Robert McNair Wilson - Mme.

de Staël, 1936
(formerly online version by Yamaguchi Incorporated)
Mme. de Staël
Preface
I. Necker Comes to Town
II. Kings and Queens
III. A Most Embarrasing Person
IV. Rivals
V. A Woman Needs a Husband
VI. A Woman Needs a Lover
VII. Towards Perfection
VIII. They Say. What They Say?
IX. The King was in his Counting
House
X. A Hunting We Will Go
XI. Coup de Grâce
XII. The Crows Come Home
XIII. The Mantle of Elijah
XIV. The Maid of France
XV. At Juniper Hall
XVI. The Kindergarten
XVII. Laggard in Love
XVIII. A New Evangel
XIX. The Comte de Ribbing
XX. Benjamin
XXI. Red Blood for Blue
XXII. After the Storm
XXIII. Hail to the King
XXIV. The Passions
XXV. Coup d'État
XXVI. General Bonaparte
XXVII. Back to Versailles
XXVIII. General Bernadotte
XXIX. When the Devil Was Sick
XXX. Lion Hunting
XXXI. Mist on the Mountains
XXXII. In Italy
XXXIII. Maurice O’Donnell
XXXIV. Women Must Weep
XXXV. “John” Rocca
XXXVI. The Stars in Their Courses
XXXVII. The Prince
XXXVIII. The Return of the Exile
XXXIX. Mother and Daughter
XL. The End
 Author of
“Josephine” : “ Napoleon the Man”
etc.

1936
LONDON
EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE

Pauvre Minette, avec l’Esprit des Siècles,

Tu es toute enfant par le Caractère.
Necker about Madame de Staël.

Germaine de Staël

Preface

THERE is no satisfactory English life of Madame de Staël. The only full-length

biography which exists in the English language is a translation from the German
of Lady Blennerhassett.

This must be accounted a singular state of affairs. But the explanation is simple
enough : Madame de Staël’s life was so intimately bound up with the history of
the politics of Europe during a period of such transcendent importance, that her
life cannot by any means be divorced from its setting. To tell her story, even in
outline, it is necessary to give an account of the history of Europe from the
beginning of the Seven Years’ War till the fall of Napoleon and to describe the
French Revolution. So formidable a task can be justified only on the ground that
this woman played a part on the stage of history of a decisive character.

It is the argument of the pages which follow that the part played by Madame de
Staël was decisive, so much so, indeed, that during a period of about four weeks
the fate of Europe largely depended on her activity. Nor was her importance
limited in point of time to that short period. The influence she and her father
exerted on the course of the French Revolution has been as grossly
underestimated as has been her influence on the policy of Napoleon. Both Louis
XVI and Napoleon understood (and showed by their actions that they
understood) how formidable she was.

She was a politician, and it is as such that she is treated here. Her literary works,
without exception, are political pamphlets the importance of which can be
understood only in relation to the events which occasioned their composition.
This applies to her novels as well as to her other works. All—novels, pamphlets
and histories—served immediate ends and, in so doing, became, as it were,
incorporated in the body of events. In the case of the three most important

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works De l’Allemagne, Dix Années d’Exil and the Considerations, delay in
publication robbed the author of the fruits of her toil. But her loss was much less,
in point of fact, than it appeared to be, for the views she expressed had been
expressed by her already on so many occasions, and in so many different forms,
that they were disseminated throughout Europe and had begun to exert their
effect while she was occupied in attempting to restate them. She was neither an
accomplished writer nor a profound thinker ; but the warmth of her feeling and
the vigour of her mind informed her style and made of it an excellent vehicle.
Moreover, she possessed that faculty of rapid observation which is the essential
qualification of the journalist. Thus, while it is untrue to say that she had any
considerable understanding of the countries of Europe which she visited and
described, Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Russia, Sweden, England, it is
undeniable that she formed and conveyed impressions of these countries that
were both just and striking. Her powers as a descriptive writer cannot be called
in question. But even description, in her hands, was a weapon. The monuments
of Rome, the Saxon plain, the Russian steppes, the golden cupolas of Moscow—
all, in her eyes, were political counters. And even the emotions of her heart
belonged, in some sort, to this category. Her unruly desires found satisfaction in
numberless love affairs ; her lovers for the most part served her political ends.

The material available to her biographer is both plentiful and of good quality, but
is wanting, nevertheless, in some important respects. It is unfortunate in the
highest degree, for example, that the letters exchanged between the Baron de
Staël and his wife are not available. Unfortunate, too, that most of the
correspondence with Benjamin Constant has been lost. In spite of these gaps,
however, it is possible to arrive at a clear understanding, for Madame de Staël
delighted to reveal herself and was, perhaps, the most diligent letter-writer of her
age. Her correspondence with Henri Meister deserves high consideration both
from its restraint and from its scope ; the same is true to some extent of her
correspondence with Gerando. Her letters to Maurice O’Donnell and to Augustus
William Schlegel reveal the other side of her character.

I have relied, first and foremost, upon her letters and upon the details of her life
which she gives in her books. These details are, however, often inaccurate, and it
has been necessary to check them with great care. In the second place, I have
made use of the letters and memoirs of contemporaries, notably of such
collections as that published by M. de Haussonville under the title of Le Salon de
Madame Necker, Madame Necker’s own “Mélanges,” the Journal Intime of
Benjamin Constant, and the Notice sur Madame de Staël, which her cousin
Madame Necker de Saussure contributed to the complete edition of her works.

Amongst the books about Madame de Staël the following have been of great help
to me : Madame de Staël : her life as revealed in her work, 1766-18oo, by David
Glass Larg (translated from the French by Veronica Lucas). Mr. Larg calls his
work “a biographical study of a mind and a soul” and fully justifies this
description. He examines Madame de Staël’s early writings with great care,
applying to them, in some instances, the tests approved by modern psychological
research. In the main his conclusions appear to be sound, though it seems to me

3
that he attaches too little importance to political as opposed to literary and
personal activities. This criticism cannot be made of Lady Blennerhassett’s
substantial volumes, Frau von Staël ihre Freunde and ehre bedeutung in Politik
and litteratur, of which the English translation by J.E. Gordon Cumming was
published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall in 1889. Lady Blennerhassett says truly
in her preface that “owing to the difficulty of separating Madame de Staël’s
personal history from that of her surroundings, the various attempts, especially
the English attempts, to produce an exhaustive and life-like portrait of her have
utterly failed. . . . The portraits of this wonderful woman could only be examined
in connection with the framework of the current thoughts and events
surrounding her.”

But pitfalls await those who write of politics. Lady Blennerhassett’s study dates
in the respect that it was written before the War and while, as yet, Europe
remained unaware of the trend of German policy. It is, in essence, a eulogy which
seeks its justification in the harm which Madame de Staël did to France, though
attempts are made to distinguish between France and the alleged unwisdom of
her rulers. Madame de Staël was not a Frenchwoman ; her claim to be a citizen
of Europe is susceptible of many interpretations. Lady Blennerhassett interprets
it in terms of German and English policy. For the rest her book is a monument of
careful research and temperate statement.

But it is nevertheless a relief to turn from this book to the writings of M. Paul
Gautier. In Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël (Paris, Libraire Plon),
M. Gautier presents an account of one of the great friendships of Madame de
Staël’s life and incorporates the letters of Mathieu de Montmorency to Madame
Necker de Saussure. He is just, but merciful, in his comments, and as he
professes to afford merely an outline, no fault can be found with his method.
Much more important, though not more interesting, is his great work Madame
de Staël et Napoleon (Paris, Libraire Plon), which is likely to remain the chief
source of information about one of the most extraordinary duels in history. I
cannot sufficiently express my indebtedness to M. Gautier, with whose
conclusions I am in substantial, if not entire, agreement.

I feel, too, a deep debt of gratitude to the editors of Lettres inédites de Madame
de Staël a Henri Meister publiées par MM. Paul Uster et Eugène Ritter (Paris,
Libraire Hachette) for their informed comments and careful documentation.
This book is essential to any study of Madame de Staël’s life. Nor is M. Jean
Mistler’s Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell (Paris, Calmann-Levy) less
important. It is a work of distinguished scholarship enriched by very valuable
appendices. Among shorter works Madame de Staël by Albert Sorel is well worth
reading ; its weakness resides in its lack of background. A work of a similar kind
is La Signora di Staël by Meuccio Ruini (Laterza).

Tribute must further be paid to the edition of Dix Années d’Exil published with an
introduction by M. Paul Gautier (Paris, Libraire Plon), one of the most useful
features of which is the collection of letters from Germany given in the appendix.

4
Sainte-Beuve’s famous essay on Madame de Staël (Portraits de Femmes) must be
mentioned.

Benjamin Constant played so important a part in Madame de Staël’s life that her
biographer is under the necessity of making a study of his life also. I wish to
express my indebtedness to Elizabeth W. Schermerhorn for the help derived from
her book Benjamin Constant (London, Heinemann). This is a work of great
excellence and first-rate importance. Every student of Constant again must
acknowledge with deep respect that remarkable work La Jeunesse de Benjamin
Constant by Gustave Rudler (Paris, Libraire Armand Colin). Among other
studies which have helped me areBenjamin Constant by M.L. Dumont-Wilden
(Paris, Libraire Gallimard) and Benjamin Constant by Paul L. Leon (Paris, les
editions Rieder). Constant’s novel Adolphe affords, perhaps, as true a picture of
his relations with Madame de Staël as has ever been presented. This is one of the
most remarkable studies in literature and the first parent of all “psychological”
fiction.

Two other books have been of the greatest help to me : Madame de Staël and the
United States, by Dr. Richmond Laurin Hawkins (Harvard University Press,
193o), which contains important material about investments made in America,
and The Assignats, by Mr. S.E. Harris (Harvard University Press, 1930), in which
the finances of the French Revolution are discussed in a fashion which cannot
sufficiently be praised.

With Madame de Staël’s own literary work I have dealt in the body of my book. I
have made copious quotations, especially from the Considerations, and it only
remains to point out that De l’Allemagne was not published until after the revolt
of Germany against Napoleon, which it was intended to stimulate, had taken
place. This fact does not in any way invalidate the opinion that Madame de Staël
during her visit to Germany was one of the first to sound the call to resurrection
and that her pleading exerted an effect of decisive importance. Dix Années
d’Exil is worth reading still because of the wit which informs it and because of the
portraits which it contains of illustrious people. I doubt very much if
the Considerations are worth reading. Madame de Staël misunderstood the
French Revolution as completely as she misunderstood Napoleon.

I do not propose to offer a complete bibliography of all the works I have consulted
on the French Monarchy, on the Revolution, on Napoleon and on European
politics. A study which is now more than thirty years old cannot easily be
documented in its details, but I wish to mention the works of M. Madelin
(Fouché, The French Revolution, The Empire and the Consulate, The
Revolutionaries) ; Fournier’s Life of Napoleon, and the works of Hilaire Belloc
(Richelieu, Marie Antoinette, Danton, Robespierre, etc.). I still think that
Carlyle’s history of the Revolution is one of the best accounts of it which has ever
been written.

A study of Rousseau’s works is essential to the biographer of almost any of the

great figures of the Revolutionary drama. I acknowledge with special

5
indebtedness the edition of Du Contrat Socialedited by Mr. C.E. Vaughan
(Manchester University Press). I further desire to acknowledge help from M.
Pierre de Nolhac’s Autour de la Reine (Paris, Jules Tallandier), which contains
some valuable information about Versailles and the life of the Court,
and L’Angleterre et La Vendée by Emile Gaborg (Paris, Perrin).

I venture to believe that a new study of Madame de Staël in the English language
is necessary and make no apology, therefore, for having attempted the task. With
all her faults, this woman exerted, indirectly, a great influence on the thought of
her time. Her influence is active still, though it remains largely unrecognised. It
is possible that the republication of an English translation of her greatest
novel, Delphine, might handsomely reward the publisher bold enough to
undertake it.

I desire, finally, to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend Douglas Woodruff,

whose knowledge of French history has been put freely at my disposal and who
has done me the kindness of reading the proofs of this book.

R. MCNAIR WILSON.

LONDON, 1 May, 1931.

6
Germaine de Staël

Chapter I

Necker Comes to Town

BOOK ONE
PROSERPINE

“ Was it not indeed a singular spectacle to see this family together : M. Necker
always admiring Madame Necker ; Madame Necker prostrated before M.
Necker ; M. Necker enchanted by Madame de Staël ; Madame de Staël in
ecstasies before M. Necker, and every one of them unrelaxing in their efforts to
implant their transports in the souls of others ? ”
DE FELETZ, Jugements Historiques et Littéraire, p. 352.

SWITZERLAND, during many centuries, has stood in the same relation to France
as has Scotland to England. From her valleys and mountains, as from those of
Scotland, lads o’ pairts, mostly of German descent, frugally reared, diligently
educated, and with a robust equipment of self-satisfaction, moral fervour and
spiritual pride, have made journey year after year to the cities of the plain. Paris,
like London, has been wont to receive them uncomplainingly.

Of these lads, Jacques Necker, who left his home in Geneva in the year 1750, at
the age of eighteen, was an honest sample. He came of good North German
stock. His father, Charles Frederick, a native of Custrin in Pomerania, had spent
his early manhood teaching a German princeling, had then been elected professor
of public law at Geneva and had put by enough money to commence authorship
on his own account. While Jacques and his elder brother Louis were still in the
nursery, this diligent man published two works—namely, Lettres sur la discipline
ecclesiastique andDescription du gouvernement présent du corps germanique
appelé vulgairement le Saint empire roman. His sons profited by these labours
in various ways, but chiefly by a determination not to emulate them, though
Louis, more docile perhaps than Jacques, as is the way of elder brothers, delayed
his going to France until after his father’s death, studying mathematics, in the
meanwhile, under D’Alembert and earning his living by teaching.

Jacques, therefore, set out alone. He was a tall lad, fresh-complexioned, big of
bone, accustomed to move slowly, and possessed of an excellent self-control.
Diligence and good-nature disputed his expression ; but his long, cautious nose
promised acquisitiveness when there should be anything to acquire. A drooping
upper lip, a mouth the corners of which were apt to smirk, bright eyes and the
habit of holding his head a little on one side, with the face raised, announced him
vain, but such mannerisms are not unpleasing in a handsome boy. When he

7
reached Paris and was installed in the bank of M. Vernet, a friend of his father’s,
in which he had secured a place, he showed himself possessed of enough ability
to justify his address.

This Paris of the year 1750 made sharp contrast with his native Geneva, where
thrifty men traded knowledge for pence with the diligence of bees, obedient, like
the bees, to a fatalism of circumstance and law. Young Necker was a Calvinist ;
come out from a society accustomed to a mechanistic conception of deity and
greatly distrustful of all others. That conception by exalting intellect at the
expense of emotion, weakens the sense of humour ; but it inculcates
independence of judgment and austerity in living. Necker perceived the frailties
of Paris at a glance ; he was to remain unaware of her greatness.

Frailty was everywhere, except in the banking houses. King Louis XV, called the
Well-Beloved, because his predecessor, King Louis XIV, at his death had been so
well hated, had just turned over the business of governing France to Madame de
Pompadour. That eager little lady, by reason of her ravishing loveliness, her wit,
her accomplishments and her impudence, had managed, at twenty-nine, to
exchange the boredom of middle-class married life in Paris for the King’s bed at
Versailles. She had had a mind from the beginning to try her hand at statecraft,
but had met an obstacle in the opposition of the Queen and the Queen’s
supporters, many of whom were priests. Madame de Pompadour countered by
making a pet of Voltaire and declaring herself the protector of liberal ideas. The
Queen and the priests proved no match for the King and the philosophers.

The moment was critical. Thanks to the policy of Colbert, Louis XIV’s great
minister, France was in a fair way of becoming a world-power, the most
considerable, perhaps, since Imperial Rome. She had vast possessions in North
America, notably Canada ; India was falling into her grasp ; the peace which had
followed the battle of Fontenoy, where King Louis XV had covered himself with
glory, promised security on the Rhine, and so a free hand against English
aggression. This favourable position was exerting its effects on commerce and
finance. The merchants of Paris, Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux were growing
rich ; the banking houses which handled the merchants’ money were
multiplying. Shareholders in the Compagnie des Indes had reason to be satisfied
with their investment. It was evidently necessary now to keep the peace and at
the same time prepare, especially at sea, for the inevitable struggle against
England.

The basis of French policy in Europe had been a balance of power secured and
maintained by alliance with Prussia against Austria. Unhappily, Frederick the
Great liked himself as a wit and was unable to resist the temptation offered by the
gallantries of his brother of France about which his friend Voltaire kept him
informed. Madame de Pompadour heard with lively anger that Frederick was
writing verses about her. Gay she was and of an excellent cheerfulness of
disposition ; but the Providence which had given these good gifts had withheld
humour. The Poissonades, as the lampoons against her were called, from the fad
that her maiden name had been Poisson, afflicted a mind burdened day and night

8
by the heavy responsibility of government. That a royal hand should have
smitten was an added grief. The lady proclaimed her distress and asked for
satisfaction. They heard her cry in Vienna. Soon there was delivered at Versailles
a letter inspired by the Empress Maria Theresa1in which, with soft words, that old
cat called the little French fish within range of her paws. The call came
opportunely : England, determined to force the Colonial issue between France
and herself, had in 1755 attacked the French at sea without warning and had
followed up this aggression by making a treaty with Frederick the Great. Could
France in such circumstances hope to keep peace ? England did not intend that
she should, but Frederick was certainly much less irreconcilable. Faced by the
possibility of a coalition against him of Russia, Austria, Sweden and Saxony, he
was likely to have welcomed any friendliness which the head of the most feared
and most formidable army in Europe had felt disposed to show him. But King
Louis, with the whispers of Madame de Pompadour in his ears, saw in this
readiness of his Prussian brother to keep peace an additional reason for going to
war. The destruction of Prussia, he flattered himself, was in sight. That
accomplished, France would be free to deal with England. So the alliance with
Frederick was broken in favour of an alliance with Maria Theresa of Austria. The
Seven Years’ War began.

Punishment followed. Within a year France had lost India and Canada to
England and yielded her reputation as the first military power of Europe to
Frederick the Great. The French navy was hurled to destruction and the French
army stripped of its glory. King Louis saw the British Empire rising from the sea
and the Prussian Empire being established on the land. He learned how Clive in
India and Wolfe in Quebec had wrested two continents from him while he was
suffering humiliating defeat in a quarrel that he might have avoided. Paris,
stupefied, turned hostile eyes on Versailles.

It remained to France to pay the bill. The merchants, the shareholders in the
East India Company, the bankers and shopkeepers, met the fresh demands on
their purses with grim faces. Would the King shear the shorn ? Where now were
their ships ? Their plantations ? Their goods ? Let Versailles pay for he
statesmanship of Versailles. So they spoke in every counting-house in France,
pointing to the profligacy of the Court and making endless complaint of a nobility
and clergy which enjoyed so much and paid so little. The philosophers found
plenty of audience when they sharpened their wits on the pillars of the social
structure.

Young Necker, in the intervals of getting rich, very quickly listened to all the
tongues of Paris and learned, soon, to distinguish the cry of the stricken
merchants from that of the unhurt but alarmed financiers. Merchants are
concerned with goodwill, financiers with security, and the two are not necessarily
interdependent. The loss of India and the American colonies entailed the
disappearance of valuable markets and of still more valuable sources of the raw
materials of industry. These losses bore heavily on traders and employers of
labour. They exerted much less effect on the leaders of money whose operations
are not conditioned by frontiers. The credit house of Thelusson and Necker,

9
which within a few years of his arrival in the capital Necker helped to found, early
established a branch in London and made advances to Englishmen as well as to
Frenchmen. The house was interested in the prosperity of England as well as in
that of France. Further, since the finance of the corn trade was its chief business,
the rising price of bread in Paris was no obstacle to success. But the Swiss lad in
his prosperity did not deceive himself. The turn of the financial houses would
come when the losses sustained by France abroad and the burden of taxation at
home debased further national and personal credit and so ruined the people
whose capital the financiers handled. He began to interest himself in politics
without neglecting to add to his extensive investments in British funds.

He had matured quickly in the Parisian atmosphere but had lost nothing of the
mental and moral equipment which Geneva had furnished. What he heard about
Versailles shocked him both as man and moneylender ; but the lure of the great
Court made his eyes sparkle and his mouth water. What might not an honest
Swiss accomplish in that field ? He had fallen in love with the widow of a French
officer, named Madame de Vermenoux,2 and was about to marry her. The lady,
however, visited Geneva, met there the daughter of a Swiss pastor named
Susanne Curchod3 and brought this girl back with her as her companion. Necker
instantly transferred his affections to Suzanne, who, for her part, broke with
Correvin, a lawyer in Geneva, whom she had been going to marry.

The banker was thirty-two, a millionaire, with the reputation of a wizard of

finance. His boyish looks had been replaced by a man’s firmness, but the curve of
the mouth and the tilt of the head were still the same. Success had confirmed his
opinion of himself and guaranteed in advance his opinions about everybody and
everything else. The smirk of the lad o’ pairts was become smugness, substantial
as his fortune, which had enabled him already to bring his brother Louis to Paris,
and to establish him in prosperity. Suzanne, aged twenty-five, though penniless,
was worthy of the rich young man. Her upbringing had lacked nothing of
completeness and her family tree included a Frenchwoman, her mother, among
its Teutons. That lively blood inclined the young lady to wit, but there was
substantial guarantee of more enduring merits. Seven years before she had been
wooed and won, but lost again, through the opposition of his father, by Gibbon
the historian :

“ Her father in the loneliness of a remote village,” wrote Gibbon, “applied himself
to give a liberal and even philosophical education to his only daughter. She
surpassed his hopes by her progress in the sciences and languages, and, in the
short visits which she made to some of her relations in Lausanne, the spirit, the
beauty and the erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the subject of universal
praise. The tales about this prodigy awoke my curiosity. I saw her and I loved
her. I found her wise without pedantry, animated in her conversation, pure in
her feelings and elegant in her manners, and this first, sudden emotion was only
strengthened by further knowledge and observation. She allowed me to make
two or three visits to her home. I passed some happy days there in the mountains
of the Franche Comte, and her parents honourably encouraged our attachment.”

10
These were Necker’s feelings. This pure young man brought all the sincerity he
had to his wiving, and got, in return, worship that neither slept nor stumbled.
But Suzanne did not at first feel happy in Paris. Homesick, bewildered, afraid, in
spite of the comfortable words of her Jacques, she cried that she had no part in
that Babylon.

“ Oh, what a want of friendship !”

The want was supplied. Jacques brought his clients to their huge house, and his
bride found herself entertaining the most amusing as well as the dullest people in
Europe. Her French blood quickened and her wit grew sharp, so that new uses
for the education her father had given her presented themselves. Diderot wrote
that same year :

“ There is here a Madame Necker, a pretty woman and a wit, who has taken a
great fancy to me (raffole de moi). She importunes me to visit her. Suard is in
love with her.”

Diderot was not the only individual so favoured. A year after her marriage,
Madame Necker entertained Gibbon once more and was able to introduce him to
Buffon, Marmontel, the Abbé Raynal, Morellet, Thomas and others of that band
which composed the rearguard of the eighteenth-century philosophers. It was
not an inspiring company, for philosophy, as Voltaire and Montesquieu
understood the word, had grown old without dignity. The new wind
of sensibilité was beginning to blow. Men and women were tired of doubts that
had no more solid foundation than a King’s mistress or a Cardinal’s blasphemy,
and even the lettres persanes4 no longer aroused enthusiasm. But Madame
Necker was well enough content with her “Fridays,” which gave her all she
wanted, namely, excitement of the milder kind and a feeling of importance in a
world where bankers’ wives were not greatly esteemed.

That year of Gibbon’s visit to the Neckers, 1766, had begun well for them, because
on April 22 Madame Necker had given birth to a daughter. They called the child
Germaine. The last was Madame Verménoux’s name. She had salved her injured
feelings, and consented to become the child’s godmother.

1
Maria Thérèse always denied that she had written to Madame de Pompadour.
That she inspired the messages sent to the mistress of Louis XV is certain.
2
For details about Madame de Vermenoux, see Lettres Inédites de Madame de
Staël à Henri Meister (Introduction).
3
Details of Suzanne Curchod’s early life are given in Gibbon, Memoirs of my Life
and Writings (Chap. 4), and in d’Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker.
Madame Necker : Mélanges.

11
4
Of Montesquieu. He and Voltaire were still alive, but their influence was
definitely on the wane.

12
Germaine de Staël

Chapter II

Kings and Queens

GERMAINE NECKER was as plain as her mother was pretty. She had a sallow
complexion, blunt, heavy features and prominent teeth ; but her black eyes could
kindle like coals. She amused herself in her nursery by making kings and queens
out of twisted bits of paper.

The game had something to recommend it. Four years before Germaine was
born, a Swiss named Jean Jacques Rousseau had published a small book
called Du Contrat Social* in which it was argued not, as is usually said, that man
is virtuous by nature, but that man, though unspeakably wicked and depraved by
nature, can be made virtuous by the State, that is to say by himself multiplied
indefinitely. This was good news to a world whose material conditions were
growing worse every day and whose inhabitants had been robbed by the
philosophers of all hope of improvement whether in time or eternity. Like a
patient who hears, after his doctors have condemned him, of a miraculously
endowed physician, men and women demanded eagerly to know more about the
new means of salvation. Of what nature was Jean Jacques Rousseau’s state, and
how could it be gotten ? The answer was that each must give up his liberty to all
so that all might guarantee the liberty, the happiness and the spiritual progress of
each. Every man to be not his brother’s keeper only but his brother’s king and
priest as well. This doctrine presented existing kings and priests, as it presented
eighteenth-century philosophers, in a bad light. Kings and priests, it implied,
were arrogating to themselves functions which belonged to humanity as a whole
and which only humanity as a whole could fulfil.

There was plenty of contemporary evidence in support of it ; for example, the

palace of Versailles with its 10,000 pensioners, Madame de Pompadour and her
war, King Louis and his unconscionable behaviour, the higher clergy, some of
whom were not even willing to agree with Voltaire that if God had not existed it
would have been necessary to invent him, the tax-gatherers who robbed industry
to pay vice, the prisons full of honest men.

All France, in short, like little Germaine Necker, was busy making kings and
queens according to heart’s desire. That exercise comforted the pangs of hunger
for lost faith, lost glory, lost territory, lost trade. It relieved the bitterness of
spoliation, and the hopelessness of bankruptcy. But human nature is not so
easily changed. If France, in despair at her eclipse by England, lost her head
over Du Contrat Social, Frenchmen remained as determined as ever to get what
they could in a hard world. The philosophers, busy with their satires and
invectives against Church and Court, had never been averse from warming
themselves at the fire they sought to extinguish. It was the same with the masters

13
of money. The angrier they grew with Versailles, the more passionately they, and
their wives and daughters, longed to go there.

This was Necker’s position. Since he had been appointed a director of the
expiring Compagnie des Indes, he had multiplied his fortune tenfold and was
become one of the richest men in Europe. The company died in 1770 at the
hands of the victorious English, and the “John Company” reigned in its stead.
India, except for a few isolated settlements, had passed to her new proprietors,
but France could boast two fresh acquisitions, both of them big with destiny,
namely, Lorraine, which she had seized, and the island of Corsica, which she had
bought. These were King Louis XV’s last gifts to his people. He died of small-pox
in 1774, mourned by his unmarried daughters, by Madame du Barry, Madame de
Pompadour’s successor, and by nobody else. Louis XVI, his grandson, took over
the bankrupt estate.

The new king was a young man aged twenty years who was afraid of women and
most of all of his wife, the Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, daughter of
Maria Theresa. His fear was based on a physical infirmity which prevented him,
until he had been cured by operation, from performing his duties as a husband,
and which, even then, remained as a distressful memory. Louis had a shrewd
judgment and understood very well what was wrong with France. In spite of the
opposition of his wife and his mother-in-law, he broke the alliance with Austria
which had cost France her glory. This step won him the enthusiasm of Paris and
of the whole French middle-class. He followed it up with another equally wise
move. In the year after his accession, the English colonists in America rebelled
against their Mother Country. He gave them secret help, preparatory to
becoming their open ally. It was a bid, if not for the lost Empire at least for new
markets, because the English, in accordance with usage, had excluded other
nations from trade with their colonies. England, accustomed to treat France with
contempt, reacted with extreme sensitiveness and claimed the right to search
ships at sea.

Louis was guided by his foreign minister, Vergennes, whose sole object was to
weaken England and so regain what had been lost by Madame de Pompadour
and Louis XV. Vergennes contrived to counter the attempts of the British
Government to make trouble for France in Europe, and he opposed successfully
the wish of the Emperor Joseph II, Marie Antoinette’s brother,** to add Bavaria
to his possessions. The result was a renewal of the old friendship between France
and the German peoples on the Rhine and in consequence a free hand against
England. Vergennes and his King, with the help of American agents, succeeded
in uniting nearly the whole of Europe against England.

But all this cost money, and the till was empty. Louis at the beginning of his
reign had taken steps to reform the finances. On the advice of his old teacher and
friend Maurepas, who was now his chief adviser, he had called Turgot to the
Treasury. This was a Norman, forty-seven years of age, of a family which had
established itself in Paris and grown prosperous in trade, a man of great
imagination, scientific mind and liberal culture, with the courage of a lion, a

14
skipper’s temper, and no manners at all. Turgot understood what was wrong
with the King’s finances, but he did not understand what was wrong with France.
It was impossible to convince him that the chief cause of the lack of money and
the general uneasiness was England’s command of the seas and of the lands
beyond them, and he opposed, on grounds of expense, the King’s purpose of
entering the American War of Independence. Louis, in spite of this opposition,
continued to send help to the Americans and pushed on the building of warships.
So acutely, indeed, did the King feel the need of a strong navy that he refused to
buy the famous diamond necklace for the Queen on the ground that the price
asked would give France a new man o’ war.

Turgot’s reading of the situation was entirely different from his master’s. The
Norman was under the influence of the philosophers, and believed that France’s
troubles were due to her political system. He wished to see the King assert
himself, put the nobles and clergy in their place and reform the whole system of
taxation. Only thus, he believed, could France become strong enough to attack
England. “ Want of glory,” said the King, “has ruined us”; “Want of reform,” said
the Minister, “has cost us our glory.” The King agreed that reforms were
necessary, but insisted that they could only be accomplished in an atmosphere of
victory. He was ready, none the less, to carry out immediately such reforms as
might be achieved without great disturbance. The speculations in grain, most of
which were financed by Necker, were bringing cruel hardships on the poor in
every part of France. Turgot proposed, as a means of relief, abolition of the bread
taxes. Opposition was immediate and strong. Necker published a denunciation
of the minister, entitled : Essai sur la Législation et le Commerce des Grains.
Though the taxes had gone, the price of bread was forced up and riots, which had
obviously been carefully organised in advance, broke out in various districts. The
effect was to frighten investors and make it more difficult for the King to borrow
money. Louis supported Turgot with admirable firmness. The riots were
suppressed.

But the moral was plain. If the King indulged in reform on anything approaching
a big scale, he would be unable to borrow money and would be forced to abandon
his struggle with England. As soon as the bread riots were quelled, Necker
hurried to London. He took his wife and daughter (Germaine was nine) with him
on this business trip. Madame Necker, as usual, gathered philosophers and
journalists about her while her husband was busy with business men and
politicians. Necker found the British Government uneasy about King Louis’
flirtation with the American rebels. Was France really going to make common
cause with these fellows ? If so, where was the money coming from to carry on a
war with England ? The Swiss was initiated into the methods of English
administration and shown how quickly and infallibly public opinion, as informed
by the Press, reacted on credit. He experienced so lively an enthusiasm that he
continued to talk about the matter till the end of his life. In return, he hinted that
if France knew how Versailles spent money, there would be less money for
Versailles to spend. Necker was strongly opposed to the entry of France into the
American War. His visit to England convinced him that this and many other

15
undesirable events might be prevented if the Parisian newspapers were as free to
express their opinions as were the newspapers of London. A further idea which
he carried away with him and in due course imparted to his daughter was that the
English Constitution was without fault—an impression of the political situation in
this country at the beginning of the American War of Independence which must
be regarded as singular.

The return of the Neckers from London occurred at a moment critical for King
Louis. Turgot, encouraged by his success against the bread rioters, had just
produced a policy of reform designed to change the face of France. The man was
a physiocrat ; that is to say, he believed that land is the only real security and
ought, in consequence, to bear the whole burden of taxation. He proposed to put
this belief into immediate operation. Since the Church owned one-third of the
land in France, on which it paid no taxes at all, and the nobility owned most of
the remainder, on which it paid the merest trifle, it was obvious that this was
inviting trouble. But the sturdy Norman was not afraid. So little, indeed, that his
plan actually included the withdrawal from the powerful trade corporations and
guilds of the rights they possessed to hamper commerce in their own interests
and a scheme for setting up active local authorities all over the country to replace
the obsolete “parlements.” Turgot, in short, wished to abolish overnight that
feudal system which had existed in France and Europe for a thousand years.
Everybody with anything to lose felt himself threatened. For the last time Paris
stood shoulder to shoulder with Versailles ; noblemen and bishops, the Queen
herself, joined with financiers and merchants and lawyers in implacable
opposition. Lovely Madame de Polignac, to whom Marie Antoinette could refuse
nothing, stretched out her little hands in supplication to Necker who grasped
them with rapture. Only the King sympathised with his minister, and the King
was about to declare war on England.

Louis, greatly loyal, exerted himself to make it clear that he was in no position to
challenge simultaneously every powerful interest in his realm, and urged Turgot
to modify his proposals. Turgot refused. The reformer emerged at a bound from
the treasurer’s skin, and the King got a lecture, in his minister’s most aggressive
style, on the folly of petticoat government and the infamous character of
financiers in general and Swiss financiers in particular. These two men faced one
another and knew one another honest. But Louis was determined to follow his
policy. They parted. On the advice of Maurepas, who argued that it was only
from the financiers that they could now hope to get money, Necker was called to
replace Turgot at Versailles.

1
The idea that Rousseau believed in the essential goodness of human nature is
widely prevalent. It was proclaimed recently, again, by the Dean of St. Paul’s.
Rousseau saw no hope for human nature except in Society and by means of
education. See Emile and Du Contrat Social (edition of C.E. Vaughan,
Manchester University Press, Introduction).
2
Maria Thérèse died in 178o.

16
Germaine de Staël

Chapter III

“ A MOST EMBARRASSING PERSON ”

SO Madame Necker’s dream had come true ! For years she had been urging her
beloved Jacques that the counting-house was far too small to hold his
transcendent intellect. Suzanne of the Swiss pastor’s house had developed
without changing. She remained the woman who had seen her chance when
Necker came to visit his fiancée, the widow Vermenoux, her mistress. It was she
who had secured for Jacques the directorship of the East India Company ; her
“Fridays” had been the means of harnessing all the liveliest tongues and pens in
Paris to his interests. Philosophers and wits, journalists and pamphleteers, dined
and wined at regular intervals, could make a prodigious stir. All these had now
for some time been imploring his Majesty, as he loved his people, to clasp Necker
to his bosom. Back from London and seeing how affairs were shaping, this
excellent wife persuaded her husband to get rid of his shares in the bank to
brother Louis. For he ought, she argued, to be found ready, when the call should
come. She herself was in the same state of preparedness. Very well she knew
why Jacques, Swiss, republican, Protestant and friend of England, had been
summoned to the King’s closet. But let Versailles beware ! Her husband was
coming to Court with all the wagging tongues of Paris for his bodyguard. Necker
left the King in no doubt about his terms. Each loan, said the banker, must be
based on an economy drastic enough to provide both income and sinking fund.
Louis’ hopes grew faint. Economy meant a struggle with the permanent officials
at Versailles, who knew too well how to make trouble. And it meant, a smaller
matter, trouble with the Queen and Madame de Polignac, with his brothers, and
his and their pensioners. But needs must when the devil drives. The economies
were made, the money was found and the war began.

Immediately, Madame Necker’s corps of tongues and pens was ordered into
action. Louis and Vergennes grew aware that their American policy was being
viewed in a new light in the capital. Paris talked no longer about the humiliation
of England, but about the successful resistance offered by the American rebels to
the English King. Was not good M. Necker at Versailles fighting the same sort of
battle against unjust and oppressive taxation levied on the poor for the benefit of
the profligate friends of royalty ? As his popularity grew in Paris Necker’s
position at Court became increasingly difficult. He countered by publishing
his Compte Rendu, an insolent and inaccurate statement of the King’s accounts,
designed obviously to show what the Queen and her friends were spending.
Louis dismissed him. But the mischief was done. On the day following Necker’s
fall thousands of Parisians wore a green cockade—green was the colour of the
banker’s livery—and huge crowds demonstrated outside his house. The King’s
war against England was charged, miraculously, into Paris’ war against the King.
Louis had no illusions. Unless he could hold France against his capital, he must
reign in future by the grace of money-lenders and merchants, which, after all, is a
less agreeable title than the grace of God. He set his face with Vergennes to

17
pursue the struggle against England, pledging with calculated recklessness such
credit as he still possessed.

Madame Necker, most indefatigable of advance agents, had kept the faithful
informed on many Fridays about the preparation of Compte Rendu. The salon in
the Rue de Cléry was become a court (the rival, as she hoped, of the other at
Versailles) where flattery trod on the heels of wit and the three estates, influence,
affluence and obsequiousness, agreed together that it is money which makes the
mare go. The philosophers were not as young as they had been, but their
disciples, cadets of great houses, rich tradesmen’s sons, journalists,
pamphleteers, artists, actors, made up for that. Here was the new world which
should replace the old. Here was reason for superstition, red blood for blue,
credit for insolvency. And the whole garnished with revelry. Necker beamed
while Suzanne glowed. The banker never spoke, never listened, except perhaps to
the music which ebbed and flowed in the great drawing-room, but the smile on
his face and his raised eyebrows delivered their message. His wife would touch
the hand of Diderot or Marmontel or Guibert. “You see ; he’s thinking.” Her
eyes, lingering on his gold-embroidered coat, grew gentle. That was everybody’s
cue. Madame Necker had put her trust in Rousseau to the extent of believing that
her Jacques was the Messiah hinted at in Du Contrat Social. For herself,
Rousseau taught that woman is made perfect through love, and she loved
Jacques. All, in these days, were for “perfectability.” Madame Necker glanced at
her daughter, aged fifteen now. Germaine was big for her age. The woman’s eyes
clouded.*

The truth was that mother and daughter were already getting in each other’s
way. Thanks to Suzanne’s views about education, Germaine had been admitted
to the “Fridays.” A small stool, near her mother, had been allotted her, a
listeningpost in the battlefield of wits ; Madame Necker believed that children
should be seen and not heard. But some of her guests had not failed to notice
that homage paid to his daughter pleased Necker even more than homage paid to
his wife. Germaine’s stool became the centre of a circle in which the subject of
discussion was neither Compte Rendu nor Madame Necker but Germaine
herself. Marmontel, aged but gallant, reconditioned the verses he had made for
the mother to fit the daughter, while Guibert wrote :†

“ ‘ There she is, there she is ! ’ we cry when she appears, and our breath comes
short and stifled. I gaze, I listen in transports. She has that which is more than
beauty. What variety and play of expression in her face, what delicate
modulations in her voice. What perfect harmony between mind and lips. She
speaks, and if I do not catch her words, her inflexions, her gestures and her eyes
convey all her meaning to me. She pauses, and her last words echo in my heart
and I read in her eyes those words which are unspoken yet. She ceases and the
temple rings with applause. She bows her head in modesty ; the long lashes
creep down over those eyes of fire and thus the sun is veiled.” . . . He added, “Her
great, dark eyes were alight with genius. Her hair, black as ebony, fell round her
shoulders in waving locks. Her features were marked rather than delicate.”

18
Germaine liked it ; Madame Necker didn’t. During ten years excellent Suzanne,
with the memory of her own childhood in her heart, had been occupied in
snubbing her daughter. Thus :

“ No one came specially to see you. . . . (They) finished up with you to see the
garden. . . . You must make a habit of passing several days in solitude, well
occupied. You know that I do not oppose your innocent pleasures but encourage
them. But I’m sure that people who can’t do without pleasure are slaves.” (June
10, 1779.)

“ You’re very clever at twisting all the silly things you’ve said to me so that they
don’t seem to be absurd. But a loving mother can see through all that and would
much prefer frankness to the tricks of egoism. . . . If you want me to believe in
your exaggerated expressions of love you have a simpler means at your disposal
than the French language. Do in my absence all that my fondness has tried to
teach you for your moral and bodily welfare.” (June 11, 1779.)

Germaine rebelled and gushed by turns.

“Yes, Mamma,” she wrote, “if I were to spend a thousand years gazing at you, I
should be jealous of one single moment when you turned away from me.”

Necker, in addition to losing his post at Versailles, had to retire from Paris to his
country house, Saint Ouen, some six miles from the capital. There were no more
“ Fridays,” and after a time rather less incense, because pagans like to worship
the rising sun. Would Necker come back ? Perhaps not, since the King’s
American policy was popular everywhere except in Paris, and not unpopular
there. Suzanne fell into depression. She had already written to Maurepas
protesting Jacques’ good intentions, to Jacques’ no small embarrassment ; now
she bustled about trying to set the silent tongues wagging again. She visited
Madame de Genlis among others, and took Germaine with her. The Duc de
Chartres’ mistress edified them by reading passages from her works.

“Germaine,” Madame de Genlis reported afterwards, “astonished me and did not

please me. She wept a great deal, uttered loud exclamations as I read, incessantly
kissed my hands and is altogether a most embarrassing person.”

* See d’Haussonville : Le Salon de Madame Necker.

† Guibert is sometimes credited with having been Germaine’s first lover. There is
no evidence whatever in support of this view. She admired him greatly, however,
and wrote an appreciation (see text) after his death.

19
Germaine de Staël

Chapter IV

RIVALS

A SHATTERING blow destroyed all King Louis’ hopes. The victorious Americans,
instead of making France a partner in their peace negotiations with England,
found it expedient to conclude a treaty on their own account. The dream of a
settlement on favourable terms with the enemy who had seized Canada and India
vanished, leaving Versailles with little to show for French intervention in the war
but the cost. Worse still, England was now in a position to retaliate.

In these circumstances there was nothing to do but make peace. The British
Government, realising its strength, drove a hard bargain, and Louis had to accept
a trade treaty which allowed English manufacturers to send their goods freely
into France. The inevitable consequences followed, business men in Lyons and
elsewhere were ruined and had to close their factories and workshops. The
streets became filled with hungry unemployed. Second-Lieutenant Napoleon
Bonaparte, passing through Lyons on his return from Corsica to his regiment,
observed these disastrous effects of French inability to oppose England’s
demands and, though he was only a boy of eighteen at the time, never forgot
them.*

The King’s position was desperate. His failure against England had robbed him
of any part in the glory of the American War, which belonged now, exclusively, to
Lafayette and the young men who had shared his triumphs, for example, Mathieu
de Montmorency. These cadets of great houses came back to France with the
baptismal water of democracy gleaming on their brows. In freedom’s name they
had fought and vanquished a king. The bill was to pay. Could an impoverished
peasantry or a business world in the stranglehold of England and staggering
under losses at home and abroad provide an additional penny ? Let the King get
what he could in the only place where there was anything left to get, namely, in
the treasuries of the nobles and the Church. Louis had not dared to attempt that
adventure in Turgot’s time. How should he attempt it now ? The monarchy,
stripped of the last rags of prestige, could not hope to challenge single-handed
the two most powerful bodies in France. There was no nation in the modern
sense of that word. There was no organised public opinion to which appeal might
be made. The tongues and pens of Madame Necker’s salon would scarcely suffice
against an army led in revolt by its officers or a peasantry mobilised by its parish
priests at the bidding of their superiors. Turgot’s policy of a tax on land, viewed
from the Council Chamber at Versailles in the years between 1786 and 1789,
involved the danger of civil war.

This was mate. The King, unable to act, fell into despondency. The reactionary
elements in his Court bestirred themselves. At the Queen’s instance, Calonne
became Minister of Finance and showed that money could still be got if one was

20
daring enough. The army was combed for disaffected officers. Nobles collected
their revenues with less compunction than formerly and enforced their rights,
while the Church asserted, in commanding tone, her claim to order the civil
estate of all Frenchmen. This demonstration achieved the purpose of its
organisers. Louis’ belief that he could not hope to prevail against nobles or clergy
hardened into absolute conviction.

