excepting Madame de Maintenon. The book was apparently published by the malicious old countess for the purpose of disparaging Madame Necker, and afflicting her success- ful daughter. She caricatured the latter in her novel of La Femme 58 Madame de Stacl. CH. It was in such cii'cumstauces that the genius and character of the sensitive young girl were developed. Her education was entirely domestic, for she was never sent away to school ; and these circumstances, so early and so stimulating, were among the strongest impidses of her life. They impressed her nature for ever. Madame Necker felt no little chagrin at the defeat of her plan for the education of her daugh- ter. In abandoning it now to the control of her husband, she abandoned nearly all hope of the future ' distinction ' of the child. She could not, however, fail to be surprised at her continued and wonderful intellectual growth, and when, at last, she appeared in the literary world, prepared to claim a distinction unrivalled among her sex, the mother's pride could hardly console her for the failure of her original scheme. ' I remember,' writes Madame Necker de Saussure, ' that at the time when the eclat of Madame de Stael's fame was Vhilomphe. She endeavoured, years later, according to Saiute-Beuve, to atone for her early malice by her Athena'is, ou le Chateau de Coppet en 1807, a romance which is of no authoritj', either for events or charac- ters. She lon.fr survived ^ladanie de Stael, and in 1825 published her Memoires of herself, in ten volumes, in which she again attacks her rival with senile and ridicidous jealousy. See particularly volumes iii. and iv. 'In this work, as in all her other publications, for twenty- five years, she followed only the impulses of her hatred. She seized this occasion to renew her attacks against Madame de Stael. Her judgments on authors and their worlcs are all dictated by the dis- paraging spirit which always giuded lier pen.' — Bioffraphie JJniverseUe, tome xvi. 11, Mademoiselle Nccker. 59 yet new to me, I expressed to Madame Necker my astonishment at her prodigious distinction. " It is nothing," she responded, " absolutely nothing, com- pared to what I would have made it ! " This answer struck me very much, because it referred only to the qualities of her understanding, and ex- pressed a sincere conviction.' 6o Madmne de Sta'el. ch. CHAPTER III. YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS. First Travels — Visit to BuiFon — His Egotism — His Riile for Style — Fine Sayings of Madame Necker— Journey to Switzerland — Lake Leman — The South of France — Retirement at Marolles — Early Literary Compositions — Dramas — Fictions — Criticism. It was in this period of the retirement of Necker that his daughter had her earhest experience in travel — afterwards so much the habit of her hfe. Her first journey was to Plombieres (the waters of which had been prescribed for the health of her mother),^ and it was particularly interesting to her, as it afforded a visit, at Montbard, to the old friend of the family, the naturalist Buffon, now a sage of seventy -five years, and of European renown not only as a ' scientist ' but as a classic model of French literature. He had been a favourite authority in the Necker salon on questions of literary criticism as well as of science. His celebrated discourse, before the Academy, on ' Style,' had won for him this deference. Sur- rounded by his ' little court ' of admirers and co- workers, he received his guests at Montbard with ^ Notice by Baron de Stael : (Euvres de Nechcr, tome i. III. Buffon. 6 1 ceremonious attentions, which could not fail to prove irksome to the young girl Avhom he had gaily flattered at her home in Paris, and whose late emancipation in the woods of St. Ouen had unfitted her for dimiified restraints. Instead of rambles among his flowers and birds, she found three grand velvet-covered arm-chairs, elevated in his salon, for herself and her parents ; another, less raised, for himself; and these circled by lower seats for his associates, who were silent listeners to his conversations and discussions with tlie late famous Minister and his accomplished wife and daughter. His guests were amused at the deferential etiquette of the well-meaning patriarch, and endured it patiently, ' rather than afflict an old man,' their ardent friend, by hastening on their way ; for the simphcities of decaying but affec- tionate age, hke those of childhood, have a charm of their own, and though we may regret them, it is usually with a smile. Meanwhile the aspiring girl could hardly fail to learn important precepts, for her own future use, in the conversation of the venerable author. His very egotism made it the more comprehensible and instructive to her. In an elegant studio, a pavihon, so constructed as to exclude all surrounding sights and distractions, lie meditated his picturesque descriptions and polished liis periods, following his well-known maxim that 'Genius is only patience.' 'I trace,' he said, ' a first sketch, and, in doing this, I do what 62 Madame de Sta'cl. ch. a hundred writers in Europe can do. I copy it, and obtain a result which but twenty writers can obtain. I recopy a second and a third time, and thus achieve, at hist, what BufFon alone can do.' Madame Necker, with her notable aptitude for epigrammatic sayings,^ remarks on the simphcity of her old friend, that ' Buffon knows not the world, but he knows the Universe.' But with all her re- spect for him, and in spite of so fine a comphment, she cannot refrain from a sarcasm on his egotism. ' He always says " great men," " people of good taste," &c., using the plural : it is because he sees himself in a mirror which has facets.' Much more agreeable must have been their journey, in the summer of 1784, to Switzerland, which ever afterwards seemed to Madame de Stael a sort of native country, for, though she was born, and was to die, in France, in Switzerland were born, and there died, not only her parents, but nearly all her kindred ; there was her dearest asylum in the darkest periods of her hfe ; there was to be her own grave ; and, notwithstanding her tlio- roughly French temperament and the Teutonic element of her blood (so manifest in her more studied works), lier moral nature was distinctively Swiss. Crossing the Jura mountains (the geographical, though not the political boundary of France), the first picture of the glorious land lay extended and - Iler Melanges are superatundaiitly licli in them. III. Lake Lcman. 63 radiant beneath her i>'aze — Lake Leman flashing in t]ie midsummer sun ; the dechvities of the Jura, terraced with vineyards, and studded with thriving hamlets ; Lausanne, on the one liand, with its ancient cathedral ; Geneva, on the other, with the grey towers of St. Peter's, whence had gone forth influences still dominant in the thought of all Pro- testant Christendom. Defining the background of the magnificent picture, the Alps stretched their snow-covered summits along the south, Mont Blanc lifting his head to the heavens sovereign of them all. Far to the left quietly reposed, on the margin of the Lake, Vevey, Clarens, the Castle of Chillon, the rocks of Meillerie, scenes of Eousseau's most power- ful romance — an author whom the young traveller was now, not only reading, but studying, with en- thusiasm, and meditating her first pubhshed book — an essay on his genius and writings — which was soon to surprise the world by reveahng the extra- ordinary though immature luxuriance of her own genius. On the western margin of the lake lay Coppet, with its humble church, its few habitations under the shelter of its spacious chateau, her future Swiss home. They now sojourned near Lausanne, in which city Necker was about to publish his ' Administra- tion des Finances.' His wife was suffering seriously from her life-long malady,^ but she was absorbed in cares for the comfort of her husband. Her dauo-h- ^ Fragments of her letters, Melanges. 64 Madame dc Stael. ch. ter's happiness, she writes, is independent of her maternal attentions, ' she is carried along by the torrent of her pleasures.' Bonstetten visited them at Lausanne, and says, ' I saw there the future Madame de Stael, in all the charms of youth, of intellect, and of coquetr}-.' ^ Madame Necker was now in view of the scenes of her early hfe. Gras- sier looked down upon her. She wrote sadly to her literary friend, Thomas, that, in retracing her old tracks here, she has passed over, in one day, an interval of twenty years. ' I hardly know,' she adds, ' Avh ether the memories I still have are my own, or another's. If my heart did not still chng, in all places, to the objects of my regret and affection, I should beheve my youth a dream, and the present alone a reality. Are not, indeed, the first years of life only passing illusions ? ' And yet this poetic land is God's own temple to her, ' luxuriant nature, mountains green and peopled, their tops touching the sky, a grand lake regahng the eye, scenes upon which one's gaze may wander with rapture. It seems that God has interested himself here more than elsewhere for his creatures, obliging them to lift up their thoughts to himself without ceasing.' This tour brought Mademoiselle Necker into more intimate acquaintance with the kindred of the family, now somewhat numerous on the shores of Lake Leman, especially at Geneva, where the * BoDstetten's Souvenirs. III. Afadamc Necker de Satissui^e. 65 talented daughter of the naturahst De Saussure married, about this time, in her nineteenth year, James Necker, and became afterwards celebrated in hterature as Madame Neclver de Saussure. The friendship of tlie two j^oung women was a hfelong consolation to both ; and Madame Necker de Saus- sure became the best biographer of her cousin. Her own biographer says that ' in these youthful years the conversation of these two persons, so worthy of each other, had a degree of vivacity and interest which it is impossible to describe. It seemed then that all which the imagination could sugo'est of what is beautiful and good would soon be realised by the growth of their souls. The sad effects of the great Eevolution had not yet shown how easily the noblest designs may be defeated, how the most up- riglit and courageous wills may be broken. In their confidential intimacy they discussed the grandest subjects which can occupy the human mind. Ideas which were one day to be uttered in the " Corinne " and the " Allemagne," the treasures of thought and of sentiment, the inventions of the imagination, dazzled their souls in these familiar conversations. Madame de Stael dreamed without ceasing in the companionship of her j^oung cousin. She Avas delighted with this exchange of views, which tranquilliscd and directed the restless ardour of her thoughts. It was indeed a beautiful spectacle — these two superior minds, at the entrance of life, looking towards the future ; the one already peace- VOL. I. F 66 Madame de Sta'el. ch. fill and self-collected, the other ready to take flight towards the regions where storms, and yet light and glory, prevail.' ^ After passing some time at Coppet, they pro- longed their absence into winter, by travels in other parts of Switzerland and in the south of France ; for Madame Necker was quite wilhng to keep her daughter, now advancing in her briUiant youth, as long as possible away fi-om the moral atmosphere of Paris. She had written to Lord Stormont, the British Ambassador at Versailles : ' Paris appears to me more dangerous than ever, now that my daughter is growing into womanhood, and tliat I find myself obliged to war without ceasing, by in- dividual example, against the general example — a combat of unequal strength, and of doubtful success. I am every day astonished at the moral perversion which withers all minds and all hearts. Vices or virtues, all are ahke indifferent, provided only conversation is animated, and ennui^ our most dreaded plague, is banished.' They spent some time at Avignon, under a sky so pure and transparent that it seemed ' one ought always to pierce the azure veil, and find, beyond it, aU the consolations one needs ! ' But the vices of Paris are rampant here also ; ' they have even lost some of their polite disguises on the way.' The opinions and corruptions of the capital had long ^ Notice mr la Vie et les Ecrits de Madame Necker de Saussure, prefixed to the second edition of her work on Education. III. Travels. 67 been inundating the provinces ; social, and espe- cially domestic life were dissolving ; and the whole nation was hastening on towards the abyss of its pohtical dissolution. They go to Montpeher, in sight of tiie Medi- terranean and the Pyrenees. Tliey are deeply interested in the fervid life of the South. They hear impassioned eloquence from its pulpits — ' from bishops and archbishops,' and especially from the Bishop of Narbonne. They receive refreshing letters from their Parisiari literary friends. Madame Necker replies to one of them, who had visited the family in Switzerland : ' Monsieur Necker, my daughter, and I, constantly think of you. He often says that you have rendered our sojourn at Coppet deliglitful. It is in retirement that one feels the preciousness of genius and friendship, as one hears best in the silence of the night the sound of the sea, or the song of the nightingale.' By tracing allusions in their letters, and by other obscure clues, we learn that they turned towards Paris in 1785, and lived for some time in comparative solitude at Marolles, not far from the city. Here their retreat was ' quiet, as no move- ment reached it. All things around being tranquil, the soul is also.' It befitted the studious liabits of Mademoiselle Necker, wlio having, without the aid of schools, far surpassed the usual academic culture, and ranged over the fields of both ancient and modern literature, now aspired to authorship r 2 68 Madame de Stael. ch. and literary distinction. Her occasional brief compositions — ' Portraits,' ' Eloges,' ' Synonymes' — had been read with avidity in private circles of her friends, and some of them, as we have seen, had been sent by Grimm to his princely correspondents, as promises of extraordinary genius. Her conver- sation and letters now showed rapidly maturing powers. Madame Necker, still suffering in health, had devolved her correspondence upon her daugh- ter, whose brilliant letters brought back replies full of admiration. The mother, answering one of tliese admirers, not without a tinge of jealousy (ironical, let us trust, in this instance), wrote : ' The first days after my arrival have been very sad ; I have left to my daughter the happiness of writing to you, but she has received a too charming letter from you, and I do not wish that she should inherit my rights before I am no more. One can make little presents during life, but we give all our property only when we die.' In the year after her return from her southern travels. Mademoiselle Necker completed a drama in verse, in three acts, entitled ' Sophia, or Secret Sentiments.' Its theme is love without hope ; it is pervaded, says her cousin, by ' a sweet and me- lancholy sensibility ; ' though it has the excess, the sentimentalism, of a juvenile production, the whole piece is marked by presages of genius. It is characterised by great moral dehcacy, but it did not escape the rigorous criticism of Madame Necker. III. Early Writings. 69 It presents four characters clearly delineated, four well-defined situations, and its style, though in- correct, as its authoress remarked when, in later years, she gave it to the world, bears, nevertheless, the stamp of that vigorous originality which was tlie distinguishing seal of all her mature works. The next year (1787) her genius, now restless in its aspirations, attempted a more ambitious flight ; she composed her tragedy of ' Jane Grey ' in the cus- tomary five acts, a few copies of which were printed, three years later, for private distribution. Its style, though defective, as she acknowledges in tlie preface, shows a surprising improvement on that of her ' Sophia,' as do also its characters, and indeed all the essential attributes of the piece. She has strictly followed history, except in the character of Pembroke. That of Northumberland has been admired as reveahng astonishing power, ' if we consider the age of the writer.' There is genuine pathos in some of the scenes, and not a few passages are written with an energy of thought and feeling unsurpassed in lier later writings. This, it has been remarked, is the only work of Madame de Stael in which we find ' a picture animated with liappiness ; ' its early scenes admit of such a treat- ment notwitli standing its tragic conclusion. It re- veals also that rehgious tendency which habitually characterised the heart of its Avriter ; ' for, as she had always,' says her cousin, ' need of gratitude and, in consequence, of rehgion, in lia])piness, she has JO Madame dc Stacl. ch. given to the cliaracter of Jane Grey a deeply re- ligious colouring.' From her childhood she had an ardent sympathy with her heroine. ' In reading her history,' she says, ' her character has trans- ported me. I was about her age when I attempted to paint it, and her youth encouraged mine. I longed to be able to make others share my admira- tion of that union of force and sensibility which enabled her to brave death while prizing life.' ^ She recurs to her a quarter of a century later in her ' Eeflections on Suicide,' to show that the prospect of a frightful death is not, to a true Christian, a sufficient reason for ending one's days. A second tragedy, entitled ' Montmorency,' quickly followed that of ' Jane Grey,' but it has never been given to the public. These juvenile works are interesting, chiefly, as indications of her gromng intellect ; imperfect as they are, they are vivid with her genius. With them ended her attempts at versification on any considerable scale, if we except her ' Epitre au Malheur, ou Adele et Edouard,' relating to the atrocities of the Eevolution, and published in the year 1795. Before she was twenty years of age she composed three tales, which were pubHshed with this poem — ' Mirza,' ' Adelaide and Theodore,' and ' Pauline.' She did not overrate them ; their situations are rather indicated than developed ; she saj's, in her preface, ' their only merit is their pic- ^ Preface to Jane Grey : (Euvres completes, ii. Paris, 18G1. III. M. de Guibert. 71 tiires of some sentiments of the heart.' That tragic tone whicli pervades all her writings is extreme in- these fictitious sketches. The chief importance of the httle volume is in its introduction, which is a critical essay, of remarkable abihty, on Fictitious Literature, written at a later date, but certainly in her early womanhood. It indicates an incredible range of reading, and equally incredible depth of reflection on her reading, Sainte-Beuve calls it ' a charming essay.' It reviews nearly all tlie great works of this kind which had appeared down to her day, in any language — classifying them, first, as Fictions, Marvellous and Allegorical ; secondly. Historical ; thirdly, those which have botli Invention and Imitation, but are founded not so much upon fact as upon probability. She gives pre-eminence, as works of Art, to such as are ■ truly natural romances, exhibiting the real action of human affections and passions, without allegory, without mythology, Avithout fantastic or fairy machinery, and without an obtrusive philosophic or didactic purpose. Her ' Eulogy on M. de Guibert ' was written in her twenty-third year ; extracts were given in Grimm's Correspondence, but it was not printed till after her death. It is characterised by much of the entliusiasm and nascent genius whicli pervade her letters on Eousseau. Guibert was the hero of the famous letters of Mademoiselle Lespinasse, a fact not yet known, however, to his young eulogist. 72 Madame de Stacl. CH. There was miicli nobleness in his character, and he had rare talent, as his writings show ; he was an habitual and brilliant guest of the Necker salon^ and was in full sympathy witli ISTecker's political opinions — ' one of the first,' says Sainte-Beuve, ' to conceive the ideas and means of public reform, the States-General, the citizen soldiery/ &c. ; ' but,' adds this writer, ' I am tlie more pleased Avith him for having foreseen with certainty, and disclosed in advance, by a " portrait " the future greatness of Corinne.' She had, probably, a stronger reason for her interest in him. Years later, wlien in England, she intimated to a friend that ' Guibert had been very much in love with her before her marriage.' ^ If she could not reciprocate his affection, she could appreciate it, for a woman, especially sucli a woman, always feels herself complimented by love, though it may be from a man incapable of winning her heart, or perhaps even her esteem. It is at least a homage to her attractions, and that is a tribute wliich no woman can despise. The Eulogy on Guibert is the expression of a grateful, as well as of an admiring heart. Such were tlie tentative productions of her juvenile pen, before she dared to send forth the superior, tliough defective, ' Letters on the Writings and Character of Eousseau,' wliich were to be the first pubhshed demonstration of her superb genius.*^ '' Wharton's Queens of Societij, p. 309. Loudon, 18G7. ^ Sainte-Beuve is evidently inclined to think that the earliest 111. Her YoiUh. JZ We have anticipated a few dates in this con- ne(-ted view of her earhest works. Meanwhile otlter and important events have occurred. Her father, still pursued by persecution, has been ban- ished from the vicinity of Paris, and she has accom- panied him in his exile. She has grown into a rich young Avomanhood, physical and intellectual. Her admirable conversational powers have already been recoofnised in the best circles as somethins^ wonderful. Her unfortunate marriage has taken place. The increasing embarrassments of the na- tional treasury have compelled the government to turn again imploringly to Necker, and he is about to be recalled to office, replacing the family in the dazzHng excitements of Parisian life. And in the same year with his restoration she is to take her position, and take it for ever, in the literary ranks of her country by her first pubUca- tion. ■written of her printed works may have been the small volume entitled Letfres de jSannine a Simphal, wliich was attiihuted to her by M. Beucliat, but was disavowed by her family at the time of its publication (1818), after her death ; if it is genuine, it was probably written about her fifteenth year. M. Bohaire, publisher at Lyons, and owner of the manuscript, insisted that, though not in the hand- writing of Madame de Stael, the work is nevertheless hers. (Querards La France. Littcraire, tome ix. The Biofp-aphie UniverseUe inclines to the same opinion.) It differs little from her three other novelettes, except that it is more juvenile in style. It is a small, sentimental I'oraance, such as an ardent, guileless young girl might readily imagine. 