Necker’s stock began to rise again. So much so, indeed, that the banker
published a work called L’Adininistration des Finances in which, by implication,
he attacked Calonne, and of which he sold 80,000 copies. The “Fridays” were
resumed, and again, until Madame Necker sent Germaine to breathe the air of
Switzerland, mother and daughter competed for compliments in the big drawing-
room. Germaine’s absence was used by Suzanne to plan her marriage to the
younger Pitt. She had no doubt of success. But Germaine, bored by Lausanne
and a-flutter with ecstasy to be back in Paris, refused on her return to listen. She
did not want to get married and she did not want to live in London. Madame
Necker had a nervous breakdown** and felt that she was going to die. This
modern Demeter wrote a last letter to her daughter :

“Yes,” she cried in this letter, “you see me now on that verge which divides time
from eternity. I stretch out one hand to life and one to eternity, calling both to
witness that God lives and that goodness alone gives happiness. I wished you to
marry Mr. Pitt. I wanted to give you into the keeping of a husband of great and
noble character ; further, I wanted to have a son-in-law to whom I could confide
the care of your poor father, a son-in-law able to appreciate the worth of that
legacy. You refused me these comforts. But I forgive you on condition that you
fulfil the service which this marriage must have fulfilled. That is a great task. For
in this life, my whole devotion has been given to your father—I look on you as
part of him. You see, therefore, that you must take my place with him.”

Suzanne did not die, but Germaine took her place. That, indeed, was the root of
the trouble ; father and daughter got along together so well that Madame Necker
felt widowed. Germaine was wittier than she, quicker at the uptake, more adroit
in appreciation. Was it not by the exercise of these gifts that Jacques had been
won originally from Madame de Vermenoux ? A husband’s interest in his wife is
often refreshed, however, if her health seems to be in danger. Madame Necker
found comfort in an affliction which brought the further advantage that it put an
end to rivalry with Germaine. That young woman, now nineteen, had taken to
keeping a diary.

“ The death of a person one loves ! ” she wrote. “ Think of being forced to see the
ministers of death lay hands on the beloved ! To the music of funeral hymns they
would snatch away all that is left, the dear body that one would struggle to revive
with the force of one’s despairing cries. The tolling bell would swing in time to
the rhythm of feet moving to the grave-side. And then silence.”

21
The Neckers were making a short stay at Coppet, the estate on the Lake of Geneva
which the banker had bought, and Switzerland was exerting its usual influence on
Germaine’s mind.

“A fine sort of retirement for my father,” she wrote scornfully, “a desert in a

republic after having served a King ! What a position for a proud heart !
How splendid it would be if he were sent for and begged to take the reins of the
French Government again ! Then he could accept or refuse at his own good
pleasure. As for myself, well . . . I fret over it a great deal. I am mortally afraid
that he might choose to spend the whole of his life on his estates here. Oh, may
he forgive me . . . but I shudder to think what it would be like if the door was shut
for ever upon us three !”

There was no danger that Necker would choose to stay at Coppet. The lad o’
pairts never returns home for good except under compulsion. Madame Necker,
upon her bed of sickness, was no less eager to serve France. This had been, for
her, a season of meditation rich in blessing, for she had sorted out for her
daughter a husband to whose excellent merits even Germaine was not likely to
prove indifferent. He was Eric Magnus, Baron de Staël-Holstein, Ambassador
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of France of his Majesty
Gustavus III of Sweden.

“Little de Staël,” as Madame de Boufflers called him, was, in 1785, thirty-six years
of age. Nine of those years had been spent in Paris and Versailles, where he had
made a name for himself among the ladies, who admired his wit, his good spirits
and his corn-coloured head. So much so, indeed, that he owed his quick
promotion from Councillor of the Embassy to Ambassador to the plea of Marie
Antoinette herself. Madame de Polignac did not hide the fact that she had “a very
tender feeling” for him, and he numbered among his intimate friends Madame de
la Marck, Madame de Luxembourg, Madame de Chalons, Madame de Goutaud
and the Comtesse Diana—in short, all the prettiest women in France. This
distinction, however, was not the one which had specially recommended him to
Madame Necker. In Suzanne’s practical mind two qualities of the Baron de Staël
stood out from the others : he was an Ambassador and he was a Protestant. The
first of them guaranteed to his wife a position such as she could not hope to
achieve by marrying a Frenchman ; the second made unnecessary her
conversion, which, in the circumstances must have been fraught with difficulty.
Germaine admitted the soundness of these views, perceiving that if she married
Eric Magnus she would have her place at Versailles and be rid, for ever, of the
nightmare of the Swiss Republic. The moment was charged with a lively
emotion. Madame Necker’s heart overflowed as she murmured for the first time
the words “notre ambassadrice.”

Now it was Necker’s turn. As Germaine’s father he had to satisfy himself that de
Staël’s only substantial possession, his Ambassadorship, was made of durable
stuff. On the principle that there could be no advance without security,
negotiations were opened with the Swedish Court and some kind of assurance
obtained that if the marriage took place, the bride could count on a prolonged

22
enjoyment of his office by her groom. Reassured, the banker produced his
money, and the wedding took place with great circumstance in the chapel of the
Swedish Embassy.

On the morning of her wedding-day, January 14, 1786, Germaine wrote to her
mother :

“ To-night I shan’t be coming home to you. This is the last day I shall live
through in the fashion of all my former days. Making such a change costs me a
great deal, I can assure you. It will be hard for me to begin a wholly new life, and
fear of the unknown adds to my uneasiness about the whole business. Every
moment I foresee regrets. What then ? Will happiness come later ? Will it even
come occasionally ? Will it never come ? Death is the end of all this ; are you
sure there is a future life ? ”

* There is no doubt that it was this spectacle which first directed Napoleon’s mind
towards what became, ultimately, his “Continental System.”

** The jealousy of Madame Necker towards her daughter was well known. See
d’Haussonville : Le Salon de Madame Necker, and the introduction to
the Œuvres by Madame Necker de Saussure.

23
BOOK TWO
ECERIA

“ She is a woman of wonderful wit and above vulgar prejudices of every kind.
Her house is a kind of Temple of Appollo. ”

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS writing to GEORGE WASHINGTON about MADAME

DE STAËL : January 1790.

Germaine de Staël

Chapter V

A WOMAN NEEDS A HUSBAND

ERIC MAGNUS had not considered his marriage in its relationship to eternity. He
was deeply in debt and needed money. He came to the altar prepared to bury his
bachelor days and give his wife such love as he knew, a good fellow, ready to
settle down and found a family, fond enough of nineteen-year-old Germaine
already to relish the thought of making a pet of her—in short, a usable husband
with no humbug about him.

That was exactly what Germaine wanted, though she did not know that it was
what she wanted. In the background of her mind were mysterious and beautiful
young men, a Saint-Preux, a Mylord Edouard, noble as these heroes of Rousseau,
like them the prey of a melancholy scarcely to be conceived, removed eternally
from the understanding of the vulgar. Somewhere, in the uncharted heights of
the soul, they were destined to meet, these Galahads and she, to drain together
the chalice of ineffable sorrow and, moving swiftly upon the flower-clad hills, to
perfect one another in love. Eric Magnus was necessary to this transfiguration as
the hangman is necessary to the martyr, since in this love of exalted spirits there
is neither marrying nor giving in marriage and a girl ought to have a husband.

It took the excellent man only a very little time to learn his part. Germaine was
presented to the Queen within a fortnight of her wedding. While making her
third curtsey, she put her foot through her skirt.1 Marie Antoinette’s amusement
did not make her forgetful to be kind, and she sent the careless girl to refit in her
own rooms. “What a contrast to her mother !” At Versailles they had called
Suzanne “the governess.” Pinned up and smiling, Germaine hurried off to the
banquet which was being given in the palace in her honour. How shabby the
“Fridays” and the philosophers seemed now. There were only twenty-four guests
at the banquet, and the Princesse de Chimay, one of the ladies-in-waiting, did the
honours.

A few days later Vergennes gave a dinner at which he offered one arm to the
Spanish Ambassadress and the other to the Swedish. Eric Magnus’ women
friends were equally kind. They gave her hints about her clothes. When
Germaine tried to discuss serious matters with them they told her that the best

24
way to attract men was to avoid bright colours if you were dark and pale ones if
you were fair. This was a little upsetting, seeing that she loved bright colours,
greens and blues and golds, the very brightest that money could buy. The men
understood her better. They bent their powdered heads over her hand ; some of
them whispered suggestions that made her blush. On February 13, a month after
her marriage, she went to a reception at the Academy, given in honour of her old
friend Guibert, and the audience clapped their hands when she entered. After
that came the Queen’s balls in the winter garden at Versailles. Marie Antoinette
was thirty-one. Her girlish beauty, chiefly dependent on the exquisite freshness
of her skin, had passed, but she remained a handsome woman who expected to be
admired. Eric Magnus knew how to satisfy that expectation ; his wife did not.
The Queen, five months pregnant with her fourth and last child, was doubtless
more irritable and exacting than at ordinary times ; she began to dislike
Germaine, finding her noisy, aggressive and wanting in respect. There were no
blacker faults in a world which wore the hard polish of a diamond. Versailles had
achieved so rigid a discipline of manners that a false step was apt to be construed
as a challenge.

Nevertheless, Necker’s daughter experienced at first in the palace an ecstacy of

enjoyment such as no other surroundings had ever afforded. She could scarcely
believe that this man and woman, who condescended to her, were real King and
Queen, these gay boys, flushed with meats and mirth, real nobles of the great
houses of France. How delicious to listen to compliments from lips that could
laugh at Time ! To make one at intimate little dinners where there were pet
names for Princes, and no secrets. To chatter about the King’s supping with his
old aunts or the Queen’s new friendship for Madame d’Ossun and what Madame
de Polignac thought about it. When the Court went to Fontainebleau Germaine
supped three times a week with Madame de Polignac, three times a week with
Madame de Lamballe, and once a week in the Royal apartments. And in addition
she had her own entertaining in Paris, at home in the rue Bergère or at the
Swedish Embassy in the rue du Bac. Versailles was less prodigal than she of
victuals and drink. One day Marie Antoinette dropped a hint that lavishness is
apt to be misinterpreted even in the case of an Ambassadress. Far from feeling
resentful, Germaine thought that she had been singled out for the Royal favour.

“I live,” she wrote to Meister,2 her father’s old friend, “in a whirlwind of pleasures
and duties which fill up all my time whether I like it or not.”

Suddenly she was bored. In this world, as she told herself, though everything
counted, nothing mattered. The hive of Versailles with its endless rotations and
obeisances, its diligence, its flutter of wings, began to frighten her. How vast and
inhuman were its calculated movements ! One might admire the Queen en
grand costume staggering under the weight of Mademoiselle Bertin’s latest
mode, with its terrific mingling of fur, fin and feather. But how to endure the
ceaseless talk about tailors and barbers, milliners, perfume-makers, manicurists,
beauty doctors, the greedy and scandalous regiment of regeneration ? Enough of
a world in which the pouf au sentiment had set every tongue wagging, in which
one duchess had worn a negro, a parrot, and a wet nurse and infant all together

25
as ornaments in her hair, and another a lake, ducks, a mill, the miller’s wife being
courted by a priest and the miller himself leading home his donkey.

“Society in Paris,” she wrote to the King of Sweden,3 “gets more and more
insipid. One loses the wish to shine, and if one hadn’t the hope of winning at the
tables, what would there be left to live for ?”

In fact, it was Eric Magnus who from day to day cherished this hope. Germaine
was pregnant and had taken to writing plays and stories.

1
See d’Haussonville : Le Salon de Madame Necker. Geffroy : Gustave III et la
Cour de France (Appendix).
2
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 77.
3
Letters of Madame de Staël, in the University Library at Upsala, to Gustavus
III. Geffroy : Gustave III et la Cour de France (Appendix).

26
Germaine de Staël

Chapter VI

A WOMAN NEEDS A LOVER

THERE were two reasons why Germaine became unhappy at Versailles. In the
first place the people there did not show that eagerness to be made aware of her
opinions which the urgency of these opinions seemed to warrant. She liked to
strip her soul and stand spiritually naked, but they had a way, when she did that,
of throwing rugs over her. She could never get going as she used to get going on
the “Fridays,” among the philosophers. Again she had an uneasy feeling that
there was something about this great Palace and its life which she did not
understand, something, perhaps, which it had pleased God to reveal to babes like
Madame de Polignac. That ravishing woman awoke a vague terror in Germaine’s
heart. It seemed impossible that flesh and blood should be able to put on so
much loveliness or lips and eyes be able to express such delight. But the red lips,
the eyes of such excellent gentleness, held moments of laughter that scattered the
Swiss girl’s wits. It was like being kept out of a secret, and yet what secret could
there be ? The whole world knew of the extravagance and frivolity of the Court,
its stupidity, its moral emptiness. How she longed to testify ! Gabrielle de
Polignac, she shuddered to think, knew what was in her heart. If only she could
know what was in Gabrielle’s heart ! At rare intervals she saw the King and
marked his kind, apathetic face. Did he, too, know what was hidden from her ?
Did the Queen know ? But her thoughts returned to Gabrielle.

Her pregnancy began in the September following her marriage. Her writing
began about the same time and consisted of two plays in verse, Sophie and Jane
Grey, and three novels, L’Histoire de Pauline, Mirza and Adélaïde et Théodore.
The theme of all is the same, love in distress for one reason or another but
nevertheless making for perfection in those privileged to experience it. Rousseau
had said it, every word of it, in Julie; but whereas Julie was human, Germaine’s
heroines existed only to prove a case—namely, that a woman needs a lover as the
indispensable means of her spiritual growth and therefore has the right in all and
any circumstances to seek and possess him. The obverse of this claim is
displayed in Adélaïde et Théodore when Adélaïde, an old man’s bride, writes to
her aunt on the day following her wedding :

“ They have done for my future ; the ecstacy of love is for ever denied me ;
henceforward, because I can know neither joy nor sorrow, I must remain
indifferent to everything.”

In other words, the price of fidelity to Eric Magnus, in Germaine’s opinion, was
spiritual death ; she did not accept the child she was going to bear as a possible
substitute for a lover. The child, a girl, was born in June 1787. It survived only a
short time. Madame Necker de Saussure, the wife of Louis Necker’s son, and

27
therefore Germaine’s cousin by marriage, visited Paris at this time and observed
with uneasiness how little interest the young mother showed in her baby.

Germaine had other things to think about. The expedients of M. de Calonne had
not rescued Versailles from its financial distresses, and a fresh crisis was at hand.
It was no longer a question of waging war but of living. The wolf was at the
King’s door. Poor Calonne, who understood the handling of women better than
the handling of money, was in despair. He had advised the King to spend freely,
“so as to encourage trade”; the bills were falling in a snowstorm about his ears.
The need for a tax on land presented itself to him as it had already presented
itself to his master, to Turgot, to every man possessed of political sense. That
need was now the central fact of the situation. Versailles had doubtless spent a
great deal of money, but Versailles was the seat of government ; its expenses
were not out of proportion to its importance. On the contrary, both Louis and
Marie Antoinette were thrifty people among French Kings and Queens. The truth
was that the basis of taxation had not been broadened to meet modern needs
because the monarchy, after its loss of prestige in the Seven Years’ War, had not
dared to challenge the Church and the nobility, the owners of the land. As Louis
had told Turgot, absolute monarchy is based on prestige even more than on
legitimacy. Without prestige an absolute sovereign can only temporise or
abdicate.

The monarchy in France had served, during two centuries, as a substitute for
England’s island position. It had effected and guaranteed unity. Its weakness, as
Louis clearly saw, was therefore a danger not to itself alone but to the nation. The
King had exhausted every resource to maintain his absolute power because he
foresaw what the ruin of that power must bring about, namely, civil war and
dismemberment at the hands of greedy neighbours. Louis has had but little
credit for the faithfulness with which he discharged his duty. This honest,
devout, virtuous man, whose kindness was felt by all, must have been well aware
that he seemed to have failed and that both Church and nobility were advertising
his failure and his faults everywhere. But he knew also that the dangers from
which her Kings had rescued France and against which, even in his weakness, he
was still protecting her, remained not the less formidable because they were
unseen. Men beheld Versailles but not the disruption which Versailles had cured
and was preventing. In accordance with the policy of opportunism, which was his
only resort, he allowed Calonne to approach the Parlement of Paris with a view to
obtaining its sanction of a tax on land. The task was anything but an agreeable
one ; during centuries the monarchy had disputed the right of the Parlement to
meddle with taxation. The Parlement returned a curt refusal, a clear indication
that it meant to help the King’s opponents. Louis turned to another ancient body,
the Assembly of Notables. Calonne addressed the Notables in a speech which,
had they possessed any political wisdom, must have won them. He stated frankly
that the expenses of government exceeded income by more than £2,000,000 a
year, and claimed—truthfully—that this deficit was occasioned not by
extravagance but by the growing cost of administration in a modern state. To
prove his case he disclosed the fact that even the thrifty Necker had not been able

28
to make ends meet during the period of his ministry, though the banker, in
his Compte Rendu, had claimed a balance on the credit side.

The Notables, like the Parlement of Paris, refused to help the King, whom they
advised to summon the States-General. Their joy at finding him in so sorry a
plight was ill-concealed, for they were heart and soul for Church and nobles.
Some of them even showed resentment at the disclosures about Necker, who had
now become their man and was eager to see absolute monarchy replaced by a
constitutional government modelled on that of England. Necker himself was not
less resentful than his friends. The fact that Calonne had called him a liar upset
him so much that he was unable to rest until he had justified himself. He
composed a lengthy memorandum, Mémoire Justicatif, in which he tried to
prove that the King’s income was large enough, if carefully used, to meet the
King’s expenses—which he knew very well it was not. He sent this memorandum
to Versailles. Louis, remembering Compte Rendu and taking thought, no doubt
of his own desperate plight, forbade him to have it printed. Necker disobeyed.

“ One evening,” Germaine recounts,* “in the winter of 1787, two days after the
reply to M. de Calonne had appeared, a message came for my father. We were
entertaining some friends in the drawing-room. He left the room. A moment
later he sent first for my mother and then for me. The Lieutenant of Police, M. de
Noir, had just delivered a lettre de cachet in which my father was ordered to leave
Paris and not again approach nearer to it than 120 miles. I can’t describe the
effect which this news produced upon me. My father’s exile seemed to me an
unexampled act of despotism ; I felt for him the more acutely because I knew so
well how noble and disinterested were all his feelings.”

Necker left Paris twenty-four hours later. Germaine rushed off to Versailles to
the Queen and poured out the story of the monstrous treatment to which her
father had been subjected. Because she was an Ambassadress it was necessary to
listen to her, but Marie Antoinette was not encouraging. When asked directly if
she would try to influence the King in Necker’s favour, she refused. Germaine
returned to Paris to Eric Magnus. She declared that she had been insulted, and
urged that, if he cared for her, her husband would show his resentment. Eric
Magnus obeyed. Like most other people, he found it easier to yield to Germaine
than to argue with her.

Calonne’s failure made it necessary to try a new advocate. After a brief period
Louis—with misgivings—appointed as his Minister Etienne Charles de Lomenie
de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, and later Cardinal Archbishop of Sens. This
most dissolute man, more philosopher than ecclesiastic, more rogue than either,
was possessed of a persuasive tongue and felt that he could succeed where so
many others had failed. He shared—so he said—the King’s view that absolute
monarchy was necessary to the safety of France and that, if the States-General
was summoned and the English Constitution introduced, the nation would
speedily fall to pieces. He was ready, therefore, to adopt any means which offered
even the slenderest hope of an increased revenue for the Crown.

29
He began where Calonne had left off and exhausted his eloquence first on the
Parlement of Paris and then on the Assembly of Notables. Both these bodies
remained unmoved. The nobles, having at last got the King at their mercy, were
determined to reduce him to the position of a constitutional monarch and, as
they hoped, to govern the country themselves like their English brethren with the
help of the bankers. It would be time enough when the Royal power was broken
to think about a new basis of taxation. A campaign of calumny against the King
and the Queen and the Queen’s friends, notably Gabrielle de Polignac and her
husband, was launched in Paris and carried on with such enthusiasm that its
echoes have not yet died away. Louis was depicted as a fool, the victim of a
vicious and designing woman whose favourites were devouring the substance of
the nation. Necker, in his Compte Rendu, had struck the first note of this chorus
of hate ; Germaine, aflame with indignation at the punishment of her father and
the Queen’s coldness to herself, swelled the chorus by every means at her
disposal. Her salon at the Swedish Embassy was crowded with nobles professing
liberal principles, financiers, lawyers, philosophers, journalists. She went to and
fro in this crowd, stimulating its ambition and sharpening its rancour. She spoke
to the nobles about the free institutions which it would soon be their privilege to
bestow on France, to the rich about the opportunity which liberty must afford
them, to the philosophers about the realisation of their dreams. There were
blades for the knights, money-bags for the usurers ; there was gall for the writer’s
ink. Should a worthy but dull young man and his spendthrift, foreign wife be
allowed to stand between France and her destiny ?†

Louis marked the rising tide of hate and saw that his policy of delay had been
forestalled. He must act at once with such wretched resources of power as were
left to him or await tamely the pleasure of his conquerors. He dismissed the
Notables, arrested several members of the Parlement of Paris, and exiled the
Parlement itself to Troyes. This resolute gesture was followed up on November 9,
1787, by a resounding declaration of the absolute power of the Crown. Paris,
inflamed by orators and pamphleteers, bared its teeth. Nobles and priests joined
their defiances to those of the citizens. Let the King come and collect his taxes.
Versailles, remote among its woods, knew itself defeated by a combination of
forces singular even in political history.

Unable to collect his land tax, Louis was forced to yield. The Parlement, recalled
from exile, was welcomed by the Parisians with transports of joy, as if the rescue
of the nobility and clergy from the power of the tax-gatherer had been matter of
sincere congratulation among those who remained in the tax-gatherer’s clutches.
Germaine was in ecstasies. The King’s defeat was the opportunity of those young
and noble friends in whose spirits she had kindled the ambition to regenerate
France. More important than that a thousandfold, it was her father’s opportunity
to become the King’s master. Louis was compelled to promise that he would
summon the States-General for the following year. He was compelled to dismiss
Brienne and send once more for Necker.

* Considerations, Part I, p. 115 .

30
† For an account of Madame de Stael’s salon at this time, see Madame Necker de
Saussure’s introduction to the complete works, and nearly all the memoirs of the
period. It was by far the most famous salon in Paris.

31
Germaine de Staël

Chapter VII

TOWARDS PERFECTION

GERMAINE rushed off to Saint-Ouen to tell her father that he was about to be
recalled to power. The good man was peaceably at work on his book on the
importance of religious opinions.

“Oh,” he cried piously when his daughter burst in upon him, “if only the fifteen
months of the Archbishop of Sens’ (Brienne’s) ministry had been granted me !
Now it is too late !”1

Germaine didn’t hide her joy at the spectacle of this worthy walrus lamenting the
fate of the Royal oysters. Her father chided her gently.

“Only the agreeable side of office,” he said, “is seen by a minister’s daughter. She
lives in the reflected light of power. But the power itself, especially just now, is a
fearful responsibility.”

Even so sobering a thought could not damp Germaine’s ardour.

“ While driving through the Bois de Boulogne that night,” she recounted, “on my
way to Versailles, I was in horrible fear of being attacked by robbers ; for I felt
that the happiness which my father’s restoration to power was giving me was
bound to be offset by some cruel blow.”

Every moment brought its new delight. She wrote :

“ I presented myself to the Queen, according to custom, on St. Louis’ day. The
Archbishop of Sens had been dismissed that morning and his niece had come at
the same time as myself to take leave of Marie Antoinette. The Queen made it
quite clear, by her manner of receiving us, that she much preferred the Minister
who was quitting office to the Minister who was entering upon it. The courtiers,
however, behaved differently ; never before had so many people wanted to
conduct me to my carriage.”

The stage, so Germaine thought, was now set for the final scene, namely, the
superannuation of the King and the ascent to power of the nobility and the wits
under the joint leadership of her father and herself. She had prepared Eric
Magnus’s mind for the change which was coming, and he and his were harnessed
ready for the moment when their services might be required. Meanwhile she
suffered ; the lawful raptures of the Swede were hindering the evolution of her
soul towards perfection at a moment when her soul bore the responsibility of
nourishing the new France.

32
“How I thank you,” she wrote to Meister, who had sent her his De la Morale
Naturelle, “for having emphasised the importance of loving ! If men of high
intelligence will not defend loving, on philosophical grounds, as the crown of life,
it will soon be spoken of as a woman’s game, in the same tones as one uses of the
games of children.”2

This, perhaps, was how Eric Magnus spoke about loving, for he had flirted with
the prettiest women at Versailles. Certain it is that his little Swiss had no joy of
him, mentally or physically ; the more he desired her the more vehemently she
determined that this great office of loving must be rescued from the titterings and
slyness of a naughty world, full of the whispers of milliners and maid servants,
and established in honour as the authentic bread of the new life.

She had been working for some months on a book entitled Lettres sur Jean
Jacques Rousseau, the object of which was to prove that the author of Du
Contrat Social had provided a place for women in that Paradise of his to which all
Frenchmen were now marching. Woman’s place, she argued, like man’s place,
would be the reward of perfection. But whereas men were made to have careers,
woman ought to stake all on the object of her love, since by love alone could she
achieve citizenship. How to reconcile this shining truth with poor Eric Magnus ?

“ Happy that being,” she wrote, “who has never had to respond in relations not
springing from the heart ; who has never had to submit except gladly out of
love !” And she adds : “ It is our custom to educate young girls in convents ...
what choice have they ? Everything in this education tends to suppress emotional
liberty.” But after marriage “the whole atmosphere has been changed.
Everybody scoffs and jokes about the things which used to be held up as the
objects of deepest reverence.”3

The moral is obvious. In the new France Liberty must be supplemented by

Lovers’ Lane, so that virtue may no longer be compelled to exhaust herself in
fruitless resistance to passion. The writer is not yet bold enough to proclaim her
evangel, but she hints discreetly :

“ In countries where public opinion is the only bulwark against tyranny, the
applause and support of women constitute an additional motive for men’s
contending together. It is important to preserve this motive.”4

Liberty for all ; but love for women, so that, by love, “which prepares the soul for
virtue,” women may become the guarantors of liberty. Germaine dwelt piously
on all that love had accomplished for her father, thus calling worthy Jacques to
the support of ideas which frightened him out of his wits. Then Rousseau was
summoned from the tomb to do Jacques honour :

“ Arise, O Rousseau ! Arise from your ashes. And may your life-giving
prophecies inspire the man who departs from all evil in quest of perfection ; the
man whom France has named her guiding spirit, the man who sees only his duty

33
towards France in her enthusiasm for him ; the man to whom all must give their
help and support.”5

Madame Necker, reading her daughter’s book on a bed of continuing sickness,

was moved to write :

“ The old age of women ... is only bearable ... on condition that they do not take
up any room, do not make any noise, do not ask any service.”

Eric Magnus and his mother-in-law had many thoughts as they had many
afflictions in common. Both, without doubt, felt regrets for the world that was
passing away, the world in which husbands and old women had been accorded a
measure of toleration.

“ Conversation in Society,” wrote Germaine to the King of Sweden, “is no longer

unprofitable since public opinion is formed and declared in that way. Words
have become actions.”

1
Considerations, Part I, pp. 155 et seq.
2
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 79.
3
Lettres sur J.J. Rousseau.
4
Lettres sur J.J. Rousseau.
5
Lettres sur J.J. Rousseau.

34
Germaine de Staël

Chapter VIII

THEY SAY. WHAT SAY THEY ?

NECKER found only £10,000 in the King’s coffers. During the morning of his
first day of office the funds rose by 30 per cent., a clear indication of the way the
wind was blowing.

The banker, master of the situation, cast an anxious eye on the future. The
States-General, or parliament of the nation, which the King was about to
summon, had not met since 1614, that is to say, during 175 years. It was a body
composed of three orders, the Clergy, the Nobility and the Tiers État or
Commons. These three deliberated separately from each other and presented
separate reports to the King. Voting was by order, not by head, so that if the
Clergy and Nobles happened to be of the same mind on any subject, the
Commons could offer no effective resistance to them. Clergy and Nobles, as
Necker knew very well, were of the same mind on the subject of taxation ; they
did not intend to pay. Where did the business man come in ? The banker, in
spite of Compte Rendu and his Mémoire Justicatif, had no illusions about the
Royal finances. The existing revenue of government was permanently in-
adequate, and the basis of taxation must therefore be broadened forthwith. He
foresaw that if the States-General refused to broaden it, the middle class,
suddenly enlightened, would rally, as of old, to the support of the King. It was
essential, therefore, that the voice of the business world should be heard
effectively in the coming deliberations.

But the Swiss had small thought of poking his own stick into the hornet’s nest.
He lent no public countenance to the demand which many of his supporters,
Germaine among them, were making on his behalf, namely, that voting at the
meeting of the States-General should be by head rather than by order. He
suggested merely, that as the population of France had greatly increased since the
year 1614, the membership of the Commons ought as a matter of course to be
doubled. He offered the further suggestion that the King might find it expedient
to place this proposal before the Assembly of Notables. The plan was excellently
conceived and succeeded even beyond the hopes of its author. Scenting danger to
their pockets, the Notables refused to hear of any increase in the number of the
Commons. Instantly they became the object of popular suspicion and execration,
so much so, indeed, that a lively terror seized upon the Parlement of Paris, to
which Necker now turned. This body, so lately bold in opposition to the King,
bolted for safety behind his throne, declaring that the number of members of any
of the three orders was a matter solely to be determined by His Majesty’s
wisdom. Without moving a finger Necker had achieved the double purpose of
showing Versailles his strength in Paris and showing Paris his strength in
Versailles. Louis, at a sitting of the Privy Council at which the Queen was present
for the first time, ordered the doubling of the Commons’ membership ; the credit

35
went to Necker. The banker could now afford to wait upon events. It was certain
that the new Order of Commons, composed as it would be largely of business
men, lawyers, philosophers and journalists, would argue that, since its
membership had been doubled, its voting power must be doubled also. In other
words, the Commons could be relied on to fight desperately for voting by heads
instead of voting by orders. Necker had no doubt that, in the existing temper of
Paris, they would succeed. He meant, as soon as that had been accomplished, to
recommend the formation of two Chambers, as in England, with the power of
imposing taxation vested in the House of Commons. The rest, he thought, ought
to be plain sailing.

The elections of the members of the States-General, which took place early in
1789, justified his expectations. So far as the Commons were concerned there
was only one issue, namely, the method of voting. From every corner of France
the same challenge rang out : votes must be counted by head and not by order.
Mirabeau, at Marseilles, went further. He demanded the fusion of the three
orders into one parliament. That proposal drove the blood out of Necker’s cheeks
; where would financial stability be found in a single chamber ? Honore Gabriel
Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, younger son of a crazy sire, himself great of
courage, evil of visage, pock-marked, with grave brow, predatory nose, sneering
lips and eyes dulled by an incredible satiety of pleasure, was received with
bouquets of flowers by the hungry people of Marseilles when he drove in among
them. He bent his shaggy head and wept. But his heart leaped at thought of the
battle which lay before him.

Germaine saw him a few months later, at Versailles, at the opening of the States-
General, when the three orders went in procession to the church of Notre Dame
in that town. The sight made her gasp.

“It was hard,” she wrote, “not to keep gazing at him once you had begun to gaze.
His tremendous head of hair marked him out from all the others so that you felt
that, like Samson, his strength resided in it. Its very grossness lent something to
the expression of his face and his whole being conveyed the idea of power,
irregular perhaps, but such as ought to be possessed by a tribune of the people.
His name and his alone was famous then among the 600 members of the
Commons.”1

Mirabeau, in his black coat, strode on into the church, behind the splendours,
spread prodigally under the Maytime sun, of clergy and nobility. Germaine’s
breath came freely again.

“ I was seated,” she wrote, “at a window near Madame de Montmorin, wife of the
Foreign Minister, and I felt, I confess it, the most lively hope when for the first
time I saw representatives of the Nation in France. Madame de Montmorin . . .
declared in a sharp tone . . . ‘ You’re making a great mistake in congratulating
yourself ; terrible misfortunes for France and all of us are coming out of this.’ ”2

36
That was the King’s view also on this 5th of May. He looked weary, Germaine
thought, when she saw him next day at the formal opening of the Assembly.

“ When the King took his place on the throne . . . I felt for the first time a sense of
fear. . . The Queen was very much moved, she came a little late and looked pale.
The King spoke with his usual simplicity, but the expression of the deputies were
more energetic than that of the monarch. . . .”3

Necker then addressed the Assembly at such unseasonable length that even his
friends were bored to death. He talked money, nothing else, letting it be
understood that his husbandry would soon make the King solvent again. Nobody
believed him. Was this the saviour at whose feet Paris lay prostrate ? Next day
the battle between Lords and Commons was joined. It lasted six weeks, at the
end of which time the nobility, in living fear, fled helter-skelter to the King for
protection. Gone now their arrogance and their bold talk about the English
system : let his Majesty levy what taxes he might think necessary, they were
ready to pay. As they spoke, they glanced anxiously towards the meeting-place of
the faithful Commons. A whiff of democracy had given Louis all that he had
asked and more. He could have money now, and a free hand, for the foundation
of Necker’s power was sapped. Instinct counselled a speedy dissolution of the
States-General which had so admirably served its purpose. The banker was in
despair ; but he had one card left—namely, the hatred that had been worked up
in Paris against the Royal house. Rumours about the King’s intentions began to
spread in the Capital ; that he meant to betray his people, to fasten the yoke
more firmly than ever on their necks, to destroy liberty and re-establish tyranny.
He would certainly, it was proclaimed, succeed in these designs unless the Com-
mons bestirred themselves. Germaine was her father’s chief agent. She served
him well. Her salon became a sounding-board ; words were transmuted to
actions overnight, and once again the name of Necker was on every lip.

The effect at Versailles was tremendous. Until this time, the King had managed
to avoid taking sides and the Commons had not sought to draw him into their
struggle. Had he dissolved them, they would have obeyed. But the fury of Paris
imported a new element into their discussions. On June 17 the Abbe Sieyès,
whom Mirabeau had already nicknamed “Mahomet,” proposed that, as they
represented ninety-six per cent. of the nation, they should call themselves The
National Assembly and get to work without troubling further about the other two
orders. Necker had the King in his toils once more. He followed up his
advantage. Two days later the majority of the Order of the Clergy, headed by five
bishops, went over to the Commons. They were followed by what Germaine
called the more enlightened part of the nobility. Louis, faithful to his principles,
resisted this challenge to his authority by shutting the Commons’ house. The
deputies met in the tennis-court and took an oath not to separate till they had
given France a Constitution, a further direct defiance of the Royal power. Necker,
in ecstasies, advised the King to submit and threatened to resign if his advice was
rejected, moves which were duly advertised from the housetops of Paris. Louis
had now to decide whether to go on governing or to vacate his throne in favour of
the banker and the banker’s friends. To Jacques’ lively astonishment he chose to

37
go on governing, declaring that, for the public safety, authority must be upheld.
He added that he proposed, by a bold declaration of policy, to graft reform upon
the stem of absolutism.

The three orders were called to a Royal sitting on June 23, 1789. Louis told them
that he would not allow his authority to be set aside. He declared the proceedings
of the last few days illegal, ordered the Estates to meet separately and then
turned to his reforms. These consisted in the withdrawal of privilege in the
matter of taxation and the throwing open to talent of all the public services,
military as well as civil. The King retired, followed by the Clergy and the Nobles.
But the Commons lingered in the hall. One of the masters of ceremonies, de
Brézé, came to order them to leave. There was a moment of hesitation. Then
Mirabeau sprang forward, his eyes bloodshot, his lips foaming :

“ Go and tell your Master,” he shouted, “ that we are here by the will of the
people, and that we shall not go out from here except at the point of the bayonet.”

This was a gesture towards Paris. In fact, it was not Mirabeau but Necker who
dominated the situation. That evening worthy Jacques, the news of whose
resignation had made other events seem paltry, was carried shoulder-high
through the streets of Versailles. Germaine tells :

“ The report that M. Necker had resigned spread. In an instant all the streets of
Versailles were full of people shouting his name.”

In Paris demonstrations of a fiercer kind were in progress. Louis saw the

hopelessness of resistance other than by armed force. He shrank as yet from that,
though Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, had advised him to call up the troops.
Necker was recalled to the palace and invited to take office again.

“ In returning home from the King’s presence,” says Germaine, “ M. Necker was
carried in triumph by the populace. The lively ecstasy I experienced then still
glows in my memory, reawakening the emotions which, in these beautiful
moments of youth and hope, the spectacle produced. All those voices which
called my father’s name seemed to me to be the voices of friends who shared my
tender reverence for him. ... People about the court tried to suggest that M.
Necker had staged this scene himself. . . .

“ The majority of the Clergy, the minority of the Nobility, all the Commons
crowded to visit M. Necker on his return from the King. His house could scarcely
contain them. . . I heard my father urging the Commons not to hush their
demands too far. ‘ You’re the strongest party just now,’ he said, ‘ It’s up to you to
show wisdom.’ He described for their benefit the state of France and showed
them the good they could accomplish. Several of them wept and promised to be
guided by his counsels. But they insisted on hearing the King’s intentions.”4

These were announced a day or two later. Louis commanded the three orders to
sit together. It was Necker’s victory. But if the banker had Paris and the

38
Assembly, the King had his army. Very reluctantly Louis decided that he must
play this, his last card. The stake, as he believed, was the safety of France, which
arising tide of violence already threatened, especially in Paris. France, he
thought, would welcome his policy of reform all the more if there was no price to
pay for it in weakening of the national unity or in diminished respect for law and
order. Regiments, notably regiments containing foreign soldiers, were ordered to
Versailles and Paris in readiness for the day when the King should see fit to
dismiss Necker and dissolve the Assembly. The banker mobilised his forces,
which at this moment included Mirabeau. In an appeal delivered with the magic
of an oratory which wept, laughed, sneered, coaxed, threatened, abused and
flattered by turns, and which, at moments, filled men’s hearts with the purest
flame of patriotism, Mirabeau cried to the King :

“ Sire, we conjure you in the name of the Fatherland, in the name of your
goodness and your glory, send back your soldiers to the outposts from which your
advisers have brought them. Send back the guns that were forged to protect your
frontiers. Above all, send back the foreign mercenaries—those allies of our nation
whom we pay not to threaten but only to defend us. Your Majesty doesn’t need
them. What, a sovereign adored by 25,000,000 Frenchmen needs to waste his
money gathering a few thousand foreigners round his throne ! Sire, you are
among your children ; let their love protect you.”

This was the cue. Necker went daily to the palace, with his smug mouth tight
shut and his ears open.

“ Every evening my father told us in strict confidence,” says Germaine, “that he

expected to be arrested next morning, but that, in his opinion, the danger to
which the King was exposing himself was so great that he had made it a rule of
conduct not to let it appear that he suspected anything.

“ On the 11th of July, at three o’clock in the afternoon, M. Necker received a letter
from the King in which he was ordered to leave Paris and France. He was further
ordered to keep his going a profound secret. The baron de Breteuil had, the King
stated, offered the advice that M. Necker should be placed under arrest because
his dismissal was likely to cause a riot. ‘I replied,’ wrote the King, ‘ that he
(Necker) will give me strict obedience in the manner of his going.’ M. Necker was
touched by this proof of faith in his honour even though it accompanied an order
of exile.”5

He and Suzanne left for Brussels, with Germaine in pursuit. The news soon
spread. Up went the barricades in Paris. Out poured the mobs from their
kennels. The city went mad, partly from fear of the troops, partly from dismay at
the loss of its saviour. On July 14 the King’s great stronghold in the city’s heart,
the Bastille, was attacked, entered by a trick, and destroyed. Bloody heads
appeared on the ends of poles. As the formidable towers came crashing down,
Paris vowed that Necker should return. Because the supply of green ribbon had
given out, the trees in the Tuileries gardens were stripped of their leaves to make
Necker cockades.6

39
Jacques and Suzanne had left Brussels and were homeward bound for Coppet, by
way of Bâle. They put up at an inn in this town and were settling for the night
when a messenger was announced. The good couple could scarcely believe their
ears. He came from Gabrielle de Polignac, who, fleeing with her husband and
child from stricken Versailles, was staying at another hostelry in the town.7

1
Considerations, Part I, p. 186.
2
Considerations, Part I, p. 187. Madame de Montmorrin died on the guillotine.
One of her sons was guillotined, another drowned. Her husband was a victim of
the September massacres. Her eldest daughter died in prison, her younger died
of grief.
3
Considerations, Part I, p. 189.
4
Considerations, Part I, pp. 227-229.
5
Considerations, Part I, p. 235.
6
This fact is attested by eyewitnesses. See The Grim Bastille, by Friedrich
Kircheisen (Hutchinson).
7
Considerations, Part I, p. 243.

40
Germaine de Staël

Chapter IX

THE KING WAS IN HIS COUNTING-HOUSE

GABRIELLE had a sorry tale to tell. The terrific outburst in Paris had shattered
Louis’ power. King and Queen were in such great danger that Marie Antoinette
herself had begged her friend to go.

Necker got no rest that night. There were couriers every hour with messages
from the King, from the Assembly, from the people, beseeching him to come
back. Each new message sounded a louder note of urgency. He, he alone, could
save the Fatherland. Germaine had joined her parents at Brussels. She had Eric
Magnus with her and was in ecstasies. Babylon was fallen. It remained only to
enter and take possession. The Swiss family drove out, across the frontier, with
eyes blinded by tears. As the big berline lurched upon the French highway, their
hearts overflowed. So the lad o’ pairts was to be King ! There were deputations
at every hamlet.

“ Respect property, my friends, honour your priests and nobles, love your King,”
counselled worthy Jacques.

“ Vive M. Necker ! Vive Madame Necker ! Vive Madame de Staël !”1

Again and again the horses were taken from the carriage, that it might be drawn
by loving arms. Men and women fell on their knees when the banker bowed to
them. His word was good enough to save the life of one of the commanders of the
foreign mercenaries who had been arrested thirty miles from Paris and was about
to be sent back there. They drove direct to Versailles. Next day Necker made his
triumphal entry into the Capital, to receive the homage of the newly formed
“Commune” of Paris.

“ Let me pause again at this day,” wrote Germaine, “the last lucky day of my
young life. The whole population of Paris was crowded in the streets at the
windows, on the roofs, shouting : ‘ Vive M. Necker.’ When he approached the
Hotel de Ville the cheering became terrific. The place was filled by a vast
multitude which flung itself at the feet of this one man. This man, my father—!
He ascended to the council chamber. . . .”

There he explained his reasons for preventing the sending back to Paris of the
King’s officer and demanded a general pardon for the misdeeds of the past. That
granted :

“ M. Necker came out on the balcony and proclaimed in a loud voice holy words
of peace between Frenchmen of all parties. The entire multitude was
transported. From that moment I saw no more. I fainted with joy.”2

41
A few days before, the King had come to this same Hotel de Ville in deep
humiliation to sanction acts which he had no power to prevent ; Lafayette had
helped to pin the tricolour cockade (the red and blue of Paris with the Bourbon
white) on his hat. Louis had ceased to reign. It was Jacques and Germaine who
sat on the throne. Gouverneur Morris, newly arrived from America and most
perspicacious of observers, saw the illustrious pair about this time. He says :3

“ He (Necker) has the look and manner of the counting-house, and, being dressed
in embroidered velvet, he contrasts strongly with his habiliments. His bow, his
address say : ‘ I am the man.’ If he is really a very great man I am deceived. . . .
In the salon we find Madame de Staël. She seems to be a woman of sense and
somewhat masculine in her character, but has very much the appearance of a
chambermaid.”

Nevertheless he paid tribute to her wit :

“ I feel very stupid in this group . . . A conversation too brilliant for me. . . The few
observations I make have more of justice than splendour and therefore cannot
amuse. . . . She is a woman of wonderful wit and above vulgar prejudices of every
kind. Her house is a kind of Temple of Apollo. . . .”

The letters on Rousseau had been published during some months and were being
hailed as miracles of wisdom. A second edition was now called for. The cup of
her happiness was so full that Germaine scarcely dared to lift it. But amid these
distractions she was not unmindful of the duty of striving towards higher planes
of perfection. A lover had been vouchsafed to her.

Louis Marie Jacques Almeric, Comte de Narbonne-Lara, thirty-four years of age,

reputed bastard of King Louis XV, was an elder son of Versailles. He had been
fed on the Royal nectar, tutored with princes, and was of an excellent distinction
of mind and body. Beardless, he had made himself master of all the tongues of
Europe, its systems of law, its diplomacy, its politics. The years bore richer gifts,
wit, laughter, good looks, the love of women. No woman had been found to resist
Narbonne ; none could penetrate his mask of grand seigneur nor match the
agility of his thought. But the fellow was ambitious. There was the link with
Germaine, Necker’s gipsy-queen, who would promise luck for a love-song.
Madame de Montmorency-Laval, his mistress, was abandoned ; Narbonne
addressed himself to the charms of the Swiss. She, for her part, must cry her
conquest to the winds of heaven. A King’s son in her bed, beautiful as Apollo !
Here was loving as the gods love, vintage cellared dustily through the splendid
years, to be spilled in Liberty’s sunlight, noble enough for a queen’s lips. Paris
gaped, Versailles too. King Louis and Louis de Narbonne had learned their
alphabets together, played together, grown up together. Germaine’s black eyes
flashed their triumph across the drawing-room of the rue du Bac. Her broad,
blotched features glowed with new joy as her arid lips discoursed of the soul’s
mounting to virtue. What if her complexion was muddy, hair coarse as a horse’s
mane, figure stout and stocky ; beauty is cheap when wits are joined. The
woman of the century had found her mate and would know how to keep him.

42
The drawing-room was full of her courtiers : Lafayette, Mathieu de
Montmorency-Laval, newly-wed but devoured by his love of his cousin ;
Monseigneur the Bishop of Autun, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, lover
of Madame de Flahaut ; Stanislas, Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre ; Trophine
Gerard, Marquis de Lally-Tollendal, whose father’s death on the scaffold for
failing to defend India when Madame de Pompadour had made defence
impossible lay still, a shadow, on his face ; Alexandre, Comte de Lameth ; his
brother Charles ; François Jaucourt ; Anne, Marquis de Montesquieu-Fézensac,
fifty years of age, the oldest of the group. These were her selections for the House
of Lords (English style) which Necker meant to set up as a means of keeping the
King and the Commons apart and himself in the saddle. All were pledged to the
banker, suspicious of Versailles, filled with implacable loathing of Mirabeau “the
unclean.” All burned incense day and night before the face of Germaine. Besides
these chosen, the unregenerate had been bidden—deputies of the extreme Right,
of the Left, opponents of Necker who might yet be won for him ; the children of
hope—writers and journalists with the tribune in their mind’s eye, business men
scenting honours or carrion ; the diplomatic corps—out of regard for Eric
Magnus. Words were wasps in this hive, every one with a sting in its tail for the
King or Mirabeau, but most for Mirabeau.

That man had played Necker’s game till now (on June 23 at the Royal sitting ; in
July, before the banker’s dismissal). But Jacques was under no illusions.
Mirabeau despised him as he hated Mirabeau. It was pride against vanity, and
there is no truce between these two. But more, it was wisdom against a doctrine.
Mirabeau, seeing the Neckers’ glory, was choked with rage. Had Frenchmen then
no sense, no instinct ? What a monstrous farce ! The King shorn of authority ;
the Assembly drunk with talk. And this Swiss for the cement of France. No
wonder men could hear France breaking up as the ice breaks under the thaws of
Spring.

43
 “ We are not savages,” he shouted,
“landing on the banks of the Orinoco to form a society ; we have ancient
prejudices, a Government and a King which have already been in existence a long
time. As far as possible all these things must be grafted on to the Revolution and
the suddenness of the change avoided.” He demanded to talk with the King. For,
“I feel deeply how great is our need to kill ministerial tyranny and to raise up the
authority of the throne once more. . . . Make it known at the Chateau (the palace)
that I am more on their side than against them.”4 Louis shrank from his violence
as did the Queen from his uncleanness ; Necker even seemed better than
this rebellious son, faithless husband, fickle lover, this gambler, debtor,
drunkard, seducer, companion of rogues and harlots. The two men whose
coming together must have ruined Necker did not meet. Mirabeau had to fight,
single-handed, the battle for a strong hand to pull France together, the battle,
that is to say, against Necker’s plan to establish the English Constitution, with its
government and opposition, its upper and lower House. Would this alien
harness, he asked, give control of the runaway ? Why not introduce the English
language as well ? Mad with the horror of what he saw approaching, he bellowed
his warnings in the Assembly’s ears, gibing, sneering, cursing by turns. He
painted for them the “hideous bankruptcy” that was at hand till they sweated with
fear. He showed them the wounds, gaping ever wider, in the breast of France,
and made them see, as well, England’s strength and the envious foes, reinforced
now by the emigrant nobles, who stood on the frontiers. To no purpose. “ This
man,” they said, “is a wild beast, a madman. He has a tiger’s face. He can’t speak
without convulsions.” But when he spoke they listened.

Necker at Versailles, Germaine in the rue du Bac, watched with growing anxiety
and began to understand something of what King Louis and his Queen had
endured. His crown seemed heavy now to the banker, and he looked about
anxiously for support. Germaine called on her young lords to set about the work

44
of introducing the English Constitution. But when they showed themselves
Mirabeau savaged them.

“ I cannot imagine anything more terrible,” he shouted, “than the rule of six
hundred noblemen.”

So thought the majority of the Assembly. Necker saw the plans of his new world
torn up before his eyes. Worse still, he had much ado to lay his hands on the
money needful for government. The Assembly was not interested in money. Its
members used the backs of his appeals to them for writing notes about the march
of the soul towards virtue. The name of Liberty was on every lip. One night,
August 4, 1789, the salle dujeu de paume, where the oath to give a constitution to
the Fatherland had been taken, became the scene of an emotional outburst
without a parallel in history. Weeping, and hugging one another, while the
bishops who were present sang the Te Deum, nobles of France flung their lands,
their revenues, their names even, at the nation’s feet. In an hour or two the
feudal system was broken up like a derelict wind-jammer that will make fuel for
poor hearths.

Away they all ran to tell the King what they had done and ask him to agree with
them. Louis, scarcely awake and weary of the sight of these black coats about his
palace, as one grows weary of the sight of workmen about a dwelling, chided
them gently on a haste that had not marred any other of their deliberations. They
conferred on him the title of “Renewer of French Liberty.” Mirabeau, who had
been abed during the “charity subscription,” roared his rage. “Fools, madmen,
jackasses !” Who was going to pay a penny of taxes now that the basis of taxation
had been swept away ?

That, too, was Necker’s first thought. It was destined to abide with him. The flow
of money which had been diminishing from week to week stopped abruptly. The
banker turned out his pockets and proposed a loan, carrying interest at 5 per
cent. But this rate being reduced to 4½ per cent. by the Assembly, the loan
failed, though Jacques himself subscribed £56,000. Mirabeau let it be known
that he thought it quite a good thing to keep “the dictator” a bit short of cash, a
suggestion which Germaine repaid with interest.

“Mirabeau,” she wrote, “was banned from decent society and his fondest wish
was to get back there. He was ready to burn down civilisation to open the doors
of Paris. Like all immoral men, he saw his own interest first ; his foresight was
limited by his egoism. ‘ Small scruples kill big ones’ (La petite morale tue la
grande), he used to say ; but the big ones, on his showing, are seldom
encountered even in the course of a life.”5

Having got his hand on the purse-strings, for the Assembly alone could levy
taxes, Mirabeau began to make Necker squeal. The bad man derived an exquisite
pleasure from this punishment of the good.

45
“ He had a damnable way,” Germaine wrote, “of praising M. Necker. ‘ I don’t
approve of his plans,’ he would say, ‘ but since the nation in its wisdom has hailed
him as our dictator, we must accept with faith.’ M. Necker’s friends realised with
what cunning Mirabeau sought to snatch his popularity away from him, in thus
exaggerating it. For nations are like men ; they love less when they are told too
often that they love. . . . I was quite near Mirabeau one day when he brought
down the house, and although I had no illusions about his aims, he captivated me
for two whole hours. Nothing could be more impressive than his voice ; and, if
the gestures and the biting words he used did not spring straight from his heart,
they held at least a living force the effect of which was tremendous.”

Necker called now for a voluntary subscription and flung in another £4,000 of
his own money. A few of the faithful brought their family plate (one of them his
shoe-buckles), but the till remained empty. Investors, it seemed, had lost their
confidence in Jacques. That was the more distressing because there was a bread
famine in Paris, about which ugly charges were being made by Dr. Marat in his
news-sheet L’ami du Peuple. Was the people’s hunger the work of the
speculators in wheat ? Everybody knew that M. Necker had grown rich by
financing these scoundrels. The banker tasted fear and sent more appeals to the
Assembly. Paris heard that M. Necker was fighting its battle for bread against
Royal apathy on the one hand and parliamentary eloquence on the other.
Though his heart was bleeding, his hands were tied.

Germaine, in love, was grown more formidable as a politician. Her salon, in this
duel with Mirabeau, was losing its character of cadets’ kindergarten. Swordsmen
have need of their breath. She had courage to match the Tribune’s, vigour too ;
above all, the lively conviction of virtue. Her sex was a cordial for faint hearts ;
her wit their counsellor. She could plan, plot, foresee. The most agile spirits, the
most subtle, rejoiced in her, among these, becoming more attentive daily, the
Bishop of Autun. Talleyrand was thirty-five, a thin, slight man with a game leg
and an expressionless face. Ordained priest at twenty-five, he had been,
successively, Secretary of the Assembly of the Clergy and Agent-General. In 1788
the “little Abbe de Périgord,” as he was called, received his mitre. This was in
keeping, if not with the tradition of his family, which was military, at least with
his family’s distinction. Soon, as he believed, he would exchange the mitre for a
Cardinal’s hat ; and that nearly happened, would have happened had not King
Louis harboured old-fashioned prejudices against priests who slept in other
men’s beds. Talleyrand bore the King no ill-will. He liked old-fashioned
prejudices, as one likes old pewter. But his faith in Louis sickened after he saw
Necker being carried shoulder-high out of the palace of Versailles. A few days
later he went to sit among the Commons and took the road to Paris, to hobble
into Germaine’s drawingroom with Madame de Flahaut in attendance.

Germaine loved Talleyrand’s wit, hotly, as she loved Narbonne’s person.

Dauntless empiricist, she must needs go to bed with the one as with the other,
though the bishop was not disposed to be so accommodating about Madame de
Flahaut as Narbonne had been about Madame de Montmorency-Laval. What
sauce for jaded appetites this liaison of priest and little presbyter in such

46
excellent tolerance of one another as made politics among the pillows a new spice
of love. The girl’s soul, mounting ever higher, perceived that Mirabeau’s
weakness and Necker’s strength dwelt in the same place, here, in Paris. Very
soon her friend M. de Lafayette, Gilbert, Marquis de Lafayette (called “The
General”) was talking vaguely about the need which might arise of marching his
Parisian Civic Guard to Versailles and stimulating there the energies of the
Assembly and the monarch. This young man of thirty-two had taken Liberty to
wife and was living with her like an honest bourgeoise. Or at least he was trying
to live with her, for the lady was inclined to lightness, a gadabout, a scold, with a
shrew’s temper and harlot’s lips. One might read the pain of secret woe on
Lafayette’s long, uneventful face with its crown of red hair. He had so wished
that his dear Liberty might be respectable. But she held him under thumb, none
the less.

That had not been apparent in the days when he was fighting her battles by
Washington’s side—“my friend Washington”—in far-off America. All was kisses
and rapture then, as becomes a honeymoon. But men had discovered doubts at
the fall of the Bastille, while Necker was posting back to Paris. Lafayette knew
very well that the mob which took the Bastille had murdered two men.
Nevertheless he it was who sent the mob back, with a bow and a flourish, to the
old fortress to raze the walls. The mob murdered two more men. When, during
these bloody days, the City of Paris set up its own government, the Commune in
the Hotel de Ville, and made Bailly, the astronomer, Mayor and master, Lafayette
was there to give the rebel act his countenance. It was he who urged the King to
make an honest body of the Commune by coming to Paris and blessing it, he who
escorted the Royal carriage on that occasion, he who invented the Tricolour
cockade, he who pinned it upon the King’s breast, he, finally, who became
General-in-Chief of the National Guard which anxious citizens formed in these
July days to protect themselves against both throne and gutter. The wench
Liberty, it seemed, could do what she liked with this spouse.

“ His faith in the triumph of Liberty,” wrote Germaine, “is of the same kind as
that of a godly man in the life everlasting.”6

There was the secret of his usefulness to Necker’s daughter. Whisper to him that
Liberty was in danger, he would be abroad, uniformed, on his white horse to
defend the damsel with his life. Say even she had gone whoring, he would woo
her over again, with untempered rapture. “Little great man,” Mirabeau called
him, and pelted him with the scorns and mockeries flung already at Necker.
These be your gods, O Israel ! Lafayette came sometimes to Germaine’s drawing-
room, route-marching through it without a word spared to woman’s weakness,
but with his ears wide open. She knew how to speak to him, about the King and
Queen, about Mirabeau, about her father. If only the King could be quit of his
obsession that France had need of a chef de famille ; if Mirabeau could be purged
of his lust of power ! “Where may wisdom be found, and where is the place of
understanding ?” Surely in the city which delighted to honour Lafayette and
Necker. The General turned it over in his mind ; Paris always contrived to know
what Lafayette was thinking.

47
The King and Queen, in these autumn days, had their own thoughts, simple like
their natures. On June 4, before the Swiss family had begun to trouble their
relations with the Commons, they had bent together over the death-bed of their
eldest son, Louis Joseph Xavier François, a boy eleven years of age. That blow
had left its mark on both father and mother, mocking with its new pain the frenzy
of the liberators. But they had hidden sorrow from the world’s eyes. Now it
seemed that, perhaps, the boy’s death had happily released him. Marie
Antoinette feared for her children, for her husband. In the faces of the deputies
who came and went morning and night, like the tide, were looks she had not seen
before on any man’s face. Where was safety in this France ? “ The King and
Queen will perish,” Mirabeau cried in horror one day, “and the people will batter
their dead bodies.” That thought had begun to quicken in her heart also. If only
they could escape from it all ! The longing to escape grew till it filled her mind ;
and the golden heads of her children, each time she glanced at them, deepened
it. Since Necker and Germaine reigned, why stay to uphold their power ? Better
be gone, that France might awaken out of her dream. Here, in Versailles, they
were props of the banker’s power ; but there, on the frontiers, they would hold
him at their mercy. Could they reign alone, this Swiss and his daughter ? Marie
Antoinette knew her Jacques as no other except Mirabeau knew him. “ The King
has only one man on his side,” cried the Tribune, in a burst of admiration, “and
that is his wife.”

“ Take care,” whispered the tongues of Paris, “that the King and Queen do not slip
through your fingers. Will they stay, do you suppose, to endure the short rations
you are enduring ? Bring the King to his capital and the price of bread will fall ?”

On October 3 the officers of the bodyguard held a dinner-party in the palace.

After the tables had been cleared, the doors of the room were thrown open and
the Queen entered, followed by her women. She distributed the white cockades
of the Bourbons, bidding the young men swear to protect her husband and her
children. She was flushed, beautiful, as in the old days. They sprang on chairs,
with swords drawn, and took the oath she gave. Then they tore Lafayette’s
cockade, which the King had bade them wear, from their hearts and put the
Queen’s cockade in its place. The song of Royalty

“ O Richard, O anon roi. . . ”

burst defiantly from their lips. Before the candles on the table had been
extinguished, the news of this defiance was abroad in the Paris streets.

1
Considerations, Part I, p. 254•
2
Considerations, Part I, p. 255.
3
The Life of Gouverneur Morris, by Jared Sparks, Vol. I, p. 298 and Index.
4
Mirabeau’s letters to La Merck.

48
5
Considerations, Part II, pp. 26o et seq.
6
Considerations, Part II, p. 272.

49
Germaine de Staël

Chapter X

A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

THE Commune or City Council of Paris illegally formed at the time of the fall of
the Bastille, but made legal, before Necker’s return, by the Kings visit to the Hôtel
de Ville, was becoming the formidable rival of both National Assembly and
Throne. The Commune owed its existence to Necker, in the sense that his
propaganda had paved the way for its creation and his dismissal furnished the
pretext. It relied for strength on the National Guard, of which Lafayette was
General, and on the mobs which could be summoned from the slums of the rue
St. Antoine and other poor quarters by the ringing of bells.

Both Necker and Lafayette supposed, in these autumn days of 1789, that they
remained masters of this new Parisian Government. Both cherished the same
fear, that the King might leave France. If that happened, the Assembly would
become the master ; and Mirabeau had looked once or twice like becoming
master of the Assembly. There would be short work, if he succeeded, of Swiss
bankers and city councils, and generals in command of amateur battalions. “
Mirabeau,” said Necker, “is tribune by calculation, but aristocrat by choice.”1

Worthy Jacques was haunted by visions of his foe, become Dictator, re-
establishing the rule of Richelieu and Louis XIV. The morning of October 5, the
morning after the banquet of the bodyguard at Versailles, opened dull and
lowering. The King went hunting ; the Assembly, in the tennis-court, put the
finishing touches to the Rights of Man. Suddenly an uneasy rumour ran about
the benches. The Parisian mob, it was whispered, which had destroyed the
Bastille, was on the march to Versailles.

“ I was informed,” wrote Germaine,2 “on the morning of October 5 that the people
were marching to Versailles ; my father and mother were living there. I rushed
off to join them, going by a way that was little used and on which I met nobody.
The only people I saw at all were some of the servants of the King’s hunt. These I
met near Versailles. When I reached the palace I was told that a messenger had
been sent off to beg the King to come back at once. (Such is the force of habit in
the life of a Court ! The King did the same thing in the same way at the same
hours as he had been accustomed to do in the most peaceful times ; evidence, no
doubt, of a serenity of spirit which one might have admired if his circumstances
had warranted the display of any other quality than the resignation of a victim.)

“ M. Necker came hurrying to the Chateau to attend the Council ; and my

mother, growing more frightened every moment by the reports which kept
pouring in from Paris, entered the King’s ante-room so as to be at hand to share
whatever fate might befall my father. I followed her and found the room full of
people who had come to it for all sorts of reasons.

50
“ While we waited, Mounier passed through. He came, very much against his
will, to demand, as President of the Assembly, the royal assent to the Declaration
of the Rights of Man. The King had consented to the principles enshrined in this
declaration, but had let it be known that he wished to see how they were going to
be applied before finally committing himself. The Assembly was up in arms
against this trifling obstacle to its wishes, for there is no feeling so violent among
the French as the rage excited by opposition when those who oppose are
defenceless.

“ Everybody in the room kept asking whether or not the King would leave
Versailles. Soon we learned that he had ordered his carriages but that the
townsfolk had refused to let them pass ; then it was stated that he had
commanded the Flanders Regiment, which was in garrison in the town, to stand
to arms. The Regiment had refused to obey. We heard afterwards that the
Council debated the question whether or not the King should escape into the
country ; but as there was no money available, as the bread famine made any
considerable mobilisation of troops impossible, and as no steps had been taken to
organise such supplies as were still at disposal, the King hesitated to take the
risk. He was convinced, too, that if he fled, the Assembly would give his crown to
the duc d’Orleans. The Assembly, in point of fact, had never dreamed of doing
anything of the kind. M. Necker was opposed to the departure of the Court in
circumstances which must preclude the success of such a move, but he offered
nevertheless to follow the King if the decision to go away was taken. M. Necker
was ready to lay down his fortune and his life, although he understood very well
what his own position would be among a crowd of courtiers who knew no rule of
policy, as of religion, except intolerance.

“ Now that the King has fallen victim, in Paris, to the sword of the factions, it is
but natural that those who, on this 5th of October, advised him to flee, should
plume themselves on that advice, for it is always an easy matter to paint the
advantages that would have followed a course of action which was not, in fact,
adopted. But, apart from the consideration that it was, possibly, already out of
the King’s power to leave Versailles, one must remember that M. Necker, while
arguing that it was necessary to go to Paris, urged that His Majesty should act
strictly in accordance with, and put his whole trust in, the Constitution. If that
was not done, M. Necker said, the King, whatever he might decide, would expose
himself to terrible misfortunes.

“ The King, in deciding to stay at his post, still had it in his power to put himself
at the head of his bodyguard and meet force with force. But Louis XVI made it a
strict rule of conduct in no circumstances to put the life of any Frenchman in
danger for his personal safety ; his courage, too, about which the spectacle of his
death has removed all doubts, never enabled him, of his own accord, to take any
decisive course of action. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that at that
time of day, a success against the mob could not have saved him ; the public
mind was bent upon revolution. When we study the course of events carefully,
happenings, which vulgar minds love to impute to chance or to human frailty, are
seen to have been inevitable from the beginning.

51
“ The King, then, made up his mind to await the coming of the army, or rather the
mob, from Paris, which was now approaching. Every eye was fixed on the road by
which it must come. We thought that guns would be trained on us, and that was
terrifying enough ; but not one of the women had an idea of running away.

“ When the multitude began to draw near, the arrival of M. de Lafayette at the
head of the National Guard was announced, a reassuring piece of news. M. de
Lafayette had, in fact, held back until the last moment from marching to
Versailles and had only been induced to do so by the express order of the
Commune of Paris which had bidden him go and prevent the misfortunes that
threatened. Night approached, and the general uneasiness increased with the
darkness. We saw M. de Chinon, who has since, as duc de Richelieu, achieved
such well-merited distinction, come to the palace. He was pale and exhausted ;
he wore the clothes of a common man (un homme du peuple). It was the first
time that such a dress had ever been brought into the King’s house or that so
great a noble as M. de Chinon had ever been reduced to wearing it. He had, he
stated, marched some distance with the crowd to overhear what was being said,
and had then left it in order to reach Versailles in time to warn the Royal family.
What a story he told ! Women and children armed with pikes and scythes
gathered from all parts. The dregs of the population brutalised by drink rather
than rage. In this hellish crowd, men nicknamed coupe-tétes and swearing to
deserve this title. The National Guard had marched in orderly fashion, obedient
to its chief ; its only wish was to bring the King and the Assembly back with it to
Paris.

“ At last M. de Lafayette arrived and crossed the room to go to the King.

Everyone crowded round him eagerly, as if he was master of the situation.
Already the popular party had gone one better than its chief ; principle was being
sacrificed to party, or rather being used as a pretext for party allegiance. M. de
Lafayette looked very calm ; nobody has ever seen him look otherwise. But his
tact was fully equal to the importance of the part he was playing. He asked that
as a matter of precaution the duty of posting guards inside the Chateau might be
entrusted to him, but was only allowed to post the outside guards. It was easy
enough to refuse him, because the rule was that the bodyguard must occupy these
inside posts ; nevertheless, terrible calamities were to result from refusal. M. de
Lafayette came out from the King’s closet and reassured us all. Everybody, he
urged, ought to go home after midnight. It seemed to us all that we had reached
the crisis of the day, and we all felt quite safe—the usual experience when people
have been afraid but have found their fears unjustified. M. de Lafayette, at five
o’clock in the morning, thought that danger was over and left matters to the
bodyguard which had taken the inside posts. An entrance they had forgotten to
close gave admission to the assassins. The same chance, as we have seen, has
brought about the success of two plots in Russia3 at moments when, apparently,
watch was being kept with the most scrupulous care and when calm seemed to
prevail everywhere. It is ridiculous, therefore, to blame M. de Lafayette for an
event so difficult to foresee. No sooner did he hear about it, than he rushed to the

52
help of those in danger with an eagerness which at that moment, and before
calumny had begun its poisonous work, was freely recognised.

“ On the 6th of October, in the morning, a very old woman, mother of the Comte
de Choiseul-Gouffier . . . rushed into my bedroom ; she came in terror seeking
refuge, although I did not enjoy the honour of her acquaintance. She told me that
assassins had made their way into the Queen’s anteroom, that they had
massacred some of the guards at the door, and that, wakened by their cries, the
Queen had only succeeded in saving her life by fleeing into the King’s bedroom by
a secret passage. I knew that my father had already left to go to the Chateau and
that my mother was getting ready to follow him. I rushed to accompany my
mother.

“ A long passage led from the house of the Controller-General, where we were
living, into the Chateau. As we approached the Chateau we heard shots being
fired in the courts, and when we reached the gallery we saw splashes of blood on
the floor. In the room at the end of the gallery, soldiers of the bodyguard were
embracing members of the National Guard with the lack of restraint which vast
calamity always brings ; they had exchanged their distinguishing marks ; for
example, the National Guardsmen had the bandoliers of the bodyguard and the
bodyguard the tricolour cockade. All kept shouting ‘Vive Lafayette’ in tones of
delight, for Lafayette had saved the bodyguard from annihilation at the hands of
the mob. We passed among these brave fellows who had just seen their comrades
killed and who had expected to share their fate. One could guess what they were
feeling, but they allowed themselves no tears. Then, farther on, what a spectacle !

“ The mob had demanded, with bawlings, that the King and his family should
come to Paris. It had been told that its demand would be granted. The cries and
the shots we had heard were the expression of its joy. The Queen entered the
room where we were. Her hair was in disorder, her face was pale, but she looked
so dignified that everyone was impressed. The mob called for her to come out on
the balcony. The whole court below (called the Marble Court) was crammed with
men armed with guns. We saw from her expression what she feared. But she
went forward, unhesitatingly, with her two children, who served as a protection.
This spectacle of Queen and mother softened the hearts of the mob and stilled its
fury. The very people who had, perhaps, wanted to kill her during the night now
cried her name to the skies. . . .

“ When she left the balcony, the Queen went up to my mother and said to her,
with choking sobs :

“ ‘ They want to compel the King and me to go to Paris with the heads of our
bodyguard carried before us on the ends of poles.’

“ That was what happened. Thus were the King and Queen fetched their Capital.
We (the Neckers) returned to Paris by another way, which took us far from this
terrible spectacle. Our way led us through the Bois de Boulogne. It was a lovely

53
afternoon, with scarcely a leaf stirring. The sunlight filled the whole land with
glory, mocking our distress. ...

“ The King went to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Queen displayed an
extraordinary self-possession. The King said to the Mayor :

“ ‘ I come with pleasure to live in my good town of Paris.’

“ The Queen added :

“ ‘ And with confidence.’ ...

“ Next day the Queen received the Diplomatic Corps and the Court functionaries.
Every time she tried to speak sobs choked her ; we couldn’t answer her. What a
sight was this old palace of the Tuileries, abandoned by its august owners for
more than a century ! . . . As nobody had foreseen the coming of the Royal family,
very few of the rooms had been fit for occupation, and the Queen had had to have
camp beds got ready for her children in the room where she received us. She
excused them, saying :

“ ‘ You know that I didn’t expect to come here.’ ”

It remains to ask : By whom was this drunken rabble despatched out of Paris ?
Most of its members were women ; many were whores ; all shouted for bread,
but all appear to have been liberally supplied with wine. Lafayette told the
Assembly that he had come to protect the King ; in fact, he took the King
prisoner. Necker professed himself ready to go anywhere that his master willed.
But long before the mob from Paris reached Versailles, the people of Versailles,
the same who had carried the banker in triumph out of the palace three months
before, refused to let the carriages, which might have taken King and Queen to
safety, leave their stables. It was not the King only who went hunting on that 5th
day of October. As soon as the royal family reached Paris the price of bread fell, a
circumstance which convinced the Parisians that they had judged shrewdly in
nicknaming the King and Queen and their children : “ The Baker, the Baker’s
wife and the Baker’s brats.” Mirabeau snarled that Necker had “marched to
glory” on the “crutch of famine,” a suggestion big with menace by reason of the
banker’s contacts with the grain trade.

Mirabeau was watching, waiting. Not for him the twenty-course dinners at the
Swedish Embassy in gracious company of Talleyrand and Narbonne, Robespierre
and Tallien. A little woman, for preference, to add her eyes’ sparkle to the joy of
wine and prattle mischief or millinery without benefit of wit. And then to the
Assembly in its new home in the Royal Riding School under the black shadow of
the King’s house. Sombre, feathers ruffled, like some great, sleepy owl, the
Tribune scanned the benches, calculating, counting. There were King’s men,
Necker’s men, People’s men, Right, Centre, Left, and, up yonder, on the high
benches, soon to be called “ The mountain,” mobs’ men. Not a friend now in the
bunch since Necker’s star had risen high. The fierce, predatory nostrils expanded

54
with rage. His eyes sought the public gallery where the townsfolk crowded to see
and hear. There was the real mistress, Paris, newly tricked out with her
Commune and her Citizen Guard, her Jacques and her mobs, she who had
widowed France of King and Commons to make debauch of them. His mouth
grew hard suddenly. France would claim her own again from this bawd. He
wrote to his friend La Marck : “ I always have thought that the monarchy is the
State’s only sheet-anchor.”

He wooed the Royalists, humbling himself to plead for a post at the King’s side,
where, he promised, he would know how to arm the King with the people’s will,
so that the Assembly and Paris too would be restored to their natural allegiance.
No “Royal Democracy” for them. He turned to the Centre, to Germaine’s nobles
and churchmen, the financiers, the lawyers, the writers, the wits ; but the mice
ran squeaking from his blandishments. The Left then, even the Mountain. He
warned them to kick up their heels before Necker saddled them with the English
Constitution and galled them with his loans. Mirabeau’s passion put the Radicals
in a lather, but they cooled again and were afraid.

A few days after the King’s coming to Paris, Necker announced that, having
liquidated Versailles, the Government would be able to save £2,000,000 a year.
He confessed, in the same breath, that his budget would show a deficit of nearly
£7,000,000, since Liberty and Equality had run away with the taxes. A new loan,
bright with benefits, and freighted with £56,000 more of Necker’s honest gold,
was launched, staggered on the slips and went to the bottom. Government was
bankrupt. On October 10, the Bishop of Autun, Germaine’s lover, limped to the
tribune of the Assembly to suggest that the nation might assume stewardship of
the land (a third of France) belonging to Holy Church. Talleyrand was a
nobleman and displayed his Aladdin’s cave with such excellent detachment as he
might have used in showing his garden. But the deputies gasped. The glittering
of the episcopal ring, as he informed his discourse, could not blind their greedy
eyes. He saw their tongues come to their lips while they denounced him ;
Necker, it was clear, had better seize the booty quickly, before someone else made
off with it. So thought Jacques. While the Assembly gazed at the treasure, he
made ready to issue notes against it as soon as it should be taken. Meanwhile, on
the witness of Germaine, the lamentations of the faithful wrung the good
Protestant’s heart. Talleyrand was similarly afflicted. Two days after making his
proposal, he addressed a pastoral letter to his flock in which he ordered prayers
for a period of forty hours, “for peace in this time of national unrest.”

“ Thine anger, O my God,” he wrote, “is kindled against Thy flock. Will Thy hand
reject us ?”

On October 30 Mirabeau called for a speedy issue. France was perishing ; how
should the Church abide in fatness ? He unleashed his tongue against the
obdurate, the reluctant, the doubters, pursuing them with strong words. His eyes
were set on the gallery, on Paris, which roared its approval. The motion was put
on November 3 and carried with tumult. Talleyrand sowed : Mirabeau had
reaped. The Parisians flung themselves at the Tribune’s feet, crying that here was

55
the man to rule them. Both Necker and Assembly shuddered ; if Mirabeau
became the King’s minister now, with the spoils of the Church bulging his
pockets, there would be short shrift for them. “Back to Richelieu,” foamed he ;
“Man must be free to be good,” they warbled. On November 7 a young Breton
deputy named Lanjuinais, one of Necker’s men, proposed that no member of the
Assembly should be allowed to become a minister of the King until three years
had elapsed from his ceasing to be member.

“ An eloquent genius,” he urged, “is carrying you with him and subjecting you to
his will ; to what would he not aspire as a minister ?”

The hands were the hands of Lanjuinais, but the voice was the voice of Jacques.
Mirabeau, snarling like a trapped beast, scared his enemies so well that they
huddled together, Royalists, Liberals, Radicals, in quickening fear of him, and
passed Lanjuinais’ motion by a big majority. He laughed and mocked to
extinguish the sound of the bolting and barring in his face of the King’s gate ; but
his heart was sick. It was Necker’s game ; at the rue du Bac they celebrated the
victory and prepared to exploit it. On November 14, the banker suggested,
blandly, that the Caisse d’Escomptes4 be allowed to increase its issue of notes on
the strength of the Church lands. The bank, he promised, would thus be enabled
to lend more money to the Government. “ What,” Mirabeau sneered, “the
Government is to lend to itself ?” That night saw the first production of Chenier’s
play, Charles IX, at the Théâtre Français. All the world went with Germaine to
feast upon the spectacle of worthy Jacques, from whom the character of the
Chancellor of the Hôpital had been drawn, crossing his legs on Olympus.

A few days later, at Necker’s instance, Commissioners were appointed by the

Assembly to report on the best way of spending the Church’s treasure. They
closeted themselves with the banker for many days, and his face and address
informed the initiated that he was getting his own way. Jacques, when that was
happening, grew boastful and dictatorial and used to shout down people who
differed from him. On December 5, 1789, Gouverneur Morris noted :5

“ Our conversation is loud. He (Necker) makes it so purposely. And at this point

Madame de Staël, with the good-natured intention of avoiding ill-humour,
desires me to send her father to sit next to her. I tell her, smiling, that it is a
dangerous task to send away M. Necker and that those who tried it once had
sufficient cause to repent of it. This little observation brings back good humour
and he seems inclined to talk further with me, but I take no further notice of him,
and, after chatting a little with different people, I take my leave.”

The Commissioners reported on December 19. They recommended that

£10,000,000 worth of Church land should be sold outright to pay debts, that the
Government should obtain a loan of £3,000,000 from the Caisse d’Escomptes by
depositing with the bank assignats (that is, paper based on the Church lands) to a
value of £7,000,000 and annuities to the value of £2,500,000. The
Commissioners expressed themselves as opposed to the idea that the
Government should pay its debts directly in assignats, for if that was done the

56
assignats would become, at once, a paper currency. Everyone glanced at
Mirabeau. His anger flashed from his eyes. So they were to give this precious
bank more than £9,000,000 worth of security for £3,000,000 worth of loan ?
No only that ; a huge slice of the body of France was to be sacrificed to pay the
Government’s debts to bankers and their kind. Why, he demanded, bother about
the banks ? The Assembly had the land, the good soil of the Fatherland ; why
not, themselves, turn it into money, without parting with a rood of it ? If they
could issue assignats, they could pay their debts with them. The assignats were
“circulating land.”

So he argued, pleaded, adjured, with his gaze fixed on England, the enemy with
whom, he warned them, the final reckoning was yet to come. How should France
struggle with England if she had delivered herself into the hands, for example, of
Messrs. Thelusson and Necker of London and Paris ? But the Assembly was deaf
to that voice. On this same 19th of December it decreed that the Government
must give the bank assignats as security for its issue of notes and that these must
bear interest and be redeemable in five years. It decreed further that the
assignats, of which £16,000,000 worth were to be printed, should not be legal
tender. Necker had his banker’s bargain. Government was tied to thrift as every
wastrel ought to be. Would it spend, it must come to the counting-houses and
listen to the voice of discretion. No adventures, wars, wild-cat schemes, window-
dressings-gifts of the printing-press to bellicose statesmen. The Swiss rubbed his
white hands together. He had the English financial system now : could the
English Constitution be long deferred ?6

He had come up, warily, to the high places of his ambition. It remained to dig
himself in. He counted there on Germaine’s influence with the deputies, so
strikingly shown in the vote to exclude Mirabeau from the Ministry and in the
vote on the Church lands.

1
Considerations, Part II, p. 259.
2
Considerations, Part II, pp. 338 et seq.
3
The most important of these was the murder of the Emperor Paul I, in which his
son, afterwards the Emperor Alexander, was implicated.
4
For a full account of these transactions, see The Assignats, by S.E. Harris
(Harvard University Press).
5
The Life of Gouverneur Morris by Jared Sparks.
6
Madame de Staël believed that had her father’s financial policy been followed
the Revolution must have been saved from its worst excesses. She refused,
obstinately, to see that these excesses were reactions to the fear occasioned by
foreign invasion. See Considerations, Part II, p. 389.

57
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XI

COUP DE GRÂCE

FRANCE did not like Necker’s paper, the notes issued by the Caisse d’Escomptes.
So the stockings in the chimneys were charged with every coin on which thrift or
greed or fear could lay its hands, and metallic money (numéraire) disappeared
from the land. Paralysis seized upon the national life.

“ If Necker remains another month,” wrote Mirabeau to La Marck on January 20,

1790, “the écu (3f. and 6f. pieces) will entirely disappear and you will know the
mistake of the sublime invention of paper money.”

Jacques was in despair. The stockings, he saw too late, were foes more dangerous
than Mirabeau. People wanted coin and would have it, his paper fell in value till
so much of it was needed for every purchase that there was not enough to go
round. On March 6, beaten to his knees, he confessed dismally that it would be
necessary to put some of the assignats in circulation. His heart was wrung. For
what was he saying but that a better paper than his was needed to win the
confidence of Frenchmen ? Mirabeau’s spirits leaped up. Necker would learn
very soon what Paris thought of him. Three weeks later, crisis arrived. The
Finance Committee of the Assembly demanded in alarm that the bank’s notes
should be withdrawn and replaced wholly by national notes, assignats. There was
a short, sharp scuffle, and then in April Mirabeau’s original plan was approved—
the assignats were to be legal tender ; an additional issue of £16,000,000 worth
of them was to replace the notes of the Caisse d’Escomptes.

Jacques went down to his house, on that Spring day, with death in his heart.
What a fate, to have triumphed over the King’s Majesty and the passion of
Mirabeau and to be brought low by miser’s pence ! The worst, too, was to come.
He had lent the Government £100,000. Would he get it back ? Would the Caisse
d’Escomptes be able to weather this hurricane ? Would he himself be able to hold
his office now that the spell of his financial wizardry was broken ? If Mirabeau
pressed his advantage and insisted that the Government should pay its debts in
the new currency, where was he ? He glanced to right and left and beheld ruin.

Germaine was frightened out of her wits, for nobody had a shrewder knowledge
than she of the foundations on which her life reposed. All were shaking ; power,
money, prestige, love even. Could she count now on Eric Magnus ? On
Narbonne ? On Talleyrand ? Gouverneur Morris had assured her that her
husband was “madly in love” with her, and been told, in reply, that she was only
too well aware of it. But her father was master then. Would love live on if
greatness withered ? After all, Eric Magnus had his grievances.

A fury of energy seized her. All their troubles, she assured herself, were due to
the King, who did not support his Minister. Very well, then, why not work to put

58
a new King on the throne, Orleans, for example ; or, better still, to set Wisdom in
the place of kings ? She lived in a fever, spending herself with unmerciful haste,
social occasion added to social occasion, adventure to adventure. She was gay,
reckless, drunken with words, careless of appearances, unsparing of feelings. In
the blaze of her prodigal candle-light she spoke treasons jestingly, demanding “a
great alliance of literary and business abilities” to rule the State, writers and
bankers, herself and her father. She was Royalist, Constitutionalist, Republican,
by turns—all things to all parties, with a sharp eye open for the highest bidder.

“ Anyone who lived through these days,” she wrote, “will admit that there has
never been so much vitality, mind and wit gathered together before or since.”

Guibert died in May. She snatched her pen to extol the darling of her girlhood,
and in a moment was belabouring her own and her father’s enemies. The Eloge
de Guibert, like the letters on Rousseau, is all about Necker and herself ; amid
the din of lamentation and invective the voice of praise is never silent. Guibert, in
short, is to rise from his ashes, he too, and give Jacques a helping hand. Jacques
needed it. In pleasant days in June his popularity vanished away like his paper.
The quintal of wheat stood so high that suspicion sat upon his threshold, side by
side with scorn. What had he done for France ? This year the trees in the
Tuileries gardens stood in no danger of spoliation whatever treatment the King
might give. Louis gave the same kindly treatment as before, but, on July 3, he
and the Queen received Mirabeau in private audience.

Less than a fortnight later the first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille came
round, the anniversary of Jacques’ triumph. There was great celebration on the
Champ de Mars, where an altar of the nation had been run up hurriedly by pious
hands. The King and Queen were there, surprised to find how popular they were,
and Lafayette, on his white horse, at the head of representatives of all the
National Guards in France. Talleyrand, too, to say Mass at the national altar, and
Mirabeau. But where was Necker ?

“ Patriotic enthusiasm,” wrote Germaine,* “was so lively that Paris poured out to
(the spectacle) in just the same way as it had rushed, a year before, to the
destruction of the Bastille. The spectators were drunk with excitement ; King
and Liberty seemed to them to have been indissolubly joined together. . . .
Meanwhile thinking people were far from sharing the general delight. I saw deep
anxiety on my father’s face. At the moment when it was believed that he was
celebrating his triumph, he felt, perhaps, that he had exhausted all his resources.
M. Necker having sacrificed every shred of his popularity to the defence of a
constitutional monarchy, M. de Lafayette inspired the most tremendous devotion
in the National Guard.”

This was Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. There were bitter moments for
Germaine when the crowd cheered King and Queen, fell on its knees at the
summons of Talleyrand and kissed Lafayette’s stirrup-leathers as he remounted
after laying his sword on the altar. France was accepting, in anticipation, the new
constitution on which her wise men were still at work, but it was not the

59
constitution which Necker had wished to give her. In a single year, as it seemed,
a new generation, which knew not Jacques, had sprung into life. That uneasy
man did now what he had so often done before, namely, rush into print. Though
King and Assembly would not listen to his opinions, the people, he conceived,
might hear them gladly. He delivered a vigorous attack against a recent proposal
to abolish titles, declaring :

“ By wiping out all distinctions between man and man, a risk is run of
bewildering the popular mind about the true meaning of the word ‘ Equality.’
That word, in a civilised country, possessed of an established social system, can
never mean equality of rank or of possessions. Different occupations,
professions, fortunes, educations, ambitions, working-powers, different natural
abilities, different knowledge, all these stimulants of social flux, inevitably lead to
inequalities of circumstance. The sole end of the legislator must be to reunite, as
is the way of nature, these different units, in a well-being which, no matter how
diversified are its forms and evolutions, will partake of the true nature of
equality.Ӡ

It had been well spoken if its author had possessed the slightest knowledge of the
effect it was likely to produce. That he possessed none at all is certain. Certain,
too, that when the effect was manifest, he was overwhelmed with regret. Paris
rubbed her eyes. Was this the man at whose trumpet-blast the walls of Jericho
had fallen ? Doubts, packed like a murmuration of starlings, came home to
roost. So he was worried about his money, was he ? And the titles of his noble
friends ? Away with the old snob !

In that atmosphere the Assembly came to the discussion of the manner in which
the Government ought to pay its debts. Necker urged that the assignats should
not be used for this purpose. He proposed Quittances de Finance, a new interest-
bearing paper of a non-monetary nature, that is, a loan. Mirabeau rose, on
August 27, to administer the coup de grâce. The payments of interest on a loan,
he declared, would ruin the State ; he was, therefore, for payment by assignats.
Was their land-money not good enough ? He turned to the political side of the
subject : an extension of the use of the assignats would add to the numbers of the
defenders of the Constitution. In other words, money was made for the people,
not the people for money. Politics rampant drove its fists into the face of
Finance.

Necker staggered, beaten, from the encounter. He sent his resignation to the
King and asked, humbly, for the return of some of the money he had lent. He got
£6,000 of his £100,000. A few days later, on September 8, he and Suzanne set
out from Paris amid hootings, to return home. They left Germaine behind
because, on August 25, she had been delivered of a boy, Auguste.

* Considerations, Part II, pp. 380 et seq.

† Considerations, Part II, p. 371.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XII

THE CROWS COME HOME

GERMAINE, in her child-bed, tasted the dregs of humiliation and dismay.

Nothing was spared her, for the politically dead have no friends. But when she
heard that her father and mother had been arrested at Arcis-sur-Aube and were
being held there as prisoners, an access of rage lifted her out of her depression.
From her bed, in a trembling hand, she wrote to the President of the Assembly
demanding an immediate reconsideration of the reasons which had led to this
step and declaring that the state of her father’s health admitted of no delay.

“ That,” her letter ended, “is the only consideration that I put forward.”

She was still Swedish Ambassadress. The Assembly, which seems to have
thought Necker’s haste to be off rather unceremonious, granted her wish.
Jacques and his invalid wife continued their journey in lively fear which was far
from being without justification. They were mobbed, hustled, hooted, at the last
howled out of France. Safely back at Geneva, Suzanne wrote to Meister :1

“ La Fontaine made use of tigers and lions so as not to shock men and women ;
now we shall have to use men and women so as not to shock tigers and lions.
Forgive me, the barbarous treatment we suffered at Aix haunts me day and night.
. . . My health is completely broken.”

Germaine’s anger was quenched by the rising flood of her despair. Eric Magnus
spent all his time now at the tables, and it had been necessary to pay his debts.
Both Narbonne and Talleyrand remained, but only, her fears whispered, as the
swallows linger sometimes into autumn days. She looked about her wistfully for
the balm her spirit craved, and found a soul as desolate and empty as her own.
Mathieu Jean Félicité de Montmorency-Laval, twenty-three years of age, son of
that Madame de Montmorency-Laval who had been Narbonne’s mistress, was
mourning the loss of the woman he had loved, his cousin, the Marquise de Laval.
This lady had caught a fatal chill at the Celebrations of the 14th of July.
Mathieu’s grief was immoderate, licentious, and had assumed, from the violence
of its expression, a public character. Everybody was talking about it, except
Mathieu’s wife, Hortense de Luynes, who had the makings of a shrew. Emotional
expression of a dramatic kind was one of Mathieu’s gifts. The youngest member
of the Assembly, he had drawn attention to himself by demanding, the year
before, that a declaration of the Rights of Man must precede any debate about the
Constitution.

“ Truth and happiness,” he had cried on that occasion, “walk hand in hand.
Would we be here if Wisdom’s beams had not thrust back the shadows. . . . ?”

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He it was who had urged the abolition of armorial bearings and “the foolish
ostentation of liveries,” and had hailed with rapture the day when all Frenchmen
would wear the garments of liberty. His hands had borne Voltaire’s ashes to the
Pantheon, and from his lips had come the plea that those of Rousseau be
similarly translated. Already his portrait had been inscribed :

“ Faithful to the People’s Right,

Weeping for the People’s woes,
How shall virtue stay her flight ?
How defer the debt she owes ?
Summer all her gifts did bring
In the pleasant days of Spring.”