74 Madame dc Sta'cl. ch. ^ CHAPTER IV. EARLY WOMANHOOD. Necker — His Daughter witli liim in Exile — Her Account of liis Book on tlie Importance of Religious Opinions — Her Development — An early Portrait of her — Description of her in her Eighteenth Year — In her Twentieth Year — Her Manners in Company — Her Bon- homie — Her Cou^ersatioual Powers — -Her Religious Tendency — A Literary ' Portrait ' of her. Neckee, on liis late visit to Lausanne, published tliere his work ' On the Administration of the Finances,' vindicating his ' Comj^te Eendu,' and ex- posing more completely the wretched fiscal con- dition of France. It struck the nation, as we have seen, with astonishment, and startled Europe. His daughter sa5's ' it made the fortune of three or four pubhshers ; a hundred thousand copies were issued, and it is now [1809] esteemed the only- classic in French literature on its subject.' ^ The Emperor Joseph H., the King of Poland, and the King of Naples, had invited him to take charge of the finances of their governments. Catherine of Eussia and Frederick the Great had expressed surprise and regret at his treatment by the Cabinet ^ Du Cnrocthre de M. Necker &:c. An edition was issued the same year, 1784, in London. IV. Necker. 75 of Versailles. Declining all foreign overtures, he remained faithful to his adopted country. Cal- onne, his successor, convoked the Assembly of Notables, and attacked before it the ' Compte Eendu.' Necker rephed through the press, and the immediate result was his banishment forty* leagues from Paris. His daughter was inexpress- ibly afflicted by this new persecution. She says that ' a lettre de cachet^ an exile, appeared to me the most cruel act that could be committed. I uttered cries of despair when I heard of it. I had no idea of a greater misfortune. All the society of Paris, that refined manners and a long period of peace had rendered unfamihar with sucli suffer- ing, crowded to my father mth their sympathy, and with indignation against his exile. I passed the time of his banishment with him. How calm and serene he was ! He now finislied his work " On the Importance of Eeligious Opinions," a grand proof of the tranquilhty of his soul in circum- stances which might well agitate an ambitious man. This production could not serve his interests ; on the contrary, he risked many distinguished partisans by it ; for he was the first, and even the only one, among the recognised writers of the period who dared to signahse the irreligious tendency of the times. Unaided, he warred against that disastrous tendency, not with hatred for philosophy, but Avith noble enthusiasm for rehgion ; religion with- out which reason has no sfuide, ima"ination no 76 Madame de Stacl. CH. object, sensibility no deptli, and virtue itself no charms.' During these adversities of Necker, the interval between his first and second administrations, 1781- 1788, his daughter passed through the most interest- ing period of her youth, from her fifteenth to her tAventy-second year. By her keen sympathy with her father she received the salutary disci- pline of affliction ; her retired life enabled her to prosecute extensive studies ; and the country air restored her health. Sainte-Beuve mentions an unpublished por- trait which he had seen, representing her, in her early youth, with hair loose and floating in the air ; eyes confiding and bathed in light ; forehead higli ; hps open, speaking, and ' moderately thick in sign of intelligence and generosity ; ' complexion animated by sentiment ; neck and arms bare ; ' costume hglit, with a ribbon floating at the waist ; bosom respiring with full breath. Such might be the " Sophie " of the " Emile," such the author of the " Lettres sur Jean-Jacques," accompanying her guide in her Elysium, excited at every step, con- stantly advancing and returning, now on the one side, now on the other.' In her eighteenth year she is described as ' so mature a woman that they could justly pronounce her to be one of the most luminous spirits of tlie times ; she eclipsed all who came near her, and IV. Her Youth. yy seemed rightfully the mistress of the house.' ^ The same authority, speaking of her appearance in her twentieth year, says, ' Her figure was admirable ; her shoulders, her bust, her arms and hands, were of rare beauty ; she had in her mien and her features all that poetry of soul which she afterwards displayed in her writings. Without being beautiful, she was already the model after which Gerard painted his Corinne twenty years later, having the same richness of form and health, the same purity of lines — those contours, powerfully rounded, which express a poetic or- ganisation.' Young as she was (in 1788), ' she had a very powerful fascination, felt by all who approaclied her.' Her cousin says that she was graceful in all her movements ; her countenance, without entirely satisfying the ej^e at first, attracted it, and then retained it, by a rare charm, for it quickly displayed a sort of ideal or intellectual beauty. No one feature was salient enough to determine, in advance, her character or mood, ex- cept her eyes, which were truly magnificent ; but lier varying thoughts painted themselves in ever- varying expression on her face. It had, therefore, no one permanent expression ; her physiognomy was, so to speak, created by the emotion of the moment. In repose her eyelids had something like languor, but a flash of thought would illu- ^ Duchesse d'Abraiites' Ifisfoire des Salons de Paris, Introd. 78 Madame dc Stael. ch. minate her glances with a sudden fire, a sort of lio-htninof forerunnino; her words. There was, however, no unquiet mobihty about her features ; a kind of exterior indolence characterised her ; but her vigorous frame, her firm and well adjusted attitudes, added to the great force and singular directness of her discourse. There was, meanwhile, something dramatic in her bearing ; and even her toilette, though exempt from all exaggerations, gave an idea of the picturesque more than of the mode or fashion. Some of those negligent caprices, or eccentri- cities, usually attributed to persons of genius, were reported of her about this period. It is said that, at her presentation at Court, the courtiers, who were familiar with her reputation, amused them- selves over a fault in her ' curtsey and a slight derangement of her robe ;' ^ and in a visit, a few days later, to the Duchesse de Polignac, a confidant of the Queen, ' she forgot her bonnet, leaving it in her carriage.' The feminine gentlemen, and mas- culine ladies, of the court, envious of her rising fame, found occasion for self-complacent criticism, for rebuke and sarcasm, in such barbarous defects. She herself repeated these reports to her friends with equal self-complacency. When she entered a salon., her step was, accor- ding to her cousin's sketch, measured and dignified ; a slight diffidence seemed to require her to aim at ^ Encyclopedie des Gens du Monde &c. tome xxi, Paris, 1844. IV. Early Character. 79 self-control, especially if her introduction attracted many eyes. As if this passing cloud of embarrass- ment had prevented her from distinguishing, at first, the individuals of the company, her face became illuminated in proportion as she recognised them. A listener would suppose that she had inscribed on her mind all their names ; and very soon those charming words, of which she was so generous, showed that the most distinguished acts, or qualities, of each were present to her thoughts. Her praises proceeded from the heart, and therefore reached it. She knew how to compliment without flattering. It was a maxim with her that politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts. Her whole demeanour was marked by a dis- position to obhge ; there were abundant wit and vivid repartee, but no chicanery, and, especially, no severity, in her expressions. ' Her cordiaHty im- posed silence on self-love,' and her superior sense imposed it on self-conceit ; but pride itself could not feel resentful towards her, for her perfect sincerity and instinctive kindhness and good hu- mour won all hearts. A writer who knew her in her childhood and in her advanced life says that '- among lier most remarkable qualities her hon- homie held perhaps the first rank.' * This ex- traordinary conciliatory power, united to an intel- lectual superiority which seldom fails to provoke envious criticism, was doubtless much enhanced * Simond's Voyage &c. So Madame de Stael. ch. by a certain tenderness and sadness, which habi- tually affected her tli oughts, and often appeared suddenly in her gayest conversation. Her sensi- bilities were quicker even tlian her thoughts. Society, conversation, were a necessity of her nature ; she needed distraction, for a certain pensiveness, not to say melancholy, hung continually about her ; it was mitigated \y^ years, but was never totally dis- pelled.^ It was a powerful element of her genius, and gave ricli poetic colouring to her writings. She usually retired from company, in which she had conversed much, witli sensible relief. ' Tins relief,' says her cousin, ' was necessary to her very being. The conservative instinct of her talents repelled dullness or depression. Perhaps her constitution, more sensitive than was supposed, required the stimulus of diversion ; for a sort of terror seized her at the thoug;ht of the stao-nation of existence. In her youtli she could not endure solitude ; and tlie melancholy impressions, which are painted with so much beauty in her works, were with her formidable reahties.' It w^as only very late in life, when she was able to hold in abeyance the phantoms created by her imagination, that she could, according to her own expression, ' live in society with nature ; ' consequently ennui^ whicli in * The last and unfinished sentence in her Ten Years of Exile, ■written in her forty-sixth year, reads : ' I have always been strangely subject to ennui, and, far from Ifnowinghow to employ m3'self in those oitirely void moments, which seem appropriate only to study . . . .' IV, Her Manners. society or elsewhere is a solitude in which one has not even his normal self for company, was ex- tremely dreaded by her. It sufficed not that her associates were intellectual, they must be animated. She could not be content if they spoke without interest. 'How can they expect me to listen,' she said, ' if they do not themselves the honour to hsten to themselves ? ' She could endure better certain defects of character or manner, than heartlessness, or a lack of interest in the speaker. She said, one day, of an egotist, ' He speaks indeed only of himself, but this does not oppress me, for I am sure that he is at least interested in what he says.' She delighted in humour, though there is hardly a trace of it in her own writings, except one or two of her domestic dramas. She showed a sort of tenderness, a lively gratitude, for those who cheered her by their conversation. A hon mot., a comic story, a brilliant epigram, charmed her. Piquancy, origina- lity, imagination — these pleased her above all else ; they gave spring to her mind, wings to her genius. A single marked trait or talent was more valued by her than any combination of mediocre qualities, however numerous. Talent in others always prompted her own. She was never dispirited in conversation by the brilliancy of competitors ; but, witli a simple candour, a charming abandon., she gave herself up to the inspiration of their powers, and shone tlie brighter for the combination of their Hght with VOL. I. G 82 Madame de Sta'cl. ch. hers. This simphcity, this utter frankness, was an infinite cliarm ; never has tlie etymological signifi- cance of the word sincerity had a finer exemphfica- tion. Hence her self-rehance never appeared like egotism ; it was perfect, and yet apparently with- out self-consciousness, Hke that of the ascending lark, which doubts not its power of wing because it thinks not of it. She had no reason to fear rivals in conversation ; her superiority there was supreme. ' This illustrious woman,' says a good authority, ' personified the eloquence of conversa- tion in the country where that brilhant gift was the most fully appreciated.' ^ In the more strictly moral qualities of her nature we discern an habitual conflict between her conscience'and her life. Thougli, during this period of her young womanhood, she showed no very posi- tive disposition to self-assertion on religious subjects, her heart ever turned towards them in spite of its waywardness, and of the corrupt social influences which prevailed around her, and, at a later period, more or less infected her. The authority just cited says, 'The daughter of Necker, notwithstanding the energy and originality of her nature, received a strong impression from the philosophic society which surrounded her youth ; yet the scepticism of that arid and railing philosophy was utterly re- pugnant to the fervour and loyalty of her soid; and, " Coppet et Weimar: Madame de Staiil et la Grande-Duchesse Louise. Preface. Paris, 1862, IV. Gtiiberfs Sketch. with her all convictions, took, on the contrary, the intensity and ardour of faith. As she ripened in experience and was cured of the intoxications and illusions of youth, she was more and more led to the Christian belief, the precepts of which were blended in her soul with her filial affection.' '.She could not,' says her cousin, 'separate in her experience religion from happiness,' and that highly gifted woman adopted, as the motto on the title-page of her important work on Education, a sentence from Madame de Stael which expresses her whole tlieory of human hfe : ' Life is valuable only so far as it serves for the religious education of the heart.' ^ Madame Necker de Saussure has preserved for us a sketch of her as she appeared about this time, to her admirers at least, — one of those ' portraits,' the reading of which in the salons of Paris was a favourite literary entertainment of the period. They are abundant in the fugitive literature of the times, and though they were, of course, generally eulogistic, their success depended on their vrai- seniblance. This one was from the pen of M. de Guibert, whom we have already had occasion to notice as a guest of the Necker salon, and eminent in both the society and literature of that day. He wrote it after the model of a Greek poem, but, ' L^Education Progressive, ou Etude du Cours de la Vie. 3 vols. Lausanne, 1838. 4 2 84 Madaine de Stacl. ch. apart from its poetry, it may be pronounced a true likeness : — ' She is but twenty years old, but slie is the most celebrated priestess of Apollo, and the favour- ite of the god — the one whose hymns and incense are the most agreeable to him. Her words bring him down from heaven to glorify his temple and mingle with mortals, ' From the midst of tlie consecrated maidens, the choir of tlie priestesses, suddenly advances one ; my heart will always remember her. Her great black eyes are radiant witli genius ; her hair, of the hue of ebony, falls in floating ringlets on her shoulders ; her features are more strongly marked tlian delicate — one sees in them something above the destiny of her sex. Sucli it would be necessary to paint the Muse of Poetry, or Clio, or Melpomene. See her ! See her ! all exclaim, when she appears ; and they hold their breath to hear her. I had seen the Pythoness of Delphi; I had seen the Sibyl of Cumce, but they were extravagant ; their movements were convulsive ; they appeared less inspired by a god than devoted to the Furies. This young priestess is animated Avithout excess ; inspired without in- toxication ; her cliarm is freedom, and her super- natural powers seem to belong to her own nature. ' Uniting her voice with the sounds of her lyre, made of ivory and gold, slie began to sing the praises of Apollo. Her words and music were spontaneous. From the celestial fire of the poetry Guiberfs Sketch. 85 which kmdled her aspect, and the profound atten- tion of the people, we could see that her imagina- tion created the song ; and, astonished and enchanted, we knew not which most to admire, its facility or its perfection. Then, laying aside her lyre, she spoke of the great truths of nature, of the immortahty of the soul, of liberty, of the charm and the danger of the passions. In hearing her one would be dis- posed to say that many persons, many experiences, were minsi;led in her one soul. On observinof her youth, we were fain to ask how she had been able thus to anticipate life and to exist before her birth? ' I saw and heard her with transport ; I dis- covered in her features charms superior to beauty. What a play and variety in her countenance, what modulations of her voice, what perfect accord between her thoughts and expressions ! When she speaks, if her words cannot reach me, her tones, her gestures, and her looks suffice to convey to me her meaning. ' She pauses a moment : her last words sound through my soul, and I discover in her eyes what she has yet to say. At length she is silent, and the temple resounds with applause ; her long eyelashes shade her eyes of fire, and the sun is veiled from our sight ! ' 86 Madame de Stacl. CH. CHAPTER V. MAEEIAGE COREESPONDENCE WITH GUSTAVUS III. Baron de Stael — Count Fersen — Interest of the French Court in the INIarriage — Stael's subsequent Career — His Wife's Correspondence with his King — French Court Life — Necker's Restoration to Ofiice. Attractive by rare endowments of mind and lieart, with personal charms greater than those of beauty, and, withal, one of the richest heiresses of France, Mademoiselle Necker could not fail of suitors. Her marriage, however, was a difficult family question. Her mother was not willing that she should marry a Roman Catholic, and the most eligible oppor- tunities, apart from religion, seemed almost confined to the high Catholic families of the country. The daughter's passionate aflection for her father led her to insist that she should not be separated from liim. These difficulties were compromised at last by their accepting Eric Magnus, Baron de Stael Holstein. There is evidence tliat Count Fersen, a Swede of higher pretensions, luid ]ioped to win Jier Jiand. He was younger than Stael, and singularly liandsome, belonging to a ftimily in which personal beauty had long been an liereditary distinction. Count Fersen. 87 He was a favourite with his King, and beloved by the Queen of France, whose intimacy with him be- came a popular subject of the scandals with which she was overwhelmed during tlie Eevolution.^ He spent some years in America, fighting for the colonial revolutionists, as aide-de-camp of Couni Vaux and, later, of Eochambeau ; and was present at the surrender of Cornwalhs. He attempted to save the Koyal family of France by the famous flight to Varennes, and conducted them, disguised as their coachman, as far as Bondy. Though he re- vered Washington, he was one of the very few Frenchmen that served in America who did not return with liberal principles. He was opposed to the republican tendencies of tlie times, and ab- horred the French revolutionists. He disliked Necker's liberalism, and this, probably, was the reason why he failed to win the affections of his daughter. The Adonis of the Court, he cared little about his failure ; her great fortune was probably her cliief attraction for him ; and it is said that he compromised this with his friend Stael, by accepting from him a large bonus and by zealously promoting tlieir marriage. Fersen wrote to his father, ' Necker has at last made his deci- sion : he gives his daughter to Stael ; and I am ^ Barou Klinckowstrom, a relative of the Oouut, lias puLlished (ie Comte Fersen ct la Cour de France, 2 vols. Paris, 1878), the diaries, letters, and despatches of Fersen — aflbrding important data for the history of the Revolution. There are in these volumes twenty-eight letters from Marie Antoinette to Fersen, and thirty-two from him to her. 88 Madame dc Stacl. CH. delighted for his sake. He had many and powerful rivals, among whom was Mr. Pitt, who is now at the head of affairs in England ; but the girl has pre- ferred M. de Stael.' The Baron de Stael was a Swede, of moderate fortune, but of generous character, of solid instruc- tion, of philosophic tastes, and zealously devoted to the reforms which then occupied the attention of the enhghtened classes of French society,^ — a man of pohshed manners, and of good official pros- pects. He was born in 1749 ; was a mihtary offi- cer some fourteen years ; was chamberlain to the Queen of Sweden, and a Chevaher de I'Epee. He was made a Councillor to the Swedish Legation at the Court of France in 1778 ; appointed Charge d'Affaires in 1783 ; subsequently Minister Pleni- potentiary, and, finally. Ambassador.^ At the time of his marriage he was thirty-seven years old ; his bride was but twenty ; but the disparity of their ages was no serious consideration, especially in view of the marriages of convenance then custo- mary in France, which usually made Httle or no account of the age of the husband. It was not, however, a marriage of love, on the part of the bride at least. It is supposed that her motive in consenting to it was her affection for her father, for whom she was alwaj^s ready to make any sacri- fice. Stael was a fervent advocate of Necker's ^ Nouvelle Bioyraphie Gcnerale, xliv. ^ Bioyraphie Univei'selle, xl. Her Marriage. 