Here was godsend indeed for a broken heart. Add that the young man had fought
under Lafayette in America, had exquisite manners, was tall, beautiful and
possessed of bright golden hair, and it is evident that Germaine must have
sought, diligently, to afford him consolation. She was a year older than he, of a
riper knowledge, but not, certainly, further advanced in the ascent towards
virtue. She held out her hand. Mathieu covered it with his tears. When
Gouverneur Morris called at the Swedish Embassy a few days later, he was told
that Madame de Staël was not receiving anybody ; he saw her new lover being
admitted. Mathieu’s tears and kisses effected an immediate salvage of
confidence. So much so that, in October, Germaine was able to take the road to
Switzerland. But as the big berline rolled out through the fortifications, her heart
sank. Coppet, with an infant on her hands, and her father and mother for
company, was a nightmare so hideous that she dared not think about it.

She found the worthy couple sunk in gloom, though Suzanne was glad, in a way,
to have got her Jacques to herself once more. There was nothing to do, nothing
to see except the lake and the Alps beyond it, nowhere to go. Germaine lived only
for news from Paris. It was not cheering. Mirabeau had come to his kingdom.
He was master now of the Court, of the Assembly, of Paris. The future of the
Revolution was in his hands. That, in Germaine’s view, meant that the
Revolution had no future. But she revised this view during a brief visit she paid
to the Capital in January 1791. She saw Mirabeau then, at close quarters, and
realised, suddenly, that he stood, a rock, among shifting sand.

And so it was. The King’s coming to Paris had deprived him of his usual exercise
of hunting, and condemned him to a wretched idleness. Body and mind were
deteriorating. He was grown fat, lethargic, despondent, as if the loss of authority
had robbed him of the will to exercise it. Nor was the Assembly in much better
case. That body was fallen more and more under the fear of Paris, which, from
the public galleries, exerted a merciless compulsion. Only Mirabeau could speak
to Paris in such language as charmed her fury and removed her suspicions.
When he mounted the tribune France became united again, Throne with
Parliament and Parliament with People. The King trusted him, perhaps because,
like a briefed barrister, he was taking the King’s money in exchange for advice ;
the Assembly, too, because his piping to the Parisian snake allowed deputies to

62
forget their panic ; above all, France, widowed of government, because he dared
to command her, he alone, in the authentic accents of mastery.

To the King he proclaimed that the uses of the Revolution were accomplished.
Far from having lost by the upheaval, the Throne had achieved conspicuous gain.
Nobles and Church were beaten to their knees ; taxes might be levied on the land
; the assignats had furnished a short cut to an abounding prosperity. Greatest
gain of all, the nation, freed from the yoke of feudalism, looked to the King to
complete his work of giving it back its glory. Only one obstacle to the gathering of
this harvest remained, namely, the armed mob of Paris, whose leaders were
falling into helpless irresolution. “It is time,” Mirabeau declared, “to leave
Paris.” He advised that Louis should surround himself with his bodyguard and,
in the full light of day, go out from his capital to Rouen or Compiègne, and that,
having arrived there, he should summon his parliament, the Assembly, to follow
him. To abandon Paris, thus, would be to return to France. Bold counsel ; but
for bold ears alone. Louis liked the idea, Marie Antoinette too, though she liked
better her own plan to flee to the frontier where the emigrant nobles were
gathered in readiness to receive them. Suppose the Assembly refused to obey the
King’s call ? Suppose a rump of the Radicals joined with the Paris Commune in
declaring for a Republic ? There was danger of plunging the country into civil
war. So they talked, argued, hesitated, in these winter days of 1790-1791, while
Mirabeau’s health failed and the mobs of St. Antoine were multiplied in
boldness. From the bowels of the city issued, night after night, men and women
famished, predatory as wolves, to listen to new gospels in ramshackle halls, by
the light of guttering candles. Marat served meat for these packs ; Danton too, a
lawyer, big of brow, bigger of mouth, with strong, coarse pugilist’s nose and neck
and a complexion pitted like Mirabeau’s. Great of stature and voice, Danton
filled the Cordelier’s Hall with his wrath so that skinny bodies grew hot and spent
muscles strong. Away with the kings, away with the talkers. To arms, citizens !

They were beginning to speak the same language at the Jacobin Club, though in
milder accents. Mirabeau, in the Club’s chair, marked the changing tone and
bade the King haste. In this Paris ambitions and greeds were lively as in a
thieves’ kitchen. But Majesty doubted, tarried, bound perhaps by scruples
beyond even the Tribune’s knowing, an instinct of kings. In April Mirabeau
sickened and died. “I am taking the last shreds of monarchy with me,” he
gasped. Talleyrand was beside him, among the heaped-up flowers which King
and cottager had given. The room throbbed with music which the dead man had
ordered for the occasion. And even Germaine, at Coppet, shed a tear.

Next day France was broken. The Liberals carried Mirabeau’s body to the
Pantheon. In his dingy palace Louis mourned the man whose advice he had not
taken. The Assembly addressed itself, sadly, to the constitution which, as Arthur
Young said,2 it was making “like a pudding.” And the Radicals in the Cordeliers
threatened violence because the poor were unfed. The nation was dissolved into
factions, sundered and divided as in the days before Richelieu’s hand fell upon it.
Hostile armies, vultures about a carcase, were gathering on the frontiers. Shall
we perish, Danton shouted to his night-birds, for want of a man with guts ?

63
Danton’s bawlings reached the Assembly and pained its respectable members ;
they echoed in the streets and slums. At the Palais Royal tub-thumpers repeated
them to gaping audiences of harlots and men about town ; young noblemen,
debauched with kisses, leering under the lamps at the wench Liberty ; stock-
jobbers ; swindlers ; here and there a soldier of the King’s Guard ; a priest
shambling across the city. The Queen made ready to flee to the frontier in the
carriage procured for her by Count Axel Fersen.3

That was Royalty’s solution, judged a bad one because it failed at Varennes,
where the King put his head out of the carriage window and was recognised by
the postmaster. Had it succeeded, another judgment might have been needful.
For here, at least, was protest against the ruin of government. All said and done,
when the Royal Family was brought back to Paris on June 26, 1791, in a carriage
with blinds drawn, its case was little worse than on the day, nine months before,
when Lafayette fetched it from Versailles. The King had been Paris’ prisoner and
so remained. Monarchy was destroyed already because the glory was departed.

Louis, indeed, had taught a lesson which the Liberals, by far the strongest body in
the Assembly, should have been quick to learn, namely that constitutional
monarchy is alien to the genius of Frenchmen. His kingdom, when he left it, was
in an uproar, city divided against city, province against province, class against
class. Only Mirabeau’s magic had held France together ; and the Tribune died in
the faith of Richelieu. Louis could claim that he had given the new system a fair
trial. He could point to the rising tide of a despotism harsher even in its promise
than that of Versailles. They could not accuse him of lack of sympathy with
modern ideas. Had he not decreed, at the meeting of the States-General, equality
before the law for all Frenchmen ?

The crows, for the Liberals, were coming home to roost, those ill birds which
Necker’s hand had reared and Suzanne and Germaine had fed, Compte Rendu,
the Mémoire Justicatif, the slanders on the King and Queen, the manipulations
of the price of bread against Turgot, the financial policies, the ceaseless poisoning
of Parisian opinion against Versailles, the Bastille, the Commune, the National
Guard, the setting of Assembly against Throne, of Throne against Mirabeau, the
baiting of Mirabeau. There had been moments when Liberalism might have
worked with Kingship for the glory of France, the moment, for example, before
the threats of Paris drove the Tiers État into active opposition to the monarchy,
the moment when Mirabeau, had he become minister, might have shown King
and People that their interests were the same. Who but Necker had snatched
these moments out of Time, obedient to a vanity unhampered by allegiance or
scruple ? Of his raising was this Parisian Frankenstein which at the last had
driven him forth and threatened now to make an end of Liberty herself. The
inheritors of his horrid legacy, with Danton’s bellowings in their ears, and his
armed mobs before their eyes, began to think of their safety and recognised it, as
the recalcitrant nobles and clergy had recognised it before them, in the King’s
Majesty. What calamity that that power had been broken ! Since the King and
his family were brought back, prisoners, from the frontier, the royal emblems in
the city had been defaced and bespattered. On July 17 a petition calling for Louis’

64
deposition and trial was laid by Danton’s associates on the altar of the country in
the Champ de Mars, the same whereon, a year before, Talleyrand had celebrated
Mass. The petition was signed by thousands of citizens. The Liberals lost their
heads. When two men were lynched by the demonstrators round the altar, they
called up the National Guard, under Lafayette, to fire on the crowd. Repressive
measures against Danton and his friends followed, and he and Robespierre and
Marat had to look to their safety.

“ The Massacre of the Champ de Mars,” as it was called, was a naked sword
between Liberalism and Radicalism ; it had, in addition, other implications.
Large numbers of Parisians went “Red” and gave their allegiance to Danton. The
Liberals, in quickening fear, turned to France, hoping to find in the nation as a
whole enough support to enable them to resist the Capital. They discovered
France monarchist at heart and were convinced anew of their dependence on the
King. The Constitution was finished at last, thanks to the tireless labours of
Sieyès. They implored Louis to sign it, and, when he did, abandoned themselves
to transports of relief and joy. “Long live the King !” sneered the Radicals, “if he
keeps his word.” The Assembly’s work was done. It dissolved itself in September
1791. In that month, Germaine, unable to endure the stagnation of Coppet for
another day, returned to the rue du Bac, leaving her baby behind her in
Switzerland. She had been absent from Paris for nearly eleven months.

1
Madame de Stalël à Henri Meister, p. 82.
2
Arthur Young’s Travels in France. No observer has left a more complete
account of the old France.
3
Fersens’ disinterested love of Marie Antoinette is one of the great romances of
history. He had his carriage built specially, and kept it on public view in his
garden so as to allay suspicion.

65
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XIII

THE MANTLE OF ELIJAH

GERMAINE had left Paris in bitterness ; she returned in hope. For she came as a
forerunner and missionary of Necker, bearing glad tidings for spirits in
perplexity. Jacques, by the shores of his lake, under the shadow of his
mountains, had taken counsel with his spirit and evolved a new way of life for the
French people.

“ As we walked together, my father and I, under the great trees of Coppet,” she
wrote,1 “trees which seemed to me to be friendly witnesses of his noble thoughts,
he asked me once if I believed that the whole French people shared the vulgar
suspicions of which he had been the victim during his journey from Paris to
Switzerland.

“ ‘ It seems to me,’ he said, ‘ that there were some districts in which, until the very
end, the purity of my aims and my devotion to France were recognised.’

“ He had scarcely asked me this question before he brushed it aside as if afraid of

being too much moved by my reply.

“ ‘ Say no more !’ he exclaimed. ‘ God can read my heart. That’s enough.’ “I

didn’t dare to reassure him at that moment, because I saw how deeply he was
moved.”

Meanwhile the fallen statesman had published a work entitled, “De

L’Administration de M. Necker par lui-même,” in which he had thus apologised
to the Assembly :

“ I know it. I will be blamed for my stubborn devotion to the principles of Justice,
and the attempt will be made to discount these principles by calling them
‘snobbery’ (pitié aristocratique). I know my own principles better than you do.
The first on whose behalf my feelings of affection were kindled were yourselves,
when you had neither cohesion nor power. You were the first people for whom I
fought. Then, when I was distressed at the contempt with which you were being
treated, when I proclaimed the respect that was due to you, when I displayed a
ceaseless anxiety about the People’s lot, I was held up to the same kind of scorn
which you, yourselves, now heap on me. You say that I was ready, when you
abandoned me, to transfer my allegiance to others ; that I lusted after power. I
cannot so flatter myself. Your enemies and mine have placed between you and
me a barrier which I will never try to break down. They will hate me for ever
because they have saddled me with their own faults. It was not I who gave them
hopes of being able to enjoy their ancient powers undiminished ; it was not I who
stiffened their resistance when the time had come for them to treat with fortune.
Ah, if they were not now being sorely oppressed, if they were not steeped in

66
misfortune, how many reproaches could I not heap upon them. The next time I
put in a word for them in the matter of their rights or their possessions, they
won’t imagine, I hope, that I wish to get these back for them. I desire to-day to
associate neither with them nor with anybody else. Let me live and die with my
memories and my thoughts ! Contemplating the purity of the feelings which have
guided me, what social stay do I need ? Ah yes, every feeling heart has need of
human contacts. I am forming them, these contacts, in a hopeful spirit, with the
honest men of all lands, with those—how small their number is !—whose ruling
passion is the love of righteousness on earth.”

From which it is clear that Jacques still cherished a lively hope of being able to
live down his mistake and take up his burden.

“M. Necker,” wrote Germaine2 with artless candour, “regretted bitterly that
popularity which, without a moment’s hesitation, he had sacrificed to his sense of
duty. People have blamed him for attaching so much value to it. Unhappy those
statesmen who have no need of the support of public opinion ! Courtiers or
oppressors, they are ready to win by intrigue or terror what men of generous
mind seek not except as the expression of the regard of their fellows.”

Necker’s message of hope to France, which Germaine brought with her, was thus
proclaimed by him :

“ I see,” he told her3 “primary assemblies nominating an electoral body, the

electoral body choosing the deputies to the National Assembly, the National
Assembly making laws and bidding the King approve and promulgate them, the
King dispatching the laws to the departments, the departments sending them to
the districts, the districts passing them on to the municipalities, the
municipalities putting them in force with the help of the National Guard, the
National Guard exerting a controlling influence on the People, the People
obeying.”

But this House-that-Jack-built would not, the banker thought, be complete

without the controlling influence of a House of Lords.

“ The legislator would have too easy a job,” he continued, “if all that was
necessary to run this great political machine, the submission of the many to the
wisdom of the few, was to conjugate the verb to command and repeat, like a boy
at school, ‘ I command, thou commandest, he commands, we command, etc.’ An
effective subordination, guaranteeing the free play of all the diverse elements,
needs a carefully graduated system of consideration and respect as well as of
official rank. Distinction must grow from rank to rank, and there would be, at the
top, a power able, by virtue of its actual strength supported by its effect on the
popular imagination, to exert a direct influence on the whole political hierarchy.”

The salon in the rue du Bac, swept and garnished, rang with the evangel, and
here were Narbonne, Talleyrand, Mathieu de Montmorency and the rest of them
gathered to receive it. That it was stale goods mattered nothing at all. Necker’s

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stock, in the turning of Liberalism towards the Throne, had risen sharply, and
there were many who believed that he would soon be with them again. Had he
not, in season and out of it, advertised his English Constitution as a certain
preventive of democracy ? Paris was in cheerful mood because the King had
signed the Constitution.

“ The King and Queen,” Germaine wrote,4 “had been urged to go to the Opera.
When they arrived in the house they were greeted with hearty cheers in which the
whole audience joined. The balletPsyche was being given. While the furies
danced and waved their torches, filling the theatre with light, I saw the faces of
King and Queen, lit up by this pale imitation of Hell. A horrible presentiment
overwhelmed me. The Queen was forcing herself to look pleasant, but one could
see the deep sadness behind her charming smile. The King, as usual, seemed
more concerned about what he was looking at than about personal reactions. He
glanced round him calmly, even carelessly. He was accustomed, like most
sovereigns, to hide his feelings, and perhaps that long restraint had diminished
their intensity.

“ We strolled afterwards in the Champs Elysées, which was brilliantly lighted.

Only the fatal Place de la Révolution5 separated us from the Palace and its
garden. The illumination of the Tuileries and the gardens was joined, in
admirable fashion, to that of the long avenue of the Champs Elysées, garlands of
lamps being used for the purpose.

“ The King and Queen drove slowly through the crowd. The moment their
carriage was recognised there were shouts of ‘ Vive le roi ! ’ But these
demonstrators were the same who had insulted this very king on his return from
Varennes ; their applause was of no more account than their abuse.

“ I met a few members of the Assembly during my walk. They looked like
dethroned sovereigns, very much worried about whom their successors were
going to be. Undoubtedly there were good reasons for sharing their wish that
they had had the task of maintaining the Constitution, such as it was, entrusted to
them, for enough was already known about the spirit in which the elections to the
new Assembly were being conducted to dispel any hope of improvement. But our
attention was disracted by sounds which came from all directions at once. The
people had begun to sing, and the newsboys, singing too, called in loud voices :

“ ‘ La grande acceptation du roi. La constitution monarchique,’ etc.

“ It seemed that the Revolution was complete and that Liberty had been
established. But, all the same, people kept glancing at each other as if they hoped
to find in their neighbour’s expression the security which none of them felt.”

On the proposal of Robespierre, the old Assembly had decreed that none of its
members should be eligible for election to the new. It was a move against the
Liberals, who possessed the ablest parliamentarians in France and therefore
stood to suffer most by the prohibition. It had succeeded because the Royalifts of

68
the old school, in their hatred of Liberalism, had supported it. The effect was to
furnish a body of deputies wholly lacking in experience of affairs. The Legislative
Assembly, as the new Chamber was called (to distinguish it from the old
Constituent Assembly) contained few nobles and very few clergymen. Most of its
members were drawn from the middle class.

Germaine’s friends meanwhile had established a club, in the rue St. Honoré, a
large, pretentious building with a restaurant attached. They called themselves
“Feuillants” from the name of this building, which had belonged to a religious
order. All were rich or, at least, well-to-do, and many were noble. Now that the
old aristocracy was gone over the border, the Feuillants were the smartest set in
Paris as well as the brightest ; puffed up most of them with spiritual and
intellectual pride. Here was Sieyès fresh from his labours on the Constitution of
1791. Here the gentle Lameths, Mathieu Dumas, Jaucourt, Girardin, Bailly the
Mayor, Talleyrand the Bishop, Mathieu de Montmorency-Laval, Narbonne, eight
hundred “Friends of the Constitution” with the oracles of Necker buzzing in their
ears and the belief that they had been divinely appointed to rule over France
rooted in their hearts. It was this belief which had caused them to come forth (in
July 1791) from among the Jacobins who, having been honestly wed to Liberty,
were now gone a-whoring after her slut of a sister, Equality. From the rue St.
Honoré to the rue du Bac they moved easily, full of talk, with their heads in the
air, rejoicing in the vigour which Germaine’s unruly sex infused into their ideas.
They did not doubt that she was right. France, as she said, could be ruled only by
men of breeding and intellect, men of substance, women of wit.

Very different was the view expounded nightly by Madame Roland, Manon
Jeanne Roland, born Philpon, who had her own salon and her own circle. Manon
was thirty-seven, twelve years older than Germaine, with a husband twenty years
her senior and no money to speak about. Her parties, for the Liberals of the Left,
were dingy affairs, intolerably shabby by comparison with those of the rue du Bac
; but what Manon lacked in splendour she possessed in ecstasy. Frigid, rather
plain, oldish, with nothing to give, she could excite the men who surrounded her
as Germaine had never excited any man. Brissot, Pétion, Robespierre himself,
warmed their enthusiasm daily at this fire, which Buzot, with his love unrequited,
had tended so long and so piously. When Manon spoke, dreams borrowed flesh.
She gave her own flesh to Liberty that men might see and believe. To be free, her
message ran, is to be equal, since freedom is the nursing-mother of the love of
humanity. Manon, in the autumn of 1791, was queen of the Jacobins as
Germaine was queen of the Feuillants. The Jacobins, like the Feuillants, had
their headquarters in the rue St. Honoré in the refectory of a religious house.
From small but respectable beginnings at Versailles, during 1789, when all its
members were deputies from Brittany, this club had developed into a political
octopus with its body in Paris and its tentacles in every village in France. Where
once Mirabeau had counselled, Marat now fell into convulsions so that more
moderate spirits were saddened and alarmed. But the Liberals of the Left,
Manon’s men, still held the reins ; Republicans at heart, they paid lip-service to
the King. That was their link with the Feuillants whom, for the rest, they held in

69
jealous hate. If only Manon could have rid herself of her loathing of Danton she
might have led her flock along the path, soon to be trodden by the feet of
Robespierre, which conducts from the Plain to the Mountain, from persuasion to
force, from Liberalism to Dictatorship. As it was, both she and her people lived in
fear which quickened from day to day, for at bottom they were timid souls. How
long would it be before Danton’s great voice commanded the echoes of the
Jacobin Club as now it commanded those of the Cordeliers, his own little Bethel,
across the Seine, in the rue Dauphine ? The Cordeliers had chosen an open eye as
their sign. The Girondists, as Marion’s folk, the most distinguished of whom
came from that district, were now called, marked it with terror.

Danton’s open eye made the Girondists vote with the Feuillants as a rule. But
sometimes, when its glare had robbed them of their wits as well as of their
courage, it made them vote with the extreme Radicals. Nor were the Feuillants
themselves immune from the influence of that basilisk eye. They too had their
moments of panic when every instinct counselled submission. If the opening of
the Jacobin Club to the public on October 4, 1791, three days after the first
session of the new Assembly, was a Girondist sop to the Reds, the feeble
opposition offered by the Feuillants to the decrees of the Assembly against the
emigrants and the priests was, equally, a gesture of weakness. Both parties were
trying to run with the Royal hate and hunt with Danton’s and Marat’s hounds.
Louis on this occasion acted with an excellent courage. He refused to sanction
laws which condemned his own brothers, now emigrants, to death (November 9)
and which imposed heavy penalties on priests whose consciences forbade them to
take the civil oath (November 29). The Girondists hoped fervently that this
baiting of the King would convince Paris that they were true patriots.

Germaine, meanwhile, grew more and more convinced that France was perishing
for want of her father’s vision. She cast Necker’s mantle, therefore, about the
shoulders of Narbonne and set to work with diligence to get him appointed
Minister of Foreign Affairs.

“ No Minister appointed yet,” wrote the Queen on November 7, 1791. “Madame

de Staël is working hard for M. de Narbonne. I never saw a stronger and more
involved intrigue.”6

The post was filled. But Germaine did not despair. A month later Narbonne
became Minister of War.

“ Comte Louis de Narbonne,” wrote Marie Antoinette on December 7, “is at last,

since yesterday, Minister of War. What glory for Madame de Staël, and what a
pleasure for her to have the whole army at her command.”

1
Considerations, Part III, pp. 13 et seq.
2
Considerations, Part III, pp. 13.

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3
Considerations, Part III, pp. 16.
4
Considerations, Part III, pp. 454 et seq.
5
Where the guillotine was soon to be set up. Now, the Place de la Concorde.
6
See Marie Antoinette’s correspondence with Fersen.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XIV

THE MAID OF FRANCE

NARBONNE had just returned from conducting the King’s aunts, his own half-
sisters, into Italy, a task of some difficulty, seeing that they had all been arrested
on the way. Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, “daughters of France,” were
convinced that all the troubles which had befallen them could be traced back to a
single cause, their father’s infatuation for Madame de Pompadour and the
alliance with Austria which had sprung from it. Was it not this alliance which
had bestowed Marie Antoinette on their unlucky nephew ? Long ago Madame
Adelaide had nicknamed that frivolous little spendthrift “L’Austrichienne.” It
was the Austrian, she and nobody else, the old women kept repeating, who had
driven them all forth into an inhospitable world.

So thought Narbonne. This son of Louis XV had many bones to pick with the
Queen who, as he conceived, had proved herself the enemy of his father’s house.
His memory of slights at the hands of Gabrielle de Polignac and others of Marie
Antoinette’s favourites had been refreshed during his journey, and he had come
back to Paris determined to settle accounts. Germaine and he concocted a plan
which promised glory as well as satisfaction.

This was nothing less than an alliance with Prussia and a war with Austria.1
Scarcely was Narbonne’s portfolio of War in his hands, when he demanded of the
Assembly a vote of £2,000,000 for the strengthening of the national defences
and sent Segur to Berlin, to King Frederick William, and Custine to the Duke of
Brunswick.

The effect exceeded expectations. From the rue du Bac a wave of militarism
spread to all parts of France. The Queen’s brother, it was rumoured, was about to
invade the country. In vain that peace-loving man protested his good intentions
and dissociated himself from the emigrant French nobles of “Condé’s army.” The
assurances which he addressed to the Assembly were hailed as additional proof of
his wish to interfere in the affairs of France. The mob, tired of oratory, got its
drums and whistles out and began to eat fire, and the clubs dwindled. Germaine,
in transports, girded a sword to her side and went forth, with her lover, to the
armies, to the scandal of the Queen and the affliction of Eric Magnus. Hand in
hand, she and Narbonne made inventory of France’s resources, wedding pleasure
to duty on many memorable days. The lack of discipline, of equipment, of
clothing even, which other eyes were able to see, remained invisible to their eyes.
Narbonne presented batons to Rochambeau and Luckner and appointed these
new marshals, with Lafayette, to command the French forces. Then he and
Germaine returned to Paris and testified, amid scenes of enthusiasm, that the
army was ready to execute the nation’s will.

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That was now declared. The drums and whistles of Paris had wrought such
intimidation, that Girondists as well as Feuillants were speaking thunders. Woe
to objectors in a world of patriots ! The Assembly, bellicose but uneasy, looked
everywhere for opponents of the war and found none except the King, the Queen
and Robespierre. The new Maid of France unsheathed her sword. With splendid
gesture she surrendered Narbonne to the Fatherland, a leader and a saviour. She
was pregnant by him ; her faith in him burning, ecstatic, boundless. As for him,
kings’ bastards always wish to be kings.

It had been decided, if Prussia became France’s ally, to offer the post of
Commander-in-Chief to the Duke of Brunswick. Hints, too, had been sent to
Brunswick that a greater prize, the throne of France, might conceivably reward a
signal service. This last was Germaine’s contribution. A cooler head than
Narbonne’s must have reflected that his Swiss was a German. Meanwhile
complaints about the uses to which his Embassy in Paris was being put by
Germaine poured in on the King of Sweden. Gustavus III was deeply concerned
about the safety of the French Royal Family, with whom he was in touch through
Count Axel Fersen. Was the rue du Bac to be turned into a rallying-place of the
Queen’s enemies ? A vantage-ground for Narbonne and his mistress ? Eric
Magnus was ordered to return immediately to Stockholm. It looked as though
the little man was ruined. What guarantees could he offer, supposing that
Gustavus was willing to allow him to return to Paris, that Germaine would behave
herself better in the future ? Her unruly passion for Narbonne would not be
cooled by anything her husband might say. Everybody knew that de Staël was a
gambler, who endured his wife and gave his name to her bastards only because
her father made it worth his while.

On January 14, 1792, at the instance of its Diplomatic Committee, the Assembly
sent an ultimatum to Vienna. The Emperor Leopold was ordered to furnish proof
of his goodwill before March 1. He died, as it happened, on that day, leaving
behind him a defensive alliance with Prussia which was a knife in Narbonne’s
heart. Nine days later, King Louis, plucking courage from adversity, dismissed
his Minister of War. But the mischief was done. Little as it liked him, the
Assembly had to fall on Narbonne’s neck because Paris, and France too, believed
that his dismissal was due to the hatred of the Queen. Marie Antoinette, so
rumour ran, was at work secretly to destroy the Revolution with Austrian
bayonets. A surge of popular fury compelled the King to seek new ministers
among the Liberals of the Left, Manon Roland’s friends. Germaine saw her hopes
wither and perish. Not so, however, the seed of hate and panic which she and
Narbonne had sown. That came up, in vigorous growth, so that the new
ministers, for all their timidity and love of peace, were obliged by the populace to
force the King into battle. On April 20, Louis came to the Assembly and proposed
that war should be declared against Austria.

“ I was present,” wrote Germaine,2 “at the sitting at which Louis XVI took, under
compulsion, the step that was fated to lead him to so many troubles. His face was
expressionless, not from any desire to convey a false idea about his feelings, but
because resignation and dignity so informed his bearing that there was no room

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for any other expression. As he entered the Chamber he glanced to right and left
with the vague curiosity which people who are so short-sighted as to be unable to
see anything often display. He proposed that war be declared in the tone of voice
he might have used about some trifling order. The President answered him in the
arrogant, off hand manner which the Assembly had now adopted, as if it was
necessary to the self-esteem of a free people to ill-use the King whom it had
chosen as its constitutional head. When Louis XVI and his Ministers had gone,
the Assembly voted the war with acclamation. A few of the members refrained
from taking part in the discussion, but the people in the galleries were in
ecstasies. Members flung their hats in the air.”

Germaine had triumphed over the Queen ; moreover, the assassination of the
King of Sweden by, among other plotters, the Comte de Ribbing a month before
had removed the fear that Eric Magnus would lose his post. She took some
satisfaction, which dwindled, however, when Narbonne joined the army. Though
six months pregnant, she went to Arras3 to be near him. Paris, when she
returned home, seemed empty and uninteresting. The Feuillants were badly
under the weather and the rue du Bac had lost its glory. Talleyrand and Mathieu
de Montmorency came to see her, but the Bishop was uneasy, restless, anxious to
be off out of France, while Mathieu had begun to repent both his liaison with
Liberty and his liaison with her. They were anything but cheerful companions,
these two, and she fell into gloom.

Dumouriez became Foreign Minister. He invited Talleyrand to go on a mission to

London and another familiar face disappeared overnight. The war began. The
rabble of French troops which had marched into the Netherlands was flung back
by the Austrians, and Mons and Lille fell into the enemy’s hands. Narbonne’s
new marshals were got rid of as quickly as possible while Lafayette, who
commanded the Army of the centre, had to fall back. Paris, fear-stricken,
demanded if this was the perfectly equipped and disciplined force about which
Narbonne had boasted. Then darker thoughts gathered. Had the Queen
betrayed France to her nephew ?4 The new Government passed from triumph to
terror, for Danton, Marat and Robespierre had begun to accuse it of being hand-
in-glove with Royalty. New decrees, sops to the mob as well as attempts to fasten
the odium of defeat on the King, were proposed—namely, that the non-juring
priests should be exiled, the King’s Bodyguard suppressed, and a corps
of fédérés established near Paris. Louis surrendered his Guard, but, as had been
expected, vetoed the other two proposals. Roland, Manon’s husband, who was
Minister of the Interior, urged the King, in insolent terms, which his wife had
concocted for him, to sign the decrees. Louis dismissed him and made
Dumouriez Minister of War. But that soldier could no more escape from the fury
of the extremists than could Roland. He, too, was compelled to urge the King to
sign. When Louis refused once more on June 15, he resigned.

The Girondists flattered themselves anew that nobody could accuse them of being
King’s men. They were quickly undeceived. The accusations grew in violence
and were accompanied by threats. Suddenly these Republicans felt again their
need of the man they had baited and insulted. Only the King’s popularity and

74
prestige in the provinces of France could, they realised, save them from
destruction. But how to recede from the position they had taken up ? Unless the
King signed the decrees, they were lost. Brissot at this juncture conceived the
idea of out-Heroding Herod by organising a demonstration. Danton’s mob, he
decided, should be pressed into service against Danton in order to frighten the
King. The plot succeeded. On June 20,5 five days after Dumouriez’s resignation,
a huge crowd surrounded the Tuileries, demanding to see its Sovereign ;
contrary to plan, however, it quickly got out of hand, broke into the palace and
threatened the Royal Family with violence. Only Louis’ courage saved the lives of
himself and his wife and children. He gave the leaders wine and talked to them
during several hours ; he appeared, too, at a window, wearing the red cap. But
he promised nothing.

The news of this outburst horrified every decent man and woman in France, and
made martyrs, in many eyes, of the sovereigns who had been its victims.
Addresses poured into the palace congratulating the King on his escape and
denouncing the ruffians who had threatened him. Twenty thousand citizens of
Paris joined their hands to this protest. Germaine, true to the instinct which
impelled her, at all times, to associate herself, either as friend or enemy, with the
most prominent actor on the stage, experienced a sudden, overwhelming pity for
King and Queen, which was to remain alive in her heart for ever.

“ The King,”7 she wrote, “showed that day all the virtues of a saint. ... The bonnet
rouge, horrible symbol of massacre, was thrust on his devoted head. But nothing
could humiliate him because his whole life was one long, continuous self-
sacrifice.”

The world was about to weep for this man ; already she coveted its tears. She
took occasion to be present at the celebration of the 14th of July, the third
anniversary of her father’s triumph.

“ A few feeble voices,” she wrote,7 “cried Vive le roi !, like a last goodbye, a final
prayer. I will never forget the look on the Queen’s face. Her eyes were hidden by
tears. The magnificence of her toilet, the dignity of her bearing, made sad
contrast with the crowd by whom she was surrounded. A few National Guards
only separated her from the populace. The armed men gathered in the Champs
de Mars looked as if they had come to take part in a riot rather than a fête. The
King walked from the tent which had been erected for his use to the altar . . .
where he swore again to support that Constitution under the ruins of which his
throne was soon to be buried. A few children, seeing him, raised a cheer. . . .

“ Only a man of Louis XVI’s character—that of a martyr—could have endured

such a position. Both his gait and his expression were characteristic ; in other
circumstances one might have wished for a little more majesty. But now, he had
only to be himself to be sublime. I saw, from far away, his powdered head among
those heads of black hair ; his coat, embroidered as of yore, among the coats of
the common people who jostled him. When he ascended the altar’s steps, one felt
that one was looking at a holy victim offering himself in willing sacrifice.

75
“ He descended, and passing back through the ranks of disorder, sat down beside
the Queen and his children. His people saw him no more till he stood on the
scaffold.”

The Prussians joined the Austrians, and Brunswick was made Commander-in-
Chief of the enemies of France. Mindful, no doubt, of the overtures which had
been made to him, he addressed, on July 25, a warning to the people of Paris. It
declared :

“ The Allies (Prussians and Austrians) will enter France to restore the royal
authority, and will visit the Assembly and the City of Paris with military execution
if any further outrage is offered to the King.”

Louis was lost. With the pistol at its head, Paris displayed the courage which was
to justify usurpation of leadership. The mob, to whom Danton had been nursing-
mother, took possession of the Hotel de Ville and set up, there, a new Commune,
the Revolutionary. This body proclaimed its sovereignty and received, at once,
the submission of the Assembly which did not dare to challenge it. It turned, in
fierce hate, against its rival, the Throne, determined to make an end.

“ The Constitutionals” (i.e. the Feuillants), Germaine wrote,8 “had in vain asked
leave to enter the King’s palace in order to defend it. The invincible prejudice of
the courtiers refused them admittance. Unable, meanwhile, in spite of this
refusal, to join the opposition, they wandered round the Tuileries, taking the
chance of being massacred since they were not allowed to fight. Among them
were MM. de Lally, Narbonne, La Tour-de-Pin, Gouvernet, Castellane,
Montmorency and several others whose names have since been honoured.”

Germaine herself had sent an offer of help, only to be told that the King and
Queen could accept nothing from Madame Staël.

“ Before midnight on the 9th of August,” she wrote,9 “the forty-eight alarm bells
of the sections of Paris began to ring, and all through the night this sound,
monotonous, mournful and quick, did not cease for a moment. I was at my
window with a few of my friends, and every quarter of an hour the voluntary
patrol of the Constitutionals sent us news. We were told that
the faubourgs (sections) were on the march, under the leadership of Santerre, the
brewer, and Westermann, a soldier. . . . Nobody could guess what was likely to
happen next day, and nobody counted on living more than another day. There
were some moments of hope, during this dreadful night ; we took heart, I don’t
know why, perhaps only because we had exhausted our fears.

“ Suddenly, at 7 o’clock, we heard the terrifying sound of the guns of

the faubourgs. The Swiss Guards won the first round, and the mob fled through
the streets as frightened as, earlier, it had been wrathful. I must say that I think
the King ought to have put himself at the head of the troops and driven back his
enemies. The Queen was of that opinion, and the brave advice which, in these

76
circumstances, she gave her husband, does her honour and should commend her
to posterity.”

The King, anxious to avoid bloodshed, ordered his troops to cease firing. His
Swiss Guards were all massacred. Before noon he and his wife and children
walked across to the Assembly and placed themselves in its hands. They were
lodged in a reporter’s box while the few members who were present decided upon
their fate. It was finally decreed that the King was suspended in the exercise of
his office, that the Assembly should be dissolved, and that a National Convention
should be summoned to make a new Constitution. In the meanwhile,
government was confided to an executive council of which, among others, Roland
and Danton were made members. The inclusion of Danton in the Provisional
Government was a gesture of the Assembly towards Paris, a gesture of weakness.
Louis and his family were removed to prison in the Temple through crowds which
included Captain Napoleon Bonaparte of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, an
officer, twenty-three years old, who had just been acquitted of the charge of
overstepping his powers during a riot in his native Corsica.

“ The French,” this young officer observed in a letter to his brother Joseph, “are
an ancient people who are out of control.”

Germaine, as night fell, grew sick with fear. Where were Narbonne, Mathieu, all
her friends ?

“ I was told,” she wrote,10 “that all my friends who had tried to guard the palace
from outside had been seized and massacred. I rushed out, instantly, to learn the
truth. My cab-driver was stopped on the bridge. ... After two hours uselessly
spent in trying to pass, I learned that all those who interested me were still alive,
but that most of them had been compelled to go into hiding, to avoid the
proscriptions with which they were threatened. When I went, on foot, that night
to see them in the humble dwellings where they had succeeded in finding shelter,
I passed armed men, lying in drunken slumber on the ground in front of
doorways. These only stirred to utter horrible oaths. I saw several workwomen
in the same state, and their cursings were more ghastly than the men’s. The
moment one of the patrols, which had been constituted to keep order, was
sighted, all honest men fled out of its way ; for what was called ‘keeping order’
was in fact assassinating and helping assassins.”

She was shaken but not demoralised. Her object, now, was to get her
Constitutional kindergarten out of Paris to some safe place where she might
restore and confirm its faith. Instincts of the nursing-mother, of the teacher, of
the shepherd jostled one another ; and along with these her love of Narbonne
which dominated them all.

The Prussians and Austrians, hurrying, as they proclaimed, to restore the King to
his throne, were but a few days’ march from Paris. Longwy had surrendered to
them on August 22 ; Verdun was invested. The French armies, a rabble,
staggered along every highway towards the Capital. Faint hearts forgave the King

77
in anticipation of favours to come. But the Commune, with nothing to hope for,
dared everything. The King and Queen were deprived of their handful of
followers (August 19), and every man and woman who might be supposed to wish
the invaders well, was arrested and flung into prison. It was made known that, if
the enemy continued to approach, all these illustrious prisoners would be
massacred.

“ Several of my friends,” wrote Germaine,11 “MM. de Narbonne, Montmorency,

Baunets, were threatened personally ; each had gone into hiding in some middle-
class household. But the refuge had to be changed daily because the hosts soon
became terrified. We decided at first against the use of my house for this purpose
because we were afraid that it was being watched ; but, on the other hand, as I
pointed out, my house was likely to be respected as that of an Ambassador and as
bearing on its door the name L’hôtel du Suède. This, although M. de Staël was
absent from Paris. Very soon hesitation gave way to necessity ; nobody was
found bold enough to offer shelter to the proscribed men. Two of these came to
me ; I told none of my people, except the few whom I could trust absolutely. I
shut them up in the most remote room in the house and spent the night myself in
the rooms overlooking the street, expecting every instant that a domiciliary visit,
as it was called, would be paid me.

“ One morning, one of my servants, whom I distrusted, told me that a placard

describing and denouncing M. de Narbonne had been pasted up at the corner of
my street. M. de Narbonne was one of the people hidden in the house. I had the
impression that my servant was trying to frighten me into betraying myself. . . .
Shortly afterwards, the dreaded domiciliary visit took place. M. de Narbonne had
been outlawed ; he would therefore be put to death the same day on which he
was taken. In spite of my precautions, I knew very well that if a careful search
was made he was bound to be discovered. It was essential, therefore, to prevent
such a search. I collected my forces (and I discovered then that one can always
control one’s feelings, however violent they may be, when lack of control is likely
to endanger somebody else’s life). The commissaires told off to search all the
houses of Paris for proscribed persons were men of the lowest class. While they
were making their visits, soldiers stood on guard at each end of the street to
prevent escapes. I began by frightening them as much as I could about the
outrage against the rights of men they were committing in entering an
ambassador’s house, and as they didn’t know their geography too well, I managed
to convince them that Sweden was a power able to attack them immediately,
seeing that her frontier and that of France were the same ! . . .

“ Either you get common men at once or you never get them at all. Ideas and
feelings with them are not awakened gradually. Seeing that my arguments had
made an impression, I dared, with death in my heart, to chaff them on the unjust
character of their suspicions. Nothing pleases fellows of this class more than
chaff, because they love to be treated as equals by the nobles against whom their
wrath burns so fiercely. l kept up my banter until I had fetched them to the front
door, and I bless God for the wonderful strength he gave me during that time.
Meanwhile it was obvious that this state of affairs could not continue. The

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smallest accident must bring death to a proscribed man who had so recently been
a Minister and who was therefore very well known.”

Happily a worthy Hanoverian, Dr. Bollmann, who had heard of Narbonne’s

plight, came forward with an offer to conduct him to England by means of a
passport belonging to one of his friends, an act of the highest courage. Four days
later Narbonne was in London. Germaine received passports for herself and her
servants, but felt reluctant to leave Paris so long as any of her intimate friends
remained there.12

“ I was told on the 31st of August,” she wrote,13 “that M. de Jaucourt ... and M. de
Lally-Tollendal had both been taken to the Abbaye. I had information that only
those whose assassination had been determined on were being sent to that
prison. The quick-wittedness of M. de Lally saved him in a most curious way. He
made himself defendant of one of his fellow-prisoners who was brought to the
Tribunal before the massacre began. This prisoner was acquitted, as everybody
realised, because of Lally’s eloquence. M. de Condorcet admired his ability and
exerted himself to save him, while at the same time M. de Lally found a capable
protector in the English Ambassador, who was still in Paris. M. de Jaucourt
lacked their help. I got a list of the members of the Commune of Paris, now the
masters of the town. I knew none of them except by their horrible reputations
and trusted to chance to give me a cue. Suddenly I remembered that Manuel, one
of them, had dabbled in literature, having published some of Mirabeau’s letters
with a preface—a bad preface truly, but showing some signs of a desire on its
author’s part to pass for a wit. I felt that if the man was greedy of applause he
was probably accessible to flattery. I wrote to him and asked for an
appointment. He gave me one, for the next day, at his house, at seven o’clock in
the morning, rather a democratic hour, perhaps, but I was punctual. He was not
yet out of bed when I reached his house, and I had to wait for him in his study.
There I saw his portrait standing on his desk and felt really hopeful that his
vanity would come to my help. He entered . . . I drew a picture of the distressing
changes of popular feeling of which examples were being furnished every day.
‘Six months from now, perhaps,’ I said to him, ‘you yourself may have lost your
power.’ (Before that time had elapsed he had perished on the scaffold.) ‘Save M.
de Lally and M. de Jaucourt ; lay up a sweet and consoling memory against the
day when, perhaps, you will be proscribed in your turn.’ Manuel was an
emotional man, easily carried away by his passions, but capable of honest
behaviour ; it was for defending the King that he was condemned to death. He
wrote to me on September 1 that M. de Condorcet had obtained M. de Lally’s
liberty and that, at my request, he was about to set M. de Jaucourt free.

“ Thankful to have saved the life of so splendid a man, I made up my mind to

leave the next day ; I had promised to pick up the Abbé Montesquieu, another
proscript, outside the barrier and take him with me, in the disguise of a servant,
to Switzerland. . . The news of the fall of Longwy and of Verdun reached Paris on
the morning of September 2. Again one heard, everywhere, those terrible alarm
bells. . . My passports were in perfect order, and I conceived the idea that the best
way of travelling would be in my berline, with six horses and postillions in full

79
livery. I thought that this equipage would impress people with the idea that I had
a right to travel and that, in consequence, they would not try to impede me. . . .
Scarcely had my carriage moved four paces when, hearing the postillions’ whips,
a posse of old women, who looked as if they had sprung out of hell, flung
themselves on my horses, shrieking for my arrest, and declaring that I was
making off with the nation’s gold and was going to join the enemy. . . . These
women attracted a crowd in an instant, and gutter-boys with ferocious faces
jumped up beside my postillions and compelled them to take me to the
headquarters of the Section in which I lived (the Faubourg Saint-Germain).

“ I entered this place and saw in progress what looked like a permanent
insurrection. The man who called himself President (of the Section) informed me
that I had been denounced as likely to try to take proscribed persons out of the
country, and that they were going to examine my servants. . . He ordered that I
should be taken to the Hôtel de Ville. Nothing could have been more terrifying ;
I should have to cross Paris and get out (of my carriage) at the Hôtel de Ville ; I
knew that several people had been massacred on the staircase of that building on
the 10th of August. No woman, it is true, had so far been killed, but, in fact, on
the following day the Princesse de Lamballe was murdered by a populace whose
rage was already of so dreadful a character that everyone seemed to thirst for
blood.