89 political opinions, and was devoted to his official interests. He was a Protestant ; and willing to concede Mademoiselle Necker's demand that she should never be separated from her parents. Like his friend Fersen, he was a favourite at tlie Court of Versailles, especially with Marie Antoinette, and could probably promote the interests of Necker there. The Queen encouraged the mar- riage, and induced Gustavus IH. of Sweden to promise the Baron a long continuance in the Len^ation at Paris, in order that he mis^ht fulfil his pledge to the family not to withdraw their daugh- ter from the country. In short, the match seemed every way eligible, if it could onlj^ be one of real aflfection. Mademoiselle Necker may have been able to see no more Avorthy opportunity, in the French society around her ; or she may have deceived her own heart through devotion to her father's inte- rests. The marriage was not a precipitate one ; the negotiations for it had extended through some years. King Gustavus was in intimate sympathy witli the Court of Versailles ; his occasional visits to Paris were a special pleasure to him ; he constantly received news from the capital, not only through ]iis official representatives, but from the correspon- dence of Madame de la Marck, Madame d'Egmont, and Madame de Boufflers. The latter persistently promoted tlie interests of Stael, and managed, mth the King, the preliminaries of the marriage. She 90 Madame de Sta'cl. CH. induced Marie Antoinette and at last the King him- self, to write to Gustavus favouring it. Creuts, the Swedish ambassador at Paris, looking for promo- tion at home, urged Gustavus to give his place to Stael. ' Your Majesty,' he wrote, ' cannot imagine to what a point the King and Queen are interested in him. The King loves him as much as the Queen, and treats him with real affection. He has, ac- cording to the avowal of the King himself, special audiences with the Queen, such as I cannot, as ambassador, obtain.' * Stael himself kept up an adroit and urgent correspondence with Gustavus on the subject. In these, as in all his subsequent official communications with the Court of Sweden, he showed himself an able diplomat. Gustavus came to see, at last, that though the terms de- manded for the marriage were extraordinary, yet the wishes of the French Court, and the opulent dowry and distinguished talents of the bride, would be of great advantage, not only to his legation, but to himself, and he consented. A formal stipulation was made, guaranteeing not only the ambassador- ship for twelve j^ears, but also a pension of 25,000 livres per annum in case, ' by circumstances unfore- seen, M. de Stael should lose liis ambassadorship.' The marriage took place on the 14th January, 1786. As her husband will seldom reappear in our narrative, we may liere briefly anticipate tlie "* Geffroy, Heme des Deux Mondes, l>'oO. See also Gustav III. et la Cour de France, by the same writer, ibid. 1864-65. Baron de Stael. Q i principal subsequent events of his life. Favouring, like Necker, the liberal spirit of the times, he did not, like Necker, escape its radical tendencies. He entered with enthusiasm into the Revolution, and allied himself closely ivith members of the Consti- tuent Assembly. His King was decidedly hostile to the new pohtical ideas of France, and, becoming the royal leader of the foreign opposition to tliem, recalled him in 1792 ; but he was restored tlie next year, after the death of Gustavus by assassi- nation. He arrived again in Paris about two months after the execution of Louis XVL, and was then the only ambassador from a royal govern- ment to the new republic. An astonishing change had taken place in a short time. Most of his old friends had fied from the country, or were in prison, or had perished on the scaffold ; and Necker had escaped, with his family, to Switzerland. On en- tering tlie capital he sought the goodwill of the Revolutionists, by a donation of three thousand francs to the poor of the section of the Croix Rouge, then a liot-bed of the revolutionary spirit. He was alarmed at the tumults and atrocities around liim ; and returned to Sweden, bearing with him a treaty of alliance, which had been forced upon him by the Convention, but which was so objectionable that the Regent of Sweden rejected it. Not till tlie fall of Robespierre did Ids Government send liiiii again to the French capital, for the negotiation of another treaty of alliance. He remained at liis 92 Madame de SiacL CH. post, displaying at times not a little courage, through the vicissitudes of parties, down to 1799, when he was recalled by the young King, Gustavus Adolphus. Of the separation of his wife from him and the reasons for it, and of his death, we shall hereafter have occasion to speak. Under the auspices of the new ambassadress the salon of the Swedish Legation immediately became ' the most brilliant of all the diplomatic salons of Paris. The ambassador was more favoured than all others, in his private audiences at the Court, and by the confidence of Necker, who was familiar with the Court news and possessed commanding credit. Stael was at the summit of his ambition ; he was master of an immense fortune, and ambassador for life. Necker saw his daughter a baroness and an ambassadress ; he could hold his head high at Court. Gustavus himself, besides the political advantages which this union promised him, had won a new and already celebrated feminine ad- mirer, whose correspondence would outshine that of Mesdames d'Egmont, de la March, de Boufflers, and so many others.' ^ The correspondence here alluded to, though affording few personal facts for our pages, is valu- able to the historian of the Revolution, and has a curious history. ^ Geffroy errs in supposiiif^ the Baron's appointment to Lave been 'pour toujours." See M. d'llaussonville, in Revue des Deux Mondes, Aui?. 1880. V. Royal Correspondence. 93 Some years ago the public journals of Europe announced that an im})ortant discovery was made in the Scandinavian University town of Upsala. Two large cases, filled with letters and historical docu- ments, had been brought out of a subterranean concealment, and were about to be revealed to the world. They had been left, by the will of Gusta- vus III., to the University, in 1788, on the condition that they should not be opened till fifty years after his death. He died in 1792 ; they were opened in 1842, in presence of a royal commission. These documents formed more than a hundred volumes — sixty-four in foho, and fifty-five in quarto. They had been all classified, catalogued, and carefuUy stitched. The Swedish historian Geijer was ap- pointed by the Government to examine and edit the precious collection. One of the volumes (in quarto) bears the title of ' Letters from Foreign Ladies.' They are from Marie Antoinette, Mesdames d'Egmont, de la Marck, de Boufflers, but, above all, many are in the handwriting of Madame de Stael. Immediately after her marriage she became, at the soHcitation of Gustavus, one of his private correspondents ; and, under the title of ' Bulletins of News,' sent him abundant court and city gossip, re- heved often by sagacious comments which show that she understood, better perhaps than those around her, the drift of opinions and events, and the tragic catastrophe to Avliich they were tending. They give a picture of the last years of the ancien regime. 9-1- Madame de Sta'cl. ch. and striking proofs of the intellectual vigour of the young writer. She attributes the growing agita- tions to the North American Ee volution. Gustavus himself saw them in this liglit ; and, in a letter to Stedingk, his representative at St. Petersburg, which was to be shown to Catherine II., he calls them ' an epidemic of popular effervescence — an epidemic which has had its real source in America, and is extending over France.' The reaction of the new on tlie old world had already begun : it was to be fearfully abused ; sometimes temporarily counter- acted, but never defeated. For good or for evil, it was to s]iape the future social and political his- tory of Europe. Dumont, the coadjutor of Mira- beau, says, ' The National Assembly began with the famous Declaration of the " Eights of Man ; " it was an American idea, and regarded as a ne- cessary preliminary.' ^ The first placards on the Avails of Paris, proposing a republic, were written by Thomas Paine, and were signed by a young noble- man, Duchatelet, who had served in America. Condorcet and his circle were among the first to avow Eepublicanism. ' America,' says Dumont, ' appeared to them tlie model of good government, and it seemed easy to transplant into France the system of federahsm.' ^ The primary cause of the Eevolution was, doubtless, the ruined finances of ^ Dumont, though he did not approve the document, helped to compose it. Souvenhs mr Miraheau, chap. vii. Paris, 1832. " Ibid. chap. xvi. V. At Court. 95 the country ; its proximate cause was the character of the King ;^ its final cause was the repubhcanisni of America. ' The American war,' says a Eoyahst liistorian,' developed in France new germs of revolt. It afforded at once the example and the tactics ; confused ideas of Hberty, of independence, of de- mocracy, fermented in all heads, and prepared a general explosion.'^ Her title as Ambassadress brought Madame de Stael into immediate relations with the Court. ' The Queen,' she writes to Gustavus, ' has received me with kindness. She said to me that for a lono' time she had desired my acquaintance, and she thus distinguishes all who bear Swedish names. The repast was more magnificent than any yet given to an ambassadress. Eight days afterwards I was received at dinner, with the Spanish Am- bassador, at M. de Vergenne's. He took us both by the hand, to make us pass together.' She goes to the Trianon — still so agreeable to the eye, so sad to the memory — to the Court at Versailles and at Fontainebleau. ' The Queen's balls,' she says, ' are very splendid. The hall is arranged as a fairy palace. The gardens of the Trianon are there, and fountains of water play continuallj- ; pastoral ideas, reveries that the country inspires, mingle with the splendours of the luxury of ^ Dumont, chap. xvii. ^ Beitraiid de Moleville's Hist, de la Revolution, &c. i., Introd. Paris, 1801. 96 Madame de Stacl. ch. courts. In another hall you witness recreations but little pastoral — reckless gambling. Young M. Castellane has had to quit his paternal home for having lost here, in one evening, the wliole of his fortune. The Queen sets an example of modera- tion ; and it is not on her account that her Court is ruining itself. But the gamesters tire of every other occupation ; they find everything else insipid. They have acquired the taste for great excitements ; they cannot get on without gaming. The apartments of the King, and above all of the Queen, at Fontaine- bleau, are of an extraordinary magnificence. The cabinet of the Queen is beautiful in all its details, beyond anything that can be imagined. The Mar- shal, Segur, makes no promotions ; the Ministers all retain their places ; suppers and dinners are the only events of the day. They sup three times a week with Madame de Polignac, three times with Madame de Lamballe, and once in the Cabinet. The Queen goes to Madame de Polignac and Madame de Lamballe daily at twelve o'clock, and plays at billiards : a game at which women succeed well. It has become fashionable. The houses of .the Ministers, of the captains of the Guard, of the great officers of the Crown, are filled even till twelve o'clock ; at this hour all leave for the house in which the Queen is to be found. At midnight they go forth to pass the time elsewhere. Games are the only secret they have yet discovered for the amusement of assembled people — or rather for The Finances. 97 their occupation. The greatest pleasure of the mistress of a mansion is to disembarrass herself of those who are with her, by enchaining them to tables of quinze or of trictrac' Such scenes were, however, an onerous official ■etiquette to the young ambassadress. Her own salon presented attractions infinitely superior to this courtly and vacant folly, for there she could gather elite minds, and hold high discussions on the noblest themes. Wliether by the influence of his son-in-law and of his son-in-law's friends at Court, or otherwise, Necker's pohtical fortunes began again to brighten. Every experiment made by his successors in the national finances only involved them in deeper embarrassment. Calonne's failures and his perse- cution and banishment of Necker caused a reaction. The King dismissed him. The feebleness of the sove- reign's character, his habitual vacillation, rendered the pohcy and the fate of miy Minister precarious, and must be considered as one of the chief causes of the general downfall which was now at hand. The Marshal de Castries, Minister of the Marine, proposed the recall of Necker, but the King could not yet humble himself by reinstating a man whom he had exiled. M. de Fourqueux was appohited, of whom Madame de Stael said that 'Never did the perruque of a Councillor of State cover a poorer head.' ^ M. de Brienne, then Archbishop of Tou- ^ Coiisiderations &c. i. 9. VOL. I. H Madame de Stacl. CH. louse, later of Sens, followed ; he attempted vigor- ous measures, but all his endeavours served only to show the impossibility of conciliating the obstinate selfishness of parties and classes ; none would tolerate measures for the relief of tlie treasury which might bear unfavourably on their own re- sources. At last, after seven years of disgrace, Necker had to be recalled, though he himself at least saw that it was in vain. His dauc^hter was tlie first to bear to him the news, which at any earlier and more hopeful period would have been most grateful to his wounded feehngs, but was now only alarming. ' When I came,' she says, ' to announce it to him, he exclaimed, " Ah, if they had but o-iven me these fifteen months of the Arch- bishop of Sens ! Now it is too late." He submitted to the order of the King with sadness. Seeing my joy, he remarked, " The daughter of a Minister has only pleasure : she rejoices in the reflection of the power of her father ; but the power itself is at pre- sent more than ordinarily a terrible responsibility." ' Slie, proudly beheving him equal to any exigency, could not share his discouragement. She records her extreme dehglit ; and so intense was it, that its very excess excited her apprehension : it seemed too precious to last, and ominous of coming evils. ' In traversing the Bois de Boulogne, at niglit, on my way to Versailles,' she says, ' I had a terrible fear of being attacked by thieves ; for it seemed to me tliat the happiness which the elevation of my father caused me must be balanced by some cruel V. Neckers Restoration. 99 accident. The thieves did not attack me ; but destiny justified, only too faithfully, my fears.' On paying her homage to the Queen she found new reason for anxiety. ' The niece of the displaced Archbishop of Sens paid her court at the same time. The Queen showed plainly, by her manner of receiving us both, that she much preferred the displaced Minister to his successor. The courtiers, however, acted otherwise ; for never have so many jDcrsons offered to conduct me to my carriage. The disposition of the Queen became one of the greatest obstacles that M. Necker had to encounter in his official career. She had protected him during his former ministry, but, whatever he did to concihate her during the second, she considered him always as nominated by public opinion, and princes in arbitrary governments accustom themselves, unfor- tunately, to regard public opinion as their enemy,' ^ Meanwhile Necker 's restoration, though to him- self hopeless, had an extraordinary effect on the nation. In one day the funds rose thirty per cent. Though only two hundred and fifty thousand francs remained in the treasury, capitaHsts im- mediatety offered considerable loans. ' Such an effect,' exclaims his fond daughter, ' produced on the pubhc credit, by confidence in a single man, is without example in history.' But his anticipation was correct ; it was now too late for any scheme to save the nation from bankruptcy and revolution. ^ Considerations &c, i. 12. lOO Madame de Sta'el. ch. CHAPTER VI. LITERATURE THE REVOLUTION. Necker again in Office — First Publication of Madame de Stael — Letters on Rousseau — Her Opinion of Literary Life — Madame Necker de Saussure's Estimate of the Letters — Grimm's Criticism — Madame de Stael's Sympathy "with the Revolution — Her Account of the Opening of the States-General — Necker's Dismissal — His Trium- phal Return — Letter from Mile. Huber — Riots of the People — Necker finally retires. Necker was recalled to office in August 1788. He was now more than ever the idol of the nation. The vague sense of impending disaster — the ge- neral, though unacknowledged suspicion that the national condition was hopeless, seemed to give way before a man who, if he had not great abilities, had nevertheless great character. Corrupt as the nation was, it appeared to hope that virtue, if not talent, might yet save it. Again the Minister's family shone amidst the edats of Parisian life. Again the Necker Holon was throncfed in the me- tropohs and at St. Ouen. If the devoted wife, thoughtful of coming events, moved more gravely, more reticently, in the brilliant circle, the daughter, the freshness and charms of whose girlhood were only enhanced by her recent matronhood, became VI. First Publication. loi its liappy presiding genius. Proud of the restored honour of her father, and hopeful of all things in spite of all omens, exhilarated with genius and the homage of distinguished men, she not only led its conversations, but assumed there her first honours as an author. In the year of her father's restoration her ' Letters on the Writings and Character of Eous- seau ' were printed for private circulation. Only twenty copies were issued, but it was reprinted and published the next year. To us this Httle volume is interesting as her first published work, an index to her youthful mind. To herself it always had another interest. In her second pre- face, written more than a quarter of a century later (1814), she says : ' It was published without my avowal, and by this chance was I led into the career of hterature. I cannot say that I regret it ; for the cultivation of letters has afforded me more consolations tlian chagrins. One's self-love must be intense, if unfavourable criticism gives more pain than eulogies give pleasure ; and, besides this plea- sure, there is in the development and perfection of one's mind a continual activity, an ever renewed hopefulness, that the ordinary course of life never affords. All things move towards declension in a woman's hfe, except the power of thinking, the immortal nature of which tends always to its own elevation.' After all deductions for its juvenile entliusiasm I02 Madame de Stacl. ch. and occasional excesses of style, this first of her printed writings is a very remarkable production for so young a mind. It Avas a sudden appa- rition of a new star in the intellectual heavens. However open to criticism, no critic could mis- take its sicfnificance as an indication of rare genius. Madame Necker de Saussure justly, and as finely, remarks that ' in it we see all the vivacity of a youthful intellect, and the highest charm of such a mind, namely, both Avliat it is and what it will be. There is deposited the germ of all the opinions that Madame de Stael has since developed. We see in it a thinker, a moralist, a woman, who can paint the passions, though as yet confusedly. She ranges over an immense field of ideas ; she illustrates, in j^assing, a crowd of sub- jects ; and though her steps are directed by those of Eousseau, she accompanies him with a movement so light and so rapid, she deviates from and surpasses him so often, tliat one sees she has been prompted rather than sustained by him. She always speaks from the exuberance of her mind, yields to tlie un- controllable expansion of her soul ; and we acknow- ledge that if she had chosen anotlier theme she might have written with as much facility and as much eloquence. With whatever influence Eous- seau inspires her, she maintains tlie independence of her mind. She scatters her opinions profusely with the graceful embarrassment of a young woman who evidently fears that she has displayed too VI. Baron Gri7nm^s Opinion. 103 much force. In short, notwithstanding some imma- ture judgments, she is ah^eady astonishingly her- self in this book.' Baron Grimm was favoured, as a guest of the Necker salon^ with one of the twenty copies of the first edition of the ' Letters.' His antipathy to Rousseau, founded in jDersonal recollections, was intense ; but he could not fail to admire the genius of the young eulogist, and sent pages of her book to his correspondents. ^ ' It is a production,' he says, ' which in any circumstances, or by any author, would be important ; but which is espe- cially admirable as coming from a young woman of twenty years.' He cites, as proofs, her criticism on Eousseau's style, and her analysis of his several works ; and especially the letter on his ' Emile,' as ' presenting a crowd of fine and profound ideas.' The first four letters cannot fail to excite the asto- nishment of the reader by the extent and maturity of mind they display ; but still more surprising, lie thinks, is her criticism of the ' Contrat Social,' and of similar speculations of Rousseau. Grimm can- not withhold ' liis sentiments of admiration,' and pronounces tlie book ' a charming work ; ' its cri- tical judgments cannot, however, be accepted in our day. Time lias determined more justly the character and influence of Rousseau's writings ; Madame de Stael herself woidd doubtless have ' Some twelve pages of the Correspondance, Jan. 1789, part iii. tome V. Buisson's edition of 1813. I04 Madame de Sta'cl. ch. given a very different estimate of them, had she written the Letters in her maturer life. Her sympathy with Ronssean's pohtical specn- lations led her to sympathise with the early ten- dencies of the Eevolution ; for Rousseau was the oracle of the leaders of that great movement, and his ' Contrat Social ' was their text-book. Funda- mentally erroneous as his theory of government may be, it nevertheless included many of the essential principles of political justice and liberty, and never had they been more clearly formulated, or more enthusiastically advocated. Her young soul caught his enthusiasm, and, like many of the best thinkers of the period — like Jefferson and most of the Amer- ican statesmen, and Fox and Mackintosh in Eng- land — she saw, in the attempt of the French to embody some of his doctrines in the Revolution, a new epoch in history ; an epoch of liberation and regeneration for Europe. She had, sadly enough, to qualify her hopes amid the frantic excesses which soon drove her from her country, but she never materially qualified her opinions. She lived and died an advocate of the rights of tlie people, as co-ordinate with the rights of their rulers. She was a conservative liberal, and never ceased to assert the claims of hberty against the usurpations and tyranny of Bonaparte. Reinstated in the highest society of the metro- pohs, an ambassador's wife, a minister's daughter, and a recognised writer, she entered heartily into VI. The States-General. lO^ the political excitements and events of the day. The meeting of the States-General, in May 1789, was to her one of the most signal of these events. In her volume on Eousseau she had anticipated it, with patriotic enthusiasm ; and described ' the great nation which was soon to assemble to consult on its rights, as astonished at recovering, after two centuries, the power to do so.' It was to achieve,^ in peace, she beheved, what ' other nations had reached only through fields of blood.' She invoked the spirit of Rousseau to ' witness the imj)osing spectacle that France was about to present of a grand event, prepared in advance, and with which for the first time no hazard would mingle.' This was but six months before the session of the assembly. ' I shall never forget,' she says in her work on the Revolution, ' the moment I saw the twelve hundred deputies of France pass in procession to the church to hear mass, on the eve of the open- ing of the Convention. It was an imposing spec- tacle, new to this generation of Frenchmen. All the population of Versailles and eager multitudes from Paris assembled to witness it. This novel sort of authority in the State, the nature and power of which they knew not yet, astonished most of those who had not reflected on the rights of nations.' '^ It was indeed a splendid scene. ' From the ^ Considerations Sec. i. 16. io6 Madame de Sta'cl. ch. church of St. Louis,' says Carlyle, ' to the church of Notre-Dame, one vast suspended billow of life — with spray scattered even to the chimney-tops ! For on chimney-tops too, as over the roofs, and up thitherwards on every lamp-iron, sign-post, break- neck coign of vantage, sits patriotic courage, and every window bursts with patriotic beauty ; for the deputies are gathering at St. Louis' church to march in procession to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon. — This, the baptism day of Democracy, sick Time has given it birth, the numbered months having run. — The extreme unction day of Feudal- ism. — The procession of processions advancing towards Notre-Dame ; shouts rend the air, one shout at whicli Grecian birds might drop dead. It is indeed a stately solemn sight. Tlie Elected of France, and then- the Court of France; they are marshalled and march there, all in prescribed place and costume. Our Commons in plain black mantle and white cravat ; Noblesse in gold-worked, bright dyed cloaks of velvet, resplendent, rustling with laces, waving with plumes ; the Clergy in rochet, alb, or other best pontificalities ; lastly, comes tlie King himself, and King's household also, in their brighest blaze of pomp, their brightest and final one — some fourteen hundred men blown together from all winds, on tlie deep errand.' ^ ' I stood,' writes Madame de Stael, ' at a window near Madame de Montmorin, wife of tlie Minister ^ Carlyle's French Revolution, iv. 4. VI. Madame de Montmorin. 