“ It took me three hours to go from the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the Hôtel de

Ville. A man, on foot, led my carriage through an enormous crowd which howled
for my death. It wasn’t me they were troubling about ; very few of them knew me
; it was my fine carriage and smart liveries which had become, in the mob’s eyes,
challenges to massacre. Not yet fully aware of the brutalising effects of
revolutions on men’s hearts, I asked help on several occasions of gendarmes who
passed near my carriage windows ; they answered me with gestures of contempt
and menace. I was pregnant, but that fact didn’t disarm their wrath. Quite the
contrary ; the more ashamed of themselves they felt, the more exasperated they
became. Meanwhile the gendarme who had been posted in my carriage, being
removed from contact with his fellows, took pity on me and promised to defend
me with his life. . . .

“ I descended from my carriage in the middle of an armed mob and walked under
an arch of pikes. As I mounted the stair, which bristled with spears, a man thrust
at me. My gendarme protected me with his sword. But if I had stumbled at that
moment my life would have been lost, for it is of the nature of the common
people to treat with respect anybody who still remains standing but to kill
anybody who has been struck down.

“ At last I reached the Commune, over which Robespierre presided, and breathed
again at my escape from the populace. What a protector to have found !
Robespierre ! Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varenne were acting as his
secretaries. The latter hadn’t shaved for fifteen days to avoid the least suspicion
of being an aristocrat. The room was full of common people—women, children,
men, yelling ‘Long live the Nation ! ’ at the pitch of their voices. . .

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“ I pointed out the right which I had, as Swedish Ambassadress, to leave the
country, and displayed the passports given me because of this right. At that
moment Manuel arrived. He was very much astonished to see me in such a
melancholy position, and, having answered for me until the Commune should
have decided on my fate, he took me away from this terrible place and shut me in
his own room with my maid.

“ We had to wait there six hours, hungry, worried and afraid. The window looked
on the Place de Grève and we saw the assassins coming back from the prisons
with bare and bloody arms. They uttered horrible yells.14

“ My carriage, with its luggage, remained in the middle of the place. The crowd
was making ready to pillage it, when I saw a big man, in the uniform of the
National Guard, jump onto the driver’s seat and forbid anybody to touch
anything. He spent two hours defending my luggage ; and I confess I found it
difficult to understand how so trifling a matter could be attended to in the middle
of events of so horrifying a nature. Towards evening this man came to my room
with Manuel. He was the brewer Santerre, so hideously famous since. He had
seen and distributed in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he lived, the wheat
sent there by my father during the famine, and he remembered these occasions.
He had had no wish to go to the help of the prisoners (who were being
massacred) as was his duty as a commandant, and had found in my carriage the
excuse he wanted for not doing so. He wished to boast about it, but I couldn’t
refrain from telling him what I thought he should have done. As soon as Manuel
saw me, he exclaimed with much feeling :

“ ‘ Ah, how thankful I am that I was able to set your two friends free
yesterday.’ . . .

During the night Manuel drove me back to my home in his own carriage ; he had
been afraid to do it in daylight and so, perhaps, lose his popularity. The street
lamps hadn’t been lit, but we passed many men carrying torches. The light of
these torches was more terrifying even than the darkness. Again and again
Manuel was stopped and asked who he was. When he answered : ‘The procureur
of the Commune,’ this worthy revolutionary was saluted with respect.

“ When we reached my house Manuel told me that a new passport was being
given me but that I would not be allowed to take anybody with me except my
maid. A gendarme had been told off to accompany me to the frontier. The next
day Tallien . . . came to my house under orders from the Commune to escort me
out of the city. Every moment was bringing us news of fresh massacres. There
were several people, some of them very much compromised, in my room. I
begged Tallien not to mention that he had seen them ; he promised and kept his
word. I got into my carriage with him ; we, my friends and I, took leave of each
other without being able to speak, for our words were frozen on our lips.”

The “September Massacres” which continued on this day proclaimed the

sovereignty of the Commune. They had begun the day before (September 2) at

81
noon, on receipt of the bad news from the front. At that hour the alarm gun at
the Pont-Neuf was fired and a black flag was hoisted on the Hôtel de Ville.
Thereupon a gang of assassins, 150 strong, many of whom were butchers and
most of whom were small tradesmen, hurried off to the prisons—La Force,
L’Abbaye, the Carmelites, the Conciergerie and others—and after, in certain
instances, a rough-and-ready trial, massacred upwards of 1,600 men and women
in the presence of howling mobs. Those of the prisoners who were found guilty of
wishing success to the invaders of France were bludgeoned or cut down with
swords as they stepped from the tribunals ; those who were acquitted were
embraced hysterically by the weeping, laughing, ravening spectators—a sufficient
indication of the mental state of the populace. That the massacres were
organised by the Commune is certain. The object was two-fold—namely, to
compromise every member of the new Convention so fatally that no hope of
salvation, if the enemy reached Paris, could be entertained, and to strike terror
into the heart of anyone disposed to dispute the power of the Hôtel de Ville.
Danton was accused of preparing the massacres, so was Marat, so was Tallien.
All denied the charge ; all remain under suspicion.

The Convention met for the first time in this atmosphere. It abolished the
monarchy and declared France a republic.

1
Considerations, Part III, p. 40.
2
Considerations, Part III, p. 40.
3
This is attested by Fersen who kept a close watch on her.
4
Afterwards the Emperor Francis.
5
It is often incorrectly stated that the rising of June 20 was the work of Danton.
He had nothing to do with it. The Girondists on this occasion stole his thunder.
6
Considerations, Part III, p. 49.
7
Considerations, Part III, p. 53.
8
Considerations, Part III, p. 60.
9
Considerations, Part III, p. 60.
10
Considerations, Part III, p. 62.
11
Considerations, Part III, p. 66. et seq.
12
The other proscribed person in her house was Mathieu de Montmorency. He
too escaped to England.
13
Considerations, Part III, p. 69. et seq.

82
 For a full account of the September Massacres, see the monumental work of
14

Lenôtre, The September Massacres.

83
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XV

AT JUNIPER HALL

GERMAINE reached Coppet on September 7, 1792, and found her father and
mother very glad to see her.

“ Switzerland,” wrote Suzanne1 to Meister two days later, “is in mourning. The
Ambassadress came back the day before yesterday with the terrible news (of the
massacres of September 2) and with an account of all her own sufferings.”

The good woman added that Jacques had just been reading a book in which he
had found all his own views set forth.

“ If you happen to know the author,” she urged, “tell him that he has given us the
purest essence of reason embellished by the graces of the mind. Tell him that
ideas so sweet and so inspired can still reach our spirits, just as the nightingale’s
song can be heard in a forest in spite of the roarings of tigers and lions.”

It seemed to them, now, that the wind which had blown them out of France had
not been so ill. Necker, when Germaine arrived, was busy on a defence of the
King which gave his daughter, when she read it, the liveliest delight. Here was
another nightingale’s song among the roarings and all the sweeter because the
singer hinted “avec quelle délicatesse,” that Louis’ downfall was due to his failure
to support Necker. Necker could afford to be generous. The King, he wrote, was
a good man, “the only one, perhaps, among the heads of the French Empire, St.
Louis always excepted, who has set the example of a blameless life.”

This precious apology was published in October 1792. In November, Narbonne’s

child was born. It was a boy. Germaine called it “Albert,” and Eric Magnus,
assured that his debts would be paid, accepted responsibility. He was still in
Sweden but looked forward with confidence to a speedy return to Paris. Jacques
ventured to suggest that the time had come for a reconciliation between husband
and wife, and hinted that he himself was no longer rich enough to finance any
more escapades. He and Suzanne then learned, with lively affliction, that
Germaine intended to join Narbonne in England the moment she rose from her
child-bed. When they protested, they were told to mind their own business.

“ Love,” their daughter informed them, “is above laws and man-made opinion. It
is the truth, the flame, the essential stuff, the basal idea of the moral world.
Heaven itself has no right to condemn it.”

Suzanne appealed to her old friend Gibbon, who was then living at Lausanne,
begging help, and the author of The Decline and Fall addressed remonstrances to
the infatuated girl. These had the effect of revealing that Germaine no longer felt
sure of her lover. She declared that she had an idea that if she didn’t go to him, “a

84
gulf would open” between them. Gibbon failed, apparently, to understand what
she meant, for he repeated his exhortations. What, did they expect her to pay
with the laughter of Frenchwomen for the approval of Geneva ? Everybody knew
that Narbonne was hers.

“ There are feelings,” she wrote2 to the man who had given her mother up to
please his father, “which, uniting every aspect of love and friendship, become
yourself . . . and more than yourself. When unheardof conditions, such as have
arisen in the Revolution, have welded together the minds and souls of two people
during five years, when these conditions have produced mutual dependence, so
that it is impossible for the two people to live apart, when, finally, everything
known as propriety and worldly consideration and advantage has tumbled into a
ridiculous heap of ruins, I can see no reason why he and I should go on living if
we are to be separated.”

Coppet was too near the French frontier for Jacques’ taste. When he heard that
the Commune of Paris had sequestered his estates in France because of his
apology for the King, he asked the Swiss Government for a guard of fifty soldiers
to be supplied at his own expense. That being refused, he moved inland to his
other estate, Rolle. From Rolle, on December 10, 1792, he wrote to Meister, who
was then in London :3

“ My daughter is about to leave us to go and spend some months not indeed in

London but in the English countryside, where several of her friends are now
gathered. Not from you, sir, whom I love and who loves us, would I seek to hide
how much this journey saddens us. I have done everything in my power to
prevent it ; but all to no purpose. She will have to travel through France, and
that is an added anxiety even though she won’t go through Paris. Her
confinement passed off excellently ; but a journey undertaken so soon after it, at
this season of the year, is necessarily a matter of distress. One must be resigned
to what one cannot help. . . .”

On January 2, 1793, Suzanne wrote to Gibbon :

“ After having exhausted uselessly all the resources of mind and reason in
attempting to dissuade my daughter from her insensate project, we had an idea
that a short stay at Geneva might, by bringing her under the influence of public
opinion, make her more docile. She profited by that freedom to set out on her
journey sooner even than we had feared. How badly she has begun the year and
made us begin it ! I say no more.”

There was nothing more to be said. Germaine had bolted to her lover. She
reached England safely and, before the end of January, 1793, had taken Juniper
Hall, near Leatherhead in Surrey, and was living there with Narbonne. Very soon
the Kindergarten was in being once more in this desert place. For Talleyrand
came limping down from London, where he had been practising poverty ; he
brought Mathieu de Montmorency with him and Lally-Tollendal, stouter than
ever, and Jaucourt and his mistress, Madame de Chatre. Malouet also.

85
Germaine made them all welcome. She was writing about “Happiness” and
needed an audience.

But the disciples in this English January, with the east wind for comfort, proved
less tractable than in Paris, even though all were dependent on their hostess, or
rather on her father, for food and shelter. Germaine read to them every evening,
from her work on “Happiness,” and they endured it badly. Talleyrand found her
voice, which was sing-song, exceedingly irritating. Neither Narbonne nor
Mathieu felt much interest in her opinions, which both had begun to distrust.
Their minds were in Paris, where, as they gathered round the board which
Necker’s hands had furnished, their King was making ready to die. Liberty had
lost her looks for them.

Liberty was losing her looks for most people. By compelling the Girondists to put
the King on his trial, the rulers of the Paris Commune had robbed them of their
influence among moderate men outside of Paris. By compelling most of them to
vote for the King’s death, the Commune had broken their resistance to itself.
Liberalism, in short, which had destroyed Versailles, was now on its knees to
Paris. France had a new Richelieu, more autocratic, more ruthless, more
bloodthirsty, than the old, a tyrant without a name, or rather with so many names
—the Commune, the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Jacobin Club, the “Mountain”—
that identification was impossible. To no purpose did Germaine plead that
calamity had befallen solely because Necker’s advice had not been taken.
Talleyrand, for one, realised that absolutism had replaced absolutism because
France could not live without it in some form. He saw, as Louis XVI and
Mirabeau had seen long ago, that reform must be grafted on the stem of
authority. Narbonne was of the same opinion. What, Germaine cried, a Royal
democracy ! She harangued them, exhorted them, chastised them for their lack
of faith, repeating Jacques’ arguments in favour of the English system till her
bread grew sour in their mouths. News of the King’s execution, on January 21,
reached them and drove the blood from every face except hers. Here, surely, was
a challenge that they must accept. She was full of schemes for the punishing of
the Jacobins, but the melancholy men who surrounded her remained
unresponsive. What could they do ? Mathieu made no secret of his belief that
the King’s blood was upon all their heads.

And so thought their English neighbours. Nobody called on them. Did not the
way of life of these revolutionaries eloquently proclaim their rascality. The
Royalist emigrants, mindful of Necker, spoke of them in the same breath with
Danton and Robespierre. Narbonne found ostracism, even at the hands of
English vicars’ wives, an afflicting experience, and grew morose and difficult. He
began to quarrel, and rebuked Germaine for her lack of dignity. But since they
had nobody but each other, it was necessary to be friends again, and listen to a
new chapter of “Happiness.” They learned to know one another better every day.
Germaine began to suspect that Narbonne had no heart. Her opinion of
Talleyrand was still high, and in any case, she found his conversation irresistible.
But it was Mathieu who won the love of everybody. In February Germaine paid a
short visit to London. Her father, informed about what was going on at Juniper

86
Hall, was threatening to cut off supplies. She visited Meister and begged his
help. The King’s death, she pleaded, had alienated her lover from her and she
must have time to win him again. Besides, all these people were dependent on
her, and “I have a tremendous horror of the whole of Switzerland.”

March continued what January and February had begun. Narbonne, nearing
forty, staggered under the burden of a passion which gave him no rest. He
begged mercy and was chastised daily with scorpions. Here is her own account of
him from her novel Zulma, in which he is called Fernand.

“ I followed Fernand into the desert. . . . A woman surrounded him with all the
tender joys of love. In the desert, he was still a sovereign ; he saw happiness and
a whole existence hang on one look from him ; power and glory were restored to
him by my ardent and complete yielding. My love was his shield from the
injustice of man as it tried to attack him in his thoughts. In my heart he read
himself . . . he loved me . . . he lived. ... Fernand suggested an absence of a few
days from me. I opposed this project, I complained of it bitterly. No, I did not
demand rights from Fernand on the strength of my benefits to him. It was the
memory, the deep impression of my own feelings, which forced me to believe in
my empire over him. It seemed to me that I carried such a power and weight of
love within me that it must dominate him, that a man loved with such a strength
of passion could never dream that he was free.”

In fact, so long as the house-party lasted, nobody was free. In the characters of
all these men there was a childish streak which the maternal streak in Germaine’s
character easily overrode. They allowed her to feed them, mentally and morally
as well as physically, and took comfort from her strength without shame. And
they bore her scourgings as boys bear the punishments of their mother. That the
party held together is remarkable when it is remembered that Mathieu’s mother
had been Narbonne’s mistress and that Germaine, at one time or another, had
bestowed her favours on them all.

The end came in May, at the hands of Jacques. He sent his nephew and niece,
Madame Necker de Saussure and her husband, to England ; Germaine was told
that she must return or fend for herself. The decision is not surprising. Eric
Magnus had returned to the rue du Bac in February, and the Austrians and
Prussians, driven back by Dumouriez at Valmy and Jemappes, were again, thanks
to their victory at Neerwinden on March 18, 1793, approaching the capital.
Dumouriez himself, following the example of Lafayette, had gone over to the
enemy rather than face the wrath of Paris. It seemed probable in the highest
degree that, within a few weeks, the nightmare of mob-rule would be over and the
martyred King’s son happily restored to the throne, with the Queen as Regent.
Necker foresaw that if that happened, he would have great need of Germaine to
plead his cause and recover his sequestered property, including the £100,000 he
had lent to the Government. The scandal of Juniper Hall was no longer to be
endured.

87
Germaine hauled down her flag. Weeping bitterly, speechless, she was led away,
“dragged from all that is dear to me.” The house-party continued without her.

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 87.
2
Gibbon : Memories.
3
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 88.

88
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XVI

THE KINDERGARTEN

BECAUSE of Dumouriez’s victories, the Commune of Paris had been able to put
the King on his trial and send him to the scaffold. Louis died with an excellent
courage, in Christian resignation and with forgiveness for his murderers on his
lips. A reaction followed. The Girondists, become now, in the kaleidoscope of
Revolution, the party of the Right, regained some popularity and were able to
hold “The Mountaineers,” Danton, Marat, Robespierre, in check. For a moment
France had become stronger than Paris.

This moment, in which the nation tasted glory once again, revealed the jealousy
of a host of enemies. England and Holland, alarmed at the march of French
troops into Belgium and horrified by the King’s death, joined the Coalition of
Austria and Prussia. Spain followed their example. When, therefore, victory was
turned to defeat, and Dumouriez’s treason was made known, there was fresh
panic. The Commune, architect of salvation in the previous autumn, recovered
its authority in a night. Danton, returned to his former methods, transmuted fear
into action with potent alchemy. The tocsin, rung by Marat, called the Sections to
the Hôtel de Ville. Hanriot, at the head of the Army of Paris, surrounded the
Convention now sitting in the Tuileries. On May 31, 1793, and again on June 2,
attacks like those made on the palace in the previous year intimidated
Parliament. The whole Girondist party was swept away, its members being put
under arrest in their houses. Danton, acting through the “ Committee of General
Security” of the Convention, the real strength of which resided in the Commune
of Paris, was master of France.

The usual proscriptions followed. The Girondists, those who had managed to
escape arrest, were hunted through the streets as they themselves had helped to
hunt the Feuillants nine months before. As further massacres seemed certain,
the few remaining members of the diplomatic corps judged it wise to leave
France. Eric Magnus travelled to Switzerland and became the guest of his father-
in-law. He met Germaine, but only casually. She had taken a place of her own at
Nyon, on the Lake of Geneva, and let it be known that she belonged now,
exclusively, to Narbonne. Eric Magnus was bidden use his ambassadorial
influence to transport the Kindergarten from Juniper Hall to Switzerland at the
earliest possible moment. Obliging as ever, he set to work.

Meanwhile, in Paris, Danton was disappointing the hopes which had been
reposed in him. The formidable demagogue, who had leaped into the saddle at
the beginning of June, after striking down the Girondists, had proved but an
indifferent horseman. He had not managed to pull the armies together nor
known how to prevent the disruption of the nation. Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux,
the great naval base of Toulon and many of the cities had revolted against the

89
Central Government. Enemies were attacking in the Alps and Pyrenees as well as
on the Northern frontiers. In this extremity the authentic Spirit of Richelieu was
breathed once more on France. Early in July, a month after Danton’s coming to
power, the Committee of General Security was reconditioned. He was left out.
Carnot and Robespierre gathered up the reins. The wheel of the Revolution had
turned full cycle. Parliament had become completely subservient, once again, to
the ruling power which happened to be the guillotine instead of the throne, and
that ruling power, from its seat in Paris, exerted an absolute control of all the
armies, sent its proconsuls into every province and held over all citizens the
power of life and death. A policy of “Thorough” was outlined and executed.
Carnot went to the front ; Robespierre crushed opposition at home. Terror
lashed the nation to action.

It was now certain that the Queen would follow the King to the guillotine. A thrill
of horror ran through Europe. In August (1793) Germaine published
anonymously an appeal for mercy which, in the circumstances, had much better
have been left unwritten. Everybody recognised the authorship and remembered
the relations in which the two women had stood to one another. The Swiss, it
seemed, could not leave Marie Antoinette in possession even of her tears.

Robespierre and Carnot achieved in a few months what nobody had achieved in
France for a century. By the end of August the siege of Dunkirk was raised. On
October 15 and 16 was fought the battle of Wattignies, whereby Coburg and his
Austrians were forced to retreat from Maubeuge. The same month witnessed the
surrender of Lyons and the massacre by Fouché and Collot d’Herbois of those of
its inhabitants, with their children, who had opposed the Central Government,
the trials and executions of Marie Antoinette, of Madame Elizabeth, the late
King’s sister, and of twenty-one Girondist leaders. In November Manon Roland
suffered. She was followed to the scaffold by the due d’Orleans, “Philippe
Egalité” as he had called himself, the King’s cousin who had voted for the King’s
death. Marseilles and Bordeaux submitted to Paris ; Freron, a middle-aged
dandy, who occupied his leisure making love to thirteen-year-old Paolina
Buonaparte, was master of massacres in Marseilles. Tallien filled that post in
Bordeaux, where he found and spared the beautiful Thérèse de Fontenay. In
December, thanks largely to the genius of Captain-Commandant Napoleon
Bonaparte, the English and Spanish fleets were driven from the harbour of
Toulon and that port forced to capitulate. Barras superintended the massacres
here. Thus was France, bemused a little while by Liberty, whipped back into
obedience to authority, and thereby raised again to her ancient place among the
nations. Two facts well known to Richelieu, to Louis XIV, to Colbert, to Louis XV,
to Louis XVI, to Vergennes, to Mirabeau, emerged now for all men to see—
namely, that France’s strength depended upon centralisation of authority and
that such centralisation required glory for its maintenance. The affair with
Liberty had postponed but had not avoided the inevitable settlement with
England. In other words, only he who should be master of the armies could be
master of France.

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The armies obeyed Carnot now and Robespierre, “the Committee,” which owed
its power over the Convention to the Jacobin Club on the one hand and the
Commune of Paris on the other. Could the Commune overthrow the Committee
as, before, it had overthrown the King, the Assembly, the Feuillants, the
Girondists ? Not, certainly, so long as the Committee remained the architect of
victory.

Germaine, by her native lake, with her gates closed against husband and father
and mother and her eyes fixed on England, understood nothing of what was
passing in Paris. Where was Liberty in this new France ?

“ One doesn’t know,”1 she wrote, “if these twelve members of the Committee of
Public Safety had any conception of any kind of government at all in their heads.
With the single exception of the conduct of the War, the ordering of affairs was
nothing but a mixture of stupidity and ferociousness in which no plan is
discernible but that of compelling one half of the nation to murder the other
half. . . .

“ How did the government of 1793 and 1794 triumph over so many enemies ?
The Coalition of Austria, Prussia, Spain and England, the civil war, the hatred of
the Convention felt by all the honest men who were still out of prison, none of
these diminished the resistance against which the foreigners saw their efforts
broken. One can only explain this prodigy by pointing to the devotion of the
nation to its own cause. A million men armed themselves to repulse the Coalition
; the People was inspired by a frenzy which was as disastrous within the country
as it was invincible without.”

Only once has she a partial glimpse of the truth.

“ The political and military conditions of the great monarchies which surround
France threaten her independence if the power which binds her together is
weakened.”

“ The Power which binds her together”—The Throne : the Guillotine. Versailles :
the Commune : the Committee. The King : Mirabeau : Danton : Carnot :
Robespierre. The institutions and the men against which Necker and his
daughter and their friends have always been ranged. And yet, in these autumn
days of 1793, she cannot understand why her young men have been thrust out of
France, nor why Royalists and Jacobins hold them in equal detestation.

“ They were proscribed by France,” she wrote,2 “and looked at askance by the
governments of Europe, whose knowledge of them was derived from their most
inveterate enemies, the French aristocrats. . . . These friends of Liberty found
themselves almost without a refuge on earth.”

Thanks to Eric Magnus, succour was brought to those of them in whom his wife
was interested. The Ambassador had gone to Schaffhouse near Zurich, because
French Switzerland was less favourably situated for the diplomatic work, arising

91
out of the Revolution, on which he was engaged. He obtained a number of
Swedish passports and sent them to Germaine, who bestowed them, along with
the names they bore, on the Kindergarten. Even so, the position of these young
men was difficult. The patrician rulers of Berne, far from welcoming the change
to a Republic in France, were terrified. During centuries these old Swiss families
had had things all their own way not only in Berne itself but also in Geneva and
on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, for the Pays de Vaud, their conquest in the
sixteenth century, remained their dependency. The Bernese Oligarchy had no
love of French Liberals and no wish to shelter them in its dominions at a moment
when it felt the liveliest anxiety lest its own Liberals, especially those in Geneva,
might revolt. The Kindergarten was soon made aware of this dislike, and
Germaine had to look about for a new refuge in case orders of expulsion should
be served on her friends. She turned to Zurich partly because German
Switzerland was less under the influence of ruling families than French
Switzerland, partly because Eric Magnus could afford at least a measure of
protection, and partly because her father’s old friend Meister, who had succeeded
Grimm as editor of the Correspondance Littéraire, of which Necker was the chief
financial support, possessed influence in that city. On December 21, 1793, she
wrote to Meister from Nyon.3

“ You are at Zurich ; you are having dealings with M. de Staël, and you write only
to my mother ! I’m not pleased with you for this want of confidence in my
friendship, and I hope M. de Staël will convince you that we delight to dwell on
our association with you. As a rebuke to you, I’m going to write to you direly and
with perfect candour, for I want you to do something for me.

“ There’s only one good thing left in this frightful upset of the universe, only one
thing worth living for, and that is to give happiness to one’s friends and get
happiness from them. You are aware of the position of my friends ; my house
remains their only refuge. And I am almost totally ruined by the confiscation of
my father’s property in France. Two gentlemen, de Montmorency and de
Jaucourt, have been living, under Swedish names, in my house for the last two
months ; M. de Narbonne, under a Spanish name, has just arrived. Berne
knows ; Berne tolerates, because I live absolutely alone in the depths of the
country and because our wish to be hidden away is recognised. But the Bishop of
Autun, whom I love so tenderly, has been refused admission (to this Canton)
because of his erstwhile democratic opinions. Your Canton is more liberal-
minded. That body of emigrants which desired the Revolution, but whose
revolutionary activities stopped at the point where sacrifice ended and
oppression began, that body, so small in respect at any rate of its noble members,
ought to be specially acceptable to the wise and moderate spirit of your Canton.
These emigrants feel that they should avoid the places where emigrants of a less
desirable type are assembled, for, situated as they are between two extremes, they
know the price of that moderation which the two opposing factions are pleased to
regard as a crime.

“ You know all this a thousand times better than I do. But the fact is that, as the
wife of a Swede, and of a Swede, moreover, who has a high position in his native

92
land, and whom the High Chancellor of Sweden has recommended as
Ambassador to the Avoyer de Berne, I can rent a country house on the Lake of
Zurich next spring. But if it suspected that the two Swedes who are living with
me, who never go out, who never enjoy any social intercourse, and never, indeed,
leave my garden—if it is suspected that these Swedes are two ‘ Constitutionals,’
two friends of the limited Monarchy, of liberty with order, shall I not be subjected
to all sorts of troubles ? Who is going to believe the Swedish Ambassadress when
she declares that she has nobody in her house but Swedes ?

“ Things are all right here, but I haven’t got permission for the Bishop to come,
and I won’t stay anywhere without him. Do tell me, therefore, if I can, with some
hope of being unmolested, rent a house this spring in the country and invite M.
de Talleyrand there. Tell me if Zurich is ready to advertise the moderation of its
views by affording shelter to men who are being persecuted for the exhibition of a
similar moderation.

“ Tell me, finally, if I can have the joy of spending the summer with you as well as
with my friends. If that is impossible, will you make some inquiries for me about
Schaffhouse ? That place wouldn’t suit me nearly so well, but, after all, what I
want is a house to shelter me from the elements and a retreat to protect me from
the passions of men. I won’t continue ; so many feelings surge in my heart that I
would need to give them all vent if I began to describe them, and neither life nor
spirit nor word not thought could suffice for that.

“ Believe only that I both esteem and love you and ask nothing better than to pass
some time with you.”

Germaine’s little ark was making heavy weather. Her father and mother,
shocked, ashamed, not knowing how to face their respectable friends and sorely
afflicted by their financial losses, kept protesting that they could not, any longer,
finance both the Kindergarten and Eric Magnus.

1
Considerations, Part III, p. 127, 134. et seq.
2
Considerations, Part III, p. 136.
3
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 96.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XVII

LAGGARD IN LOVE

WORSE still, Narbonne was becoming an occasion of acute distress. That man,
although dependent on Germaine’s bounty, was resolved to be quit of her
embraces. He used the fact that there was a price on his head as an excuse for
moving about as much as possible and especially for getting away from the
neighbourhood of the Lake of Geneva. Hence the wish of Germaine to acquire a
house near Zurich in German Switzerland where, at least, her lover would be
deprived of the plea of personal danger and where, with Talleyrand’s wit to cheer
her, she might be able to win him back.

“ I must confess,” she wrote to Eric Magnus, “that the society of Geneva people is
insupportable to me. Their freedom of speech simply results in insolence and
their impeccable morals in infinite boredom. In any case a small town is the
worst scene of action in the world for exceptional people. Every word they say is
bound to be torn to shreds by the gossips. I am sure that, in Geneva, my father
and I assume the significance of the States-General in Paris. To create a stir
without achieving fame is only an unmitigated nuisance.”

Eric Magnus was about to go to Hamburg and thence to Sweden on diplomatic

business. So far as he was concerned, Germaine could live where she liked.

“ I take advantage,” he wrote to Meister1 from Schaffhouse on Thursday, January

2, 1794, “of the permission you have given me, to send you a letter for your lady
friend. At the same time I have the honour to renew to you my sincere thanks for
the excellent consideration you have shown me during my stay at Zurich : I’m
afraid I have trespassed grossly on your time and good nature. You told me, my
dear sir, that you often see Madame Burkli. I do beg you most earnestly to assure
her of my devotion. I am enchanted to have become acquainted with this
delightful woman, whose soul, personality and mind possess such harmony and
charm. I do indeed pray that she may always be happy. Such natures as hers
suffer too much when they are not happy, for it is only the tender emotions which
can really affect them.

“ I beg you, my dear sir, to be so good as to remember me to your cousin and to

offer my compliments to all the other people to whom you have been kind enough
to introduce me.

“ I am still here and I am furious at it. I have given the man who drove me here a
letter for M. Ott in which I have asked him in case Wednesday’s or Thursday’s
post has brought letters for me, to send them to me by special messenger.
Neither letters not messenger have appeared. I am in despair. “ Good-bye, my
dear sir. Do believe that I am always your sincere and devoted friend,

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 “ STAËL DE HOLSTEIN.

“ P.S.—I expect to stay here till Sunday, but not a minute longer. I think nobody
ever has been doomed to do more waiting than I have been.”

Meister did not exert himself greatly to obey Germaine’s instructions. She wrote
to him again on February 19, 1794.2

“ I have seen in the “Gazette de Schaffhouse” that the Bishop of Autun has been
deported from England. I couldn’t believe it, had I not, myself, lacked all news
from England for fifteen days. This report has upset me so much that I can
scarcely hold my pen for trembling. I’ve been trembling ever since I heard it. If
he comes here I will be only too glad ; but he will go to America ; but —— If God
grants that this new affliction is spared me, I will write to you to ask you to deny
the report in the “Gazette de Schaffhouse.”

“ What do you know about M. Ott’s country house at Zurich ? ”

The news about Talleyrand was true. He had gone to America. She wrote to
Meister again :3

“ Nyon, 12th March, 1794.

“ It’s exceedingly good of you to bother about me. If only my friends, in America
and Europe, could be gathered at Zurich. Think what a great service you will
have done me if we manage that. Mathieu precedes me with M. Bink. He will
come under a Swedish name and I will tell you what I want. M. Ott’s house
seems to be all that can be desired. If I take it, I wish to do my own catering
which is both more economical and easier. It seems to me that, as I am not yet
absolutely sure that I won’t go to London, and as I am even less sure of being
happy at Zurich with the very few friends who seem likely to be tolerated there, I
ought to begin by a stay of eight days at M. Ott’s (hotel) in the town. With your
help and God’s grace, I’ll exert my blandishments (on the authorities) during the
period, and if these are successful I shall choose, with you, both my house and
the pension for Madame de Chatre. That lady, my good friend and a worthy
Constitutional, is not happy in the Canton of Berne. She will arrive under her
maiden name of Bontems, but there are two points which must be attended to—
namely, that the Government of Zurich is made aware of the real names of these
people (there can be no safety without that !), and that it gives some indication of
a definite preference for emigrants of democratic opinions. I am ready to go to
Winterthur, to Rapperswyl, or like Madame de Montesquieu to Bremgarten if
that suits better. I don’t want the glamour of the capital (Zurich), what I want is
you and again you and still again you. I want a shelter for our friends near
enough to Zurich to allow you to come and spend the night easily. I don’t think I
need say or decide anything till I come. I pull things off, sometimes, when I have
personal interviews, and in any case (don’t you think?) I ought to take advantage
of the success of M. de Staël, the memory of which is still fresh ? I repeat that,

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not having fully made up my mind not to go to England, I think definite decisions
should be postponed till I come.

“ Ah, England ! They’ve robbed me of my beloved, my excellent friend ! Tell

Brayoud that he (Talleyrand) cannot now come here ; it was the Emperor’s
Minister who asked them to apply the provisions of the Aliens Bill against him.
There is the greatest calamity for me since the Revolution : there was not a single
interest of one of his friends with which he was not tenderly occupied at the time
of his going. What a misunderstood character ! And his mind, so richly
endowed, so charming, is even more remarkable. Nothing shall prevent me from
seeing him again : and it may be that other reasons will force me to go in search
of him. I begin to loathe Europe. The last thing I shall do for my friends will be
this visit to Zurich. As for myself, I shall drag along for a while yet. But who can
agree, at 27, to break completely with the past ? How to love as one has loved !
How to experience feelings as vivid as one’s memories ! . . . It isn’t true, as you
seem to be convinced, that M. de Narbonne has gone to America.”

Narbonne had gone back to England. On March 28 she wrote again to Meister :4

“ Mathieu writes me that you are being exceedingly kind to him ; but can you
overcome all the obstacles in the way of our being allowed to live ? For, truth to
tell, to live is now the height of our ambition. With the Bishop in America, you
know what ruin has been made of this poor society (of mine). M. de Narbonne,
too, will probably not come back for three months, when he will have obtained a
permanent position either in England or Italy—and three months from now M. de
Staël is due back from his special mission to Denmark and Sweden. So I can stay
for three months at Winterthur or Rapperswyl, as far away as they like, provided
they leave us as undisturbed on the surface of the earth as we will be when we lie
under it.

“ My mother’s state of health is so pitiful that I am keeping near Lausanne and

that I ought, perhaps, to give up the idea of living at Zurich. What a state of
matters, if our friends are received there and I don’t stay with them ! If it is my
fatal name which frightens everybody, I think that, this name being more
formidable than its bearer, it will be better—since it has been spoken—if I show
myself, for that nearly always helps matters. I beg you to tell me what I should
do. Eight days from now I shall have fifteen days at my disposal ; would there be
any objection to my spending them at Zurich ? Suppose I let it be known that I
am only paying a visit and not establishing myself. I can stay at an hotel and can
say, what is perfectly true, that the state of my mother’s health compels me to
return to Lausanne till M. de Staël arrives. I can say, too, that my chief object in
coming was to see you and to find a house to buy at some future date, which is
also, really, one of my projects. Do advise me as soon as possible about this
journey. I won’t thank you ; it seems to me that in our troubles, and almost by
reason of them, you are one of us. So I behave towards you as I do towards
them : I love and I dispose.

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“ Would you be so kind as to see if, when the English mail comes in, there is
anything for me ? A month ago I gave Zurich as my address.”

Meister advised her to come to Zurich, and she arrived there on April 17 and had
meetings with several of the ruling burghers. But these interested her far less
than the news from Paris, which was to the effect that the era of blood was at an
end.

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 99.
2
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 101.
3
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 102.
4
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 104.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XVIII

A NEW EVANGEL

THE explanation of this curious mistake made at the moment when the Reign of
Terror was about to begin, is to be found in Robespierre’s behaviour. He and
Carnot and their associates on the Committee had so effectively performed their
work of pulling France together that all danger of invasion had been averted. The
nation, possessed once more of a sense of security, reacted against the methods
by which security had been achieved—namely, massacre and repression.
Deputations from the cities where the most horrible atrocities had been
committed began to arrive in Paris and to utter protests of such vigour that even
the cringing Convention was moved to wrath. The Parisians took sides with these
visitors, and let their feelings be known. For a moment Robespierre and his
friends thought that the time had come to change their tune. But while they were
making ready the olive branches and doves, Danton suddenly proclaimed himself
the true apostle of loving-kindness, and called Paris and France to witness that he
had pleaded, against Robespierre, for the Queen’s life, for the lives of the
Girondists, and for mercy and peace for all men. It was a bid for power which, in
the existing state of public feeling, threatened Robespierre with the doom to
which he had sent so many others. With quickening anxiety the Dictator saw the
effect which Danton’s eloquence was exerting on the Convention and realised
that the members of that Assembly, overawed so long by fear of the guillotine and
of the Committee which ordered it, were recovering their nerve. Led by Danton,
these cowards were likely to assert themselves. The danger was imminent and
terrible ; in face of it Robespierre put the doves and olive branches away and
exhibited the swiftness of a panther. Pretending to agree with Danton, he turned,
on March 15, 1794, upon the men who had incited to massacre, the mob leaders
of Paris, that pack of wolves led by Hebert, madmen, foaming for blood, and sent
them, livid and gibbering,1 to the guillotine. Then, while the cheers which had
greeted this stroke were still echoing through France, he turned on Danton and
accused him of political and financial corruption. It was touch and go, but the
Convention, once more scared out of its wits, surrendered its favourite after a
short sharp struggle. On April 5 Danton and all his associates were hurried off to
the guillotine. It was a wild spring evening, full of sunshine and rain. As the red
carts trundled along the rue St. Honoré past the windows of Duplay’s house
where, in an upper room, Robespierre lived, Danton, foaming with rage, shook
his fift at the drawn blinds : “You will follow me, Robespierre,” he shouted. Then
he began to sing and came singing into the place. He watched his friends’ heads
fall on the spot where the King and Queen and Manon Roland had died, and went
up the steps himself, the last. “Come, come, Danton, no weakness ! ” he was
heard to say, and then, with a laugh, to Sanson, who had cut off all the heads,
from the beginning : “ You will show my head to the people ; it’s worth it.” The
crowd, silent, afraid, saw his silhouette against the crimson and saffron of sunset
as he walked to the knife.

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Robespierre was right, probably, in thinking that if he had not sent Danton to the
guillotine, Danton would have sent him there. The trouble was that France was
become full of Dantons, men who wanted to make an end of the guillotine.
Robespierre now tried to associate with these honest folk and, to prove his good
faith, made new war on the people who had conducted his massacres for him.
This tidy fellow, always well dressed, smug, with powdered hair and laundered
cravat, set up, in the Spring of 1794, as a scourge of God. He delivered sermons
in a screeching tone and took to spying out backsliders, moral, political and
financial. All the brothels of Paris, for example, were shut and all the whores
beheaded. Men who delayed to wed their mistresses accompanied them to the
guillotine, which was fed daily with the unchaste, the dishonest and the
debauched. Atheists, too, went to Sanson, because Robespierre had a mind to
believe in God. It was the Terror to end Terror, and it gathered force every day as
the blue-coated apothecary discovered fresh recipients of his “purge of Virtue.”
In three months more than a thousand sinners were killed.

Nobody had foreseen such a development ; nobody, perhaps, could have foreseen
it. And so, when Hebert and Danton died, it was prophesied confidently that
Robespierre was about to lead the people to greener pastures.2 That was what
Germaine heard at Zurich. Instantly she decided to take the remains of the
Kindergarten back to Paris and to comfort her affliction at Narbonne’s desertion
by trying to get back her father’s £100,000.

“ I am very grateful, my dear sir,”3 she wrote to Meister in April from Baden on
her way back from Zurich, “for all your goodness. It has been the more useful to
me in that it has enabled me to profit by circumstances so as to be in a position to
go back to France. I have seen with great pleasure that you approve this
decision. All my friends now in France, those who have remained there and those
who have gone back, urge me to come. My mother, unhappily, can’t bear the idea
of our being separated. It won’t be for long. After having approved of my going,
she has become the prey of millions of anxieties, and so I don’t speak about it to
her ; I don’t say I’m going and I don’t say I’m not going. At the last moment I
shall get her to read the letter of M. Schulthess, those of my friends in France and
that which you had the goodness to write to me. Getting them all together will
make a greater impression on her. At the same time, as the affair is very
important, if I think that she is likely to try to stop me, I’ll put all these letters into
somebody’s hands to be given her after my departure. We can’t all three go at the
same time ; the weather is too bad for Mamma to travel and, besides, the
expense would be beyond my means. I’ll travel cheaply myself in excellent and
very useful company. I’ll send them (my friends) the money they will need to
come and join me. They will find all the arrangements made. I feel sure I ought
not to delay a moment. “I’ll send you my corrected manuscript. . . .”

This was the manuscript of Zulma, the novel she had just completed in which a
full account of her relations with Narbonne and his desertion of her is given ; the
first considerable literary work of her life. Zulma—“ This work of mine which
more than any other proceeds from my soul”—is written in sobs, sighs and
shrieks, with the hiss of the lash which its author was applying to her lover’s back

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for setting. Here is Narbonne naked, trussed up for whipping ; Germaine naked
too, that she may whip with the more vigour. And the moral : Hands off love !
After the transports of her rage had passed, it was the moral which interested
her. Narbonne, she recognised, was a social coward who could not face public
disapproval. The vicars’ wives in Surrey and the pastors’ wives in Geneva had
been too much for him. With a gesture worthy of Mirabeau she turned on these
scandalmongers.

“ If to love deeply that which one respects, if to remain faithful to the sacred bond
of friendship is to act a part, then I have acted a part ; or rather I have nothing in
my being which urges me towards, which even allows me to practise, any other
way of life.”4

But she held them all, nevertheless, in apostolic hate. Was this the “Society”
which Rousseau had promised should be the guarantor of love ? This poultry-
yard of cackling hens ? Her mind travelled to France, where Robespierre’s work
of “cleansing the Revolution” was now, as she had learned, in full swing.
Rousseau had promised that Society would guarantee liberty also. The event, in
both cases, had shamed the prophet ; she was done with Rousseau. Nothing was
to be expected from Society ; men and women who wished to be free, whether
politically or emotionally, must fend for themselves. They must oppose Society
since Society was certain to oppose them. The State, in short, was at best a
necessary evil. Men and women were above the State and had the right,
therefore, as men and women, to perfect themselves by liberty and by love, no
matter what any constituted opinion might decree. Full of this evangel,
Germaine returned to Lausanne. She found her mother at the point of death. On
May 5, 1794, she wrote again to Meister :5

“ I can’t tell you what I owe you. You are necessary to me and I want to bring my
life into closer touch with yours because you delight my whole heart and mind.
Tell me, then, where I can find a place for my father if I bring him (to Zurich)
immediately after the heartrending event (her mother’s expected death). Is there
a furnished house to be had in the faubourg ? ”

Poor Suzanne died the next day, May 6, 1794, at 55 years of age. “She met the
right man and spent her whole life with him,” said Germaine piously. “Peace be
to her ashes. She deserved far more than I to be happy.”

On May 18, 1794, Germaine wrote to Meister :6

“ You are aware of the calamity which has befallen my father. But perhaps you
don’t know that my mother left orders of an amazing and most extraordinary
kind about the different steps which were to be taken to embalm her, to preserve
her and to place her, under a glass lid, in spirits of wine, so that, as she imagined,
her features would be so perfeftly preserved that my poor father would be able to
spend his life gazing at them. It isn’t in that way that I feel the need of being held
in memory !

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“ As a result of all this, my father won’t leave this neighbourhood until (my
mother’s) tomb is built, that is until August. After that I don’t think he will have
any objection to going to Zurich.”

She wrote again from her new house, Mezéry, near Lausanne, on the 3oth :

“ Nothing will separate my father from that dreadful coffin.”

The company at Mezéry was plunged into lively distress by the news from Paris,
for all, except Germaine, had relations in the capital. Robespierre, smelling out
sin like a witch-doctor, was finding it in exalted hearts. Madame du Barry,
uttering cries so terrible that even Paris shuddered, had gone to the guillotine.
Madame de Montmorency-Laval, Mathieu’s mother, seemed likely to go there
also. His brother, too, and his wife’s mother were in great danger. Germaine set
about, with an excellent enthusiasm and diligence, the work of rescuing these
unhappy people.

“ M. de Jaucourt,” she wrote,7 “was living in my house, under one of the Swedish
names which we had invented for him. At the news of his nephew’s arrest (at the
Swiss frontier) his despair was terrible. . . There was only one hope, namely, to
induce M. de Reverdil, Lieutenant Baillival at Nyon, to claim M. du Chayla (the
nephew) as a native of the pays de Vaud.

“ I went to M. de Reverdil to ask this favour ; he was an old friend of my father

and mother and one of the most enlightened and respected men in French
Switzerland. He refused at first, giving me good reasons for doing so. He hated,
he said, to tamper with truth on any pretext. Further, as a magistrate, he feared
to compromise his country by a falsehood. ‘ If the truth is discovered,’ he said to
me, ‘ we shall lose the right of claiming our real fellow-countrymen who have
been arrested in France. So that I shall be risking the lives of the people whose
safety has been entrusted to me for the sake of a man who has no claim on me.’ It
was a strong argument ; but as the pious fraud which I asked for could alone save
the life of a man who had the murderous axe hanging over his head. I stayed
during two hours with M. Reverdil trying to overwhelm his conscience by means
of his humanity. He resisted a long time, but when I repeated, over and over
again : ‘ If you say No, a marvellous son, a man of irreproachable character, will
be assassinated in twenty-four hours, and it will have been your word which
killed him,’ my emotion, or rather his own, won and the young du Chayla was
claimed. . . .

“ Alas, I wasn’t always so lucky in my relations with my friends. It fell to my lot,

less than a month later (in June) to tell the man (of all my friends the most
capable of affection, and in consequence of profound grief), namely, M. Mathieu
de Montmorency, about the sentence of death pronounced on his young brother
the Abbe de Montmorency whose only fault was the illustrious name he had
received from his ancestors. At that moment, M. de Montmorency’s wife, mother
and mother-in-law were all in danger of death.”

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The news of his brother’s execution was a knife in Mathieu’s heart. Was it for this
that he had forsaken the faith of his fathers, political as well as religious, to bend
the knee to Liberty and live in sin with Germaine ? The good young man fell into
repentance with as much abandon as in his first youth he had fallen into revolt. A
licentious grief, like the grief he had experienced when his cousin died, wrought
upon him such transports of remorse that even Germaine, who understood the
mechanism of these symptoms very well, became alarmed. Mathieu dwelt upon
the King’s death, his appointed Lord whom his hands had helped to scourge.
Step by step, with a singular diligence, he trod, in spirit, the way which Louis had
trodden, from the Tuileries to the Temple, from the Temple to theplace. The
King had died as only Christians can hope to die, with blessings and forgiveness
on his lips and in his heart. Mathieu resolved to live in the light of that example.
He edified Germaine with the spectacle of a conversion to which no detail of
penitence on the one hand, or of hope on the other, was lacking. She learned that
he would be a brother to her, and then, a little later, that his energies had been
consecrated to the winning of her soul for God. Very much impressed, she
walked with this beautiful young man in the meadows by the lake and agreed
with him upon the mystery and sadness of human life. They drew inspiration and
help from Mont Blanc, so remote and pure in a naughty world, and from the
summer flowers, generous of their virtue while men were ravening for blood.

They were not always alone on these walks. There had come into both their lives
a new and gracious, if rather coy, influence in the person of Madame Necker de
Saussure, the wife of Germaine’s cousin. True, the lady had been known to both
of them for years ; but, until now, only distantly and, in Germaine’s case,
unfavourably. Albertine Adrienne de Saussure, like Suzanne, was the learned
daughter of a learned Swiss father who had taught her four languages, much
science and more philosophy. Her early marriage to Louis Necker’s son had
anchored her to Geneva and made her, so far as Germaine was concerned,
something of a poor relation, for though Louis Necker had acquired an estate
named “Germany,” and was now known as “M. Necker de Germany,” he was
small beer when compared with Jacques. Albertine Adrienne, nearly as proud of
her father as was Germaine of hers, had added his name to that of her husband.
She excelled in good works, in the office of motherhood and in the contemplation
of virtue, qualities which her cousin had not found attractive in the rue du Bac,
but which shone with a bright lustre by the lake-side in these days of moral and
spiritual stock-taking.

Albertine Adrienne was pretty, with fluffy, golden hair and blue eyes of an
excellent candour. Her complexion, strawberry and cream, her manners
squirrelish, her mind simple, sincere, of the bread-and-butter variety. No
wonder she had shrunk from Germaine at their early contacts ! But little by little
the zeal of her cousin had eaten her up. Germaine’s Liberalism, her lovers, her
lewd enjoyment of notoriety, her babyish vanity, the réclame which attended her,
her flaming griefs and furious boredoms, the rich, raw colours of her mind, above
all her aggressive vitality, won Albertine Adrienne from disapproval to devotion.
The cousins, who were of the same age, became so necessary to one another that,

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soon, on dark days, Madame de Staël found her deepest comfort in weeping upon
the bosom of Madame Necker de Saussure, who knew better than any other how
to dry such tears. Albertine Adrienne was not less successful with Mathieu. They
had met for a moment in the trying circumstances of Juniper Hall. But now, with
Narbonne fled and the Bishop beyond the sea, a closer approach was possible.
Mathieu derived from the Swiss girl’s purity the same kind of help as he was
deriving from the purity of Mont Blanc ; an uplifting of soul the ecstasy of which
was not diminished by its freedom from danger. Their golden heads, bent
together over the Confessions of St. Augustine, made a pretty picture for
Germaine’s beholding. She could view it without a pang ; these two, as she was
assured, had no other object in life than her salvation. Mathieu with his reviving
faith brought the manners and speech of Versailles to the alliance, Albertine
Adrienne the sweet wisdom of her motherhood. It was love among the lilies with
the heartache left out.

But such souls as Germaine’s are not won without affliction. June and July 1794
were anxious months for the new friends. Could they hide from themselves that
their hostess was pining for Narbonne and the Bishop ? Mathieu threw himself
with enthusiasm into the work of helping to rescue his relations from the
guillotine and found a new, rich satisfaction in the escapes of his mother, his wife
and his mother-in-law.

Germaine deserves credit for these achievements for, in the last days of his
sovereignty, Robespierre’s zeal was quickened. The fellow had been so successful
that, when summer rode into the sky, everything seemed possible. The armies
continued to win battles, the Commune of Paris, tamed by Hebert’s death, cooed,
dovelike, on the Dictator’s finger ; as for the Convention, its members crawled on
the ground, beating the earth with their hands. Since their surrender of Danton,
they scarcely dared to breathe. With Robespierre were the lively oracles. These
now counselled “Recognition” of the “Supreme Being,” as they had counselled,
formerly, the chastisement of the ungodly. Preparations were instantly made.
Robespierre addressed the Convention on the immortality of the soul and
demanded in threatening tones : “ Will the idea of his annihilation inspire purer
and more exalted sentiments in a man than that of his immortality ? ” Those
atheists who continued to live shrank from answering him. Could they forget that
they had worshipped Reason, in the person of an actress, in Notre Dame, but a
little while ago ? Or that Robespierre had been educated by the Jesuits ? The
Festival of the Supreme Being took place and all the members of the Convention
who were not in hiding attended. They wore caps covered with feathers, and each
carried in his hand a bunch of flowers, fruit and ears of corn. They saw
Robespierre set a torch to the figures of Atheism, Discord and Selfishness and
await with holy joy the emergence of Wisdom from the ashes of these false gods.
When Wisdom, rather blackened by smoke, appeared, the high priest of the new
faith ascended a little hill made of stucco, on which incense was burning, and
preached to the people.

“ To-day,” he screeched, “let us give ourselves up to the transports of a pure

enjoyment. To-morrow we will combat vice and tyranny anew.”

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The preacher was in sky-blue, with a big tricolour plume in his hat. His square,
slightly squat face, with its pouting lips, big forehead and short-sighted, green
eyes, had never looked so catlike. The cat purred ; but every eye was on its
claws. What would to-morrow bring forth, when this man, who had learned
virtue from Rousseau himself, who owned no money, drank no wine, and had
known no woman, addressed himself again to the extirpation of greed, lust and
unbelief ?

That question exercised particularly a group of sinners each of whom knew that
the preacher was determined on his death. They were not all present in the
congregation. Joseph Fouché, for example, the ex-Oratorian, who had caused
some 2,000 men and women and children to be massacred in Lyons, was absent,
but his accomplice Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre’s old secretary, was there.
Fouché’s long, grey face, so sheep-like but for the big, half-closed eyes, had not
seen the light of day for some weeks. He dwelt with his wife and children, who
adored him, adventuring out only after the fall of night. His case was the worst of
all because he had quarrelled with Robespierre and was atheist, communist and
pilferer as well as assassin. Jean Lambert Tallien, greatly daring, stood under the
pulpit ; he too was atheist, thief and assassin, who added lechery to his
backslidings. This fellow, bullet-headed, with a brush of hair like a terrier, a great
birth-mark on his face, and eyes full of surliness, was son of an upper servant and
had been lawyer’s clerk and printer. Sent to Bordeaux to slay, he had spared
Therese de Fontenay, wife of the Marquis de Fontenay, daughter of the Spanish
banker Cabarrus, fallen in love with her and brought her home with him to Paris.
Robespierre had the lady safe now, under lock and key, well established on her
way to the guillotine. With Tallien was Paul Frangois Nicolas, Comte de Barras,
ex-officer of the King’s army, who had helped to defend the remnants of French
power in India against England. A gay fellow this, lewd and debauched, who
boasted that he had reduced the population of Toulon, after the siege, from
29,000 souls to 8,000, and who was fat already with gains from the swindles he
had conducted at France’s expense.

These men and their friends, held in horror by all decent Frenchmen, had not yet
been called to account by Robespierre because, having been his special agents in
the work of terrorising provincial France, they were well-informed about him.
Possibly he had thought of sparing them, but that was before his divine mission
had been revealed to him. How should Agag not be hewn in pieces before the
Supreme Being ?

A few days later, Fouché, Tallien and Barras learned that their hour had come. It
was July 26, 1794, the 8th Thermidor in the Revolutionary Calendar. Stiff with
terror, feeling the knife at their throats, they decided to resist. Next day, when
Robespierre ascended the Tribune to pronounce their names, they howled him
down. Tallien was boldest ; he had a letter from Thérèse in his pocket in which
she told him that she was condemned to die on the following morning. Startled
and shocked, Robespierre appealed to the “good men, virtuous men” of the
Moderate party to help him against the Sinners. The leaders of that party were
Sieyès and Cambaceres, worthy citizens, timid as hares ; while Tallien and Barras

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thundered and the President, Billaud-Varenne, drowned Robespierre’s voice with
his bell, they took their inevitable decision. It had been proposed to arrest the
Dictator ; trembling but determined, they rose in support of the motion. But
Robespierre had one card left—namely, the Commune. His friends delivered him
from prison, brought him to the Hôtel de Ville, and rang the alarm bells. Would
the Sections rally to his support as in the days of old ? The Convention, terrified
at its own boldness, appointed Barras to command the troops of the Paris
garrison and retake the prisoner, and at the same time passed a decree of
outlawry on Robespierre. For an hour or two a fight between the mob and the
soldiers seemed inevitable ; then rain began to fall, and the Sections, half-
hearted from the first, for even they were sick of massacre, went home to bed.
Barras entered the Hôtel de Ville, and Robespierre and his folk were seized.
Robespierre’s jaw was broken, either by a shot fired at him or by a shot fired by
his own hand. They let him lie bleeding all the next day on a table in the Hall of
the Committee of Public Safety, the same from which he had ruled France.
Hundreds came to mock him. Only one man spoke a kind word. To that man he
replied : “Merci, Monsieur,” though the title had been abolished in favour
of Citoyen. At four o’clock the carts arrived, for outlaws have no right of trial.
Robespierre was twentieth on the list. Just before the knife fell, Sanson snatched
the bandage from his broken jaw. He uttered a scream which was heard all over
the place and which was greeted with delirious cheers.

Just eighteen months had elapsed since the execution of the King.

1
Hebert died very badly. Under the pseudonym of “Père Duchesne,” he had
written daily to demand fresh executions. Street boys followed the tumbril in
which he was taken to execution, and mocked him, calling “He’s in a devil of a
rage to-day, is Père Duchesne”—the cry of his own newsboys. In fact he was
fainting with terror and had to be dragged to the knife in a state of collapse.
2
Queen Hortense, who was a child in Paris at this time, is emphatic about the
high hopes which were entertained about Robespierre. See her Mémories, Vol. I.
3
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 106.
4
From the Preface to Zulma.
5
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 109.
6
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 111.
7
Considerations, Part III, p. 137.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XIX

THE COMTE DE RIBBING

DURING the Reign of Terror Germaine wrote a lyrical poem about a man and
woman standing on the steps of the guillotine, a tribute to the idol of the
moment. It was all grist that came to this mill. Cheers, tears, blood ; throne,
tribune, scaffold ; she must have them all, since all were furnishings of
notoriety. L’Epître au Malheur is shoddy stuff. What matter ? Its author,
without losing sight of Mont Blanc, could feel that for a moment the guillotine
had gathered her in its arms :

“ Souvent les yeux fixés sur ce beau paysage,

Donc le lac avec pompe agrandit les tableaux,
Je contemplais ces monts qui, formant son rivage
Peignent leur cime auguste au milieu de ces eaux ;
‘ Quoil ’ dirais-je, ce calme où se plaît la nature
Ne peut-il pénétrer dans mon cœur agité? ’
Et l’homme seul, en proie aux peines qu’il endure
De l’ordre général, serait-il excepté ? ”

Narbonne returned from England early in August.

“ The first moments of his return,” wrote Mathieu1 discreetly to Albertine

Adrienne, “and the daily round which has now been established, have been
managed in a fashion both charming and simple which, I hope, will secure for our
friend the happiness she deserves. That’s my sole concern. I should have to add
a few touches to make the picture complete, but the intimacy with her which you
have enjoyed and the talks you and I have had, will serve to do that for me. The
advice which your friendship dictates is excellent, and I have been much struck
by a letter from you which has been shown to me. It contains all that wit can
foresee or heart experience.”

The position at Mezéry was not quite so charming and simple as Mathieu
described it. For Germaine, having composed her ode to the guillotine, had fallen
violently in love with the chief assassin of Gustavus III of Sweden, the Comte de
Ribbing, who had come to stay at Lausanne. There had been premonitory
symptoms of this infatuation. She had, for example, written to Meister, under
date May 18, 1794.2

“ If MM. the burghers of Zurich were acquainted with the history of Sweden, they
would have heard about the famous golden locks of the Comte de Ribbing. . . .
The Comte de Ribbing is in Denmark with the Comte de Horn. It is untrue that
he was chosen by lot (to kill the King) : quite untrue. But I confess that no
history has interested me so much as that of the Comte de Ribbing. His courage,
his aristocracy (quite after your style), the honour of the whole Swedish nobility

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in opposition to the King who wished to degrade it, these give him in my opinion
titles to admiration rather than to censure. In fact there is no Swede
distinguished by birth or soul who does not speak in this fashion.”

Germaine was partial to golden locks, to good looks, to nobles who took arms
against their King, above all, to action and the fame which attends it. She found
Ribbing irresistible, and took special joy of him because of Narbonne. The
Frenchman, to her delight, showed some symptoms of jealousy, and one morning
she was thrilled to hear that he and Ribbing had gone off together on a
mysterious errand. Tears and lamentations bore witness to her excitement ; but
the two young men returned in good time for luncheon bringing a string of fish.3

The affair with Ribbing frightened Jacques, who foresaw its repercussions in
Sweden, where Eric Magnus was busy trying to wash his hands of all connexion
with the murder of his king. But Jacques, with Suzanne’s coffin still on his hands,
could do nothing. He was no longer in Germaine’s confidence because he had
opposed her rescue work. Thus she wrote to Meister :

“ Please tell him (but warn him to keep it secret from my father) that the poor
Princesse de Broglie4 has been saved by our methods. . . .”

In July, the people of Geneva revolted against the Bernese oligarchy. The revolt
failed. Reprisals followed, and Mezéry came in, once more, for a share of
attention. Germaine wrote to Meister on August 22, 1794 :5

“ The Canton of Berne has issued an order forbidding the renewal of any
permission to live here which has been granted to men under fifty years of age.
You, whom I love as if you were twenty-five, know that I can’t reproach myself
with having a French friend over that age.

“ So please set your mind to finding corners for me, Mathieu and M. de
Narbonne. . . . Do please note that some sort of visa is necessary for M. de N.,
who isn’t in hiding. M. de N. has a passport as a subject of His Britannic
Majesty. But Mathieu cannot avoid conforming to the Bernese law. It is essential
to know if M. Esches, bailli of Baden, is prepared to speak for M. de N. as he has
spoken for Mathieu. M. de Staël is coming back next month and has decided to
establish himself on the outskirts of Zurich.”

On September 13, 1794, she wrote :6

“ I am tormented by indecision. M. de Narbonne has got leave to live in the

Canton of Berne, but poor Mathieu, whose mother is free and is coming here, I
hope, has no recognised abode either for himself or for her. . . . The present is
devoured by the future.”

A fortnight later she made up her mind to stay on at Mezéry. She wrote a long
letter to Meister telling him of this decision and asking for his help for Albertine
Adrienne’s father, M. de Saussure.

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“ He is the father,” she wrote,7 “of my intimate friend, of the most lovable and
most spiritual person in this world. . . . There is appearing in Lausanne, every
fifteen days, a newspaper called La Quinzasnes—written with the gall of Marat
and the Abbé Maury. This journal cries up the Jacobins, vilifies Tallien, because
he wishes to return to a moderate policy, calls the Terror la providence de la
France, and adds to this such abuse of my father as could only come from a man
in whose mind every poisonous quality was joined. I have caused the paper to be
denounced at Berne, but it has found supporters among the partisans of
Robespierre, for whom it mourns in every line. The affair is an outrage against
France, which cannot take action unless some definite injury to the Government
is committed ; an outrage, too, against public opinion in this country, which so
readily lends itself to vile influences, and an outrage which is insupportable
against my father. Do see, please, if you can get the authority of Zurich or M.
Barthélemy (French chargé d’affaires in Switzerland) to write to Berne. If they
get protests from several sides at once, they may perhaps find this newspaper a
greater bother than M. de Montmorency’s stay in the pays de Vaud.”

1
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 25.
2
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 113.
3
This incident is given in La Cour et la régne de Paul I, p. 315, by Golovkme
(Paris, Plon).
4
The Due de Broglie, her husband, had died on the scaffold. Their son married
Madame de Staël’s daughter.
5
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 117.
6
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 118.
7
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 1120, 122.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XX

BENJAMIN

TALLIEN’S “Moderate Policy” was an invention born of necessity. The gang of

ruffians who overthrew Robespierre had small thought in that deed of anything
but their personal safety ; it was not until they woke up on the morrow of the
Dictator’s death that ideas about a change of policy entered their minds. Then,
finding, to their surprise, that they were looked upon as heroes who had rid the
world of a bloody tyrant, they made haste to appear in sheep’s clothing. What a
stroke of luck ! The memory of their massacres wiped out overnight, and places
assured them in the counsels of just men. Barras and Tallien proclaimed their
love of mercy and threw open the prison gates to set Thérèse de Fontenay and
Josephine de Beauharnais free. Together they descended from the Mountain to
that Plain on which, through so many scorching days, Sieyès had shepherded his
timid flock. A new government of all the virtues was formed and preparations
made to beat off the inevitable counter-attacks of Robespierre’s bereaved
followers.

Barras had the wit to see that this danger was not the only one likely to threaten
his new power. Millions of Frenchmen, forgetful to-day, in their relief, of the
chastisements laid upon them, would on the morrow recall these chastisements
and renew their demands for vengeance. The throne as well as the guillotine had
now, again, to be reckoned with and scapegoats would be needed. He glanced
about him, selecting them from among his associates. Fouché,1 in alarm, hid
himself once more.

Authority had perished with Robespierre ; compromise reigned in its stead, a

marriage of murder, baptised to virtue in that Dictator’s blood, with Liberalism.
France, devoured by the greedy horde of Barras’ parasites and bemused anew by
the eloquence of political jerry-builders, began to fall to pieces. In Paris
the Jeunesse Dorée, the Merveilleuses, the Incroyables, young men, banded
together for Jacobin-baiting under the leadership of Freron, ex-assassin of
Marseilles, ushered in the reign of debauchery. Thérèse, now Madame Tallien,
“Notre Dame de Thermidor,” was Queen. A lovely, lissom girl this, with the rage
of pleasure in her black eyes, multiplied in lecheries, soft and sleek of body.
These little hands which—so she loved to say—had killed Robespierre, glowed
nightly with the kisses rained on them by the greedy, the ambitious, the unchaste
and the fearful. Millions of francs were burned to feed, clothe, amuse and horse
this brigand’s darling, whose frocks cost more than Marie Antoinette’s. Very
young, she had chosen an older woman as her companion, Josephine de
Beauharnais, “guillotine widow” of Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais, a
constitutional nobleman who had sat in the Tiers État and embraced the
Republic. Thérèse called Josephine “Rose” (that was one of her names) and went
about everywhere with her ; and the condescension was not resented. For

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Madame de Beauharnais was short of money, partly as a consequence of the ruin
of her family in the West Indies, brought about by her father’s ill-health, the war
with England and the troubles with the slaves which had followed the Revolution,
partly by her husband’s proscription and execution, and partly by her own
dissolute habits, because of which Alexandre had divorced her. Josephine had
early associated herself with the more violent among the Jacobins, notably with
Tallien. She had even signed herself, at this period, “Jacobin of the Mountain
faction.” Barras had long been one of her intimates ; and as she had become his
mistress after the death of Robespierre, she achieved an importance in the
political life of Paris second only to that of Thérèse. Thérèse was necessary to
Josephine because of her immense popularity as Tallien’s wife and the power
which it gave her of extracting money from men ; Josephine was necessary to
Thérèse because of her influence with Barras. All four lived vampire-fashion with
their lips set on the veins of France. They sold offices and contracts and made the
jobbers, merchants, financiers and rogues who were their clients pay stiffly for
their patronage. At thirty-one Josephine was still a bewitching woman, with
beautiful chestnut curls and blue eyes. She was possessed of a figure of singular
grace and seduction. But there was a hard quality in her expression which offset
these charms, and she had bad teeth. Though the mother of a son and daughter,
she was not less extravagant than Thérèse, not less greedy of luxury, not less
determined to be fashion’s queen. Her head, too, was stronger than her friend’s,
her courage of a harder temper, her lusts of a more unruly fleshliness. These two
women were in the direct succession from Madame de Pompadour, Madame du
Barry, Gabrielle de Polignac, Germaine de Staël and Manon Roland, in the sense
that they exerted influence over the rulers of France. The succession had been
broken by Robespierre ; its restoration, on the lowest plane ever reached, was in
accord with the march to power of the scum of the population. France had no
rulers now except her armies, keeping watch, far away, on the frontiers, but Paris
was too full of pleasure to bother about soldiers. The armies, in face of a hostile
Europe, including England, remained unpaid, badly fed, badly clothed, and
degenerated, in many areas, into needy hordes of brigands. The money which
ought to have reached them was wanted for the women.

Germaine, sleeplessly watchful of events in the capital, felt the quickenings of a

new excitement. What might not a woman with brains accomplish in this new
Paris ? But it was idle to think of returning with the Kindergarten. Narbonne
and Mathieu and the others were on the list of emigrés, and could not enter
France ; and, in any case, these were nobles pledged to monarchy. A new knight
must be found if the moderate men, Sieyès and his people, the remnants of the
Gironde, were to be supplied with leadership and established in power.

Fate sent this knight in the person of a Swiss of Lausanne, named Benjamin
Constant, a tall young man of 27 years, with curly, reddish hair and spectacles,
loose and ill-favoured of body, but possessed of a lively and acute intelligence.
Benjamin had been absent during long periods from his native land, as a student
at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh (at Oxford he had to employ a
“bruiser” to protect him from his fellow-students), at Erlangen, at Brussels, in the

110
Pays-Bas, in Paris, in London, in Scotland. From his earliest infancy this
motherless lad had possessed Europe for his play-ground and the backwash of
the literary and philosophical worlds for his teachers. He had gaped at Suzanne
Necker’s “Fridays” while still in his teens ; had made love, before twenty, usually
unsuccessfully, to married women ; always successfully to chambermaids,
barmaids and harlots ; and had at that age entered on a liaison of intellect and
sentiment, but mostly of intellect, with a woman twenty-seven years his senior,
Madame de Charrière, who called him her “ White Devil.”

In his early twenties he proposed marriage to a rich French girl, Jenny Pourrat ;
and, when her mother made difficulties, pretended to swallow opium. The
argument failed to convince, but to show that there was no ill-will, Madame
Pourrat carried off the stricken young man with her daughter to the theatre and
they had a jolly evening. But in the course of his reaction to this refusal,
Benjamin got syphilis and fell into melancholy. His father urged a “cure-de
famille,” and he went to live for a while with his cousins and aunts in Lausanne,
but discovered so lively a dislike of Switzerland that, had Madame de Charriere
not been staying in the neighbourhood, he felt that he must have lost his reason.
Lausanne produced upon him the same effect as it produced on Germaine,
namely, a violent hatred of “Society” and a strong wish to assert against it the
claims of the individual. This wish accompanied him to Brunswick, where his
father got him appointed Chamberlain to the reigning Duke, Charles William
Frederick, he with whom Narbonne, as French Minister of War, had dealings.
Brunswick proved a second Switzerland, and Benjamin, who looked rather
grotesque in Court dress, descended to lower deeps of melancholy. In despair he
married a plump girl, badly pitted by smallpox, one of the Duchess’s maids of
honour. But Wilhelmina de Cramm, “la bonne Mina,” was neither tonic nor
purge ; merely an empty-headed shrew with a taste for social success. Benjamin
quarrelled with her and turned his back on her ; she made him cuckold. Divorce
proceedings began. By way of easing his exasperation, he had affairs,
simultaneously, with an actress and a nobleman’s wife, named Charlotte de
Hardenberg, baronne de Marenholtz, who had fallen in love with him.

“ Although,” he wrote to Madame de Charrière on September 25, 1793, “ I tell her

every minute that I feel for her nothing but friendship, she is mad to marry me.
And she doesn’t want to wait for a divorce or any arrangement of any kind. If she
can’t marry me, she will follow me : if she can only live with me, honour and
everything else can go to the winds. And, believe me, it isn’t pretence or pose or
self-interest. What has she to get out of it ? Woman’s head or woman’s heart or. .
. . Where, oh where, does this madness spring from ? ”

He called Charlotte de Hardenberg “Lagrande,” to distinguish her from the

actress, and, as a test of love, made her take luncheon alone with her rival. This
meal, at which he was not present, caused a scandal. He left Brunswick, returned
to Lausanne and met Germaine.

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1
Fouché now disappeared from public sight during a long period. Evidence exists
to the effect that he became a pig farmer or perhaps merely a swineherd. In any
case he suffered extreme poverty.

112
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXI

RED BLOOD FOR BLUE

BENJAMIN and Madame de Charrière had often discussed Madame de Staël, for
Madame de Charrière, as a literary woman who lived in Switzerland, knew
Germaine pretty well. Thus, when the defence of the Queen was published,
Benjamin wrote to his friend (September 25, 1793) :

“ Madame de Staël has no more feeling than Muset (a pet dog) when writing her
apology for the Queen. . . . The cadenced phrases, when one has before his eyes
the picture of such long and frightful torments ! It is as if you were to spit on it.”

Madame de Charrière agreed, adding, however : “ If you were to see her, you
would admire her.” She advised Benjamin to pay a visit to Coppet. He went
there on September 19, 1794. Meanwhile his friend seems to have felt some
qualms, for, on September 24, she wrote :

“ She is an agreeable woman to listen to, but it would be madness to want to be

intimate with her. There is nothing genuine. We will amuse ourselves talking her
over together.”

Benjamin replied on the 3oth :

“ My expedition to Coppet was fairly successful. I did not find Madame de Staël
there, but I overtook her on the road, was taken into her carriage and completed
the drive from Nyon here (Lausanne) with her. Have supped, breakfasted, dined,
supped, then breakfasted again with her, so that I have seen and, above all, heard
her very well. It seems to me that you judge her a little severely. I think her very
energetic, very imprudent, very talkative, but good, trusting and sincerely
devoted. A proof that she is not merely a talking machine, is the lively interest
she takes in those she has known who are afflicted. She has just succeeded, after
three disappointing and fruitless attempts, in saving from prison and in getting
out of France a woman who was her enemy while she was in Paris (Madame de
Montmorency-Laval, Mathieu’s mother) and who tried in those days to proclaim
her hatred for her in every way. That is more than mere chatter. I think that her
activity is a necessity as well as a virtue, for she uses it doing good.”

Germaine did not find Benjamin attractive, but, as his opinions interested her,
she invited him to Mezéry. The house was filling up. Madame de Montmorency-
Laval, Mathieu’s mother, had arrived from Paris, along with others, and
Narbonne lingered. These noble guests were both disturbed and annoyed by the
coming among them of the weedy young man who blinked like a bat when he
wasn’t wearing his spectacles and didn’t go out of his way to humour his betters.
Allowances must be made. Mathieu, with the light of his conversion in his eyes
and his mother by his side, was unreceptive of anticlerical and republican ideas ;

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while his mother’s sojourn in Robespierre’s prisons had imported prejudice to
her mind against Liberalism in all its forms. Again, the spectacle of her ex-lover
and son playing tabby in this snug establishment exasperated Madame de
Montmorency-Laval, who had by no means forgiven Germaine for stealing
Narbonne. As for Narbonne, the presence of two mistresses in the same house
imposed a strain on his nerves that was excuse enough for any lapse from good
humour. Benjamin, seeing how the land lay, flung himself at Germaine’s feet and
lay there, sprawling.1

On October 21, 1794, he wrote to Madame de Charrière :2

“ I do not find it difficult to ‘ toss her a compliment,’ as you put it. On the
contrary, I find it difficult, since I have known her better, not to launch forth in
ceaseless praise of her and not to afford to all to whom I speak the spectacle of my
interest and my admiration. I have rarely met such a union of amazing and
attracctive qualities, such brilliancy, such exactitude--a goodwill so extended, so
tolerant--such generosity, a politeness so gentle and so unwearied, such
simplicity, lack of constraint in intimate association. She is the second woman I
have met for whom I could count the world well lost since she is a world in
herself. You know who the first was.

“ Madame de Staël has infinitely more wit in intimate conversation than in

Society. She can listen : we thought she couldn’t. She enjoys other people’s wit
as much as her own. She honours those she likes with an ingenuous and
unflagging attention which proves her kindness as much as her intelligence. In
short, she is a being apart, a superior being such as is to be encountered perhaps
once in a century and such that those who draw near to her, know her and are her
friends ought to be so content with as never to ask any other blessing.”

He visited Madame de Charrière soon after this ; he had scented himself and
brushed his clothes, so that she scarcely recognised him.

“ Benjamin,” she cried, “you’ve smartened yourself up : you don’t love me any
more.”

She was right : the scent was for Germaine. Germaine, unfortunately, did not
like it ; but she couldn’t get rid of Benjamin, whose passion gathered force daily.
What, they were not to be united ! Wasn’t it obvious that they had been made for
each other ? A man and woman with the same ideas, the same tastes, the same
instincts ; beings far separated from the herd, with a mission to discharge ? He
discussed Paris with her and showed her what they could do there together. She
no longer noticed the scent. But still she hesitated. Benjamin recalled his wooing
of Jenny Pourrat :

“ At midnight of a day on which his bitter humour had degenerated into hatred of
human kind,” Norvins,3 who was staying at Mezéry, recounts, “agonised and
terrifying cries were heard proceeding from his bedroom. Everybody had gone to
bed. The servants rushed to his room and found him lying on his bed, pale, with

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distorted features, raving and in convulsions. They gave the alarm, shouting :
‘Help ! M. Constant is killing himself.’ People in their night clothes came rushing
from all parts of the house. I went to call Madame Rilliet, who hurried with me to
the sick man. Constant directed what appeared to be his last glance towards her
and murmured in tones that were scarcely audible : ‘Ah, Madame, tell her that I
am dying for her. Ah, beg her in the name of a dying man, to come and, if time is
given me, bid me a last farewell. Say that I shall die happy, when I have seen her.’

“ Very much touched, Madame Rilliet hurried from the room. Madame de Staël
was in bed. ‘Get up, my dear,’ she cried as she rushed to her, ‘ Consant has
committed suicide ; he begs to see you before he dies.’ Madame Rilliet had no
difficulty in inspiring so impressionable a soul as Madame de Staël with her
emotion : ‘ He’s dying,’ the latter cried, ‘I’ll come ! ’

“ Meanwhile I had gone to Mathieu’s room. I found him in a white dressing-

gown, seated reading the Confessions of Saint Augustine. At my first word, he
emerged at a bound from the beautiful serenity of Christian charity which the
news I brought had profaned, and exclaimed in the accents of the old nobility :

“ ‘ Fling the fellow out of the window. He does nothing but give bother. His
suicide will bring scandal on the house.’

“ In spite of the seriousness of the position, I couldn’t help smiling at this frank
outburst. Meanwhile, when he heard Madame de Staël’s name, Mathieu rose
from his chair, coolly lit his candle and accompanied me to Constant’s room.

“ The whole household, masters and servants, surrounded the bed, where the
patient flung himself about, uttering heart-rending shrieks. At the sight of this
horrifying spectacle Madame de Staël exclaimed : ‘ Poor soul ! What have you
done ? A doctor. A doctor.’ These breathless words, which were interrupted by
sobs, produced a magical effect. ‘Ah, is it you ? ’ whispered the dying man. ‘Is it
you ? You call me back for a moment to life. . . .’ Ah, live, live, dear M. Constant,
I call you to live ! ’ These words were spoken in accents of the liveliest despair,
for the change in Constant’s face gave us no hope of his recovery. As for him :
‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, ‘since you order it, I shall try to live.’ And he succeeded so
well that, clutching at the hand of Madame de Staël with a kind of nervous spasm
which terrified her, he imprinted a big kiss on it. . . . When the doctor came none
of us felt much doubt that the miracle of his resurrection would be accomplished.
We all retired in a state of mind rather less sympathetic, for we didn’t wish to
embarrass Constant in his explanations. Mathieu remarked : ‘ What a farce !
Good God ! ’ relit his candle and went back to his room.”

Germaine’s comment to Madame Rilliet was :

“ I feel a personal antipathy to that man which nothing can overcome.”

The comedy continued, and Madame de Montmorency-Laval took a hand in it.

She coveted Narbonne and saw the means of regaining him. To her son’s horror,

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she began to make a pet of Benjamin. Was she falling in love with him ? Poor
Mathieu found himself in grievous affliction, for, when he ventured to utter a
protest, he was told not to be jealous. Gradually the couples sorted themselves
out : Germaine and Benjamin, becoming daily more republican in their
sympathies ; Madame de Montmorency-Laval and Narbonne ; Albertine
Adrienne, who had come to stay at Mezéry, and Mathieu, these last taking what
comfort they could from the promise that the prayers of the righteous avail
much. The situation was not made of lasting stuff, and the arrival of Gouverneur
Morris determined it. He had first-hand news of Paris. Morris wrote in his
diary :4

“ This morning (October 21, 1794) at 12 set off to see the Baron de Coppet, alias
M. Necker.5 . . . (October 23, 1794.) Go to dinner at Madame de Staël’s (Mezèry)
where I am received with great warmth. ... We have much talk, or rather I have,
for they are desirous of information both public and private and I am more in
condition to give it than most others.”

This visit decided Germaine to return to Paris in Benjamin’s company as soon as

the city had settled down. Ten days later Benjamin was sent off to Neuchâtel to
make arrangements for the permanent residence of the Kindergarten at Gléresse,
near Neuveville on the Lake of Bienne. In a letter to Meister, of November 4,
1794, Germaine wrote :6

“ Monsieur Benjamin Constant, of whom M. Suard has perhaps spoken to you as

a man possessed of an excellent mind, leaves here (Mezéry) today for Neuchâtel,
having taken upon himself to procure (what is wanted). . . The news seems to me
much less good. Can it be that these infamous Jacobins belong to the nature of
things ? . . . I am going to Paris. And you ? ”

Meanwhile Jacques was setting his house in order.

“ In November 1794,” Jared Sparks tells, in his life of Gouverneur Morris, “a

transaction occurred at Coppet between M. Necker on the one part and M. le Ray
de Chaumont and Mr. Morris on the other by which the former advanced about
£8,000 to the latter, receiving their bonds payable at long terms in the United
States and secured by lands in that country. The operation was entered into by
M. Necker for the advantage of Madame de Staël and was in due time
accomplished according to the terms of the agreement. In the progress of this
affair Madame de Staël had become acquainted with the sales of new lands in the
United States, and, forming a high opinion of their value, she prevailed on her
father to appropriate £4,000 of the money he had set apart for her in the
purchase and improvement of these lands.”7

Jacques was justified of his daughter, who was an excellent woman of business.
The good man, growing fat and feeble, heard with alarm about the projected
return to Paris and witnessed the departure of the Kindergarten from Mezéry
with misgiving. Since the decks were being cleared for action, something was
going to happen. But what ? Surely Germaine was not about to surrender herself

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to Constant ? Jacques felt himself wounded in his pride. Eric Magnus, too,
mindful no doubt of the Ribbing affair, seems to have discovered some
annoyance. Germaine told Meister (December 9, 1794) :8

“ M. de Staël is en route for Switzerland. He was to have left Copenhagen on the

24th November. I swear I have no idea about the motive which brings him. He is
more than diplomatic in his dealings with me. . . . I want to go to Paris at the
same time as you.”

Germaine overcame her antipathy to Benjamin early in the new year. They had
Mezéry to themselves and could settle down to the work that called them--
namely, the regeneration of France. In Narbonne’s day, she had looked to war as
the means towards this end ; now she looked to peace. With Benjamin’s help she
wrote an appeal entitled : Réflexions sur la Paix adresses à M. Pitt et aux
Français. In a modest preface she apologised to the man she had once nearly
married and to the French nation for having so long delayed to bring them
succour :

“ During the bloody reign of Robespierre, when each new day brought a fresh,
appalling list of victims, I could do nothing but long to die myself. . . . I should
have reproached myself for mental effort which was independent of this all-
absorbing pain.”

The pamphlet itself achieves the feat of yoking Mathieu and Benjamin in double
harness ; the man of birth and intellect with the man of intellect only ; the
Constitutional with the Republican. That was Germaine’s prescription for
France. She had not, it must be allowed, found the prescription efficacious at
Mezéry. Was this marriage of wits, blue-blooded and red, to take place in a
monarchy or a republic ? She shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps in both, since
time would show if it was necessary to possess a King. Peace was the immediate
necessity since war had been shown to favour the Jacobins. Mr. Pitt was advised,
tactfully, to abdicate in favour of Mr. Fox ; and the French were warned not to
fall in love with glory.

On February 10, 1795, she wrote to Meister :9

“ I’ll tell you a secret which even my father doesn’t know ; it’s this pamphlet
(the Reflections on the Peace) which will soon be published. If you think well of
it, can you arrange for its printing in a German edition ? . . . My father is in bed as
the result of a fall.”

And again on March 12, 1795 :

“ My authorship of the pamphlet has been recognised by my father. He has read

it and forgives me. . . I want to go to France at the end of April. Couldn’t we loin
our plans and go together ? . . . M. de Staël is delighted with Paris and believes
that everything is perfectly safe there. Well-known people, rich people have gone

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back to France and recovered their possessions. So far as I can see, all there is to
fear now is the nature of things ; the Government is well-intentioned.”

She was badly informed. The Government had no intentions, only hunger for
office. Threatened both from the Left by the Jacobins, and from the Right by the
Royalists, this precious gang of “tigers and nightingales,” in Madame Necker’s
phrase, had begun to cast eyes on the empty throne. How much more secure they
would be if a King who owed everything to them sat on it ! Their thoughts turned
uneasily to the child in the Temple, King Louis’ little son, whose jailer Simon had
followed Robespierre to the guillotine. Millions of Frenchmen and the whole
population of Europe called this little boy Louis XVII ; the entire universe paid
him and his sister the tribute of its pity. What a calamity that their hands were
red with the blood of his father and mother ! If France had sight of this child of
sorrows, with his golden head and his gentle eyes, should they be able to hold
their places ? Both Barras and Tallien got into touch, secretly, with the agents of
the boy’s uncle, the Comte de Provence, who, from his retreat in Verona, had
already proclaimed himself Regent, hinting that, if their conditions were
complied with, a reforation might be effected. Surely, they argued, the bitterness
of death was past. The brother of Louis XVI was coldly non-committal.

And meanwhile difficulties accumulated. The Girondists, newly returned from

exile and hiding, demanded vengeance for their murdered friends, the Rolands,
Condorcet and the others ; deputations from the provinces continued to arrive
bearing tales of massacre, rape, and pillage which set honest teeth on edge. The
middle class, formidable architect of the Revolution, was in fear, now, of its
possessions as well as of its safety. Its young men had shut the famous club of the
Jacobins in the rue St. Honoré ; they had quelled the Commune. Would they
finish by making an end of the murderers of Toulon and Bordeaux ? New
scapegoats were required. They were provided in the persons of Collot d’Herbois
and Billaud-Varenne. These two with some others were tried and, in spite of
their plea that they were no worse than their accusers whom they had helped to
destroy Robespierre, in spite of Carnot’s defence, condemned. The Jacobins,
crying “Judas” against Barras and Tallien, rushed as of old to the Hôtel de Ville.
The alarm bells clanged. Once more from the kennels and cellars of the rue St.
Antoine, skinny, starved bodies ran to join the pack. On April 1, 1795, the “12th
Germinal,” the mob stormed the Convention. But the triumph lasted only an
hour or two. The “gilded youth” of the middle class, organised by Fréron as a
special constabulary, marched to the rescue, and cleared the hall. Next day the
National Guard was reconditioned so as to exclude the lowest class from its
ranks. Barras and Tallien took a fresh, quick step to the Right. They had luck on
their side, for, on April 5, peace was concluded with Prussia and France acquired
her “natural” frontier, Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine.

1
This is no exaggeration. Benjamin’s antics became so distressing that every
member of the house-party was disurbed by them.

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2
Benjamin’s letters to Madame de Charrière have been published by several
authors including Godet, Madame Meligari, Rudler, Gaullieur and Sainte-Beuve.
The translations, except in a few instances, are taken from the work of Elizabeth
W. Schermerhorn.
3
Norvins : Mémorial, Vol. II, p. 97.
4
Life of Gouverneur Morris, by Jared Sparks.
5
Necker conferred this absurd title on himself. It was not made less ridiculous by
the fact that Switzerland was a Republic.
6
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 123.
7
See Madame de Staël and the United States, by R.L. Hawkins.
8
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 124.
9
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 126.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXII

AFTER THE STORM

EVEN the Royalists had to confess that the happy issue of the war was due, in
some respects, to Robespierre’s chastening hand ; Barras and Tallien had their
share of that glory. The letters to Verona grew more frequent and the face of
Paris was cleansed of Equality’s dusty kisses. In April a Committee was
appointed to draft a new Constitution.

Eric Magnus, established again in the rue du Bac, found himself a more
considerable figure than at any earlier period of his official life. When, on April
22, 1795, he presented his credentials as Ambassador of the Regent Suderman of
Sweden,1 the Convention cheered him. He was the only representative of royalty
accredited to the French Government, and he possessed in addition immense
prestige as a nobleman who had been the personal friend of Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette. Therese Tallien and Josephine de Beauharnais, mindful of his
conquests at Versailles, found him charming ; Barras and Tallien, too. De Staël,
these harassed men were aware, was in touch with exiled Royalty. They took him
into their confidence, disclosing their plan of a constitutional monarchy, with an
upper and lower chamber.

The chief obstacle in the way of this plan, they pointed out, was the republican
sentiment of the Girondist rump, the largest party in the Convention. This party,
though it hated the Jacobins, remained faithful to its Radical principles and
would shy at a King. On the other hand, it was not unfavourably disposed
towards the exiled Constitutionalists and might, if brought into contact with them
again, modify its views to some extent. Eric Magnus could not mistake the
meaning. They were inviting him to recall Germaine from Switzerland so that
her salon might become, once more, a meeting-place for men of all parties. He
took the hint. On May 15 the Swedish ambassadress set out from Mezéry with
Benjamin.

“ Calm your ambition,” her father wrote to her. “Permit me to ask M. Constant
not to urge you, and to give you frequent lessons in prudence and patience.”2

The couple visited Bienne and spent a short time with the Kindergarten, the
members of which were informed of the great destiny awaiting them when the
new Constitution should be completed. Germaine and Benjamin reached Paris
on May 23, five days after the Jacobins had made a second attempt to overturn
the Convention (on 1st Prairial). That attempt was so formidable that troops had
been called to the help of the special constabulary. Again the riff-raff had been
beaten off. The first sight which the travellers saw, when they reached
the barrières, was a cartload of gendarmes, who had helped the Jacobins, being
trundled off to the guillotine. An hour later Germaine was mounting the stairway
of her huge house. Benjamin went into lodgings near by, but he spent his days in

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thesalon, which was opened without a moment’s delay, and which became,
immediately, the only feature of the Parisian landscape that had not changed in
the past two years.

“ There are districts of Paris,” wrote Meister,3 after his arrival there a few months
later, “which seem to be entirely deserted. The most deserted of all is the
Faubourg Saint-Germain where, in streets of palaces, only a house here and there
is occupied—as a rule by officials of the Government. If you happen to enter one
of these houses, across the façade of which is written, in huge red and black
letters : ‘For Sale : National Property,’ you will be horrified at the state of
disrepair in which you will find it. Most of these houses have been stripped of
furniture, glass, fixtures : and, on the pretext of getting lead from the roofs and
saltpetre from the cellars, the woodwork has often been ruined and the very walls
broken down.