107 of Foreign Affairs, and abandoned myself — I ac- knowledge it — to the most exidtant hope, in seeing for the first time in France, Eepresentatives of the JSTation. Madame de Montmorin said to me, with an emphatic tone, "Do not rejoice ; out of this day will arise frif^htful disasters to France and to lis." ' The presentiments of this unfortmiate lady were too true : she perished on the scaffold with one of her sons ; another died prematurely by an accident ; her husband was killed in the massacre of Septem- ber ; her eldest daughter died in the hospital of a prison ; and her only surviving child, an accom- phshed, lovely woman, whom we shall hereafter repeatedly meet, sunk under the weight of her griefs before her thirtieth year. ' The family of Niobe,' continues Madame de Stael, ' was not more cruelly struck than that of this poor mother. One would say she prophesied amidst the splendours of the scene at Versailles.''* The patriotic young writer witnessed, the next day, the opening of tlie States-General, with en- thusiasm unchecked by the forebodings of her friend ; for her own father was a chief actor in its proceedings, and, when he entered, ' was over- whelmed witli applause.' His popularity was tlien entire. But ' when the King came to present liimself on the throne, in the midst of the assembly, I experienced,' she says ' for the first time a presen- timent of fear.' She remarked in tlio aspect and ■* Considerations &c. i. 10. io8 Madame dc Stacl. CH. bearing of the monarch, and of the Queen also, somethmg that led her to apprehend discord be- tween the Government and the deputies, and disaster to the nation. These apprehensions were too well-founded. Day by day ' confusion worse confounded ' involved all public affairs. Necker's counsels in the royal cabinet were overruled by the influence of his enemies. He sent in his re- signation, but the Government was too dependent upon his popularity to accept it. The rumour of it spread through Versailles ; and ' the streets,' writes his daughter, ' were immediately filled with the people shouting his name.' The King and the Queen sent for him the same evening, and both entreated him, for the ' safety of the State,' to re- sume his place. The Queen added that the secu- rity of the King's person depended on his return; she promised solemnly to follow no other coun- sels than his. This was then her intention, for the popular demonstrations had alarmed her ; but, as ' she always believed that any limitation of the royal power would be a misfortune, she necessarily fell again under the influence of those who thought as she did.' Necker returned, but with little or no other hope than to mitigate rather tlian avert the coming doom. The deputies, on hearing of the fact — all the ' Third Estate,' the majority of the clergy, the minority of the nobles — crowded his liouse to thank him. ' I heard my father conjure the deputies of VI. Neckcr Dismissed. 1 09 the Third Estate,' -writes his daughter, ' not to press their claims too urgently. " You are now the most powerful," he said, "therefore you can afford to be cautious." They wept as he pointed out to them the condition of France and the good they niii^ht do.' But the reconciliation was transient. Tlie Government only apparently favoured him till it could make preparations by which it vainly sup- posed it could repel the popular opposition and dispense with his services. It adopted a measure which at last proved its ruin. It concentrated its foreign troops at hand, and ' on the 11th of July,' writes his daughter, 'just as my father was sitting down to dinner with a numerous company, the IVIinister of Marine came to him, and calhng him aside, gave him a letter from the King, who ordered him to leave Paris, and to do so without noise. He was exiled for the popular cause ; had he been factious, the shghtest indication of his feelings would have roused the people and pre- vented his departure. Two hundred thousand armed men would have shouted his name in the streets of Paris and led him back in triumph. His brotlier, myself, his most intimate friends, were not apprised of his resolution. My mother, who was in very feeble health, took no maid, no travelling dress ^vith her. They mounted their carriage under pretext of an evening drive, and travelled day and night to Brussels. When I 1 lo Madame de Stael. ch, rejoined them there, three days hiter, they still wore the same clothes in which they had departed after a dinner, the numerous guests of which had no suspicion that they were agitated in the shghtest degree, and had now quietly separated themselves from France, from their home, their friends, and power. My father's clothes were all covered with dust ; he bore an assumed name, that he might not be recognised in France, and be retained by the love of the people. All these circumstances touched me to the quick ; I was penetrated with a sentiment of respect which made me prostrate myself before him, as I entered the inn where I found him. Indeed, I have never ceased to experi- ence this sentiment, in the smallest circumstances of his domestic life as in the greatest events of his public career.' ^ Necker, accompanied by Baron de Stael, left Brussels for Basle, followed soon after by his wife and daughter ; but at Frankfort a messenger over- took them w^th surprising news and urgent orders from the King. Paris had received some intimation of his departure, on the day that it occurred. An insurrection broke out the very next day ; on the following day the National Assembly voted that he bore with him its esteem and regrets ; on the next, the Bastile fell before the enraged people ; and the trembhng Court recalled the Swiss heretic. But, though he returned, it was too late ; the hurricane ^ Z>w Caractere de Necker &c. VI. Neckers Rehirn. 1 1 1 of the Eevolution was rising, and its murmurs were in all the air. Allusion has already been made to the popular enthusiasm with which he was escorted back to Paris. There is a letter in Grimm's Correspondence which details the splendid ovation, ' the most beautiful spectacle,' he says, ' that I have ever seen,' tlie liappiest witness of which was Necker's daughter, as she rode in the procession with her father. ' A host of cavalry, infantry, and citizens marched out to meet him and conduct him to the Hotel de Ville. It was one of those triumphal marches that we read of in ancient history.' Several carriages bore Necker and his family and friends — troops before, troops behind, all carrying bouquets and branches of laurel. The drums beat, the bands played ; the flags of the overthrown Bastile, the banners of the city guards and of tlie districts, were displayed in the procession. They marched singing, and throw- ing flowers in the air. The streets were crowded ; all the windows were thronged witli applaudino- women. ' Vive the great Minister ! God preserve him!' resounded everywhere. ' It was one continual acclamation, a universal intoxication.' At the city hall, Lafayette his faithful friend, and Bailly the mayor, received him in the grand hall; the wife of Lafayette accompanying Madame Necker and Madame de Stael thither. Congratulatory speeches were made, and the great throng wept like children at Necker's words. For an hour and 112 Madame de Stael. CH. a lialf he was detained in the excited assembly, and meanwhile a countless multitude thronged the neighbouring streets, and greeted him, when he appeared at tlie window, with the wildest acclama- tions. ' They wept, and he seemed to them as a god.' Such is popular enthusiasm. Like the multitude which cried on one day, ' Hosannah in the highest ! ' to the Son of God, and on another, ' Crucify him ! ' this fickle people were soon to curse the man whom they now hailed as their only political saviour. • But again the innumerable host — cavalry, infantry, citizens, with flowers, laurel branches, flags, and music — take up their march, and conduct him onward ; for he goes with his family in his cortege^ to resume, amidst the mortified courtiers, his high functions in the Government. The Assembly vote, as he passes, that ' the day on which this Minister, so beloved, so necessary, has been restored to France, shall be ^ fete day,' and de- clares ' an amnesty to its enemies.' This very cle- mency, at which Necker gratefully wept, provoked in a few hours the furious resentment of the people, for it hberated prisoners for whose blood they thirsted. France was morally as well as financially ruined, and the atrocious horrors of the Ee volution became inevitable. But his daughter brushed aside all discomfort- ing anticipations amidst the grateful excitements of this proud day. She saw only the triumph of her beloved father. ' What an interval of fehcity,' she VI. Necker's Trminph. \ 1 3 exclaims, ' was this journey back from Basle to Paris, such as we made it after my father de- cided to return. No one but a sovereign of a nation ever made a similar passage. . . Alas ! it was I, above all, who enjoyed it. It was I that it intoxicated. I cannot be ungrateful for tliose days, whatever has since been the bitterness of my life. . . . Fifteen years have passed since that time, and nothing has been able to efface this impression, the most vivid of my life. . . There are few women who liave the happiness of hearing the name dearest to their affection thus repeated in the acclamations of a nation, but they will not contradict me Avhen I say that nothing can equal the emotion excited by such circumstances. All those faces which seem kindled by the same love that animates your own heart ; those numberless voices which resound through your soul ; the be- loved name which rises on the air, and seems to echo from tlie heavens after having swept through the applause of the eartli ; the enthusiasm, the in- describable electricity that multitudes communicate to one another when excited by a common pas- sion — these all appealing to one's love — love filial or maternal — thrill the soul, and it succumbs to emotions more powerful than itself'^ Describing- tile festal pomps of the journey, slie entreats per- mission to ' dwell upon this day ; ' and in concluding her account of the transports of the people, writes, ^ Du Caracth-e de M. Necker &c. VOL. I. I 1 1 4 Madavic de Stacl. ch, ' I saw nothing else at this time, for my conscious- ness was overpowered by my joy.' ' But,' she sadly adds, ' it was the last day of the prosperity of my life.' 7 Her present happiness was, however, too great for painful apprehensions about the future. There remains an unpubhshed letter, written with fa- miliar freedom after the restoration of Necker, by Mile. Huber to her family in Geneva, which shows that the young authoress had lost little if any of the vivacit}^ and abandon of her nature, by the trying scenes through which she had passed since their idyllic life in the woods of St. Ouen. ' My sister asks,' she says, ' if I never see Madame de Stael, as I never speak of her. I speak of her no more than of eating or drinking, because the one is as well understood as the other. During the eleven years of my intimate acquaintance with her there has never been an hour's coolness between us, although we have often differed in opinion, and, in consequence, disputed. Since her father's return to the Ministry, I see her, if possible, more fre- quently than ever, as we have more to talk about. She does not write a line which I do not see — con- cerning which she does not consult me ; and there is nothing which I am not accustomed to blame, to praise, or correct. For my part, I have all the confidence in her which I ought to have. If Madame de Stael had less levity of head, she would ' Considerations, i. 23. VI. Terrorisiu in Paris. 1 1 5 be, with the astonishing esprit which she possesses, the most celestial creature that one could find on the earth ; for, with intelhgence above all others, she has a perfect heart but often an erring head. I, who know her better than anyone else, and better than she knows herself, often find her unique, adorable — often blaniable, always extravagant and charming. And this intiniac}-, througli which I enjoy all the treasures of her mind and all the good quahties of her heart, is, I assure you, one of the charms of my life. She even spoils me for the other women Avhom I meet ; none love me as she does, and no one pleases me as she.' ^ She was to pass through farther and severer trials, which, if they were to give more sobriety to her ' head,' were never to break her will or subdue the romantic sensibility of her heart. Her home was now in Paris, where the name of the Swedish Embassy, on its front, was a protection from the daily increasing tumults of tlie people. Her parents were at the chateau of Versailles, to- wards which the popular agitation constantly gra- vitated. She was anxious for her father's safety, notwithstanding his late popularity. On the 5th of October, she was alarmed by the report that the populace of the metropolis were thronging towards Versailles. A spectacle was then presented such * Familj' manuscripts of her relative, Prof. Rilliet de OandoUe, Geneva. I 2 1 1 6 Maaame de Sta'cl. ch, as had never been recorded in the history of the world. An army of thousands of women, headed by a drummer, and bearing with them, as their cliief heroine and chief spokeswoman, a prostitute seated on a cannon, with a hghted torch in her hand, was marching out of the city through a rain storm. Madame de Stael, to avoid the riotous procession, hastened by another road, through the Bois de Boulogne. She reached her parents' apartments, which were connected with those of the King by a long corridor, but tliey were absent. ' M. Necker,' she says, ' had hastened to the King, and my mother, alarmed by the news which had reached her from Paris, had gone to the salon which is next to that of the King, in order to share the fate of my fatlier, whatever it might be. I followed her, and found the salon crowded. The scene about the palace was frightful — women and children armed with pikes pressed on all sides. The lowest class of the people were there, imbruted by fury and drunkenness — an infernal host.' Lafayette led up the National Guard, and, ' traversing the salon where we were, entered the King's apartment, very calm — I have never seen him otherwise. He came forth from the King, reassuring us all.' They re- mained on the spot till after midniglit, when tliey retired, hoping that the crisis was passed. La- fayette and his troops were supposed to be a suffi- cient protection for the palace ; but a single passage had been inadvertently left unguarded, and the VI. Scenes at Versailles. 1 1 7 mob with its assassins foiiucl entrance there at five o'clock tlie next morning. ' At an early hour,' con- tinues Madame tie Stael, ' the mother of Count de Choiseul-Gauffier entered my chamber : she came, in her fright, to seek refu^-e with me, thou2:h I had never had the honour of seeing her. She informed me that the assassins had penetrated to the ante- chamber of the Queen, had massacred some of her guards at her door, and that, awakened by their cries, she had saved her own life only by flying to the chamber of the King, through a secret passage. I learned at the same time that my father had already gone to the King, and my mother was get- ting ready to follow him. I hastened to accompany her. As we approached the royal apartments we heard the discharge of fire-arms in the court-yard ; and, in crossing the gallery, we saw on the floor recent traces of blood. In the next salon w^e met troops who shouted Vive Lafayette ! for he had saved their lives. We passed througli these brave men, but what a sight beyond ! The clamorous mul- titude had demanded that the King should return to Paris with them : he consented, and they were shouting and firing their guns for joy, over their success. The Queen appeared in the salon with dishevelled hair and palUd features, but her whole bearinoj was dif^nified.' Marie Antoinette, though stricken with long-continued grief, was still beauti- ful, and her soul was naturally heroic ; but she had been maliciously slandered. She had reason to ■BOOH 1 1 8 Madame de Stacl. ch. fear their violence, for the court-yard bristled with their arms. Her countenance revealed her appre- hensions ; nevertheless, she courageously advanced upon the balcony, leading her two children. La- fayette, as generous as gallant, seized the moment to concihate the ferocious multitude ; he stepped to her side, and, kneeling, kissed lier hand. The people, struck by the spectacle of their desolate Queen and her children, and the gallantry of their favourite General — ' the hero of two worlds ' — ' shouted her name,' continues Madame de Stael, ' to tlie very clouds. In returning from the balcony the Queen approached my mother, and with sup- pressed sobs said, " they force the King and myself to go to Paris, with the heads of our body-guard borne on their pikes." They were thus led into the capital. We returned to Paris by another route, by which we escaped the frightful spectacle. We crossed the Bois de Boulogne : the day was one of rare beauty ; tlie sun irradiated the scenery, not leaving one sombre hue ; no external object re- sponded to our sadness. How often this contrast, between the beauty of nature and the sufferings inflicted by man, is renewed in the course of life ! ' They were then passing over tlie same road on which she had accompanied lier father in the serene moonlight, and witli inexpressible joy, at his return to office, in 1788. How prophetically had he tlien said to her, ' It is too late ! ' I shall not discuss here tlie brief, final adminis- VI. Neckers Rchremcnt. 119 tration of Necker. That he was inadequate to the exigency of the crisis need not be denied ; for where on tlie earth could a man have been found adequate to it ? There was now no practicable sal- vation for France. It required the appropriation of the church property, the confiscation of the estates of the nobles, and the spohation of all Europe by the armies of Napoleon, to restore her finances. If Necker was not a great statesman, he was at least a great financier, and he did what no other man in France could have done to save the nation. But it was ' too late.' His enemies were too mighty for him. Some of the revolutionary leaders, par- ticularly Mirabeau (whose character he justly despised, but whose talents he did not appreciate), turned against liira.^ The popular enthusiasm for him subsided, or rather became demoniacal for slaugliter at home and war abroad. Necker's admirable wife saw better than he the coming catastrophe. They had tasted the bitter fruits of ambition ; lie had, as Gibbon wrote, attained the most conspicuous position in Europe. She urged ^ Mirabeau's hostility arose more from a moral than a political antipathy. It began before he had ever seen Necker, but he knew his character well. lie commenced a refutation of Necker's answer to Oalonne, on the Finances, but gave it up because he found Necker's figm'ss to be irrefutable ; he never acknowledged this reason, but his most confidential friend, Dumont, knew it. Calonne had sustained Mirabeau at Berlin. Claviere, the intimate associate and coadjutor of Mirabeau, and the originator of the assu/nats, aspired to the place of Necker, and stimulated the opposition of Mirabeau. Comp. chaps, i. iii. and xx. of Dumont's Souvenirs sur Mirabeau. Paris, 1832. 1 20 Madame ae Stacl. ch. him to retire, and he had the good sense to follow her advice. In l)iit little more than a year after his last recall to power, he was fleeing before the storm to his native countrj^ Twice was his carriage arrested on the highway, by the mob, which was noAv ready to sacrifice him among the hecatombs of victims whose blood was about to drench the land. He reached the frontier, and the remainder of his hfe was spent in his beautiful Swiss retreat, where he wrote numerous works, and found consolation in the ever-increasing fame of his daughter, whom Napoleon himself soon recognised as a rival in the attention of Europe. We have thus followed her somewhat parti- cularly into the tragic arena of the Revolution, because she is about to reveal to us, amidst its sanguinary scenes, some of the best traits of a truly heroic character. VII. N^ccker at Coppct. 121 CHAPTEE VII. MADAME DE STAEL's HEROISM IN THE REVOLUTION. Necker at Ooppet — His Daughter's Correspoudence with him — Pari- sian Society at this epoch — Influence of Woman — Madame de Stael in the PerUs of the Revolution — Heroic Efforts for her Friends — She is arrested — Terrorism in Paris — Her Escape to Ooppet. Necker left France in September 1790. Madame cle. Stael was too ill at the time to accompany him. She had given birtii, about a week before, to her first child, Augustus Baron de Stael (born August 31, 1790), who was to survive her, and to become tlie defender of the memory of his grandfather and the editor of his works. ^ As soon as she was able, the young mother hastened to her father. ' I found him,' she says, ' on his estate at Coppet, sad, thought- ful, but without bitterness. In this retreat he de- veloped a soul divine, a character every day more pure, more noble, more sensible.' ^ Her intense affection for him could not detain her at Coppet ; lier family at Paris required her attention, and she never felt at home in any other place than her native city. Solitude especially was insupportable ^ (Euvres completes, 15 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1820-21. •^ Du Caractere de Necker. I 2 2 Madame de Stacl. ch. to her. ' He lived,' she writes, ' in a land which is not my country ; where the sciences are much more cultivated than literature. He felt keenly the unhappiness that I experienced, in the struggle between my tastes and the pain of leaving him, even for a few months. He had always taken my part against others ; he now took it against myself. When I accused myself of not knowing how to endure the loss of that emulation of thought and of fame which doubles life and all one's forces, he encouraged my predilection for France.' On returning to Paris, she continued her inter- course with him by correspondence. ' He often told me,' she says, ' that my letters and conversation were all that now kept up his connection Avith the world. His active and penetrating mind excited me to think, for the sake of the pleasure of talking with him. If I observed, it was to communicate my impressions to him. If I listened, it was to repeat to him.' She A\^'ote to \\\\\\ constantly. It was the task and felicity of her daily life. He burned these letters, fearing that, if discovered by the Government, tliey might compromise her. Madame Necker de Saussure reii^rets their loss, and says they excelled any of lier published pro- ductions ; they were full of anecdotes, brilliant passages, and profound reflections. The charm of Parisian society, a fascination with her down to the last day of lier life, was un- abated, notwitli standing the popular tumults which VII. Society in Paris. \2\ now agitated tlie citj^ Contrary to wliat is gen- erally supposed, the intellectual activity of the ]netropolis was unusually brilliant, amidst the fermentation of these times. It did not display itself in literary productiveness, as in the imme- iliately preceding period, when it was led by the Encyclopasdists — by Voltaii-e, Eousseau, and a host of others ; but it prevailed, with all the intensity of the times, in the social circles, the salons. She wrote, years later, that ' foreigners who have seen it only since the downfall of Napoleon cannot con- ceive of the attractions, the eclat of the society of Paris. It can be affirmed with truth, that it has never been so brilliant, nor so serious, as during the first three or four jx^ars of the Eevolution — from 1788 to the end of 1791. Political affairs were still mostly in the hands of the higher classes ; all the vigour of liberty and all the grace of the old politeness were combined in their j)ersons. The men of the tiers etat, distinguished by their culture and their talents, joined themselves to these gentlemen, who were prouder of their merit than of the privileges of their rank ; and the greatest social and pohtical questions ever agitated were treated by minds the most capable of understanding and discussing; them.' ^ She found, in tlie freedom with which her sex was allowed to share these dis- cussions, a special attraction for her o^vn supe- rior faculties ; for, notwitlistanding the restriction ^ Considerations, ii. 17. 124 Madame de Stacl. ch. wliicli tlie French Salic traditions impose on wo- men in the actual affairs of government, in no otlier nation has the sex had more effective influ- ence in politics. Woman has, in France, avenged her privation of direct political power by a ten- fold greater indirect power. ' In England,' con- tinues Madame de Stael, ' women are accustomed to be silent before men, Avhen political questions are discussed ; in France they direct all conversa- tion, and their minds readily acquire the facihty and talent which this privilege requires.' She herself had already wielded this indirect influence in the administration of her father. The guests of the Necker salon had felt her power. Lafay- ette, Sieyes, Lally-Tollendal, Narbonne, Talleyrand, and other popular leaders, were her intimate friends, and sought her counsel. She wrote ' the most important part ' of Talleyrand's Eeport on Public Instruction in 1790, and had procured the appointment of Narbonne to the Ministry. She is hereafter to procure the recall of Talleyrand from exile and his appointment to the department of Foreign Affairs ; to gather in her salon^ and become the oracle of, the opposition to the usurpations of Napoleon ; and, through Benjamin Constant and others, to influence parties more or less down to the end of her life. On returning to the capital she plunged into its social and political discussions. But events followed one another swiftly and appallingly ; the mob tri- VII. The Revolution. 125 lunplied ; and enormities at which the world still shndders were of almost daily occurrence. Her character, as wife of the ambassador of Sweden, was still her protection ; and she witnessed, not with- out a painful sort of fascination, the rapid and frightful progress of the Eevolution — tlie dissolu- tion of the Constituent Assembly ; the session and failure of the Legislative Assembly — the pompous ratification and royal acceptance of the Constitu- tion ; the utter failure of the Constitution ; tlie march of tlie Marseillais upon Paris ; the attack on the Tuileries ; the assassination of the Swiss Guard ; the downfall of the monarchy and the imprisonment of the royal family in the Temple ; the beginning of the atrocities of the guillotine ; the September massacres — tlie infatuation and the madness of the metropolis, the outburst of general war in Europe, ' drilled Europe against mad undrilled France ' ^ — the reign of terror, and the cry, throughout the land, Aux armes ! Marchons ! Meanwhile the daily increasing tumults of the capital admonished her to provide for her own safety. The Government of Sweden suspended its embassy in 1792 ; her husband was in Holland ; it was again necessary for her to fly, but she delayed in order to save her friends. Before midnio-ht of the 9th of August, the forty-eight tocsins of Paris began to sound, and continued their alarms from steeple to steeple, without a moment's intermission, ^ Carlyle's Revolution, iii. 1. 126 Madame de Stacl. ch. till after the dawn. ' I was,' she writes, ' at my window, and every quarter of an hour tlie volun- teer patrols of the constitutional party sent us news. They said tliat the faubourgs were advanc- ing, led by Santerre and Westermann. No one could foresee what might liappen the next day, and no one could be sure of living beyond a day. There were, nevertheless, some moments of hope during; this frii^htful ni2;ht. We flattered ourselves with it. I know not why ; perhaps because we had exhausted fear. Suddenly, at seven o'clock, the noise of the cannon was heard.' They were attackiniT the Tuileries, and butcherincf the Swiss Guards. ' News was brought me that all my friends who had been guarding the palace were seized and massacred. I went forth immediately to learn more of their fate. Tlie coachman who conducted me was stopped on tlie bridge by men who as- sured him that our throats would be cut on the other side. After two hours spent in useless efforts to pass, I learned that those who most interested me still lived, but that most of them had to conceal themselves in order to escape the pro- scription with wJiicli tliey were menaced.' Not- withstanding the terror which prevailed in all tlie streets, she went forth in the evening, on foot, to visit them, at the obscure houses where they were hidden. She found armed men and women, asleep with drunkenness, before the doors, lialf-waking at times only to utter execrations and obscenities. VII. Her Heroism. 127 Orderly people were everywhere fleeing at the approach of the patrols, for the latter were but the servants of the assassms, seeking new victims. Slie drops her pen over the terrible recital, ' for one cannot have the resolution to continue such pictures.' ^ From 10th August to 2nd September new arrests were made almost every instant. Tiie seven prisons of Paris are all crowded. Danton and Marat have full sway. The victims are ex- amined by a sort of mock trial, and, under pretext of being sent to the prison of the Abbaye, are con- fronted at the gates by piles of ghastly dead bodies, and by crowds of infuriated men and women, armed with axes, knives, swords, and pikes, who strike them down and cast them on the reeking lieaps. Well might anyone, especially a sensitive woman, flee ap})alled from these scenes of peril and horror ; but Madame de Stael stayed to rescue her friends, though alone, with her servants, in lier house. Among these friends, Narbonne, Montmo- rency, and Baumets, were particularly in danger. They had to conceal themselves in separate pri- vate houses, and it was necessary to change their liiding places daily. She offered them asylum in her own mansion, but they declined it, fearing the danger to which it would expose her. At last two of them were compelled to take refuge with her, as no citizen would farther risk liis hfc and that ^ Coftmderations, iii. 0, 10. 128 Madame de Stael. ch. of his family by receiving them. She shut them up in the least exposed chamber of the house, revealed the secret to but one of her servants, and passed the night watching at her front window, expecting every moment the ' domiciliary visit ' of the patrols. One morning a servant reported to her that a placard at the nearest corner showed the assassins were seeking M. de Narbonne, one of the two friends under her roof. In a few moments the dreaded domiciliary visit was made. Nar- bonne, if discovered, must have perished the same day; and, Avhatever precautions she had taken, she knew he could not escape if the search should be thoroughly made. ' It was necessary, therefore,' she writes, ' to prevent the search. I collected all my forces, and I felt in these circumstances that we can always control our emotions, however violent they may be, when we know that they expose the life of another. In seeking the proscribed in all the houses of Paris, the authorities employed men of the lowest, the most ignorant class ; military guards were stationed at each extremity of the street, while these ruffians searched the dwellincrc: Correspondnnce ei Souvenirs &c. passtjn. 2 vols. Paris, 1875. VOL. I. X 3o6 Madame de Stael. ch, her iiiece and biographer, who knew her most in- timate hfe, ' devoted, sympathetic, indulgent, self- respectfuL You found with her consolation, strength, balm for suffering, guidance in the great resolutions of life ; she had a passion for goodness.' ' She was,' says another authority, ' an incompar- able being in all respects. Her charming quahties had something so peculiar that they can never be perfectly described. Only scattered traits of her supreme grace can be given.' Napoleon himself was smitten by her charms, and persecuted her, through Fouche, with his importunities to induce her to become a lady of his Court [dame de palais), but she dishked the man, and declined the brilliant offer. He seized the first opportunity of involving her in the exile of Madame de Stael, compelhng her to leave her family and tlie charmed circle of her innumerable Parisian friends, and wander obscurely in the southern provinces and Italy for years. It was a remarkable coincidence that, in these dege- nerate times, two women, one the most beautiful, the otlier the most intellectual, in modern history, should appear in the same country, and should be united in an inseparable sisterhood. ' Madame Eecamier,' says her biographer, ' gave her heart to Madame de Stael. It was in her nature to love passionately whatever she admired ; and the premature death of the author of " Corinne " left with her an immense void.' ^ They had met, * Madame Lenormand's Souvmirs et Corresnondance de Madame XVIII. Madame Recamier. 307 for the first time, some three or four years before our present date. ' Tliat day,' remarks Madame Eecamier, ' was an epocli in my hfe — I was struck by the beauty of her e5^es. I cannot describe what I experienced. I was eager to divine who she was. Addressing me with a bright and penetrating grace, she uttered the name of Necker, her father : I recognised Madame de StaeL I could not under- stand the rest of her sentence ; I bhished and was in extreme confusion ; she intimidated and yet attracted me. My diffidence did not injure me. She fixed her great ej^es on me, and with a curiosity full of kindhness praised my features in a manner irresistibly charming, especially as her compli- ments escaped her spontaneously. One saw in her, immediately, a being of a superior nature, but perfectly natural. It was a sudden apparition in my life ; the impression was so strong that I no longer thought of anything but Madame de Stael, so profoundly had I felt the influence of her power- ful and ardent nature.' Her admiration was more than reciprocated. Some years later, when her fortune was wrecked by her husband's bankruptcy, Madame de Stael wrote to her, ' Were it possible to envy one whom I love, I should be willing to give all that I am, to be you. Beauty unequalled in Europe, reputation without a spot, character proud and generous — what a happy fortune in this sad life ! > Ricamier, passim, particularly tlie ' Avant-propos.' 2 vols. Paris, 1860. i2 3o8 Madame de Staei. ch. Years later slie spoke of lier as ' an angel of beauty and purity.' Madame Eecamier was now living in a chateau at Sainte-Brice, about two leagues from Paris, and invited her friend to hasten thither for shelter. ' I accepted her invitation,' writes Madame de Stael, ' not supposing that my presence could injure a person so unconnected with politics. The most agreeable society was gathered under her roof, and I enjoyed for the last time all that I was about to lose.' After some da3^s spent tliere, without a further intimation about her exile, she too readily persuaded herself that she was safe and returned to her country liouse, ' convinced that Napoleon ]iad adjourned his resolutions ' against her, and was con- tent to have merely excited her fears. But, while at her table with some friends, she saw, through the open window, a man in grey, on horseback, stop at her gate and ring the bell. ' I was certain,' she says, ' of my fate. It was a hue day in Sep- tember. I received him in my garden ; the perfumes of the flowers, the beauty of the sun, struck me ; the sensations which come to us from the combina- tions of society are so different from those which come from nature ! This man told me that he was the commandant of the gendarmerie at Versailles, that he had been ordered not to wear his uniform, that he might not alarm me ; he showed me a letter, signed by Bonaparte, which exiled me to forty leagues from Paris, and required me to depart I XVIII. Exiled. 309 within twenty-four hours.' A woman with her children could not leave so suddenly. The gen- darme^ a man of some politeness and literary tastes, consented to accompany her and her children in her carriage to Paris, and allow her three days for her preparations. They stopped on the way, a few moments, at the house of Madame Eecamier, where she met General Junot (the Due d'Abran- tes), who promised to intercede with Napoleon for her. ' He did so with fervent urgency, but failed.' Napoleon so far yielded to the entreaties of Junot as to consent that she should reside at Dijon. Madame Eecamier sent this permission, in a letter addressed to the care of Camille Jordan at Lyons ; but it was never received by her, and could not have been acceptable if it had been received ; for it insinuated conditions respecting her future course wliich would have compromised her intellectual independence.^ She had previously hired a small house in a quiet quarter of Paris, hoping to be able to retire there in peace. ' I now went into it,' she writes, ' with the certainty of soon leaving it ; I passed the nights in running through its apartments, regretting, even more than I had hoped, the happiness I was losing. My (jendarme returned each morning, as in the story of Blue Beard, urging me to depart the next day. My friends came to dine with me, and ^ Sainte-Beuve discovered this letter, years after her death, among the papers of Camille Jordan. See Nouveaux Lundis, vol. xii. 3IO Madajue de Stael. ch. sometimes we were gay, as if to exhaust the cup of sorrow, and be once more happy before parting. They said to me that this man, coming each day to summon me to depart, reminded them of the Eeign of Terror, when the gendarnies came to the prisons to call out their victims. On the last evening that was accorded me, Joseph Bonaparte made yet one more effort for me ; and his wife came to invite me to spend some days in their country house at Morfontaine. I went with gratitude, for I was touched with the kindness of Joseph, who was willing to receive me into his house while his brother was persecuting me. I spent three days there, but my situation was very painful. I was surrounded by officers of the Government. I knew not which way to turn. My father would receive at Coppet, with inexpressible affection, his poor bird beaten by the storms ; but I did not wish to deepen his afflictions. I thought of Ger- many, and spent two hours in the garden, one of the most beautiful in Europe, considering what I should do. I at last entreated Joseph to obtain permission for me to go to Prussia without the liability of interference from the French minister there. He went to Saint Cloud for this purpose. I was obliged to await his answer at a country tavern, two leagues from Paris. I did not dare to return to my house in the city. A day passed without his answer. In order not to attract attention by re- maining in tlie tavern, I made the tour of the wall XVIII. Exiled. ^ 1 1 of Paris, seeking another inn within the prescribed leagues, but on a different route. These wander- ings, at a short distance from my city home and my friends, caused me anguish which I cannot describe. The chamber which I occupied now reappears to my mind : tlie window where I passed the whole day looking for the messenger ; a thousand details which misery drags after it ; the too great generosity of some friends, the selfish calculations of others. My soul was kept in a cruel agitation, such as I could not wish to be the lot of any enemy. At last the message arrived. Joseph had procured me liberty to depart for Berlin, and sent me excellent letters of introduction, accompanied by an adieu full of nobleness and tenderness. Benjamin Constant generously offered to accompany me, but I suffered from the sacrifice which he made for me. Every step of the horses sickened me ; and when the postilion boasted of their high speed, I could not but sigh over the service he was rendering me.' She hastened to Chalons, Constant endeavouring to relieve her dejection, on the way, by his ' astonishing con- versation ; ' for in all France he alone was second to herself in that talent. They arrived at Metz, where she remained some days, awaiting letters from her father. ' He was indignant,' she says, ' at my treatment ; he saw his family proscribed, and compelled to flee, as crimi- nals, from a country which he had so faithfulb^ 1 2 Madavie dc Stael. CH. served.' Even the debt which it owed him for a generous loan in the time of its utmost need, and which had been acknowledged by the Govern- ment, was still withheld by Napoleon. Necker advised her to spend the winter in Germany, and not return to Coppet till the next spring ; for who could tell what severer measures might be taken by Bonaparte, were she still within his immediate reach ? Her reputation had preceded her at Metz, and she was received there with something like an ovation. Count Colchen, the prefect of the Mo- selle, hospitably entertained her ; constant ' soirees and fetes were given in her honour,' and the elite of a literary society of the city ' were pleased to award her, at the moment in which she was about to quit France witli so much regret, the homage due to her genius and sufferings.' ^ She found there Charles de Villers, her Kantian correspondent. She wrote to De Gerando, ' I am awaiting here, my dear De Gerando, letters from Strasbourg, before con- tinuing my route. Send me, therefore, your letters for Germany ; write me by every courier, for I wish to remain but six days. What most pleases me here is Villers, in whom I discover extraordinary intellect, and I advise you to draw advantage from this intellect, this winter ; he has all the ideas of North Germany in his head. Without Benjamin, I should have succumbed to my griefs. " Baron de Gerando, Lettres Inedites &c. XVIII. Madame de Beaumont. 3 1 3 I have been able to sleep but little, and my mind is full of painful apprehensions. Adieu ! my excel- lent friend. Talk of me with Annette. I will write to Camille by the next courier. My address at Frankfort will be with the poor Maurice Bethman, about whom we have smiled so much, Camille and I, in my happy days.' At Frankfort-on-the-Maine her sufferings were redoubled by the dangerous illness of her daughter. ' I knew no person in the city,' she writes. ' I did not know the language ; and the physician to whom I confided my child could not speak French. But my father shared my trouble ; he consulted physi- cians at Geneva, and sent me their prescriptions.' ' Oh,' she exclaimed at the sick bed of her daughter, ' what would become of a mother trembling for the life of her child, if it Avere not for prayer ! ' At Frankfort her sorrows were further aug- mented by the news, from Chateaubriand, of the death, in Eome, of one of her dearest friends, whom we have met among her companions in the little French colony at Mickleham, England — Madame de Beaumont. She was a daughter of the lady who, while Madame de Stael stood at a window in Versailles, witnessing the procession of the States General, admonished her of the coming disasters of the Eevolution, and of M, de Montmorin, asso- ciate of Necker in the ministry and a victim of the September massacres. The mother and one of her sons had perished, as we have seen, on the scaffold ; 3 1 4 Madame de Stael. ch. all the family, in short, had died prematurely except Madame de Beaumont. It was through her affec- tionate intimacy with this lady that Madame de Stael had become acquainted with Chateaubriand, then her only important literary rival in France. The author of the ' Genius of Christianity ' had found in the daughter of Montmorin a congenial mind, a woman of culture and of vivid sensibility, whose cruel afflictions had not only saddened, but had ripened her soul. She suffered long from pul- monary disease as well as from grief, but ' when- ever a loving voice appealed to this solitary soul,' says Chateaubriand, ' it responded in words from heaven.' Madame de Stael could not but cling tenaciously to such a woman. Chateaubriand's letter was addressed to her at Coppet. Necker an- swered it : 'Be not surprised,' he said, ' that you do not receive Madame de Stael's response as soon as you had a right to expect. You can be very sure of the pain with which my daugliter will learn the loss of a friend of whom I have always heard her speak with profound feeling. I join in her sorrow, I join in yours, for I have a particular interest in it when I recall the unhappy fate of the family of my friend Montmorin.' On receiving Chateaubriand's letter, Madame de Stael rephed in one which was thoroughly charac- teristic of her ever overflowing heart, the empresse- ment^ the abandon of her grief and her affections. * Alas ! alas ! my dear Francis,' she exclaimed, ' with XVIII. Chateaubriand. 315 what anguish am I seized on receiving your letter ! Before it reached me, this frightful news reached me through the journals, and your agonizing re- cital now comes to engrave it for ever in letters of blood on my heart. Can you — can you speak to me of our differences of opinion about rehgion, about priests ? Wliat are two opinions, when there is only one sentiment ? I have read your letter througli saddest tears. My dear Francis, recall the time when you felt more friendship for me ; forget not, above all, the days in which all my heart was drawn towards you ; and assure yourself that those sentiments, more tender and more profound than ever, are still in the depth of my soul for you. I love, I admire the character of Madame de Beaumont. I have known no being more gene- rous, more affectionate, more passionately tender. Since I entered into society I have never ceased to have relations with lier, and have felt, notwith- standing some divergences of opinion, that I was bound to her by all the fibres of my being. My dear Francis, give me a place in your life ; I admire you, I love you. I love her whom you mourn ; I am a devoted friend, I will be to you a sister. I ought more than ever to respect your opinions ; Mathieu,'^ who entertains them, has been an angel to me in my late sufferings. Give me a new reason to respect them ; enable me to be useful or agreeable to you in some way. Have you ' Her Roman Catholic friend, Montmorency. o 1 6 Madame de Stacl. ch. been informed that I am exiled to forty leagues from Paris ? I am now making a tour in Germany ; in the spring I shall return to Paris, perhaps, if my exile ends, or near Paris or Geneva. Manage that we may meet again. Do you not feel that my mind and my soul understand yours ; and that, in spite of our differences, we resemble one another ? M. de Humboldt writes me with admiration of your work ; you ought to be flattered by the opinion of such a man. But how dare I speak of your success in such a moment ? Nevertheless, our lost friend loved that success, and attached her own glory to it. Continue to render her illustrious who lias been so affectionate. Adieu, dear Francis. I will write to you from Weimar. Alas, there is so much that is heart-rending in your letter ! And tliat resolution of keeping the poor Saint-Germain ;^ you must bring her some day to my house. Adieu ! tenderly, sorrowfully, adieu ! ' Such a characteristic letter — in which the woman's heart placed her mascuhne mind in entire abeyance — could not fail to touch the soul of the enthusiastic Chateaubriand. ' This letter,' he says, in his old age, ' tliis eager, affectionate, rapid letter, written by a celebrated woman, caused in me redoubled tenderness. These, my comforters, have both passed away ; and they now claim for them- selves the regrets that they felt for one another ! ' ^ ^ A woman in the service of Madame de Beaumont. ® Memoires (VOutrc-Tomhe, iv. XVIII. Suffeinngs in Exile. 