“ Evening began to draw in. Passing near the dome of the Invalides—that
wonderful house of God which they have treated as if it was the house of a
nobleman or an emigrant—I saw a biggish group of huge figures, of a shining
whiteness, crowded together like sheep in a fold. I couldn’t make out at first what
they were, but when I got nearer I recognised the enormous marble statues of
saints which formerly occupied the niches of the superb church. They were up for
sale, like so many other objects of all kinds which one sees everywhere. But these
poor saints ! Who will buy them ? Who will dare to buy them ?

“ It is at ten o’clock at night that the sadness and bareness of Paris are most apt to
strike a visitor who has known her in happier times. In the old days, at that hour,
one was hurrying off to sup or to amuse oneself. The wheels of a thousand
carriages filled all the streets with a sound which expressed the joy and the gaiety
of a light-hearted, care-free, contented people—or at least of a people which
seemed to be so. To-day, after the emptying of the theatres, silence reigns
everywhere, and if a carriage passes you, you notice it. With the exception of the
patrols, there are scarcely any foot-passengers either.

“ There are very few cabs for hire. For, people who kept their own carriages in
better times, don’t reconcile themselves easily to paying £4 for a journey, even
though, when exchanged for goods, these £4 are now scarcely worth a shilling. “
Almost all the spaces in front of the houses, and all the important streets, have
become markets for furniture, china, pictures, etc. You see everywhere the same
sort of stuff that we used to see, in the old days, for sale on the pont Saint-
Michele, the quai de la Ferraille, and under the piliers des Halles. The capital of
the world looks like an enormous old curiosity shop.

“ Fear of dying of hunger has driven people to invent all sorts of ways of feeding
themselves. One often sees a cage of rabbits at a house door or outside of a shop,
and one sees, too, skinny goats whose milk may easily be very precious if things
go wrong.

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“ What strikes me most, in a general way, in Paris is the queer look of uncertainty,
of ‘uprootedness’ on almost every face, a look at once restless, defiant and
tormented, often haggard, too, and convulsive. I believe that anyone who had
never before seen, or even heard of Paris, on seeing it to-day, would echo the
remark of M. de Jussieu to some man whose name I don’t know. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘ I
have not the honour of knowing you : but I find you very much changed.’ ”

Meister detested Revolutions ; he was old. Benjamin found Paris exciting.

“ Although,” he wrote to his aunt, “everything seems to be very dear, owing to the
debased value of the assignat, although a dinner costs £4, a coat £120, yet
nowhere can one live so cheaply as in Paris. My lodging, consisting of four very
attractive rooms, costs me 5s. a month, in silver, and the rest in proportion. As
the farmers are forced to pay half their rents in kind the interest from property is
enormous.” And again : “ The triumph of the Convention has been as complete
as its courage has been sublime. The bloodthirsty men (Jacobins) are crushed,
the insurgent quarters are disarmed, the guilty members of the Convention are
imprisoned and handed over to justice. . . . I have not seen a single pinched face
or a single beggar. The Jacobins are detested ; the Royalists are laughed at and
despised ; peace, order and the Republic are what people want and what they
mean to have. . . . In short, opinion is being formed . . . and we may expect,
shortly, the announcement of a strong, solid government. . . . Property and
talents, the two reasonable bases of equality among men, will resume their rights,
and humanity will have gained by all the sufferings which have oppressed the
world through this Revolution.”

This lyrical tone was less noticeable in his next letter :

“ Freedom of speech and of the Press is extreme here ; it is unheard of, this union
of the most arbitrary power that ever existed on earth, with a licence complete in
every direction. The Government possesses everything, fears everything ; it
never puts through any measure thoroughly, it does not know either how to adopt
principles of Liberty or how to make its dreams of despotism respected ; and all
this produces a combination of contradictions which has upon Society almost the
effect of good government.”

The State’s disruption, in other words, was the individual’s opportunity.

Benjamin was become man-about-town and dandy ; he was always scented now
and wore his hair curled.

“ He is really delightful, if you could see him in Society,” wrote Pierre de

Roussillon to Madame de Charrière ; “ the salon of the Ambassadress suits him
better than the little study at Colombier. In a large company one makes more
effort to please and talks more. . . . If you were not so averse from Society and
enjoyed gathering in your study twenty-five persons of whom one was a
Girondist, another a Thermidorian (i.e. of the party which, in the month of
Thermidor, destroyed Robespierre), another an out-and-out aristocrat, another a
Constitutionalist, another a Jacobin, we could enjoy the spectacle of Constant

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listened to and appreciated by all. The salon here suits him much better. If he
passed only two hours a day, then it would be the best kind of education for him.
But alas-he passes eighteen hours there, lives entirely in this salon, and the salon
exhausts him. His health is ruined. . . . That figure, which had become elegant, is
resuming to-day its stoop. . . . I have just come from his rooms. I have been
eating cherries with him . . . he fell asleep while we talked. . . .”

In his old age, Benjamin thus described the salon :

“ Members of the existing Government whose confidence she (Madame de Staël)

sought to win ; some relics of bygone days, whose appearance displeases their
successors ; all the returned nobility whom she was at once flattered and uneasy
at receiving ; writers who had recovered their influence since the 9th Thermidor
and some of the Diplomatic Corps. . . . Amid the conversations, gesticulations and
intriguings of these different parties my Republican naïveté found itself strangely
embarrassed. When I talked with the Republicans, who were victorious, I heard
that it was necessary to behead the anarchists and shoot the emigrés almost
without trial. When I approached the little group of disguised Terrorists who had
survived I heard them say that we must exterminate from the Government
the emigrés and the foreigners. When I allowed myself to be persuaded by the
Moderates, and the flatterers among the writers who proclaimed the return of
morality and justice, they implied at the second sentence that Justice could not
get along without a King, a thing which shocked me strangely.”

For all that, Benjamin helped Germaine with her work of preparing the ground
for a Constitutional Monarchy. He was still in love with her and, as she had fallen
in love with him, they were happy. Each was necessary to the other, intellectually
as well as emotionally, for Benjamin possessed so sure a nose for humbug, his
own included, that Germaine in his keeping was rescued from her worst faults,
fortified with a sense of humour and confirmed in that part of her faith which had
a firm basis. He, for his part, derived vigour from her mind, which served him
best in its crudest operations. Between them they made a prodigious stir and
became, immediately, the talk of Paris, which, at that moment, stood in need of
something to talk about other than the doings of gilded youth. The city was in the
mood of a man come straight from a death-bed to a feast. It had ceased to sing
the Marseillaise, having replaced that fierce song by the Thermidorian chant :

“ The tardy day of vengeance

Now makes the butchers pale,”

but Robespierre’s blue coat and nankeen breeches, his powdered hair and prim,
spinsterish face still haunted its memory, side by side with the gracious, portly
figure of the good King whose blood he, and it, had shed. The intellectual
fireworks of the rue du Bac served at once as anodyne and analgesic ; the
message of the rue du Bac, that “a man’s a man for a’ that,” was welcome to ears
deafened by the bawlings about the Nation, the People, the State and Society.
Madame de Staël and her young friend, as the apostles of individualism in a

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world weary of social experiment, had a great success. But jealousies were
awakened :

“ The influence of the women,” Germaine wrote,4 “and the ascendancy of good
company—what were called the ‘ gilded salons ’—seemed very formidable to the
people who were not admitted to these salons. They accused us, when we
happened to invite some of their friends, of trying to seduce them. You saw, on
the 10th days, for Sundays no longer existed, all the elements of the old and
new régimes gathered together at parties ; but they were not reconciled. The
charming manners of well-brought-up people shone through the humble clothes,
adopted during the Terror, which these people still wore. The converts from the
Jacobins found themselves for the first time in the society of the grand
monde and were more disturbed about the bon ton which they wished to imitate
than about anything else. The women of the ancien régime paid court to them, to
secure the recall of brothers, sons, husbands ; and the gracious compliments
which they knew how to pay them, exerted a profound effect on rough ears,
inclining even the bitterest partisans towards conduct of which we have since
seen so many examples.”

Snobbery is always a good card when the game is social fusion as a preliminary to
a reaction in politics.

1
Sudermann (Duc de) was the younger brother of the murdered Gustavus III and
acted as Regent for his nephew Gustavus IV. Sudermann was suspected of
having had a share in his brother’s assassination. He favoured Eric Magnus and
the French Revolution.
2
At a later date Necker complained bitterly of the way in which Barras and
Tallien had made use of his daughter to further their schemes.
3
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, Introduction.
4
Considerations, Part III, p. 151. Madame de Staël was not the only person who
noted the eagerness of the Revolutionaries to acquire good manners.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXIII

HAIL TO THE KING

WHEN Sieyès was asked, in his old age, what he had done during the Terror, he
replied : “ I lived.” In fact, this fecund mother of constitutions had discovered in
the reign of Robespierre a new impulse to gestation. His first-born, that to which
King Louis stood sponsor, had perished, in its earliest infancy, with the throne
upon which it relied. His second, of which, however, he denied maternity, went
to the guillotine with Robespierre unlamented even by himself, for he had never
liked the child.1 His third, coming to birth, promised better than either of its
predecessors if only because it was assured of a gentler cradling. But he had
already, conformably to his habit, washed his hands of it, on the ground that all
his ideas had not been incorporated whereas other people’s ideas had been.
There was substance in the complaint. Something, for example, had been
borrowed from the United States, something from England, something from
Necker, something from the hopes and enthusiasms of the Tennis Court at
Versailles. The finished work provided for a Council of Ancients, 250 strong,
every member of which must be 40 years of age or over, a Council of Five
Hundred and an Executive of five “Directors” to replace the Committee of Public
Safety.

Sieyès’ long nose became a familiar object in Germaine’s salon, and he helped her
in her efforts to secure the recall of her friends, Mathieu and the others from
Switzerland, Talleyrand (the Bishop) from America. It was not easy work ; lip
service was necessary still to the Republic, for the sake of the weaker brethren. A
Parisian newspaper had already called attention to Madame de Staël’s visit to the
Kindergarten on the eve of her return to France, and she had felt it necessary to
make profession, in a letter to that journal, of her sincere attachment to
Republican principles.

“ I declare,” she wrote, “that I do not share the prejudice which would adopt a
form of constitution for reasons unrelated to the pleasure and will of the nation ;
what I desire sincerely is the establishing of the French Republic on the sacred
foundations of justice and humanity, because I am convinced that, in the existing
circumstances, only the Republican form of government can give rest and liberty
to France.”

Nobody in Paris misunderstood, but the Kindergarten, divorced from events,

experienced a lively distress.

“ My first feeling,” wrote Mathieu2 to Albertine Adrienne, “was, I admit, one of

acute disappointment. . . But, on second thoughts, I have adopted the attitude,
the speech and even the view of a friend who, surrounded by critics, wishes to
play the part of advocate. Not that Madame de Staël’s old friends have shown a
bad spirit towards her. M. de Narbonne hasn’t said much ; he has even

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remarked with an approval untainted by irony, that, without naming us, she
wished probably to make a distinction between himself and the rest of us. For he
has never tried to have his exile revoked, whereas we have definitely cherished
projects of return to France. M. de Jaucourt and Madame de Chatre are
interested chiefly in the first part of the letter and are in doubt whether or not the
vague disavowals (of us) contained in it will not do their case more harm than
would have an absolute silence. All seem to regret, tacitly at least, that she ever
wrote it ; as for me, I stand between that regret, which in my heart of hearts I
share, and the view I am busy trying to uphold.

“ In the end, I had succeeded in persuading myself, to some extent at any rate ; I
began to believe that my first impression was quite wrong and to reproach myself
for not having made a worthier defence of our friend, when, on Thursday last, I
received three or four letters which have enlightened me cruelly, at least about
what other people think. M. Garnier de Nyon, a man of much sense and truly
friendly (to Madame de Staël) has written me in tones of sharp regret heightened,
evidently, by memories of an association based on a common faith in the
Constitutional Monarchy and by a sincere regard for Madame de Staël’s political
good name. I can to some extent discount M. Garnier’s attitude as snobbery, but
Madame d’Arlens, but you, above all, you, the only person with whom I can
always think the very best of our friend, either in recalling the precious qualities
of her heart and mind, which your sympathy so justly entitles you to appreciate,
or, in defending her when, by chance (she does) something we regret and so
involves us—you and me—in a common affliction ! Are the strictures of this
letter, then, as well founded as I fear ? Only to you would I let that suspicion
escape my lips ; after what you’ve written me, I no longer know how to find
reasons in favour of our friend.

“ Meanwhile, though, more than one reason has occurred to me ; she has been
compelled to do what she has done by her husband’s position ; by an excessive
fear of queering his pitch, explicable in terms of her tart ; by circumstances,
personal and other, which from this distance we cannot hope to understand.
Perhaps a friendly feeling (for her husband) has made her wish to disavow the
charge in the newspapers. If so, the disavowal would have to be couched in vague
terms so as to avoid telling a lie which could easily be proved against her. At the
same time she would desire to make a favourable impression by declaring
principles which preclude all idea of a Royalist coalition. Perhaps, again, she may
have thought her letter would put her in possession of more means of being
useful to us. If that is so, I am too much an accomplice, though an unwitting one,
in her apparent fault, not to try to justify it. In short, enervated, as you put it so
well, by the contagious atmosphere of France, carried away by her exasperation
at that article (in the newspapers) and by her need, in such circumstances, of
snatching up her pen, she won’t have considered that there was much occasion to
express her true opinions since all her friends, recalling her talks with them,
would know that these were not her true opinions. It seems to me, as to you, that
this is how we ought to defend her, and it is in this sense that I am writing to
Garnier, with whom she has often argued from the Republican point of view.

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“ But when we have told each other our first impressions and the excuses we can
think of, doesn’t there remain to us in these views (of hers) a glimpse of the party
spirit, of jealousy and even of indifference (to principle) ? I am very much
distressed about it. You are in a better position than me to know what is being
said at Lausanne ; do please let me know, when you write again, giving me the
names of the people worth mentioning. Have you no idea what her father
thinks ? I am full of curiosity to learn his opinion without daring to ask it or to
tell him mine. I owe him a letter but have delayed to write because of this
business.”

There were, as Mathieu suspected, wheels within wheels. Eric Magnus had been
accredited by his Government to the French Republic ; could his wife allow to
pass the accusation that she was a Royalist ? She was busy trying to get her
father’s name removed from the list of emigrants, which means that she was busy
trying to recover the £100,000 he had lent to the French Government. That
Government might be Monarchist to-morrow ; to-day it was Republican.
Experience had taught her the folly of counting unhatched chickens.

Barras’s plot, to restore the monarchy, nevertheless, went well, and everybody
was hopeful. On June 10 hope was quickened by the news that the son of Louis
XVI had died in his prison ; nor did the accusation, made at once by the
Royalists, that the boy was not really dead3—an accusation since proved to be true
—serve to damp the general enthusiasm. What a son could scarcely have
forgiven, a brother might very well forgive. Every eye was turned towards
Verona, to the Comte de Provence, who now called himself Louis XVIII. Let him
only declare a general pardon for regicides and a readiness to accept the new
Constitution, and he might have the throne for the asking. It was an anxious
moment, especially for Barras and Tallien, but they had baited the ground
carefully and were confident of success. After all, the great majority of the nation
was Royalist at heart, just as it was Catholic at heart.

The “King” did not keep his subjects waiting long for his decision. Perhaps he
believed the accusation about the abduction of his little nephew from the
Temple. If so, he must have recognised that those who were offering him the
throne had a card up their sleeves for use if he gave them trouble. Perhaps it was
just that his honest stomach turned at the thought of receiving St. Louis’ crown
from hands reeking with innocent blood. He declared that if he came back to
France he would do so as an absolute monarch, would restore property, including
that of the Church, to its rightful owners, and would make it his business to hang
every murderer on whom he could lay his hands.

That did him honour. But the postscript remains a blunder, singular in history.
In it, the heir of Louis XIV and Louis XVI revealed a complete ignorance of the
cause for which the one had laboured most of his days and the other had laid
down his life—namely, France’s struggle with England for world power.
Experience had proved that that struggle could be carried on by France only if she
was in possession of her “natural frontiers,” the Alps and the Rhine, and so might
count herself safe from attack by Austria or Prussia acting in concert with

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England. The natural frontiers had been Louis XIV’s dream ; Louis XVI and
Vergennes had based all their hopes on acquiring these frontiers indirectly by
offering protection to the Rhenish states. Now the armies of the Republic had
won the Rhine. For the first time in more than a century, France was in a
favourable position to challenge England. If “Louis XVIII” had spoken that
challenge and called his fellow-countrymen to follow up their astounding
victories on land by disputing the English claim to sovereignty on the seas, echoes
would have been awakened in every heart. Frenchmen, weary of politics, were
athirst for glory and saw already, in the success of their arms, the promise of the
recovery of lost sources of wealth in India, and the isles of the ocean. This was
the moment, however, chosen by the man who aspired to be her King to warn
France that he was about to ally himself with the King of England for the purpose
of curing her rebelliousness. Louis spoke threateningly of an invasion which,
from the coast, would carry him quickly to Paris.

For a moment there was consternation ; then Paris girded herself. No more
Royalism. Tallien ascended again into the Mountain, full of threatenings. Off
came the sheep’s clothing. Out, from a million throats, burst the Marseillaise.
Hoche was despatched to La Vendée, while the draftsmen were bidden insert
fresh clauses in the new Constitution binding the electors to find two-thirds of
the men chosen by them among the members of that Convention which had sent
Louis XVI to the guillotine and making a vote for the late King’s death an
essential qualification for a Directorship. Was a new Terror in preparation ? The
moderate men joined with the Royalists in attacking the “law of the two-thirds,”
as it was called, and Benjamin, at Germaine’s bidding, wrote violently against it.
He was denounced by Louvet as an “impudent, silly Royalist” ; she was invited,
through Eric Magnus, to seek a change of air. But she lingered in Paris. The
threatened invasion took place. A number of emigrants were landed at Quiberon
from English ships and instantly overpowered by Hoche, who promised them
their lives if they surrendered. Tallien, in spite of this, ordered them to be shot.
Seven hundred perished. The Bourbons, shouted Barras and his crew, are in
English pay ; they will sell you to your worst enemy if you have any truck with
them. These were anxious days for Germaine and her lover ; both spent their
time trying to convince people that they were Republicans, in her case without
success. Mathieu, meanwhile, was about to avail himself of the permission
granted him to return to France.

“ Surely,” he wrote to Albertine Adrienne,4 “you don’t believe there is anything

but friendship for her (in my heart) where that feeling remains alone, lively,
unchangeable, the inheritor of my life. I don’t deny that its origins were
otherwise ; of these some pleasant traces necessarily remain. But be sure that I
don’t deceive myself about my real feelings. I have proof of the change which has
been brought about in me by an element of character similar to those you have so
finely noted in your own case. It has been necessary for me, too, to accomplish,
painfully, the reconciliation of certain details (of recent knowledge) with the
complete picture of your amazing cousin which I had formed in my mind. In
doing that I reached the certainty that I was no longer in love with her.

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“ But what does that matter, if my friendship, if yours, can secure the happiness
of her life ? Allow me to love her just enough to make common cause with you. I
tell myself that we two wish exactly the same things for her, and that we will be of
the same opinion about all that concerns her. We will be allies, whether together
or separated, to rescue her from those first impulses, of love-making or of
politics, which cannot but endanger her happiness. . . Here (at the Lake of
Bienne) we are all very much distressed about the death of that unhappy little
King, who was a centre of common interest for Royalists of all shades of opinion.
Our friend has not told us a word about it. She believes that the new Constitution
will be bearable and says nothing further about going to the country for a month.
That seems to me a bad sign. It can’t be a question of the handsome Swede
(Ribbing) because I find he is safely in Denmark.”

Mathieu left for Paris on August 6, 1795. Immediately after his arrival in the
capital, one of the members of the Convention, Legendre, delivered from the
Tribune a fierce attack on Madame de Staël, whom he accused of being a Royalist
agent and the friend of emigrants. Eric Magnus was in the House at the time. He
rose and left, but uttered no protest. Mathieu at once retired to his estate Saint
Gratien ; she followed him there, with Benjamin, and set to work on a new
pamphlet, Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, the object of which was to induce the
Royalists to give their support, temporarily, to the Republic.

“ The ignorant shout for Liberty,” she commented, “only the enlightened can give
it them.”

But Mathieu and Benjamin did not become friends. The pamphlet was not
published. Very unseasonably, at the height of the elections of the new Councils,
she rushed back to Paris with her friends and reopened her salon, determined, at
this eleventh hour, to induce the lambs and lions to lie down together. Royalists
and Jacobins were actually winning seats in Paris, especially in the poorer
quarters where hungry people resented Barras’s parade of luxury. Visions of the
Constitutional Monarchy, which her heart desired because she saw herself its
Egeria, haunted her anew. She was in every intrigue, privy to every secret, an
object of everybody’s suspicion and, in the end, of most people’s dislike. The
inevitable crash came. On October 15, 1795, the mob, organised in part by
Jacobins, in part by Royalists—for all would fish in the troubled waters—but
really maddened by want and by the spectacle of the riotous living of the men in
power, advanced to attack the Convention, now holding its last sittings. Barras
was given command of the troops. He knew his limitations. The effective control
must be in professional hands. He pitched on General Napoleon Bonaparte, a
needy fellow, now on half pay, whom he had met at the siege of Toulon. “He is a
Corsican,” said Barras to his friends, “who will not stand upon ceremony.”

General Bonaparte fired cannon at the Parisian mob, and that “whiff of
grapeshot,” as he called it, put an end to the trouble. A few days later the
Convention was dissolved and the Directory established. Barras was appointed
one of the five Directors ; he ordered Madame de Staël to leave France. She had
Mathieu, now like herself under grave suspicion, tucked away once more in the

129
Embassy. Eric Magnus was sent off to plead with the Directors, and managed,
because of his official position, to secure a respite. But the salon was not to be
reopened. She tarried miserably till December 21. Then, having failed to
influence anybody of importance in her favour, and being sorely afflicted by
police supervision, she packed up and departed, with Benjamin, for Coppet.

1
Sieyès’ exact share in the making of each Constitution is hard to determine. He
was always behind the scenes, but he had a way of quarrelling with other
constitution-makers and then declaring that the finished work was none of his
doing. The Second Constitution, “Constitution of the Year II,” as it was called,
probably owed less to his efforts than any of the others.
2
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, by Paul Gautier, p. 43.
3
An immense literature about Louis XVII is now in existence. False dauphins
kept cropping up for many years, but the fate of the young prince remains
doubtful.
4
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 50.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXIV

THE PASSIONS

GERMAINE and Benjamin had cause of complaint against Barras. He had used
them and then, when things went wrong, loaded them with the blame.

That was clear to both. But, apart from that, these two Swiss left France without
having acquired understanding of her mind, of her aims or of her needs. They
spoke the tittle-tattle of Paris, now become nearly a dead language. The simpler
tongue of the French countryside, whence had marched the soldiers to save the
Fatherland and confound Europe, was unknown to them. Again, they did not
know that Royalism was dead and buried since the landing at Quiberon, or that
Jacobinism had ceased to matter much since it had ceased to be identified with
victory. Gazing at Paris they failed to see France ; listening to Paris they missed
the thunder of the guns on the frontiers. The plumed Directors bulked big in
their minds, whereas now only the soldiers counted for anything. France was
already marching against England. Jacques had returned to Coppet, where
Suzanne lay buried. They descended on him and unpacked their distresses.

“ My daughter,” he wrot1 on January 2, 1796, to Meister, “has arrived after a long

journey which has happily been free from accident. M. Constant was her
travelling companion. They are both wonderfully full of Republican ideas and
hopes ; and seem to forgive a trifle too easily the methods employed by
governments to attain these objects. I am very far from seeing eye to eye with
them. . . .”

Coppet, on its perch above the Geneva-Lausanne road, was looking bleak and
cold, for all its show of wealth. But needs does as needs must. They fell in, as
best they could, with Jacques’ method of living :

“ They gathered for breakfast in Madame de Staël’s room,” said Frédéric de

Chateauvieux ; “ They drank only coffee then. This breakfast lasted two hours,
for, as soon as they assembled, Madame de Staël raised a question, more often
chosen from the realms of literature or of philosophy than from those of politics ;
and this out of consideration for her father, whose career on the political stage
had ended so unfortunately. But whatever the subject of discussion, it was
attacked with a liveliness of imagination and a profundity from which Benjamin
Constant derived his best training and from which gushed forth all that the
human mind could conceive and create. . . . Each then retired until dinner, which
passed off in a perpetual quarrel between M. Necker and some aged butlers, deaf
and complaining, relics of the régime that M. Necker had overthrown, who, in
their embroidered liveries, had followed his fortunes to Coppet. The afternoon
was also devoted to work until seven o’clock, when M. Necker’s whist began. This
whist was stormy. M. Necker and his daughter quarrelled, got angry and left the

131
table, vowing never to play with each other again, and began again the next
evening. The rest of the evening was given to conversation.”

Rosalie Constant, Benjamin’s cousin, a tidy little spinster of Lausanne, came to

see them sometimes but felt unedified.

“ It is impossible,” she wrote, “to live peaceably with these queer people. With
enough to make ten fools happy she (Madame de Staël) is perfedly miserable ;
but she loves Benjamin passionately. God knows where all this will end. . . .

“ She was seated between the ‘fox,’ the ‘kitten’ and the other one (i.e. three men)
with an elbow on the chest of one, the other grasped by the head, and the third
holding the back of her neck and calling her a ‘nice little pussy.’ . . I quarrelled
horribly with them about our country, which they look on as the home of
boredom and emptiness. . . . I did not convince Benjamin. I came away so as to
avoid having supper there.”

Everybody at Coppet was writing a book : Jacques a four-volume work on the

Revolution from the text : “ I told you so”; Benjamin a work in unreckoned
volumes on Religion ; Germaine a treatise : De l’Influence des Passions sur le
Bonheur des Individus et des Nations. This last the discharge of a hundred
tensions : Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, in the political sphere ; Narbonne,
Ribbing, in the emotional ; Switzerland in the environmental. The preface
declared :

“ Condemned to a celebrity among those who do not know me personally, I feel it

due to myself that I should be judged by my writings. I have been ceaselessly
slandered ; and though I am unwilling to draw attention to myself I have been
obliged to yield to the hope that, by publishing the fruit of my meditation, I shall
be able to give some true idea of my habits of life and the nature of my character.”

The fruit of her meditation was that love is the chief ingredient of happiness, the
essence of liberty for men as well as for women. Alas, society, tyrants, Nature
herself, were ranged too often in opposition to the loving heart.

“ For, whatever the power and range of her mind, whatever the importance of the
affairs that absorb her, a woman’s face is always either an obstacle or an
advantage in the history of her life. Men, or at any rate their male natures, have
so willed it. . . . Do you think that dazzling success in a woman is specially
gratifying to her lover ? . . . Love is the highest ideal of felicity that the
imagination of man can conceive ; a delight more exquisite still, almost terrifying
in its bliss, if the perfect lovers are united by marriage, which makes love unique
and lifts it to a giddy height of joy. And to think that this bliss is within the scope
of human experience and that almost every living soul is debarred from it. . . .
When a woman’s share of public affairs is born of love for the man who directs
those affairs, when feeling alone dictates her opinions and inspires their
development, she is not straying from the road laid down for her by Nature. She
is a woman and she is in love. . . . Perhaps at this very moment of writing I wish

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to be loved once more ; perhaps at this very moment I resign my destiny to my
love.”

Ribbing appeared ; she had another affair with him. He went off, suddenly, to
America ; her lamentations desolated the household, which now included
Albertine Adrienne. That little lady wrote about it to Mathieu, in Paris, who
replied on May 25, 1796 :2

“ What dreadful agonies her too, too feeling heart still endures. There goes one
man the more of the goodly company of those who do not know how to love ; a
man, too, who by the contrast, so frequently remarked, between his feelings and
the most important act of his life (the murder of his King) conveys an impression
of the greatest distinction and depth of character. . . .”

Benjamin was not a witness of this episode. He had returned to Paris with a
pamphlet of his own composing on the Strength of the present French
Government and the duty of rallying to its support, which he managed to get
printed in the official newspaper Le Moniteur. He was in touch with Mathieu,
who testified that he was not sparing himself to secure “our friend’s” return and
that he was really a most obliging fellow. Jacques, less lachrymose, remarked
about Ribbing’s exit : “ Bon voyage !”

Germaine decided to rush off to Paris, to Benjamin. She was warned that if she
crossed the French frontier she would be arrested. She wrote despairing letters
to Barras, to Eric Magnus, to Mathieu.3

“ If you only knew what a touching, what a desperate letter I have had from her,”
wrote the latter to Albertine Adrienne.

Doomed to writhe at Coppet, she unloaded her feelings upon her book. But her
watchful eye had not lost its droop for a new lion. The world was beginning to
ring with the name of General Napoleon Bonaparte, now campaigning in Italy,
who, in a few weeks, had defeated the Austrians half-a-dozen times. She wrote
him a series of four or five letters, offering her genius and her love.4

“ You are Scipio and Tancred,” she cried. “ You combine the simple virtues of the
one with the glorious deeds of the other.” She added that Josephine was no fit
mate for such a hero.

“ My dear Bourienne,” said Bonaparte to his secretary, “this sort of thing is

inconceivable. The woman is mad. Good heavens, a blue Rocking, a faker of
feelings, to dare to compare herself with Josephine ! Bourienne, I don’t want to
answer such letters.”

And he didn’t. Germaine shrieked that Benjamin must come back at once and
comfort her. But that young man showed himself coy. He had made a good
impression with his pamphlet and began to fancy himself as a politician and
man-about-town.

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“ Noisy gaiety,” wrote his cousin Charles to Rosalie,5 after visiting his rooms, “the
most libertine conversation, the least temperate expressions, supplied the theme
of the talk. . . . Benjamin looked played-out, bored.”

His pamphlet annoyed the Jacobins ; one of them bade him mind his manners as
a foreigner enjoying the hospitality of France. Benjamin called him out, and they
fired pistols into the air in the Bois and went back, arm-in-arm, to luncheon. But
the news reached Geneva and Coppet.

“ Knowing his impulsiveness,” wrote Germaine to Rosalie Constant. “I am in

torture. . . . What does Charles say ? In God’s name, what does he say ? . . . Tell
me to the smallest syllable. Do not dare to go to bed without getting your letters
(from Paris) and writing me what they contain. I have the right to ask you. For
twenty-eight hours I have trembled and wept and perished with anxiety. If you
knew what he is to me ! What a letter, too, I have received from him ! What an
angel of tenderness he is to me ! Upon him depends all that life holds for me. In
Heaven’s name hide nothing from me ! If he were wounded ! But no ! . . .”

A short time afterwards Benjamin returned. Scarcely was he arrived and

installed when the iron gates of Coppet were opened to admit another visitor,
namely, Eric Magnus. That unwelcome guest explained that, as Sweden was at
loggerheads with the French, he had been told by his government to take a
prolonged holiday. He proposed to spend it with his wife and children. Then the
Baron de Staël disclosed the real object of his visit ; his debts amounted to
£8,000. Worthy Jacques assumed immediately his counting-house manner. The
two retired to fight it out.

“ I propose going to Sweden,” threatened Eric Magnus, “and taking my wife and
family with me.”

Jacques paid. The Ambassador departed to drink the waters at Aix-les-Bains,

promising to return early in October. Germaine declared that her mind was
made up to divorce him and marry Benjamin. The proofs of the Passions were
coming to hand from the Lausanne printer, and they spent their days discussing
and correcting them. Before Eric Magnus came back, Germaine was pregnant by
Benjamin. They began to make plans, personal and political. She wrote to
Gouverneur Morris in Vienna urging him to plead with the Austrian authorities
for the liberation of Lafayette from the fortress of Olmutz to which, on his
desertion from the French army, they had consigned him.6 Crazy visions of a
Congtitutional Republic, with “the General” at its head and themselves in
effective control, filled their minds. The Passions arrived. On October 2 (1796)
Benjamin, his luggage bulging with copies, took the road for Paris ; Eric Magnus
returned from Aix on the 7th. On the 10th Germaine sent copies to Meister for
distribution to a number of literary men, including Goethe. Speaking of Paris
and her hope of returning there, she added, in her covering letter :

“ One mustn’t shut the gates of Paradise against oneself.”7

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In November she wrote to him again :

“ Ah, how bored I am in this country.”8

Eric Magnus lingered a little while, took his money and returned to France.
Benjamin, in Paris, redoubled his efforts to persuade Barras that Germaine was
not really dangerous and so might be allowed to re-enter France. The Passions
had had some success, especially with the women ; they liked to think that
Robespierre had erred chiefly in attempting to govern without their loving help,
and to be assured that, for the future, love must season statescraft. It was doing
so. “ The women are everywhere,” Bonaparte had remarked before leaving for
Italy. “And the men are mad about them.”9 He had dragged reluctant Josephine
from Paris ; but Thérèse remained to provide Barras with inspiration and the
Jacobin newspapers with copy. One of these suggested that Tallien’s wife ought
to be treated like the great houses in the Faubourg Saint Germain and inscribed,
across the back, with the words : “For Sale : National Property.” The lady found
Madame de Staël’s philosophy comforting as an antidote to that sort of thing, and
so did her lover. Barras was grown rich, vainglorious, bloated ; more and more
resentful of every obstacle to the play of his lusts and his acquisitiveness. He had
just pocketed a tip of £2,000,000 from Bonaparte in Italy, the price of his non-
interference with the campaign in that country, and had good hopes of getting
more ; why should he suffer longer the pryings and censoriousness of his fellow-
Directors, especially of Carnot ?

These two men had carried daggers for one another for more than a year. Lazare
Nicolas Marguerite Carnot belonged to that small company of honest Jacobins
who had made no money out of the Revolution. He had sat with Robespierre on
the Committee and single-handed organised the victory of the French armies
against Austria and Prussia and Spain and England. Eight pitched battles won,
80,000 enemies slain, 91,000 prisoners, 116 towns and fortresses occupied, 90
enemy flags—these were the spoils of his office, laid on the nation’s altar. He had
been Terrorist while victory remained in doubt ; had attacked Robespierre when,
victory secure, the guillotine was not put away ; had shared the honours of
Thermidor, but had come to the tribune to defend Barras’s scapegoats, Billaud-
Varenne and Collot d’Herbois, after that event. Fréron, murderer of Marseilles,
now leader of the gilded youth, attacked Carnot on Barras’s behalf ; the deputies
of the nation rose to call Carnot blessed. Fourteen departments elected him as
their representative ; the Council of Five Hundred chose him to be a member of
the Council of Ancients. He was made Director. That calm, strong face with its
high brow and lively eyes began to haunt the dreams of the men who had
renounced murder to praise brigandage. What would happen to them if Carnot
got the upper hand ?

There was danger of that. Carnot was in close touch with the great generals of the
Republic, the young Hoche, who had crushed Royalism in La Vendée, Moreau on
the Rhine, Bonaparte in Italy. All were in some measure his protégés, all held
him in respect. They had but to speak and he would be armed with an
overwhelming strength. Barras set about the task of sowing suspicion of Carnot

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in the minds of the generals. He was quicker-witted than his rival, craftier, with a
surer grasp of political strategy. Carnot’s weak point had always been his
association with Robespierre. Barras attacked him there, accused him of a secret
wish to play the tyrant, and suggested adroitly that between the tyranny of the
guillotine and that of the throne there was nothing to choose. The Jacobins,
equally with the Royalists, were the enemies of Liberty. That was the cue ; a
hundred pens, Benjamin’s among them, developed the theme in such a way as to
suggest that guillotine and throne had joined hands, secretly, to destroy the
Republic. The official Moniteur was bidden to publish extracts from
the Passions, and its readers heard, on the authority of Madame de Staël, that
despotism was represented by the Royalists and anarchy by the Jacobins.
Royalists and Jacobins were, therefore, equally dangerous ; the Republicans,
standing between the two, were the real friends of Liberty. Benjamin then
stepped forward. The Royalists, he cried, were at the door, athirst for vengeance.
He warned them :10

“ All you who, for a day, for an hour, had faith in the Revolution, you who
endorsed or applauded or profaned (Constituents, Législatifs, Conventionnels,
Feuillants, Jacobins), malefactors (in Royalist eyes) by participation, or criminals
by non-interference, you are threatened by the same anathema. The fate of every
one of you is sealed. To you who were guilty : under the Republic, life—she has
promised it ; under Royalty, death. To you who were only ambitious : under the
Republic, pardon—she owes it to you for, in spite of your mistakes, you have
served Liberty ; under Royalty, death. To you whose ever-upright conduct
offends none but the tyrant : under the Republic, glory ; under Royalty, death.”

In short, Barras had blessings for all who repented and supported him, reformed
Jacobins (like himself) not excluded ; whereas Carnot, no doubt in spite of
himself, was playing the Royalist game. Benjamin was become so useful that
Germaine’s recall was certain. On December 14, 1796, Mathieu, in Paris,
informed Albertine Adrienne :11

“ You and I are of one mind about Benj. (sic) . . . Let me tell you that he has come
to me sometimes in a state of mental disorientation, the prey of furious political
views which do not seem to have any root in his heart or in his convictions. All
that, taken in conjunction with certain small but not unimportant details, such as
the look on his face, his clothes and his maniacal manners, leaves me
dumbfounded when I think of the feeling he can inspire in our friend’s heart. . .
My position as a privileged person has enabled me to recount these different
impressions of him to your cousin ; I have returned more than once to the
charge, to question her, to warn her, to beg her not to surrender herself to an
unhappiness, more certain of accomplishment than all those she has already
experienced. I wasn’t dissatisfied with her reply, because I found no enthusiasm
(for Benjamin) in it. You have stripped away the veil. . . Still, don’t let us despair
of the ability of a friend like you to save such a heart as hers from what is not even
a passion but only an error of the imagination. As for me, I have dared to present
our prayers and plans to that Providence which cannot surely refuse to save from
the abyss one of the most lovable and most astounding of His creatures. . . .”

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Before this letter was delivered, Benjamin had arrived at Coppet, with leave for
Germaine to live in France, though not yet in Paris. He proposed to take her to
the country house he had bought, named Hérivaux. Wild, almost delirious with
joy, she scarcely listened to her father’s protests. She would take her two little
sons with her in case Eric Magnus was recalled to Sweden and felt tempted to
possess himself of them. Jacques compelled attention on that point. The boys,
he ordered, would remain with him. On Christmas Day, Benjamin and Germaine
crossed the frontier.

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 134.
2
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 68.
3
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 74.
4
Bourrienne : Mémoires, Vol. VI. See also De Casse : Mémoires du Roi Joseph,
Vol. X, p. 269. The subject is dealt with fully by Paul Gautier in his Madame de
Staël et Napoléon, pp. 2, 3 et seq.
5
Correspondence of Charles and Rosalie de Constant in the Library of Geneva.
See also Schermerhorn : Benjamin Constant.
6
Revue rétrospective, 1ère série, Vol. III, p. 465. See Madame de Staël and the
United States, by Dr. Hawkins, p. 19.
7
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 144.
8
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 145.
9
Letter to Joseph Bonaparte.
10
Des Réactions Politiques, by Benjamin Constant.
11
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 83.

137
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXV

COUP D’ÉTAT

HÉRIVAUX, in the Department of Seine-et-Oise, was a convent for which, in the

previous November, Benjamin had given £2,000. He had pulled down
everything but a single wing ; here he installed Germaine. Mathieu soon joined
them.

“ We have been three days, tête à tête in the desert . . . where our friend fears
brigands more than boredom,” he wrote to Albertine Adrienne.

Benjamin returned to Paris to prosecute his labours. He found Barras full of

cheer ; the bogy of Royalism was working wonders with the armies, who began to
see a crown under Carnot’s hat. Paris, on the other hand, was inclined to listen to
Carnot. The elections in April made the bogy lifelike. A number of Royalists
were returned, and even Germaine, with her inside information, began to fear
that the Republic was lost :

“ My father assures me,” she wrote to Meister on April 22, 1797,1 that you are so
kind as to spare me a thought. Till now I’ve been so persecuted, so lonely that
I’ve sunk to nothing in my own eyes. When the elections are over I’m going back
to Paris. When I get there I hope to write you letters more worthy of you, that is
if you don’t come yourself into a country which is now more aristocratic in feeling
even than you are.

“ Goethe has sent me a novel of his called Williams (sic) Meister, superbly
bound. As it’s in German I have been unable to admire anything but the binding
so far. (Benjamin, between ourselves, who read it, says I’m luckier than he.) Do
please send Goethe, from me, the most handsome thanks, taking care to hide my
ignorance. Say a good deal about my admiration for and recognition of the
author of Werther. . . .

“ Aren’t you curious to come to a country where they choose as their

representatives M. de Vauvilliers because he is involved in a Royalist plot, M.
Bourlet because he was one of the Comte d’Artois’ valets ? Here is a democratic
Republic where you stand a good chance of being stoned if you aren’t an
aristocrat, a land of philosophers where the most unenlightened kind of
Catholicism is the most popular. But for the armies there would be no further
hope of the Republic. I’m thinking of beginning a new book with these words :

“ ‘ The counter-revolution is accomplished. Louis XVIII reigns. It remains

to be seen whether the two Councils and the Directory can plot so cleverly as to
be able to dethrone him. . . .’

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“ The Republic exiles me ; the counter-Revolution will hang me ; what I want is a
place in the middle. But in France things go from one extreme to the other so
quickly that places in the middle are passed in an instant.”

Troubles, other than political, were accumulating. The Parisian journalists,

Royalist and Jacobin, had spied Benjamin and her in their nest and were
entertaining their readers with tit-bits of information—about her pregnancy, her
love-making in a convent, her recent relations with Ribbing, her former relations
with Narbonne (now settled in Paris with Mathieu’s mother), with the Bishop
(newly returned from America), with Mathieu himself. The news reached
Sweden, where Eric Magnus’ stock was low ; he was dismissed and had to leave
the rue du Bac. Germaine stopped his allowance and refused to give him another
penny. He threatened divorce ; she told him to go ahead. Penniless, he had to
dismiss his servants, sell his wines and turn to the money-lenders, who
accommodated him at rates in the neighbourhood of 40 per cent.2 Mathieu was
in despair. Something must be done, but what ? Did she wish her unborn child
to be repudiated ? He urged, entreated, prayed, begging her to leave Hérivaux
and take a house of her own. Appeal was made to Talleyrand, who wrote to her
with his tongue in his cheek :

“ Mathieu is awfully pleased about his plan of a house for you. It’s the only favour
he dares now to ask of you.”

She yielded. On May 13, a month before her confinement was due, she went to
Ormesson, a place of Mathieu’s. On May 30 she returned to Paris, and, financial
arrangements having been made, placed herself once more under the same roof
as her husband. It was none too soon. Her child, a girl, was born a week later, on
June 8, 1797. She called it Albertine, after her cousin. The good Mathieu wrote
to that lady :3

Paris, June 9, 1797.

“ I am happy to act to-day as our friend’s secretary, and to inform you from her
bedside, that she was delivered yesterday morning, at ten o’clock, of a little girl,
that she is very well this morning, and that my thoughts, like hers, turn to you. I
hadn’t the resolution to be here at the great moment, in fact, I only returned from
the country yesterday evening and only learned then that the cruel moment had
passed. I am doubly thankful because there is now nothing to fear. She tells me
herself that her husband has taken it very well (a été bien), without, it is true, any
very lively expression of feeling but with interest and kind attention. I must
finish my letter quickly because I want it to reach you by the same courier as that
bearing her husband’s letter to M. Necker.

“ I wish we had her in the care of her most lovable cousin ! I’m a poor substitute
for you, you know. I want, meanwhile, during the next day or two, to prevent her
seeing all the people she is longing to see. . . .”

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Germaine was up in a week, opening her salon and entertaining “Jacobins in the
morning ; emigrés in the evening, and everybody at dinner.” Here was the
Bishop again, sunburnt from his long sea voyage, rather threadbare, with only
twenty pounds in his pocket and threatening to blow his brains out if she couldn’t
find him a job. Benjamin, too, proud of his little daughter, deep, as he supposed,
in Barras’s councils. Mathieu, pained, prayerful ; at rare intervals when Madame
de Montmorency-Laval wasn’t looking, Narbonne. Barras showed himself more
obliging every day, for he was still uneasy about the generals. The Bishop
received from him, at Germaine’s urgent request, the appointment of Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and as Talleyrand began his second career ; Barras
acknowledged, too, the debt of £100,000 to Necker and held out hopes that he
would pay it ; Benjamin’s suggestion that a club of the “lovers of Liberty” ought
to be formed was welcomed with rapture.

“ You have no doubt seen in the papers,” wrote Benjamin on July 11, 1797, to his
cousin, “much misrepresented details of a Club which originated at a dinner
given by me and which is now composed of more than 600 members, among
them all that is estimable and distinguished in the Republican party. The
Government greatly encourages this assembly, which has served already as a
stimulant of public opinion.”