317 Chateaubriand's sentimental relations with Madame Eecamier, prolonged through so many years after the death of Madame de Stael and of nearly all their old friends, kept her memory ever fresh in their hearts and conversation. She looked longingly towards Weimar, then the intellectual centre of Europe — more brilhant than Ferney had ever been, or Coppet was ever to be — and hoped to find rest and consolation in its tranquil httle world of elect minds. On the re- covery of her daughter she fled towards it, as to a city of refuge. Her persecutions had, however, but begun. 'Having exiled her,' says her son, ' first from Paris, then from France, after suppress- ing by an arbitrary caprice her " Allemagne," and making it impossible for her to pubhsh anything whatever, however neutral in poHtics, the Govern- ment was at last to make even her home a prison, to interdict all travel, and to dej)rive her of the pleasures of social life and the consolations of friendshij).' ^ Talleyrand had written to her from America, that he should die if his exile were to continue another year. 'What then,' she wrote him, ' do you suppose must be my sufferings in my exile ? ' She had procured his restoration ; he left her to her fate. ^ Preface, by Baron de Stael, to the Bix Annies (TExil. 3 1 8 Madame de Sta'cl. ch. CHAPTEE XIX. MADAME DE STAEL AT WEIMAK. Weimar — The Ducliess Amelia — The Duke Charles Augustas — The Intellectual Circle of Weimar — Wielaud, Goethe and Schiller — The Duchess Louise — Letters of Goethe and Schiller respectinj^ Madame de Stael — Her Estimates of Goethe, Schiller and Wie- land — Life at AVeimar, Madame de Stael arrived at Weimar in December 1803. 'There I took courage/ she writes, 'in seeing what immense intellectual riches there were beyond the limit of French literature. I learned German ; I heard Goethe and Wieland, who, hap- pily for me, spoke good French. I understood the heart and genius of Schiller, notwithstanding the difficulty of expressing himself in a foreign language. The society of the Duke and Duchess pleased me extremely, and I passed three months there, during which the study of German literature gave my mind the occupation and interest which it needed to keep it from preying on itself.' ^ No State in Germany was now better recog- nised throughout the literary world than the little Duchy of Saxe-Weimar with its two hundred thou- ^ Dix Annees &c. i. 12. XIX. Goethe and Schiller. 319 sand inhabitants, its capital Weimar with but ten thousand, and its university town of Jena with but five thousand. Weimar was, in fact, the capital of intellectual Europe. One of the most admirable of women, the Duchess Ameha, had secured for it this pre-eminence. Though a widow at nineteen years of age, she ruled her small dominion with rare wisdom. She saw that there was one, and but one, way of rendering it prominent among the larger states around it — she could make it intellec- tually great. She called Wieland to Weimar, as preceptor of her son, Charles Augustus ; she gathered in her little court eminent writers, artists, and actors. Herder, one of the most vigorous and splendid minds of the German pulpit of the times, was appointed preacher of Weimar, and, under the faithful protection of the Duchess, became a com- manding authority in the literary circle of the Court. Knobel, Seckendorf, Boettinger, and others were attracted to it by her patronage. Her son, to whom she surrendered the government in 1775, had been so imbued with her spirit as to follow spontaneously and even enthusiastically her policy of making his capital, otherwise so insignificant, powerful and for ever historical in the literary world. While travelling in Germany in the last year of his minority, he found Goethe in his paren- tal home at Frankfort. The young poet was be- coming famous by his ' Werther ' and his recently published ' Goetz von Berlichingen.' Their friend- ^20 Aladanie de Stacl. CH. ship immediately became intimate, and, on assuming the government, the Duke chiimed him for Weimar, where he was the reigning genius during the re- mainder of his long hfe. In 1787 Schiller entered the circle, and formed with Goethe a friendship which will be for ever memorable in literary history. They were destined to be the two most brilliant stars in the poetic firmament of Germany. By the marriage of the Duke to the Princess Louise of Hesse, a woman every way befitting her position was placed at the head of the Court by the side of the Duchess Ameha. She became the ardent friend and life-long correspondent of Madame de Stael.2 Before the arrival of the French authoress, her approach had been intimated by letters from Frankfort ; and the Court circle, tliough curious to see the most eminent literary woman of the age, anticipated her coming with considerable anti- French prejudice ; for German criticism and egotism had already begun to disparage alike French litera- ture and French politics. Goethe was absent, at Jena, pursuing his favourite scientific researches. Schiller wrote to him that ' Madame de Stael is at Frankfort, and we may expect to see her soon. Pro- vided she understands German, we may enjoy her visit ; but to have to explain our rehgion, and contend with French volubility, may be a hard task. We may not be as successful as Schelhng was with "^ Coppet et Weimar. Paris, 1862. XIX. Godhc a7ia Schiller. 321 Camille Jordan, who came armed caji-a-pie wdtli tlie principles of Locke. " I despise Locke," said Sclielling, and his adversary was smitten dumb.' Goethe ratlier dreaded her noted conversational powers, and made no haste from Jena. Schiller Avrote to Korner (Jan. 4, 1804) : 'The piece ' — ' William Tell ' — ' which I have promised to the Berlin theatre for the end of February, entirely absorbs me, and behold, Satan has led to me the female French Philosopher who of all creatures living is the most animated, the most ready for com- bat, and the most fertile in words. But she is also the most cultivated, the most spirituelle of women, and if she were not really interesting, I would not be disturbed by her. You can well suppose how such an apparition, such a spirit, placed on the summit of French culture — so entirely opposed to ours — and arriving here suddenly from the centre of another sort of world, must be in contrast with the German nature, and especially with mine. She dispels from me all poetry, and I am asto- nished that I am able to do anything. I see her fre- quently and as I speak French imperfectly I really have some hard hours to pass. One is obliged, nevertheless, to esteem and highly honour this woman, for her remarkable intelligence and her liberal spirit.' Goethe, hesitating at Jena, WTote to Schiller : ' I leave entirely to you to arrange in the best manner you can all that concerns Madame de Stael. If she wishes to come hither to see me, VOL. I. Y 32 2 Madame de Stael. ch. she sliall be welcome, and, provided I am warned twenty-four hours in advance, she shall find an apartment well furnished, and good little dinners. In this manner we can readily see one another and talk together, and she can remain as long as she wishes. My occupations retain me only at brief in- tervals ; the rest of my time shall be given to her. But travel to Weimar, make my toilet, go to Court and into society — this is impossible: I positively declare it.' Schiller replied : ' Madame de Stael will doubtless appear to 3^ou what you have a priori imagined her to be. All in her is of one piece. In spite, therefore, of the difference between her nature and ours, one fpels at ease with her ; we can bear anything from her, and feel at liberty to say anything in reply. She is the representative, as perfect as interesting, of the true Frencli spirit. In all that we call philosophy— that is to say, on subjects of the very highest character — I am in op- position to her, and maintain this antagonism in spite of her eloquence. But with her nature and sentiment are paramount to all metaphysics, and elevate her spirit even to genius itself. Wishing to explain all, to comprehend all, to measure all, she admits nothing to be impenetrable, and whatever the liuht of reason cannot make clear does not exist for her. Hence her insurmountable aversion for the idealistic philosophy ; she sees in it only the road to mysticism and superstition. The poetic spirit is wanting in her entirely ; she can XIX. Schiller. 32; appreciate, in poetical works, only their passion and eloquence. She never approves what is false, but cannot always appreciate what is true. In spite of my poor French, we understand one another fairly ; but, as you speak the language perfectly, I doubt not your conversation with her will have much interest for both of 5'ou.' Candid and cordial as Schiller's judgment was, it was premature in some respects. She did not reject the Ideal Philosophy, but only its abuses. In the ' Allemagne ' she defends it against Locke and the French materialists. Her remarkable analysis of Kant ^ (more remarkable, however, as a criticism than as an analysis) is a vindication of it ; her next chapter, chiefly on Schelling and Fichte, is an exposure of its abuses. She beheved in Christian spiritualism, and had, as we have seen, no little sympathy with Christian mysticism. Schil- ler's imperfect knowledge of tlie French language led him, probably, to misapprehensions of her opinions ; and, as she was now only beginning her studies of the German mind, she ma}^ have dealt more in objections than in concessions, as the best means of eliciting the trutli. As to her apprecia- tion of poetry, had Schiller lived long enough to read the 'Allemagne,' he would have applauded with enthusiasm her splendid discussions on that subject, and wished no better criticisms on his own ^ Allemagne, iii. G. X 2 324 Madame de Stacl. ch. works.* Not a few of her critics erred, in like manner, regarding her appreciation of the fine arts, till the publication of ' Corinne ' conclusively refuted their opinion. The Duke at last ordered Goethe to appear at Court, in order to meet her. She was impressed by the greatness of his genius, though she dishked his cool scepticism, and mistook his philosophic self- control for decay of the passionate ardour of his early works, especially of his ' Werther.' ' He is a man,' she writes,^ ' of prodigious spirit in conversa- tion. His eloquence is strong with thought, his pleasantries full of grace and philosophy. His ima- gination is struck by external objects, as was that of the classic artists, and nevertheless his reason has the maturity of modern times. Nothing disturbs the strength of his intellect.' ' But,' she adds, ' he no longer has the ardour which pervades his " Werther," though the warmth of his thoughts still somewhat animates him. One would say that he describes only as a painter — that he values more the pictures which he presents than the emotions he feels ; time has rendered him a S2:)ec- tator. When he had an active part in the scenes of the passions, when he suffered in his own heart, his writings produced a more vivid impression. At first sight, one is astonished to perceive the cold- ness and even rigidity of Goethe, but as soon as he ■* AUemagne, passim, particularly cli. x., xi., and xii. 5 Ihid, ii. 7. XIX. Goethe. 325 is at ease with 3-011 liis imagination inspires him- His mind is universal, and impartial because it is universal ; and there is no indifference in his impartiality. His is a double existence, a double force, a double light which illuminates at the same time both sides of a question. He represents in himself the principal traits of German genius — pro- fundity of ideas ; grace born of the imagination, and therefore more original than that which is in- spired by the spirit of society; and finally sensibility, sometimes fantastic, but by this very fact the more interestino; to readers who seek in books somethino- to vary their monotonous being, and who would have poetry hold for them the place of real events.' If she admired Goethe as greatest in genius, she admired Schiller more, for both his genius and character. ' I first saw him,' she says,*^ ' in the salon of the Duke and Duchess of Weimar, in pre- sence of a company as cultivated as imposing. He could read French very well, but had never spoken it. I maintained, with warmth, the superiority of our dramatic system over all others ; he did not •dechne the combat, and, without embarrassment from the difficulties and slowness with which he had to speak in French, without fearing the opinions of the auditors Avliich were contrary to his own, his intimate convictions gave him utterance. To defeat him, I used at first the customary French arms, vivacity and pleasantry ; but very soon I un- ^ AllemagnCy ii 8, 326 Madame dc Stacl. ch. ravelled from the obstacles of his French sentences so many ideas, I was so struck by the simplicity of his character, I found him so modest, so impartially indifferent about his own success in the contest, so proud and animated in the defence of what he believed the truth, that I felt for him, from this moment, a friendship full of admiration. He was a man of rare genius and of perfect good faith : two quahties wliich ought to be inseparable in a man of letters ; for thought can be placed in equality Avith action only when it awakens in us the image of the truth, and falsehood is more disgusting in writings than in conduct. Schiller was as admirable among us for his virtues as for his talents. Conscience was his muse. He loved poetry, the dramatic art, history, literature, for themselves. Nothing could make him alter his writings, because his writings were himself ; tliey expressed his soul, and he could not conceive the possibihty of changing an expres- sion, if the interior sentiment which it conveyed had not chanijjed. It is a beautiful thing — tliis in- nocence in genius, this candour in strength. Schil- ler did himself wrong at iiis entrance into the world by the errors of his imagination ; but with the force of age he attained that sublime purity which is born of hio-h thoui^hts. He was the best of friends, of fathers, of husbands ; no one good quality failed in his sweet and serene character. Attacked while yet young by a hopeless malady, his children, his wife, who merited by a thousand XIX. Wielaiid. 327 touching qualities the attachment that lie had for her, consoled his last days,' . Wieland was especially agreeable to her : his French characteristics pleased her national preju- dices, though they were critically objectionable ; for she had the good sense to approve the aim of the Weimar coterie at originahty — a purely na- tional literature. ' Wieland,' she says, ' is the only German who has written in the French manner with real genius.' German writers had generally and servilely followed the French hterature of the time of Louis Xr\^. ; Wieland was the first to intro- duce that of the eighteenth century. In his prose works is traceable the influence of Voltaire ; in his poetry, that of Ariosto ; but his spirit is essenti- ally German. He is infinitely better informed than Voltaire ; he has studied the ancients more pro- foundly than any French poet has done. He lacks the lighter graces of the French, and this failure is attributable both to his talents and his faults. His conversation had for her ' great charms,' and pre- cisely because his natural quahties were in opposi- tion to his philosophy. This discordance might injure him as a writer, but rendered his conversa- tion piquant ; lie was animated, enthusiastic, and, ' like all men of genius, still young in old age.' He is both a German poet and French philosopher, and the one character disagrees with tlie other. ' The new German writers, who would exclude foreign influence from their literature, have been o 28 Madame de StaeL ch. unjust towards \\\\\\. His works, even in transla- tions, have excited the interest of all Europe ; he has made antiquity contribute special charms to modern literature ; lie has given, in verse, to liis fruitful but rude language a musical and graceful flexibility. It is nevertheless ti-ue that it has been unfortunate for his country tluit lie has had so many imitators. Kational originality is preferable. Wieland is a great master, but he should be a mas- ter Avithout disciples.' Herder had died before her arrival at Weimar ; Schiller and Goethe were now conspicuous in its intellectual constellation, with a radiance Avhich streamed over Europe. The Ducliess Louise, after- wards lier faithful correspondent, presided in the learned salon witli perfect grace. ' She is a true model of a woman destined b}^ nature to the most illustrious rank. Without pretension as without feebleness, slie inspires in tlie same degree confi- dence and respect ; and the heroism of tlie days of chivalry lias entered into her soul, without injuring the tenderness of her sex.' Tlie Duke is described as a man of military talents, and of piquant and thoughtful conversation, Avliich reminded the lis- tener that he had been formed hj the Great Frederick. Her three months spent at Weimar were full of interest, and relieved, for the time, the sadness of her exile. She disliked small cities, as re- strictive of talent, and as scenes of gossip and XIX. The Weimar Court. 329 small talk ; but ' Weimar,' she says, ' is not a little city ; it is a grand chateau, where a chosen circle entertains itself with every new production of the arts ; where w^omen, amiable disciples of great men, are constantly occupied Avith literary Avorks, as Avith important public CA^ents. They gather the AAdiole Avorld around them, by reading and study ; they escape, by their range of thought, from the limita- tions of their circumstances. In reflecting together, habitually, on the general questions common to the destiny of all, they forget the particular facts or anecdotes of each. One sees there none of those petty tendencies Avliich characterise provincial life and substitute affectation for elegance.' Before leaving Weimar, she had conceived the design of her ' AUemagne,' and AA^'ote to De Gerando : ' When Ave meet, ^^ou A\dll have to aid me in a part of a Avork that I propose to AA^ite on Germany. I have studied, and shall still study, the ncAv philo- sophic and aesthetic systems of Kant, Schelling, Schlegel, &c., and I Avisli to giA'e an analysis of them. I must first, hoAvever, read wdiat you have Avritten on them. I do not pretend to Avrite metaphysics ; but, to giA'e an estimate of the cha- racter of the Germans and of the spirit Avhich dis- tinguishes their literature, it Avill be requisite to give a simple and popular vicAV of their philosophic theories. Apropos of this, Avhat do you make of Villers? For tAvo months I liaA'e had no ucavs of him. He is a little like the Germans, Avhose enthusiasm Madame de Staci. CH. is too exalted to endure. I find, liowever, no diminution in the extreme kindness and attentions of these good Germans towards me ; and I have akeady letters from Berlin full of cordial interest. I have seen a great deal of Scliiller and Goethe. Goethe is an extraordinary man in conversation. They tell me here that Camille Jordan never saw him in his best humour ; in this case, he cannot know liim. Tliis Camille is, by the way, an un- vv^orthy idler — not a word from him for two months ! I am going, in four days, to Berhn. By force of reflection I support hfe in spite of exile, but my heart is always oppressed. A thousand tender thoughts for Annette ; and for Juliette,'' who loves me still, I hope, and of wliom I speak every- where with love ; I say everywhere, for she is very celebrated. As to Annette, she has concentrated her happiness in you and her son ; neither calumny nor praise reach her.' ^ Madame Recamier. XX. Court of Berlin. 331 CHAPTEE XX. BERLIX RETURX DEATH OE XECXER. Madame de Stael at Berlin — Her Reception at Court — Its Pageantries — Kotzebue — Augustus William Sclilegel — Execution of the Due d'Enghien — Death of Necker and lleturn of Madame de Stael — Effect of his Death on her — Iler Publication of his ' Manuscripts ' — Society at Coppet — She departs for Italy, Madame de Stael went from Weimar to Berlin, where letters from the Duke and Duchess procured her the most flattering reception at Court, especially from the Queen Louise, whose beauty and more charming quahties, as well as her subsequent mis- fortunes, have won for her the sympathies of the world. The contrast between the two Courts — the tranquil literary habits of the one, the gay and hardly intermitted pageantries of the other — was far from agreeable to her. She now wrote to the Duchess of Weimar the first letter of their long correspondence. ' It seems to me,' she says, ' that I owe you an account of my hfe at Berlin, since it is to your Highness and the Duke that I am indebted for the welcome I have received here. I was pre- sented on the 10th of March (1804) to the Queen- mother ^ and to the reigning Queen. I find the ' Widow of Frederick William IT. 332 Madame de Stael. ch. former very affable. I had been told that she speaks in a confused manner, but I understand her perfectly ; and her remarkable politeness, inspired by your letter, has rendered very delightful the moments she has graciously accorded me. She complains to me that your Highness never comes to Berhn, and she has planned a visit, for herself, to Weimar this summer. After my interview with her I visited the reigning Queen, and on this day the Court was truly imposing. At the moment the Queen entered, the band struck up. I Avas deeply moved. The Queen appeared in the full splendour of her beauty. She approached me and said, among many other gracious phrases, these words, which I cannot readily forget : " I hope, Madame, that you believe us to have sufficient good taste to be flattered by your visit to Berlin ; I have been impatient to see you." All the Princesses whom I saw at Weimar, and who love me because you do, hastened to embrace me. The King spoke very graciously to me. I was surrounded with kind attentions and was deeply touched. But, above all, I heard them repeat that I was loved at Weimar, and I perceived by certain indications that it was Weimar which had given me importance here. The Princess of Orange has impressed me as very gracious. Her husband and the Prince Eadziwill called on me the very next morning after my arrival. Everybody here has been tliinking, for twenty days, only of the masquerade : rehearsals, costumes, XX, Cottrt of Berlijt. 333 ballets, fill all heads ; and, by arriving a little late at Berlin, I have lost nothing but a more intimate knowledge of steps of the ballet, executed yester- day. We remained till three o'clock in the morn- ing, to see the Queen dance in a pantomime which represented the return of Alexander to Babylon. There were two thousand spectators : the pomp of the costumes and the beauty of the figures w^ere truly remarkable. Many quadrilles followed, and Kotzebue' entered as a priest of Mercury — or rather perhaps as Mercury himself — a crown of poppies on his head, a caduceus in his hand, and ugly and dis- gusting to such a degree, that, to use the words 01 Goethe, " it is inconceivable that one's imaoination should not be degraded by his image, for life." Ah ! "Weimar, Weimar ! All these apings of French manners appear so foreign to the genuine merits of the Germans ! It is not an imitation of Paris that I like to find abroad ; it is original, native character. In short, in two months I will be back Avitli your Highness ; it seems to me that I should be already with you. I am to dine with the Prince Louis, at Madame de Berg's. Afterwards I will give you my impressions more in detail ; for tiU now nobody has been able to talk with me except about ballets. Pardon the confusion of this letter. I write on awaking, my head filled with the sounds of cymbals and trumpets.'^ ^ The dramatic author and courtier, who was assassinated by the student Sand. * Coppet et Weimar, ii. 334 Madame de Stael. ch. At Berlin began her friendsliip with Augustus WiUiani Schlegel, tlie greatest critic of his age. His learning was prodigious, even for a German. An exact classical scholar, he was also familiar with all the literatures of modern Europe ; and, in every department of his multifarious knowledge, he was a critical, if not an indisputable authority. He was a poet of high merit. As a linguist he was of the first order, and, not only one of the very earhest leaders in Sanscrit and Indo-European studies, but he became an oracle of them, consulted by scholars from Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and all places where that ne^vly opened but marvellously fruitful field of research Avas cultivated. He was at home in mediieval literature, and contributed effectively to its just appreciation by modern students. With his vast acquisitions he combined the insio;ht, and, it must be acknowledged, some of the infirmities of genius. He could be malicious ; in his old age he was vain, and even pedantic ; but remained, nevertheless, a supreme authorit3\ He was withal a superior talker, and Madame de Stael, who ever liked a rival in this brilliant faculty, was irresistibly attracted to him. She received him into her family as instructor of her children, where he remained many years, liberally com- pensated by a salary of twelve thousand francs, with abundant leisure for his literary labours, op- portunities for extensive travel with his patroness, and the freedom and luxuries of an opulent home. XX. Death of Necker. 335 Madame de Stael remained six weeks in Berlin, the idol of its higliest society. It was there that she first heard of one of the foulest crimes of her persecutor — one which the world will never for- give nor palliate, and which might well add to the intensity of her apprehensions of his growing power and his personal enmity against herself. 'I lived,' she says, ' on the cpiay of the Spree, and my apartments were on the ground floor. I was awakened carl}^ one morning, and told that Prince Louis Ferdinand^ was on horseback under my window, with important news for me.' It was the news of the execution of the Due d'En2:hien. ' What folly ! ' she exclaimed, ' it is a false report, started by the enemies of France.' The Prince sent her the ' Moniteur,' reporting the 'judgment,' and the terrible crime could not be doubted. It struck her, as it struck all Europe, with astonish- ment and liorror. She hastened to Vienna. A letter from ]ier father, the last she ever received from him, denounced in the strongest terms the murder of the Duke, but assured her of his own continued health. Two letters soon followed, in- timatino; his dano-erous illness. The courier who brought them actually knew that he was dead ; the sad news was withheld from her, but she instinctively surmised it. She wrote to the Duchess ■* Who fell gallantly, two years later, at the battle of Saalfeld, aud whose brother, Prince Augustus, found an asylum at Coppet, and was smitten there with a life-long passion for Madame Recamier. ^,1,6 Madame de Stacl. ch. of Saxe-Weimar : ' I am o-oing; home — leavino- Yiemia, where my happiness ends. I preserve for you the most tender gratitude. If I return to hfe, I will return to you, but every day will deepen the wound of which I may die, sooner or later. Sym- pathise with me in your palace, in your noble solitude. Think sometimes of the broken heart in which the memory of you will still hve.' She immediately directed her course homeward. On the route her father's death was revealed to her. ' A sentiment of inexpressible terror,' she sa3's, ' was joined to my despair. I saw myself without support on earth, forced to sustain my soul by my own little stren2:th aojainst the misfortunes of life. I felt that thenceforward my heart could no more be happy as it had been ; and no day has passed, since April 1804, in Avhich I have not referred all my sufferings to this event.' All the strength of that unsurpassed fihal affec- tion which had bound her to her father now burst forth in convulsive agonies. Madame JSTecker de Saussure received from her a letter of ' twelve pages, exceeding all imagination in its frightful, terrible, and yet touching wailings.' Accomjianied by her ' husband, and the youngest son of Madame de Stacl, she set out to meet her ; they found her at Zurich in profound suffering, and conducted her homeward. ' I will not describe,' says her cousin, ' the cruel scenes which followed. It is not when grief overwhelms the soul that genius is recognisable. XX. Love for her Father. 2ili7 The violent sufferings of a desolate heart are the same with all our poor human race. On this journey, it was only in brief intervals, of calm- ness, that I could recognise the real Madame de Stael, and never have I been more struck with what was marvellous in her nature than in these intermissions of her anguish. When the exhaustion of suffering had subdued her violent emotions, she entreated us to converse in the carriage, apparently because the sound of words helped her to command herself. She indicated to Schlegel a subject for discussion. He developed a great quantity of novel ideas, and, when the conversation became animated, she sometimes suddenly launched into it, resuming all her talents. Speaking of Germany, of men, of systems, of society, she displayed a fire of thought and a beauty of language altogether extraordinary ; a thousand splendid pictures succeeding one another, until, reseized by violent grief, she sank again under the thought of her bereavement. It was hke the illumination of lightning in a storm, suddenly extinguished by winds and rain. Her thoughts could not be completely distracted ; even when most carried away by our discussions, a trembling, a contraction of the lips, showed that she had not ceased to suffer, and that she spoke under the weight of her grief. In the midst of her desolation, M'hen we arrived at Coppet, singular affections of the ima- gination seized her ; she sunk under a sort of ver- tigo. Behcving that she had lost the guardian of all VOL. I. z Madame dc Stacl. ch. that was necessary to her being, it seemed to her that the general ties of all things were dissolved. She imagined that her fortune would be lost ; that her children would never be educated ; that he]- j^eople would no longer obey her ; that nothing could go on without her father.' ' I have lost my father ! ' was her exclamation in answer to every remonstrance. The strong brain was overwhelmed by the stronger heart. ' It would be necessary,' continues her cousin, ' to describe each day of her hfe, at this time, if we would show the place of her father in her heart. Slie never ceased to Hve with him ; she always felt herself protected, consoled, succoured by him. Later she invoked him in her prayers, and no happy event occurred without her saying " My father has obtained this for me." ' She bore his miniature on her person the remainder of her hfe. It Avas an object of superstition to her ; only once did she part with it ; she imagined that it might console her daughter in a period of sickness as it had consoled herself, and, giving it to her, said, ' Gaze upon it, gaze upon it, when you are in pain.' ^ Necker died after an illness of nine days, in- voking, with his hand upon his failing heart, bless- ings upon his absent daughter, and repeating many times, with all his remaining force, ' She has loved me dearly ! She has loved me dearly ! ' His last words were, ' Great God, my Judge and my Saviour, receive Thy servant, hastening down to death.' ^ Ao^tce&c. ii. XX. Neckers Character. 339 On his death-bed he had written, with a trembhng hand, a letter to Bonaparte, assuring him that his daughter was not responsible, in any way, for his last book, and entreating him to have com- passion on her sufferings. This last letter, from the dying hand of one of the most notable men of the times, in behalf of his only child, tlie most notable woman of the times, was received by Napoleon, but was treated with silent contempt.^ ' Magnanimity,' she says, alluding to his conduct in this instance, ' magnanimity always appeared to him affectation, and he spoke of it as melodramatic. Had he been able to appreciate the ascendency of this virtue, he would have been both a better and an abler man.' A good man, and in many respects a great man — one of the few who have not been corrupted by wealth or power — Necker, after a long and stormy life, found peace at last amid the tranquil scenery of the family cemetery at Coppet, where he Avas laid to rest by the side of his remarkable wife, at whose grave he had not failed, during ten years, daily to meditate and pray. His daughter placed on their tomb a touching bas-relief, by Canova, repre- senting a being, aerial as if already glorified, lead- ing towards the sky another figure, which looks back compassionately on a young woman wlio is veiled and prostrate on a grave. Time, which rectifies all things, will probably, ^ I>ix Annces, i. 16. z 2 340 Madame de Stael. ch. sooner or later, rehabilitate Necker in the history of France. It cannot be doubted that, in the corrupt times of the Eevolution and of the First Empire, if not since, his almost anomalous moral character rendered him incomprehensible to his critics, and impaired his rank as a statesman. Had the American Eevolution failed, Washington's own character, as well as his fame, would have been different in the judgment of the world. Xecker, before the unavoidable failure of the Eevolution, was the great man of his times. Not merely were his talents acknowledged, but his opinions were enthusiastically approved, except by the corrupt ruhng classes and a few Eadicals. ' Men of ex- traordinary genius,' says Emerson, ' acquire an almost absolute ascendant over their nearest com- panions. The Count de Crillon said to M. d'AUon- ville, Avitli French vivacity, " If the universe and I professed one opinion, and Necker expressed a contrary one, I should be at once convinced that the universe and I were mistaken." ' The men who defeated Necker defeated the Eevolution. No impartial thinker can doubt that, had France followed the guidance of Necker (what- ever may have been the fallac}' of some of his opinions, as of those of all around him) she would have escaped the atrocities and failures of the Eevo- lution. History may yet have a word to say on that subject. The only survivor of his personal acquaintances XX, Neckers Policy. 341 whom I have been able to discover, writes : ' The hour has not yet come for impartial justice to be done to this venerable man, who combined with so many eminent gifts such severe virtues. Tlie writer who could trace with the same pen the " Compte- Eendu," the " Coursde Morale Eehgieuse," and the " Bonheur des Sots," — the Minister of State who, witliout accepting any reward, put into the treasury two millions of his own property, witli hardly a hope of receiving it again — the man who had the courage, at the Court of Versailles, to be, at that time, a defender of religious sentiments, a faithful husband, and a devoted parent — Avho from 1780 to his death in 1804 avowed, as his political motto, the utmost liberty compatible with order, — such a man merits that his memory be held in honour by every nation which is capable of appreciating true worth. The creator of the Provincial Assembhes in France, an institution which (as M. de Lavergne has shown) might, if riglitly appreciated, have saved France, deserved the national gratitude. His trial before the tribunal of history is not yet finished.''' Curiously enough, the chief hostile criticism on Necker's poHcy has had reference to a principle which the advancing liberalism of our own times zealously recognises. He wished the largest possible consideration of the national problem by the national mind. He therefore provided that the Tiers Etat, ^ Pictet de Sergy's unpublished Souvenirs. 342 Madame de Stael. ch. the people, sliould be represented in the States- General by as many deputies as the two other orders united ; for the two others were virtually one : tlie Churcli being a part of the State constitu- tion, the clergy Avere functionaries of the State ; the nobles and the clergy formed the aristo- cratic class ; botli claimed immunities from taxa- tion which could no longer be tolerated by the burdened people. What remedy could the latter command without equal representation ? This sympathetic concession to the people has been considered by Necker's critics his great crime ; in our day it should be esteemed his great virtue. He has been further condemned for not gua- ranteeing, in his programme of the States-General, the separate action of the nobles and clergy on the one hand, and the deputies of the people on the other. The latter were substantially tlie nation. They were the sufferers whose wrongs were to be redressed. The problem was a financial one. Increased resources could alone save the State. The nobles and the Cliurch had brouo'ht it to ruin by their hnancial excesses and exemptions. They had obstinately refused to share in the taxation proportionately with the people, down to the time of the States-General, when the gathering storm compelled them to make favourable avowals, Avhich the people could not, or would not, trust. Necker did not dictate to the deputies on the question of their separate or united action. He XX. Neckers Policy. 343 left that for their own decision, tliough his sym- pathies were on the side of the people. The nobles and the clergy resisted, during six tnmultuons weeks, the attempts of the popnlar representatives (led chiefly by Mirabeau) for a combined Assem- bly for tlie verification of their powers. They met separately down to June 17, 1789, when the de- puties of the people, after some additions to their number from the other orders, declared them- selves to be the ' National Assembly,' announcing that, ' after the verification of their powers, they discovered the Assembly to be already composed of representatives which were sent directl}' by at least ninety-six hundredths of the nation.' ^ It was the obstinacy of the aristocratic classes that thus roused the popular passions, till they at last swept the nobility and the Church out of the bankrupt country. The ruling classes and the Church were responsible for the long degrada- tion of the people, by which they were rendered capable of the ferocities which ensued ; and they were responsible also for the immediate provo- cation wdiich aroused and maddened the people. Neither Necker nor any other man could have an- ticipated the popular excesses. Hitherto, through- out French history, the j)eople had been too humbly submissive ; the higher classes had led the way in almost every national disru]:)tion, and the}' ^ Hist. He la Revolution, kc, i. G, par Bertraud cle Molevilla. Paris, 1801. 344 Madame de Sta'el. ch. wished now to control the nation without sharing materially in the financial sacrifices necessary for its salvation. They wrangled at Versailles till their liour was passed ; the nation was wrecked ; and they who provoked the disaster have found it convenient to charge Necker with their own re- sponsibility for it. XXI. Religion. 345 CHAPTEE XXL LIFE AT COPPET. Moral Effect of the Death of her Father — Her Eeligious Views^ Letter to Gouverneur Morris — Her Sketch of Necker's Character and private Life — Society at Coppet — Bonstetten— Schlegel — Miiller, the Historian — Her Opinion of him — Madame Necker de Saussure — Letter to Madame Eecamier. The death of her father made a moral epoch in Madame de Stael's hfe. The baptism of sorrow purified her nature. Always predisposed to re- ligious sentiments, she had, nevertheless, hitherto felt more or less the relaxing influence of the prevalent moral ideas of her times. Though they could not cliange her principles, they could not fail to affect the sentiments, and, to some extent, the life of a being so susceptible. Her cousin says that from this time ' her religious opinions were more pronounced, her sentiments of piety more con- stant and more active. The vagueness of a poetic faith could no longer suffice for her heart.' Not a poetic faith, indeed, but still hers was always a faith of the heart rather than of tlie head. It was more difficult, in tliat age than even in ours, to accept the traditional, the defmitive dicta of the Church. The genius, tlie spirit of Cliristianity, now became, 34^ Madame de Stael, ch. more than ever, precious to her ; but she found it not in speculative dogma or formula, or sectarian arrogations. She found it in all sects, underlying their petty discriminations ; in the sincere but eccentric fervour of Madame de Krlidner, as we have seen and shall hereafter more fully see ; in the Moravians, to whom she devotes a chapter of her ' AUemagne ; ' in the mediaeval Mystics, notmth- standing their reveries : in the Protestant sects generally ; and in select Eoman Catholic minds. ' Who,' she asks, ' is not profoimdly affected in read- ing the spiritual writings of Fenelon ? Where else do we discover more light, more consolation, more charity ? Here is no fanaticism, no austerity other than that of virtue, no intolerance, no exclusiveness. The diversities of Christian communions cannot be felt at this height, which is above all the accidental forms that time creates and destroys. We have no control over our birth or our death, and more than tliree-fourths of our destiny is determined by these events. No one can change the pri- mary impressions of his birth, his country, his age. ISTo one can acquire features or genius which he has not received from nature ; and how many otlier circumstances enter irresistibly into the composition of life ! If our fate depend upon a hundred different lots, there are ninety and nine whicli depend not upon ourselves ; and all the force of our will bears upon the feeble portion Avliicli seems 3'ct in our poAver. The action XXI, Religion. 347 of the will, even on this feeble portion, is singularly- incomplete. The single act of man Avhich can always attain its object, is tlie accomplishment of duty. The issue of all other resolutions depends on accidents with which even prudence can do nothing. The greater proportion of men never obtain that which they most strongly desire ; and prosperity, even if they attain it, comes to them often in an unexpected way.' ^ We have hereto- fore seen, in her remarkable conversation with Lacretelle, the historian, and shall hereafter see in an equally remarkable one, reported by Pdtter, the distinguished Berlin professor, how completely she rehed on the instincts of the heart in matters of religion. But the intuitions of the heart Avere, with her, the highest logic, — higher than the deduc- tions of the reason, and always in harmony with the latter when it is right. She believed that the instincts, which in lower creatures are so sure, ought to be surer in man, in whom they are aided by reason ; they are indeed but a quicker, a spon- taneous logic, and, in matters of the heart, man's most infallible resource. Eeligion was, with her, supremely a matter of the heart ; and dogma and formula important only so far as they ministered to the needs of the heart. In her present affliction her genius, as usual in the great trials of her career, remained unimpaired, and rose to loftier altitudes ; and her greatest ' L'Alh'VKifjnc, iv. G, 34^ Madame de Stacl. ch. works were to follow. Thenceforward life was to her more serious, more sacred. For some time her grief seemed inconsolable. Four months after the death of Necker she wrote to her American friend, Gouverneur Morris : ' The pain of his loss deepens every day in my heart. Ah ! tell me, in your America, where they love mankind — in your America, where they beheve in God, how do you endure the sorrow of death? When souls have been so intimately united, is there no communica- tion between the living and the dead ? I have friends, I have duties, but he was in the centre of my heart ; there, where no one else has penetrated — where no one else ever can penetrate. I weep bitterly in writing ; sympathise with me, for my heart is broken.' Bonstetten was now with her, to comfort her. ' She is frightfully depressed,' lie writes to Frederica Brun; 'we have done nothing but w^eep together. Wliat eloquence ! What sentiment ! What pro- found love for the father wdio loved her so much ! She is now independent, with an income of a hundred thousand livres ; and God only knows if she w^ill be happy, with all her earthly advantages ; the world is too little for her soul of lire.' ''^ She turned to her habitual means of relief in times of trouble — to work ; and prepared a sketch of the 'Character and Private Life of JSTecker,'^ to "^ Steinlen's Bonstetten, cli. vi. ^ Du Caractere de M. NecJcer et de sa Viepricce : (Euvres comjdl'tes, ii. XXI. Her Biography of Necker. 349 accompany a volume of his fragmentary writings which she soon pubhshed, with the title of his ' Manuscripts,' — that palpitating record of grief and affection, that heart-touching lament, which Benjamin Constant says is ' the best revelation of her own character ; for her whole mind and heart are displayed in it. The delicacy of her percep- tions, the astonishing variety of her thoughts, the ardour of her eloquence, the strength of her judg- ment, the reahty of her enthusiasm, her love of liberty and justice, her passionate sensibilit}^, the melancholy which often- marked even her purely literary productions, — all these are here devoted to express a single feeling, to call forth the sym- pathy of others in a single sentiment. No- where else has she treated a subject with all the resources of her intellect, all the depths of her feeling, and without being diverted by a single thought of a less absorbing nature.' ^ There is probably not to be found in all literature a more sincere and affecting disclosure of the heart of woman, or a more perfect expression of filial affection, than in this introduction to the ' Manu- scripts.' It is limited to the personal character and private hfe of Necker ; for to her, in this time of sorrow, the subject was too sacred for j)ohtics ; she makes but passing allusions to them. She pro- jected, however, a vindication of hispubhc life, and left it at her death, twelve j^ears later, incomplete, * Constant's Melanges See. viii. 350 Madame de Stael. ch. but splendid with her best abihty, in her ehiborate work on the French Eevohition. Occupation mitigated her grief; her friends gathered sympathetically and numerously around her ; and we are assured that the summer of 1804 was one of the most brilliant seasons at the chateau.^ Schlegel, Constant, Sismondi, Bonstetten, enter- tained her by their conversation. Midler, the his- torian, joined them — a hving library — ' crushing under the weight of his erudition, as well as his historic good sense, the two sceptics ' — Constant and Schlegel. ' Sismondi was astonished and con- founded by this ratthng fire of ideas. Bonstetten was gay, elegant, full of fine amiability. The good angel of the house, Madame Necker de Saussure, quite up to the intellectual level of these men, tempered their disputations by her sweet gravity and mascuhne judgment ; in the midst of them all, the queen, the mistress of these enchanting scenes, Corinne, powerful and vivid, electrified the circle, though death was in her heart. " I go," she said to them, " to bear the burden of life into Italy, where, they say, one forgets existence." It was a spectacle worthy of profound and melancholy interest.' Bonstetten in midsummer wrote : ' Madame de Stael becomes daily greater and better ; but souls of great talent have great sufferings : they are solitary in the world, hke Mont Blanc' In his letters to Frederica Brun he lias left us many ' Steinlen's Bonstetten, ch. vii. XXL Coppd. 351 interesting allusions to Coppet at this period, ' I like Schlegel very much,' he says. ' He is a man full of ideas, of spirit, of great and solid learninf^ It is hardly possible to have more intellect than he has : he attacks everything, and his French-German is so amusing, so droll, so biting, that any adversary is disarmed in ten minutes. He has an agreeable countenance, an expression of kindliness ; but in excitement it becomes as sharp as a sword : his gestures are so characteristic, that I cannot help laughing at him. Madame de Stael plunges into his disputes ; all old French opinions enter tlie lists by turns, and are thrust from the saddle like dis- mounted cavahers. Schlegel, when not in gentle mood, is unmercifully severe ; and the most beauti- ful sight in the scene is Madame de Stael charoino- herself with the blame of our quarrels ; and she has three times as much intellect as he. Schlegel re- sponds to her, now with the finest thought, and then with the finest gallantry. Everybody is delighted with the combat. They make breaches into the poor French party every day ; Madame de Stael helps to demohsh it. Albertine [Madame Necker de Saus- sure] is a convert. Midler is always the same : gay, accomphshed, a devourer of books ; we are to each other what we were twenty years ago.' ' I returned yesterday with Midler from Coppet. I feel fatigued, as by a surfeit of intellect. There is more mind ex- pended at Coppet in a day than in many countries in a year. But I am lialf dead ; and my chamber , s 2 Madavie de Stacl. CH. at Geneva seems a tomb.' Again : ' I was yester- day at Coppet, with Sismondi, Midler, and Mallet ; the heaux esprits of all Switzerland united there. Mliller fought Schlegel ; the latter denied, at the table, the personahty of Moses, of Homer, and of Ossian ; Muller responded that he would some time or other take the pen and demonstrate, in a learned work, that Charlemagne never existed. Then he gave us an analysis of the first two books of Moses, chapter by chapter, which imposed silence on Schlegel and Constant. They dared not open their mouths again. The good Sismondi was quite stunned ; he has declared to me that they all seemed steeped in clownish ignorance. I tried to console him. He wished to go to Germany, to see, himself, its great geniuses ; I counselled him rather to go to Greece.' Madame de Stael, with whom sentiment was infinitely superior to erudition, heartily appreciated Muller, who combined both. ' He is,' she says, ' the most learned of historians, and is truly a poet in his manner of painting events and men — a scholar, and a writer of grand talent. He is a man of incredible knowledge ; and his powers, in this respect, really alarm us. One cannot conceive how the head of man can contain such a world of facts and dates. The six thousand years known to us are all perfectly arranged in his memory ; and his studies have been so profound, that they are as astounding as his personal recollections. There XXI, Milller. 353 is not a village of Switzerland, not a noble family, the history of which he does not know. One day, in consequence of a bet, they demanded of him the series of the sovereign Counts of Bugey. He named them instantly, save that he could not recall whether one of them had been regent or reigned by title, and he seriously reproached himself for such a failure of memory. Men of genius among the ancients were not subject to this immense labour of learning, which augments as time goes on ; their genius was not fatigued by erudite studies. It costs more to distinguish oneself in our days, and we ought to respect the formidable labour now requisite for the mastery of almost any subject. The death of such a man as Miiller is an irreparable loss ; something more than a man seems to perish when such faculties are extinguished. He is the classic German historian, reading habitually, in the original, the Greek and Latin authors ; he cultivates literature and the arts in the service of history ; his boundless erudition, instead of impairing his natural vivacity, is the ground whence his imagina- tion takes its flight, and the living truth of his pictures is founded in their scrupulous fidelity.''^ Bonstetten makes an excursion with Miiller to Valeyres. 'We are again,' he says, 'the old, or rather the young friends. He is joyous as a child ; but here the people seem to me frightfully prosaic. In four days I shall be in Coppet, where I shall find 6 rAUemagne, ii. 29. VOL. I. A A 354 Madame de Stael. ch. myself prosaic, at least till my wings grow again.' In August he and Miiller are again at Coppet. He is not in good mood, and qualifies his opinions somewhat. Of Madame de Stael he says (still to Frederica Brun), ' She has an extreme kindness; no person has more mind ; but she is destitute of some of your excellences. She lacks appreciation of art ; for her the beautiful exists only in intellect, or eloquence. Ko one has more practical wisdom, less for herself, it is true, than for her friends ; but Schlegel is insupportable to me. He has not been, able to discipline himself enough to attain a httle reason.' N"o thing, however, could change Bonstetten's good opinion of Madame Necker de Saussure. ' She is an angel,' he writes a httle later ; ' she criticises my labours with severity, and makes excellent remarks to me ; for she under- stands metaphysics and languages better than her cousin.' ' Nevertheless,' remarks Steinlen, liis biographer, ' Madame de Stael was always the hterary star around which moved the thoughts of Bonstetten — she was the Muse who was able to awaken ideas.' Though conversation and labour afforded to Madame de Stael the most effectual rehefs fi-om suffering, she could not yet rise above the dejec- tion occasioned by the death of her father. Cop- pet was still too sad a place for her stricken heart and restless genius. She planned a tour in Italy (which was to enable her to give to the world her XXI. Resolves to travel in Italy. best-known work), and on the eve of her depar- ture wrote to Madame Eecamier (November 2, 1804), 'Dear and beautiful Juhette, you give me the hope of seeing you, next July, on my return from Italy ; then only can I believe myself no more exiled. I will receive you in the chateau, where I have lost what I loved the most in the world. You will bring a sense of happiness here, where it no longer exists. Beg M. Eecamier to afford me this consolation. Adieu, dear Juliette, I embrace you. I love you more than any other woman in France.' " ' Coppet et Weimar. A A y 356 Maaame de Stael. ch. CHAPTER XXII. ITALY ART. Madame de Stael goes to Italy — Her Love of Music — Sclileg-el's con- nection with lier Worlcs — Her Italian Tour — Observations on Art — ' Corinne.' Necker died on April 8, 1804 ; by the end of October his daughter's sketch of his ' Character and Private Life' was finished. Her mind now recoiled upon itself; every local scene that re- called her father recalled her bereavement. Her health began to fail, and she was ordered by her physician to the more genial chmate of the South. In November she was on her way to Italy, ac- companied by nearly all her family — her domestics, her three children, and Schlegel ; and, part of the way, by Sismondi, She could have no better guide among the classic monuments of that country than the learned German, who was familiar with every allusion to them in the Latin writers, and whose cultivated, artistic taste could assist her own. Hitherto music had been to her the chief of the arts. She was skilful at tlie piano, and a good singer ; and music was a necessity of her XXII. Her Love of Music . 357 nature, not merely as a relief from study or trouble, but as an expression of her exuberant sensibility. For many years an Italian musician, Pestosa, was a member of her household, not only as an instructor, but as a sort of family minstrel.^ The other arts slie could appreciate only by her in- stinctive good taste ; the conversation of Schlegel led her to more critical appreciation of them. No- minally the instructor of her children, he was, practically, her own also, and doubtless we owe, in part, the splendid superiority of her subsequent works to his aid. The chief merits of her ' AUe- magne ' have been claimed for him ; he unquestion- ably was the best of authorities, and she used him as other authors would use the best of accessible libraries. All her writings were submitted to the criticism of the cultivated coterie of Coppet ; but Schlegel himself denied that he had given more than critical revision to the 'AUemagne,' and ac- knowledged that, instead of making her books, he had himself learned from her how to write so as to interest the European public.^ No reader of her essay on Literature can doubt her ability to write the ' AUemagne ; ' and, whatever aid she might have received from Schlegel, as from books or other sources, in gathering the materials for her ' Corinne,' its magnificent descriptions, its wealth of ^ Coppet et Weimar, iii. ^ P. de Golberg's article on Schlegel in the Nouvelle Revue Germanique, Sept. 1832. 35^ Madame de Stael. ch. sentiment and of thought, its superabundant genius in all respects, prove it to have been all her own. No man could have written it ; its faults, as well as its excellences, indicate the sex of its author. She was an apt scholar for Schlegel's instruc- tions in the arts ; for, if hitherto unskilled in their technical criticism, her genius was ever in sympathy with them. To her, beauty was the highest utility. Eigorous analysis, so important in the sciences and practical arts, she would apply cautiously to the fine arts. ' Analysis,' she says, ' can examine only by dividing. It is applicable, like the scalpel, to dead nature, but it is a poor instrument for the knoAvledge of that which lives ; and if it is difficult to define, by words, the animated conception which represents to us objects in their completeness, it is precisely because such a conception belongs to the very essence of things. To divide in order to comprehend is, in philosophy, a sign of weakness, as to divide in order to conquer is, in politics.' Speaking, in her ' Allemagne,' of the sentiment, the enthusiasm, which characterised the art criticism of Winckelmann, she remarks : ' It is thus only that we can comprehend the beautiful arts. It is ne- cessary that the attention which they excite should spring from love, and that we discover in the great works of genius, as in the features of a cherished being, a thousand charms, revealed by the senti- ments which they inspire.' Though the sentiment of the beautiful was ever strong with her, yet, as XXII. Art Criticism. 359 with the Greeks, it had hitherto found its gratifica- tions more in humanity, in Kving rather tlian in inanimate nature. What we call the ' fine arts ' were, in her native language, called the beautiful arts — beaux arts. ' The beautiful,' she says, ' con- sidered only as agreeable, would be confined to the sphere of the sensations, and, in consequence, be subject to differences of taste ; it could not merit that universal assent which is the true proof of beauty. The beautiful, defined as perfection, demands a sort of appreciation similar to that on which esteem is founded. The enthusiasm which the beautiful ought to inspire belongs neither to the sensations nor the judgment : it is an innate disposition, like the sentiment of duty and the primary notions of the understanding. We recog- nise the beautiful, when we see it, because it is the exterior image of the ideal, the type of which is in our minds. Diversities of taste can apply to that which is agreeable, because the sensations are a source of this kind of pleasure ; but all men admire what is really beautiful because they have, in their souls, sentiments of celestial origin which beauty awakens, and which it enables them to en- joy.' It is to be regretted that we have but few de- tails of her Italian travels. The first part of the ' Ten Years of Exile ' ends at her return from Germany, in 1804, and the narrative is not resumed till after an interval of nearly six years. 360 Madame de Stael. ch. We learn from her son, the Baron de Staiil,^ that her mind, oppressed by grief, revived under the genial sky of Naples ; that the vivid impressions of the scenery, the art, and the poetic life of the South, reawakened her genius, restoring her power to think and write. She was treated by the diplomatic agents of Napoleon without favour, but also without injustice. Letters of introduction from Joseph Bonaparte gave lier access to the best society in Eome, but she wrote to Bonstetten that she found in it little nourishment for either her mind or heart. William Humboldt was her best com- panion there. The Eoman princes seemed stupid to her. ' I got along better,' she says, ' with the cardinals, who, though they tyrannise a little, have a wider range of thought. But how little need has one of men here, where things speak so power- fully ! Yesterday I was received at the Arcadian Academy with indescribable applause. All Eome, with its princes, cardinals, &c. was present. I spare you a dozen sonnets, in which I am made a new star.' '^ She appreciated the capabilities of the people and the evils which repressed their spirit. ' In the present state of the Italians,' she saj^s, ' the glory of the beautiful arts is the only intellectual passion allowed them. Tliey discern genius, in the arts, ^ Avcrtissemc7if, by Baron de Stael, to second part of the Div Annec's Sec. ^ Morell's Karl von Bonstetten, viii. "Wintertliur, 1864. XXII. SotUhern Life. 361 with an enthusiasm which ought to produce many great men, if applause alone sufficed to produce them — if a strong hfe, grand interests, and national independence, were not necessary for their exist- ence.' She observes that even the humour of the people is tinctured with the artistic spirit : ' The true gaiety of the Italians is not mockery, it is imagination ; their comedy is not the picture of manners, but poetic exaggerations. It is Ariosto, not Mohere, that can amuse Italy.' ' The people of the South are readily fatigued by prose, they paint their true sentiments only in poetry.' She recognised much originality, much individuality, in their spirit as in their poetic, though not in their prose literature. The limitations imposed by political oppression on the range of inquiry and speculation rendered the prose writers tame and monotonous, but the poets had more freedom in their imaginative sphere. She discerned in the general mind much ' national colour,' with abundant individual variations. And this intellectual character is, in her estimation, a good ground of hope, ' for,' she adds, ' genius is essentially creative, it bears the character of him who possesses it. Nature, which wills tliat no two leaves shall be alike, has placed stiU more diversity in souls ; and imitation is only a species of death, as it deprives one of his natural existence.' The climate and scenery especially charmed her senses and tranquillised her mind. ' The night- 362 Madame de Stacl. ch, ingales repose among tlie roses, and the purest music mingles with tlie sweetest odours. All the charms of nature seem here to attract one an- other. But that which is, above all, refreshing and \ inexpressible, is the balminess of the atmo- sphere. When we contemplate a beautiful view, in the North, the climate always mars a little the pleasure that we feel. The shght sensations of cold and humidity, which turn our attention more or less from what we see, are like false notes in a concert; but, in approaching Naples, you experience so perfect a sense of well-being, so intimate a friendship of nature for you, that nothing lessens your agreeable sensations. The relations of man, in our climates, are mostly with society. Nature in the warm countries places him in rela- tion with exterior objects, and his feelings flow spontaneously forth upon surrounding scenes. The South has, indeed, its melancholy : in what place does not the destiny of man produce it? But there is, in this melancholy, neither discon- tent, nor anxiety, nor regret. Elsewhere it is life, such as it is, that suffices not for the faculties of the soul ; here the faculties of the soul suffice not for life. One's superabundant sensations in- spire indolent reveries, of which the mind hardly troubles itself to take account. There is, in this nature, at once a life and a repose which satisfy entirely the varied cravings of existence.' To such a mind the great works of art could XXII. Classic Art. :^^2} not fail to be unusually suggestive. She wandered through the miles of galleries, in Florence, Eome, and Naples, crowded with such works, or rather their classic ruins — with dehght mixed with awe. In the Vatican, ' one seems to see,' she remarks, ' the battle-field Avhere time has warred against genius, and these mutilated members attest its victory, and our loss.' She was struck by the air of repose which the classic masters impressed on their statues and busts, ' the images of heroes and gods, in which the most perfect beauty, in eternal serenity, seems to enjoy itself What poetry in these visages, where the sublime expression is for- ever fixed, where the greatest thoughts are clothed with an image so worthy of them ! The courageous support of the suffering of our times, in the midst of a social state so cold and so oppressive, is now what is most noble in man ; and, in our days, he who has not suffered knows not how to feel, or think. But there was, in antiquity, something more noble than suffering : it was calm heroism ; it was the sentiment of force, which could develop itself amidst free and liberal institutions. The most beautiful statues of the Greeks nearly always indicate repose. The Laocoon and the Niobe are the only ones which express violent suffering ; but it is the vengeance of heaven which they recall, not passions born in the human heart. Human nature had, with the ancients, an organisation so healthy, the air cir- culated so freely iii their large lungs, their poli- 364 Madame de Stael. tical order was so mucli in harmony with their faculties, that there seldom existed souls ill at ease, as in our days. We hardly discover in their statues any traces of melancholy. The head of Apollo, in the Justinian palace, and another of Alexander dying, are the only ones in which dispositions of the soul for reverie and suffering are indicated ; but they both appertain, according to all appearance, to times when Grreece was sub- jugated. After the loss of liberty there were no longer that pride, that tranquillity of soul, which produced, among the ancients, the chief works of sculpture, and of poetry composed in the same spirit.' The tombs, the sarcophagi, had to her mind a peculiar significance, in accordance with the classic times. ' They recall only heroic or agreeable ideas. On the multitude of those in the Vatican one sees battles and sports represented in relief The memory of the activity of life was the most beautiful homage that the classic ancients believed they could render to the dead. Nothing enfeebled, nothing diminished, their forces. But the statues in sleep, or only in an attitude of complete repose, presenting an image of eternal tranquillity, accord most marvellously with the general effect of the South on man. It seems as if the beautiful arts are here the spectators of nature ; and that genius itself, which so agitates the soul in the North, is, under a beautiful sky, but an added liarmony.' xxii. Destmy of Italy. 365 The obelisks, hoary with antiquity and aspiring in form, pleased her imagination. ' Their summits, lost in the air, seem to bear even to heaven a great thought from man.' St. Peter's — ' the greatest edifice that man has ever raised,' was, to her, the most sublime monu- ment in Eome, and the more so that it at first bafiles and disappoints the mind. ' One reaches the sublime only by degrees. Infinite distances separate it from that which is only beautiful. St. Peter's is a work of man which produces on the mind the eifect of a marvel of nature. It is the only work of art on earth which has the kind of Grandeur that characterises tlie immediate works of creation. In it the genius of man is glorified by the mao-nificence of nature.' ' The view of such a monument is as a fixed and never-ceasins^ strain of music — ready to do you good whenever you approach it.' She was hopeful, even then, of the destiny of the Italians. They needed but unity, nationahty, and liberty, with their consequent amehorations, for the successful activity of the repressed genius Avhich she discerned in them. Prophetically she says, ' There is so much soul in their beautiful arts, that, perhaps, the day may come in which their character may equal their genius.' A land which, since her day, has produced both a Cavour and a Garibaldi — which was the first to initiate tlie o 66 Madaine de Sta'cl. ch. Eenaissance, and which, during ages of oppression, has never failed to produce great individual minds in science and philosophy, as well as in poetry and the arts, need never despair. Her Corinne shows how thorouglily she studied Italian life and character, and how minutely she observed the scenery and monuments of the coun- try. Even in our day, it is one of the best hand- books for the traveller, in Eome ; if not for the topographical features of the city and its vicinity, yet for local descriptions, and especially for the ar- tistic and poetic appreciation of classic ruins, and of life ; for, while it pictures real scenes truthfully, it expresses also their ideal suggestions — those poetic inspirations whicli all intelligent travellers feel, but which few can well define to themselves, and fewer can express to others. Our best im- pressions of grand or beautiful sights are always enhanced by their communication to sympathetic and appreciative minds. ' Let us pause here,' said Oswald to Corinne, as they stood in view of the tomb of Adrian and St. Peter.s.' ' I know not if I am deceiving myself,' replied Corinne, ' but it seems to me that we become dearer to one another, in admiring together monuments whicli speak to the soul by a true grandeur.' Genius never looked tlirough clearer eyes on the marvels of Italy than in the person of Madame de Stael ; and the pen has never more enchantingly described them. XXII. Retttrn to the North. 367 Abundantly supplied with observations on tlie life and art of the South, she returned to the North, to embody them in her most popular, though not Iier most able book. END OF THE FIEST VOLUME. LONDON : rniSTKD BY sroTTiswooDi; axu cc, kkw-stuket square AXD PAELIAMEST STREET -^\ THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara HIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. 0EC4 1984 Series 9482 'fi ^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 252 917 8 J A