The Club had its headquarters in the Hôtel de Salm, rue de Lille, and was known
as the “Salm.” Barras, Talleyrand, Sieyès, all the ministers, became members.
Germaine too. They combined politics with pleasure, pleasure with wit ; were
gay, statesmanlike, greedy, garrulous, but never half so important as some of
them supposed. For the Salm, like the bogy of a Royalist reaction, was merely
part of the Barras façade, a bait for fools who saw in it promise of more spacious
days, of a larger liberty or more richly endowed licence. Talleyrand knew better.
He got into touch with Bonaparte in Italy and gradually withdrew himself from
the public eye. Bonaparte sent his kinsman Lavalette, a man of integrity, to
investigate and report :

“ I wrote the truth to General Bonaparte,” Lavalette stated.4 “ I declared that he

would tarnish his glory if he gave any support to acts of violence which the
situation of the Government did not justify ; that nobody would pardon him if he
joined the Directory in their plan to overthrow the Constitution and liberty ; that
proscriptions were about to take place against the national representatives,
against citizens whose virtues made them worthy of respect ; that punishments
would be inflicted without trial ; and that the hatred resulting from such
measures would extend not only to the Directory but to the whole system of
Republican government. These considerations made so much impression on the
mind of General Bonaparte that he soon avoided, in his correspondence with the
Directors, all allusion to the interior situation of France, and at last left off writing
to them altogether.”

It was enough for Barras that Carnot had not been able to mobilise the generals.
The moment he knew that he had nothing to fear from the military side, he set
about preparing his blow. Hints of what was coming reached Germaine, who

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perceived that everybody connected with the Royalists would be in danger and
warned Mathieu, Narbonne and others to leave France at once. They took her
advice. She flung herself whole-heartedly into the plot. Thibaudeaut states that
he dined with her one night. Benjamin was present. Both urged him to throw in
his lot with Barras, assuring him that the Bourbons were at the gate.

On the night of September 4 (“18th Fructidor”) Barras struck. Troops were called
up and ordered to enter the Chambers and arrest the “Royalist” deputies. The
Director himself, in his apartments in the Luxembourg, awaited news,
surrounded by a crowd of politicians, soldiers, citizens and women which
included Germaine and Benjamin. Somebody warned Carnot ; he fled across the
garden. A few hours later a cowed and obedient Parliament, sitting in the
presence of grenadiers and the mob that had gathered at sight of them, annulled
the recent elections and condemned more than fifty persons to transportation
without trial. Barras was master of France. “Some individual misfortunes,”
remarked Benjamin saucily on the morrow, “were regrettable, but nevertheless
necessary.” Germaine took the same view. Barras, in her opinion, had merely
dissolved Parliament in the English fashion. But away in Switzerland poor
Mathieu, out of breath from his flight, saw the event from a different angle.

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 146.
2
Revue bleue, 17 June, 1905. Lettres à Nils von Bozenstein, cited by Paul
Gautier, Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 103.
3
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 108.
4
Lavalette : Mémoires.
5
Thibaudeau, A.C.: Mémoires sur la Convention et la Diretloire, 2 vols.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXVI

GENERAL BONAPARTE

ROBESPIERRE could claim for the Reign of Terror that some, at least, of its
victims were the scum of the earth. In the case of the “Little Terror” which Barras
conducted on the morrow of his victory, it was the honest men who suffered at
the hands of the rogues. Germaine and her lover, having helped to place lechery,
debauchery, depravity, brigandage and bloody murder in power, found
themselves under the necessity of defending a tyranny which refused trial,
forbade free speech, denied public opinion and sent thousands of good citizens to
rot in tropical swamps. They made no bones about it, though Germaine helped
her friends to escape and so moved Talleyrand to remark : “ She throws people
into the water for the pleasure of pulling them out again.”

France, as Lavalette had foreseen, was less complaisant. A week after

Barras’s coup d’état the Royalist bogy was everywhere recognised for what it was,
and men understood that they had sacrificed the great Carnot in a harlots’
Sabbath presided over by Thérèse Tallien. One of the Jacobin newspapers called
Germaine :

“ Baroness of baronesses, the pride of her sex, the pearl among women, the
goddess of oligarchies, the darling of the god Constancy, the protectress of
emigrés, the universal woman.”

What matter, since Barras was going to pay the £100,000, since she could keep
open house and show herself, every day, in the drawing-rooms of the
Luxembourg, with Benjamin by her side ? The autumn grew old ; Bonaparte’s
triumph over the Austrians became the sole topic. In November the young
conqueror of Italy, whose victories, Lodi, Arcole, Rivoli and a dozen others,
belonged already to universal history, got the terms of peace he demanded and
turned his face homewards. He travelled through Switzerland and paid a
courtesy call at Coppet, without, however, finding Jacques at home. France
welcomed him as a bride her groom. On December 5, 1797, he descended at his
own door in the rue des Victoires, formerly the rue Chantereine, and immediately
sent anaidede-campe to Talleyrand asking when he might call at the Foreign
Office. The Bishop, with a gesture of profound respect, suggested the following
morning at 11 o’clock and notified Germaine.

She could scarcely contain herself. Was this the long-delayed answer to her
letters ? Was it because Bonaparte had expressed a wish to meet her that
Talleyrand had sent his invitation ? She had called Bonaparte “the best
Republican in France ; the greatest Liberal”; had her words reached him ? Her
lively imagination vaulted into the saddle and galloped away : Bonaparte and she
were the Man and the Woman of the century ; they would reign, she promised
herself, side by side, bestowing the blessings of their wisdom on the whole world.

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Benjamin should be their prophet. (She had already persuaded the Bishop to
mention Benjamin favourably to the General.) The next day arrived. Talleyrand
introduced Bonaparte. He muttered some politeness about her father and turned
away. That was all.

“ General Bonaparte,” she wrote,1 “had become as famous by reason of his

character and mind as on account of his victories, and the imagination of the
French was stirred by him in the most lively fashion. People kept recalling his
proclamations to the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics. In one of these the
following phrase had been specially remarked : ‘ You were divided and bound by
tyranny ; you were in no condition to regain your freedom.’ In the other : ‘ The
true conquests, the only ones which leave no regrets, are those we win over
ignorance.’ There was a tone of moderation and nobility in his style which
contrasted strikingly with the revolutionary bitterness of the French civil chiefs.
The soldier spoke like a magistrate, while the magistrates were expressing
themselves with soldierly violence. General Bonaparte had not put the laws
against the emigrants into execution in his army. It was said that he was deeply
in love with his wife, whose nature was full of sweetness ; it was said again that
he was charmed by the beauties of the poet Ossian ; people took delight in
convincing themselves that he possessed every generous quality capable of
throwing his amazing powers of mind into high relief. Finally, everybody was so
tired of oppressors who borrowed the name of Liberty, of oppressors who wept
for the loss of arbitrary power, that admiration had no bounds since General
Bonaparte seemed to unite in his own person every quality capable of winning it.

“ In my own case, at any rate, I saw him in Paris for the first time with such
feelings in my heart. I could find no words to answer him when he came up to me
to tell me that he had called upon my father at Coppet and was sorry he had
passed through Switzerland without meeting him. But when the agitation caused
by the admiration I felt had subsided a little, a lively sense of fear followed.
Bonaparte, at that moment, had no power ; indeed, it was generally believed that
the dark suspicions of the Directory constituted a real danger for him. So that the
fear which he inspired can only have been due to the singular influence exerted
by his personality on almost all those who approached him. I have met men
worthy in every way of respect ; I have met fierce men ; there was nothing in the
effect exerted on me by Bonaparte which in any way recalled the impressions of
either of these types. I soon saw, on the different occasions on which I met him
during his stay in Paris, that his character could not be described in ordinary
words : he was neither good nor violent nor sweet-tempered nor cruel as are
ordinary men. He was more, or less, than a man. . . .

“ Far from becoming easier in his company as time went on, I grew more afraid. I
had a vague feeling that no emotion could exert any influence on him. . . . Each
time I heard him speak I was struck by his superiority. . . . The difficulty of
breathing which I felt in his presence never became less. . . . His face, thin then
and pale, was pleasant enough. . . .”

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Bonaparte would not recognise his soul’s mate. She saw him again on December
10, four days later, at the reception given him by the Directors, when Talleyrand
delivered an oration in his honour and a hymn, composed by Chénier, was sung
by massed choirs. She was losing her head ; she began to pester him. Wherever
he went she went ; to balls, dinners, receptions. The moment he appeared she
stared at him and kept on staring.

“ I examined Bonaparte’s face with attention,” she wrote, 2 in describing a dinner

party, “but each time he noticed me looking at him he had the art to blank out all
expression from his eyes so that these eyes might have been carved in marble.
His face at these moments was quite still except for the faint smile with which he
met and defeated my every attempt to read his thoughts.”

The young soldier was much embarrassed. But the more he hid himself from her
the more violent grew her desire to possess him. She invited him to a ball, he
didn’t come. She followed him to Talleyrand’s ball and, as Hortense de
Beauharnais, Josephine’s daughter, tells, “pestered him” the whole evening, till
he scarcely knew how to escape her.

“General,” she asked him in a loud voice, “whom do you consider the greatest
woman in the world, dead or alive ? ”

“ The one with the most children.” 3

A little later she called at his house and tried to enter his study. He was changing
his uniform at the moment and had to drive her out. “ What does it matter ?” she
said through the door, “ Genius has no sex.” 4

Bonaparte asked to be given the task of attacking England, the task nobody had
attempted since Louis XVI relinquished it. His plans were made. He would go to
Egypt, conquer that country, cut a canal at Suez, open up a new short route
between France and India, and so double the labours of the British navy.
Nothing was lacking but money. That was waiting in Switzerland, in the coffers
of the oligarchy of Berne, those reactionary old gentlemen against whom
Germaine had so often made protest. The Swiss Liberals had already sent
emissaries to Paris (La Harpe5 was one of them) asking that France should
possess their country and deliver it from the Bernese. Barras received the
emissaries, listened to their grievances and sent orders to the army of the East to
seize the prize without delay in the name of Liberty. Next day he had a visit from
Benjamin and Germaine. They came, as Swiss of position and substance, to
protest. What, they asked, was to happen to the feudal dues on which the
families of both relied ? The Director had no idea. But he inquired slyly how it
came about that people who, in France, were the boldest of Liberty’s apostles,
should wish to deny Liberty to Switzerland, their native land. Were they not,
then, sincere in their professions ? Germaine, panic-stricken, for a large part of
Necker’s income was derived from feudal dues, rushed off to Bonaparte.

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“ This cause,” she wrote, 6 “seemed to me so sacred that I refused to believe that it
could be impossible to enlist Bonaparte as its supporter. All through my life, my
mistakes in politics have arisen from the idea that men must necessarily be won
by truth if it is presented to them forcibly.

“ I remained nearly an hour with Bonaparte. He gave me a kind and patient

hearing because he wanted to know if what I was telling him had any bearing on
his own schemes. But Demosthenes and Cicero combined could not have moved
him an inch in the direction of sacrificing his personal interest. Many mediocre
men called that ‘reason’; it is reason of the second class. . . .

“ In the course of our discussion General Bonaparte quoted the position (in
relation to Berne) of the Pays de Vaud as a reason for sending French troops into
Switzerland. He told me that the inhabitants of that area were under the heels of
the aristocrats of Berne and that men could not live without political rights. I
tempered this republican ardour of his as much as I could by explaining that the
Vaudois were perfectly free in all their everyday relations and that, when Liberty
exists in fact, it is unnecessary in order to obtain it in law to expose a country to
the greatest of all misfortunes—that of seeing itself invaded by foreigners.

“ ‘ Self respect and imagination,’ replied the General, ‘ are both increased when a
man has a part in the government of his country. It’s an injustice to exclude a
body of citizens from these advantages.’

“ ‘ Nothing, General, could be truer in principle,’ I replied, ‘ but it’s equally true
that a nation ought to win its liberty by its own efforts and not by calling in an
outside Power which must necessarily be dominant.’

“ I insisted again on the happiness and beauty of Switzerland and on the

tranquillity she had for centuries enjoyed.

“ ‘ Yes, undoubtedly,’ interrupted Bonaparte, ‘ but men ought to have political

rights. Yes,’ he repeated like a lesson, ‘ yes, political rights.’

“ And changing the subject, because he wanted to hear no more about it, he spoke
to me of his liking for solitude, for the country, for the fine arts, and was at pains
to display himself to me in such a light as he supposed would accord with my own
type of mind.”

Bonaparte, like Barras, had a sense of humour. Germaine received a broad hint
from the police that she had better return to Switzerland, since her intrigues to
interfere with the policy of the Government were resented. She had decided to go
in any case, because she wished to be near her father when the threatened
invasion took place. Early in January she returned with her baby to Coppet. On
January 22, 1798, she wrote to Meister : 7

“ I’ve got back ; I must ask you to excuse my prolonged silence. . . . Alas ! peaceful
times are gone for Switzerland. I’m in despair at the state in which I find our

145
unhappy country. Is it possible that the wise heads of Zurich cannot come to my
help ? I have no fear that the troops which are going to pass through Geneva
have any intention of attacking the Pays de Vaud, but rumour runs that way,
accomplishing revolution by fear. I believe what I have always believed, namely,
that the sole object of the French is to get a contribution out of the Swiss. . . .
They never cease to prate about the outflow of (metallic) money (from France
into Switzerland) and about the war (which they allege is) being waged by the
(Swiss) financiers (against their paper money). That means only that they want a
few millions.”

Meister received another letter at the same time, from Suard, a victim of
Barras’s coup d’état, as follows : 8

“ I have had a letter from Madame de Staël. She has come for the show
(bagarre). Her poor father writes me that she doesn’t fear them (the French).
Unhappy man ; why has this most unexpected revolution come to trouble his old
age and rob him of the little which the other revolution left him ! When I think of
his lot I feel ashamed to bother about my own. What a deluge of sorrows, public
and private ! . . . What does she (Madame de Staël) think now of the ‘ good day ’
of the 18th Fructidor ? ”

The French troops entered Switzerland on January 28, 1798.

“ When we had positive news of the coming of the French,” Germaine

wrote, 9 “my father and I were alone, with my children of tender age, in the
Chateau de Coppet. . . . Our servants, inspired by curiosity, went down to the end
of the avenue ; my father and I, awaiting our fate together, stood on the balcony,
where we had a view of the high road along which the troops were coming.
Although it was mid-winter, it was a magnificent day. The Alps were reflected in
the lake and only the rolling of the drums broke the silence. My heart was
beating cruelly from fear of the fate hanging over my father. I knew that the
Directors spoke of him with respect ; but I knew also the force exerted by the
revolutionary laws on those who had made them. 10 . . . I saw an officer leave his
men to come up to our chateau. Mortal terror seized me. But what he said
instantly relieved my mind. He had been ordered by the Directors to offer my
father an assurance of safety.”

Very soon Necker and his daughter were entertaining the French staff at
luncheon. Things, they concluded, might have been a great deal worse. But one
trouble was succeeded by another. News reached them from Paris that Eric
Magnus had been reinstated in his post as Swedish Ambassador and had finally
made up his mind to get quit of his wife. Mathieu, back again in Paris, at once
began to exert himself to prevent this calamity, but found that a separation had
been decided upon for political as well as for personal reasons. Germaine was
frankly impossible as the wife of an Ambassador who cherished any hope of
keeping his job.

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“ I add a word,” he wrote to Albertine Adrienne in June, 11 “about our friend,
whom I always speak of as a being apart. What you and I fear for her depends
entirely on the political interests of her partner. Men of his stamp have only one
concern—namely, to avoid compromising their jobs when these are threatened.
Here is a further reason for pursuing the course she has adopted.”

That course was to hide herself with her children at Coppet. She soon tired of it.
The separation took place. She decided to go back to Paris.

“ My father,” she wrote, 12 “ found himself changed into a French citizen by the
annexation of Geneva. He had always been that in any case both in feeling and by
reason of his career. It was necessary, however, that he should get his name
removed now from the list of emigrants, so as to be able to live in peace in a
Switzerland occupied by the Directory’s troops. He gave me a memorandum,
truly a masterpiece of dignity and logic, to take to Paris. When the Directors had
read it they decided unanimously to remove from the list the name of M. Necker.
And, although that was a bare act of justice, I was so pleased that I retain a feeling
of gratitude.

“ I at once entered into negotiations with the Directors for the payment of the
£100,000 which my father had left in the public treasury. The Government
recognised the debt, but offered to pay it in Church property. My father refused,
not that he ranged himself with those who thought the sale of these goods illegal,
but because he was averse from throwing even a particle of doubt on his perfect
impartiality by any marriage of opinion with interest.”

Meanwhile Necker’s property, Saint-Ouen, was restored to him. Germaine,

warned by Barras that no salons would be tolerated, went to live there and was
soon joined by Mathieu, who wrote to Albertine Adrienne on September 4,
1798 : 13

“ The bulletin moral of our friend is much more satisfactory than that which you
gave me in the latter part of her stay with you.”

Benjamin was living at Hérivaux, close at hand. He had been a candidate for the
Council of Five Hundred but had failed to secure a seat. He was disappointed,
disgruntled, angry, but by no means cured of his ambitions. Like Eric Magnus,
he had begun to find Germaine more of a liability than an asset and wished,
secretly, to be rid of her. 14 But this young man with his indolent, slanting, half-
closed eyes and eloquent lips was better able to make love to women than to run
away from them. He had to consent to her plan for a new candidature, this time
at Geneva. She took a room there in January, 1799, and constituted herself his
election agent to the grave scandal of the Swiss and the added affliction of
Jacques. Benjamin polled heavily but was not elected. “I can understand the
wrath of ‘ Our Lady ’,” remarked Madame de Charrière viciously.

Benjamin went back to Paris. Germaine followed him in April and opened her
own house in the rue de Grenelle. She found everything changed. Barras,

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recognised as blackguard, had lost much of his power ; all the dogs were at each
other’s throats and nobody knew or cared which was going to survive. Meanwhile
the whole of Bonaparte’s conquest of Italy had been lost again to the Austrians,
with whom Russian forces were co-operating, and an Austrian army was
advancing through Zurich. The treasury was empty, the paper-money (the
assignats) was become worthless, and the great fleet in which Bonaparte had
sailed to Egypt had been destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. In her evil
hour France turned to the only man who seemed possessed of any kind of
authority or reputation, the Abbe Sieyès. He had been on a mission to Berlin to
attend the coronation of King Frederick William III. On May 16, 1799, he was
appointed President of the Directory, and let it be known that, as the Republic
was the child of Reason, it must now find its salvation in a return to its mother’s
knee. In his private memoirs he wrote :

“ They (his fellow-Directors) pursue me, and I hate their society because they do
not believe in moral goodness. They offend me, and my first act, if I gave the
matter my attention, would be to say to them : ‘ You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves ; because you are scoundrels and villains, you lightly suppose that
everyone must be like you.’ I shall end by hating them.”

Germaine imagined that she was listening once more to the voice of Jacques, and
wrote to that effect to her father, who seems to have felt a little jealous.

“ You appear to be very much pleased,” he wrote to her, “at the ascendency of
Citizen Sieyès : I think myself that we can congratulate the Republic on it.”

Congratulation did not last long. The architect of constitutions was no tamer of
lions ; when they roared he ran away. The roarings of the Jacobins in Paris, of
the Royalists in Brittany and other remote districts, robbed him of his courage in
a few weeks. He gave up the presidency of the Directory to a nominee of the
Jacobins, Gohier, who, with his friend Moulins, had just been thrust upon that
body, and hid himself, for all his fine words about moral goodness, behind
Barras’s chair. For that man still had his following in the thieves’ kitchen of high
finance and among the women. Sieyès’ eclipse at the hands of the Jacobins was
followed, immediately, by reprisals against those who had smitten the Jacobins
on the 18th Fructidor. Germaine and Benjamin were ordered to leave Paris.

He went to his country house, she returned to Coppet. She snatched up her pen
and, in great haste, wrote a pamphlet entitled Des Circonstances Actuelles qui
peuvent terminer la Révolution et des Principes qui doivent fonder la
République en France. It was never published, for events moved faster, even,
than her pen ; but it affords a useful summary of Sieyès’ views, of which it is, for
the most part, a rehash. 15 The Republic, she urged, ought to be built anew on a
basis of Reason, by the hands of philosophers working under the protection of a
great soldier. (Sieyès had employed the phrase : “ Who can establish anything
with boobies and talkers ? We need two things : namely, a head and a sword.”)
He had a new constitution in his pocket and was on the look-out for a soldier to
protect him against the roaring lions while he carried it into effect. Germaine had

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already decided who this soldier was to be. Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, the
meaning of which was hidden from her, appealed to her stagy instincts. She
pictured him in the land of Cleopatra, who, as she often recalled, had been a
seductive rather than a beautiful woman. He was greater than Alexander ;
greater than Cæsar. “ How she would have loved,” remarked Madame de
Chastenay, “to go and join him among the ruins of Thebes and share his destiny.”

Germaine’s mouth watered to devour Bonaparte. “He is,” she wrote in those
summer days, “the most fearless warrior, the deepest thinker, the most amazing
genius that history has ever known. . . . What Republican has not felt regret
that . . . he is not yet forty ? ”16 News had reached her in Paris that the hero had
sent for her book on the Passions. She had written at once to her father to
proclaim the tidings, but Jacques, with Narbonne and Ribbing in mind, had
shied.

“ So,” he replied, 17 “your glory has spread to the banks of the Nile ! Alexander of
Macedon called philosophers and wise men from the four corners of the world to
dispute with him ; the Corsican Alexander, to save time, enters only into
communication with the mind of Madame de Staël. He knows how to do things.”

So much for the “sword.” The “head,” with apologies to General Bonaparte, must
be a civilian, Jacques for preference, failing him, Sieyès, with Benjamin as second
fiddle and herself as nursing-mother of the Elect. As she warmed to her work,
splendid visions unrolled themselves among the mists on the mountain tops
across the lake. France must have the English Constitution, modified suitably to
Republican uses ; the Upper Chamber must be composed of the elite of brains
and personality, for example, “a man whose reputation increases year by year, M.
Benjamin Constant.” But no sans-culottes.

“ In France at least we may always hope that talent will be given the highest
place ; but talent is the exception, and in regard to ability men are now, or now
think they are, more on one level than formerly, and therefore the weight of
influence and consideration will rest permanently on wealth. We must not try to
fly in the face of this natural order of things. . . . (The People consists of) a mass
of egoistic men who make fun of the enthusiasts who get themselves talked
about. These egoists manage to live out their lives far from public affairs, in
private businesses and concerns dealing with trade and property. Below these we
find the vulgar herd which is moved by nothing but superstition and ranting.”

How could such people be induced to choose wise rulers ? The populace, having
destroyed the old aristocracy, had created “a peerage of criminals” to replace it
and “the Republic has run away from its guides.” So “we must hasten the work of
time by all the best methods of public instruction and reestablish the ascendancy
of mind and institutions. . . . The Government must encourage thinkers of a
certain order by every kind of favour and distinction. These men, through the
medium of a free Press, must enlighten the nation . . . for men and women of
letters are the source of all the good that France may hope for. . . .” But :

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“ The Catholic religion, which we wish to destroy, must be cut off from all
distinctions of ambition and interest, and no priest shall be allowed to hold public
office. Anyone applying for any public office must be required to make a
declaration altogether incompatible with Catholic dogmas. In this way we shall
weed out from this religion all honest men ready to be enlightened and all
ambitious hypocrites who will be disgusted with the check on their temporal
advancement. And above all, I should insist on the propagation in France of
another faith, by all the means of which a free state, backed by public opinion,
can so easily dispose.”

She was for a form of Protestantism not greatly different from Robespierre’s
worship of the Supreme Being.

“ What idea can we have of the perfectibility of the human spirit unless we can
form an idea of the Absolute in mental and moral value ? . . . Only morality, in
conjunction with religious opinions, will give a complete code for all the actions
of life, a code which unites men in a sort of pact of souls, preliminary and
indispensable to all social pacts.” 18

She had two ends in view in writing this pamphlet—namely, to give Bonaparte a
lead and to interest him in herself. She had no doubt that he would come back
from Egypt ; her loins were girded and her lamp was burning. Sieyès in Paris felt
less sure. The news from Cairo suggested that the French were in evil plight and
that the General would be lucky if he managed to beat off the Turkish armies
which surrounded him. In these circumstances the Mother of Constitutions
bethought him of other soldiers able to serve his purpose. Hoche was dead ;
Joubert killed. There remained Bernadotte and Moreau. It was Hobson’s
choice. He had dismissed Bernadotte from the post of Minister of War because of
his plottings with the Jacobins ; Moreau was timid. Sieyès, whom Robespierre
had called “the mole of the Revolution,” found himself at the end of his burrow.
He was walking in the gardens of the Luxembourg with Moreau one day in the
late autumn of 1799 when they were joined by Lucien Bonaparte, deputy of
Corsica to the Council of Five Hundred. Lucien came to tell them that his
brother, Napoleon, had just landed in France.

“ There’s your man,” said Moreau, and vanished.

Sieyès turned to Lucien : “ The die is cast,” he declared. “ It is round your

brother that we must rally.”

In every village of France men were embracing one another. They spoke not of
Bonaparte, but of “ The Saviour.” 19 The sound of joy-bells, marching like an
army, laughed, thrilled, exulted from Fréjus to Lyons, from Lyons to Paris. The
booming of guns too ; the cheers of men ; the songs of girls. The General, pale,
very grave, could rarely be induced to speak to the frenzied people who mobbed
his carriage. When he did speak, it was only of the plight of France, this “great
nation,” as he called it, which had forgiven in advance the loss of its fleet at

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Aboukir and the failure to open a new sea passage to India, because in Egypt its
claim to world power had been upheld before all men.

“ I am able to-day,” wrote Germaine from Coppet to Meister on October 15,

1799, 20 “to tell you wonderful news. The guns are being fired in Geneva in
honour of the arrival of Bonaparte at Fréjus and later at Lyons, which city he and
Berthier passed through on the 12th. It is said that he has returned with 1,000
men, having made a treaty of peace with Turkey. Be that as it may, this is a great
event. This man . . . doesn’t find it necessary to his happiness to make war on the
Republic. His destiny is invincible. . . . I am off, then (to Paris), without saying
good-bye.”

Germaine believed that she could now defy the Jacobins and their order of
expulsion. Sieyès, on the contrary, discovered new fears of these “tigers and
lions” as the time to attack them drew nearer. Robespierre’s death had not cured
this timid man of his dread of Robespierre’s friends ; could he trust young
Bonaparte ? Generals came and went ; few, no matter how great their
popularity, stayed long. The “mole of the Revolution” went underground again
and dug out a maze of tunnels. That none of his enemies saw him at work is the
best tribute to his efficiency. Early in November the job was done. 21 At his
instance the Council of Ancients, in which he commanded a majority, was
summoned for the morning of November 9, 1799 (18th Brumaire), at six o’clock,
that is to say before dawn. He submitted that France was in danger, and
proposed that special sittings of the two Chambers should take place on the
morrow at St. Cloud and that, meanwhile, the command of the troops in Paris
should be given to General Bonaparte. He did not disguise that he was concerned
to prevent any attempt at intimidation by the Parisian mob. The motion carried,
messengers were sent to summon Bonaparte. They found him entertaining some
hundreds of soldiers, mostly general officers, to breakfast. The rue de la Victoire
was crowded with officers, so that the messengers had to fight their way to the
door. Among the civilians in the house were Talleyrand and Fouché, the latter
returned from hiding to be Minister of Police. Bonaparte, having read the
summons, stepped out on the balcony.

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 “Citizens,” he cried, “France is
in danger. The Ancients have just decided to remove the Parliament to St. Cloud
and have appointed me Commander-in-Chief of all the troops in the 17th Military
Division of the National Guard. I rely on you to help me. Will you help me ? ”

His guests answered him by grasping the hilts of their swords, a curious thudding
sound, the more impressive because dawn had, as yet, scarcely broken. He
embraced Josephine, descended, mounted his horse, and, followed by a long
cavalcade, rode down to the Tuileries. Some of the veterans of his Italian
campaign were on duty round the palace ; he spoke to them before entering and
got their blessing. “Citizen representatives,” he told the Ancients, “the Republic
was on the point of perishing. Your decree has saved it. Woe to those who shall
attempt to foment disorder ! Aided by all my comrades-in-arms, here assembled
around me, I shall find means to frustrate such efforts. In vain examples are
sought in the past to disturb your minds. Nothing in history resembles the
Eighteenth Century and nothing in this century resembles its close. We will have
the Republic ; we will have it founded on genuine liberty, on the representative
system. We will have it ; I swear in my own name and in the names of my
comrades-in-arms.”

By this voluntary oath, the oath to uphold the existing constitution, required of
every general on receiving a command, was avoided, an indication of the
thoroughness of Seyès’ preparations. Bonaparte followed up his address to the

152
Ancients by reviewing the troops, and the review was still in progress under a
cloudless sky when the members of the Council of Five Hundred, in which the
Jacobins were strongly represented, began to arrive for their sitting at 11 o’clock.
The Jacobins had not been informed of the early meeting of the Ancients, and
realised, as they watched Bonaparte riding up and down the lines and heard the
soldiers and the crowd cheering him, that Seyès had out-manoeuvred them. The
moment the session of the Five Hundred began, detachments of troops were sent
to occupy the Hôtel de Ville and the headquarters of the Sections, and notices
were posted forbidding loitering in the streets. Some Jacobin deputies protested
against going to St. Cloud, but were reminded by Lucien Bonaparte, who was in
the chair, that the Ancients had acted within their rights. Lucien refused to allow
any discussion. 22

Before midday Paris was lost to the Jacobins. Seyès and his fidus Achates, Roger
Ducos, resigned their Directorships. Of the three remaining Directors, two,
Goheir and Moulins, were Jacobins. Nobody knew exactly where Barras stood,
but, as his resignation was necessary if the power of the executive was to be
destroyed, Bonaparte sent Talleyrand, accompanied by an admiral, to demand it
of him. And Barras, aware that every dog has his day, submitted. Seyès, well
content, but anxious, advised Bonaparte to lay his hands on some fifty of the
Jacobin members of the Five Hundred who were likely to give trouble on the
morrow. He was met by a refusal.

“I swore in the morning,” said the General, “to protect the representatives of the
Nation. I will not, now, violate my oath.”

Late that evening Germaine drove into Paris. Benjamin met her at the gates and
told of the day’s events about which, however, she already knew something.

“ I arrived in Paris from Switzerland,” she wrote, 23 “on the night of the 18th
Brumaire. As I was changing horses a few leagues from the city, I was informed
that the Director Barras, with an escort ofgendarmes, had just passed through on
his way to his estate of Gros Bois. The postillions gave me bits of news, and their
way of talking made these more lively. It was the first time since the Revolution
that I had heard on everybody’s lips the name of one man. . . . The entire city was
excited about the issue of the coming day, and without any doubt most honest
men, fearing the return to power of the Jacobins, hoped that General Bonaparte
would triumph.”

November 10, the 19th Brumaire, witnessed such an exodus from Paris as
recalled the march of the mob to Versailles ten years earlier. Before dawn the
road to St. Cloud was crowded with vehicles. A warm sun brought the people out,
all in their best clothes, good-humoured, merry with the first draught of that
excitement which was Bonaparte. Grenadiers stood at the gates of Marie
Antoinette’s chateau to prevent the passage of any but deputies and officers on
duty. In the orangery of the chateau workmen were busy till late in the morning,
building benches for the Five Hundred. Seyès came early and left behind him at
the gates a coach-and-six, ready for a long journey in case his plan miscarried.

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Bonaparte remained closeted with him till the Councils assembled, and then
visited the Ancients to explain his proposals. Excitement strangled oratory. He
broke down, faltered, forgot his speech and became incoherent. The scene ended
nevertheless in a vote in his favour. 24 Pale as death, he entered the orangery with
an escort of four tall grenadiers. The Jacobin deputies leaped to their feet
shouting : “ Soldiers here : away with him ! ” He was jostled before he could
open his mouth. Lucien, in the chair, arrayed in his toga, kept ringing his bell
and calling for order. But the hubbub increased. Somebody moved that General
Bonaparte be declared an outlaw. The President refused to accept the motion.
Shaken and fainting, Bonaparte was helped from the chamber. He mounted his
horse and surveyed the proceedings through the window. He saw Lucien strip off
his toga and descend from the Tribune. The Jacobins fell on Lucien. Bonaparte
sent his grenadiers to his brother’s rescue. Then both brothers addressed the
troops, telling them that a handful of deputies in the pay of England were
threatening the representatives of the Nation. The grenadiers were under the
command of Murat, who was in love with Caroline Bonaparte. They seemed to
hesitate. Lucien drew his sword and declared he would plunge it in his brother’s
heart if, at any time, he raised hand against the Republic. Murat gave the order
to advance and clear the orangery. The rattle of bayonets reached the deputies ;
then the roll of drums. The Jacobins climbed out through the windows and fled
across the lawns.

Benjamin witnessed that last agony of the Revolution and sent a courier to
Germaine with the good news. He had advised her, earlier, that the Jacobins had
won, and she was sitting on her boxes ready to flee. She broke down now and
sobbed with joy. At midnight, in the orangery, the Councils, purged of Jacobins,
abolished the Directorate and appointed Bonaparte, Seyès and Roger Ducos as
“Consuls.”

1 Considerations, Part III, Chap. XXVI ; also Talleyrand, Mémoires, Vol. I, p.

259, and Paul Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 4.

2 Considerations, Part III, Chap. XXVI. See also Hortense, Mémoires, Vol. I, and
Gourgaud, Journal inédite de Sainte-Hélène, Vol. I, p. 12. See also Madame de
Staël et Napoléon, p. 6. The word used about Madame de Staël’s attentions to
Napoleon is harcela, and this Gautier considers to be fully justified.

3 Napoleon : Mémoires, Vol. I, p. 368.

4 This Story is given in The Memorial, Vol. I, Chap. iii. The authority is not,
perhaps, as good as might be wished, but, all the same, the reply of Madame de
Staël has the authentic ring.

5 The tutor of the Emperor Alexander of Russia.

6 Considerations, Part III, Chap. XXVI.

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7 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 148.

8 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 150.

9 Considerations, Part III, p. 214.

10 Necker was sttill on the list of emigrants and so liable to be put to death if he
fell into French hands.

11 Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 125. It should be noted that

there was no divorce, as has often been stated, but only a legal separation.

12 Considerations, Part III, p. 236.

13 Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 127.

14 See his Correspondence with his aunt and cousin.

15 Knowledge about this manuscript is due to the diligent and scholarly

researches of M. Paul Gautier. He notes (Madame de Staël et Napoléon) : “ This
manuscript is deposited with other papers of Madame de Staël’s in
the Bibliothèque Nationale under the title ‘ Nouvelles acquisitions
françaises 1300.’ It was written in the last months of 1798 or at the beginning of
1799. (See the study we have published on this subject in the Revue des Deux
Mondes of Nov. 1, 1899.).” It lay for years in the desk of Madame Récamier.
Several quotations from this work follow in the text.

16 And so eligible for election to the Directory.

17 Letter in the Archives of Coppet, quoted by Paul Gautier (Madame de Staël et

Napoléon, p. 13).

18 The preceding quotations are from Des Circonstances actuelles (see, for a full
account and criticism of this work, A.G. Larg’s Madame de Staël).

19 Hortense and Josephine heard this title spoken on their way to meet
Bonaparte. Hortense : Mémoires.

20 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister.

21 Some time elapsed before Bonaparte and Sieyès were brought together, for
they distrusted each other. Sieyès could not forget that the general had professed
Jacobin sentiments and been the friend of Augustin Robespierre. Bonaparte
despised Sieyès as a dreamer, though he realised his importance. Talleyrand
effected their reconciliation.

22 Lucien had been elected to the chair of the Five Hundred as a tribute to his
brother. He was one of the members sitting for a Corsican seat.

155
23 Considerations, Part III, p. 237.

24 There are numberless accounts of this scene. Bourrienne’s is one of the best.
He was present. Mémoires.

156
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXVII

BACK TO VERSAILLES

GERMAINE reopened her salon next day and abandoned herself to such
transports of joy that her father, to whom she wrote regularly, felt it necessary to
rebuke her.

“Your nerves have got the better of you,” he wrote a week after the beginning of
the Consulate. “It’s true, everything hangs on a single life. But he’s young, and
fate will take care of him for us.” He wrote again on December 16 : “ The general
delirium which surrounds you ... your enthusiasm for Bonaparte. ... I
congratulate you on being so greatly rejoiced of his glory.” And again : “You’re
all spell-bound. I congratulate you not on feeling so uplifted but on feeling so
happy.”

Germaine awaited her call to the hero’s side in breathless excitement. The
makers of the new Constitution, with Sieyès at their head, came every night to the
rue de Grenelle to refresh themselves with her wit. Talleyrand, too, confirmed in
his office of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fouché, Minister of Police, Lucien
Bonaparte, Minister of the Interior, Joseph Bonaparte, the Consul’s eldest
brother, Elisa Bonaparte his sister, Benjamin, Mathieu. She was back again in
the spacious days of 1789 and 1790. If only Bonaparte himself would haste ! She
exhausted speech in praising him—his wisdom, his clemency, his tolerance, his
virtue, his glory. His brothers were bidden tell him what she felt. But when he
offered no sign the light began to fade in her black eyes.

Sieyès produced his last and greatest constitution. Bonaparte disembowelled it,
made its author, as a consolation prize, President of his new Senate and replaced
him and his friend Roger Ducos in the Consulate by Cambacères and Lebrun. On
December 15, 1799, the First Consul’s own constitution was promulgated. It
restored absolute power to the head of the Government, abolished popular
election altogether, but provided for a Council of State to be nominated by the
First Consul, and two popular Chambers, the Tribunate and the Legislative Body,
to be nominated by the Council of State. Versailles had risen from the dead.

“The Revolution,” said Bonaparte, “is now anchored to the principles which gave
it origin. It is finished.” Louis XVI had said much the same thing in 1789, when,
after receiving the submission of the nobility and clergy, he had offered, within
the limits of his own absolute authority, equal justice, equal opportunity and
equal taxation to all citizens. Germaine felt, suddenly, that she had been exiled
from history. Had Necker, then, counted for nothing ? Had the Feuillants,
Narbonne, Mathieu and the others, counted for nothing ? Had the Constitutional
Republicans, Benjamin, for example, counted for nothing ? Who was this
Corsican who, by implication, blamed the children of Liberty for the sorrows of

157
France ? She let her tongue run as freely in criticism as she had let it run before
in praise. Bonaparte sent his brother Joseph to remonstrate.

This was a tall, good-looking man with the grave brow and straight Grecian nose
of the Bonapartes, but weak “of mouth, as are wine-bibbers and lovers of many
women. He was intelligent above the ordinary, a student who had profited by the
10,000 volumes in his father’s library ; but knowledge had not brought peace of
mind. Giuseppe Buonaparte, Corsican, Italian, felt himself lost in a world where
his rights as eldest son counted for nothing. Too sensible of the value of money
to dream for an instant of renouncing his share in Napoleon’s good luck, he
continued to regard that good luck as a slap in the face. Providence had been ill-
informed. Giuseppe lurked always behind the smiling mask of Joseph, troubling
his kindly eyes and imparting bitterness, sometimes, to his speech. Germaine
had known how to address, flatter and console ; Joseph held her in high regard.
He began by apologising for his brother. France was at war with England and
Austria, to say nothing of smaller states. She was bankrupt, torn by factions. A
strong hand, therefore, was necessary.

“My brother is hurt by your attitude to him,” said Joseph.1 “ ‘ Why,’ he asked me
yesterday, ‘ doesn’t Madame de Staël attach herself to my Government ? What
does she want ? The payment of the money lent by her father ? I’ll order the
money to be paid. Leave to live in Paris ? I’ll give it her. What on earth does she
want ? ’ ”

So, at last, the hero had condescended to notice her existence. Her eyes sparkling
with joy, she replied :

“It isn’t a question of what I want, but of what I think.” France, she resolved,
should hear what she thought. She wrote at once to her friend Chabaud-Latour, a
member of the Committee for organising the new popular assemblies, begging
him to introduce Benjamin to Bonaparte.

“ M. Chabaud-Latour,” says Aimé Martin, 2 who had the story from him, “took
Benjamin Constant to the First Consul and introduced him. Bonaparte remarked
that he had read Constant’s works and had been much interested in them. He
congratulated him. Benjamin returned compliment for compliment and then
expressed his wish to be made a member of the Tribunate.

“ ‘ And why not ? ’ said Bonaparte. ‘ Yes, that can be arranged. We’ll see to it.’

“ At these words Benjamin warmly assured the General of his devotion to him,
exclaiming :

“ ‘ Believe me, I’m with you. I’m not one of those ideologues who think
everything can be done by thought’ (a hit at Sieyès, now critical of Bonaparte). ‘
Give me deeds ; if you nominate me, you can count on me.’

158
“ They parted. M. Chabaud-Latour remarked, as he and Benjamin were
descending the stairs, that he was going to see Sieyès. Benjamin said he would
accompany him. He didn’t need an introduction ; he knew Sieyès. He wanted to
see him, to talk to him. Sieyès’ office was in the same street as Bonaparte’s,
directly opposite it. They crossed the street, ran up the steps and entered.
Benjamin Constant succeeded in getting a short interview. He asked Sieyès to
have him made a Tribune, and said to him :

“ ‘ Well, you know that I detest force. Never will I be friend to the sword. What I
love are principles, thoughts, justice. So if I’m happy enough to get your support,
you can count on me, for I’m Bonaparte’s strongest opponent.’

“ M. Chabaud was astounded by the coolness of Benjamin.”

Bonaparte nominated Benjamin. Instantly that man became his bitterest critic.

“At eleven o’clock at night,” said the General, “he begged for the post on his
knees. At midnight, when he had got it, he began to insult me.”3

Germaine gathered round her everybody who had a grievance against Bonaparte.
Her salon was transformed overnight from a place of worship to a slaughter-
house. She exerted her agile wit to make sport of his constitution ; and not of
that only. He, himself, and his worthy wife, his mother too, earned shares of her
attention. She had found a new friend, Juliette Récamier, a lovely girl of twenty-
one, with a sharp tongue, the wife of an elderly millionaire.4 They competed in
making epigrams about the Bonaparte family ; that good old woman, the dam of
the lively brood, called by her sons and daughters “Mama Letizia,” with her bony
features, her work-worn hands and her Corsican French ; the noisy, insolent
minxes, her younger daughters, Pauline and Caroline, who were giving
themselves airs already ; above all, Josephine, Barras’s castoff, who had so
narrowly escaped divorce for her affair with Hippolyte Charles. The great ladies
of the rue de Grenelle looked down their noses at the other salon in the
Luxembourg where Consul Bonaparte’s wife laboured to receive Consul
Bonaparte’s friends in the humble spirit of a woman who has just had a new leaf
turned over for her by her husband. What a dreadful, dowdy, dreary caricature
of bon ton !

Bonaparte, instructed by Fouché, heard it all. He was busy ; let them have rope
enough. On New Year’s Day, 1800, the Tribunate met in the Palais Royal, among
the gaming-houses and brothels. Two days later the first of Germaine’s
champions opened the attack by expressing his pleasure that they were sitting in
the building which had been a cradle of the Revolution and where,

“ When people talk of an idol fifteen days old one can remind oneself of another
idol, aged fifteen centuries, which was shattered to atoms.”

159
Bonaparte defended himself in the Moniteur against this charge of tyranny. One
of his friends, on his behalf, called attention to the “restless and disturbing
ambitions of a wellknown person.”

Was it true, asked the writer, that the Tribunate was to degenerate into an
“organised opposition” (Germaine’s phrase) and to make bad blood everywhere
at the moment when the Government was labouring to restore good-will ?
The salon in the rue de Grenelle blazed that night with wit and candles, and
though familiar faces, notably that of Talleyrand, were absent, Lucien Bonaparte
was among the guests. Benjamin approached Germaine.

“You see,” he said, “your drawing-room is full of people whom you like. But if I
deliver my speech to-morrow it will become a desert. Have you thought of that ?
”

She eyed him coldly. Would he too leave her ?

“One must be true to one’s principles.”5

Benjamin delivered his speech. His bitter tongue, all the more bitter because he
had no stomach for this job, jested at the rule that the Tribunate might discuss
new laws but must not touch them. Then he became eloquent with the turgid
eloquence of Germaine.

“ We owe it to the People,” he cried, “to save it from these laws, if that is possible.
This is not our own cause which we are pleading but the People’s ! ... There is
only servility here and silence, a silence to which all Europe is listening.”

Bonaparte did not take his Benjamin too seriously. “There are a dozen or more
metaphysicians in the Tribunate,” he remarked, “who should be drowned. Lice
on my clothes ; but I’ll get rid of them. Do they suppose that I’m going to allow
myself to be attacked as Louis XVI was attacked ? ”

The Jacobin Press, under Fouché’s guiding hand, now gave Germaine a whiff of
grapeshot.

“ It isn’t your fault that you’re fat,” one inspired pen declared, “but it is your fault
that you’re an intriguer. Mend your manners, for your kingdom is not of this
world. You know the way back to Switzerland. Be off, before something nasty
happens to you ... and take Benjamin with you. ... Let his light shine in the Swiss
Senate. ...”

Said a Royalist writer :

“ She writes about philosophy which she doesn’t understand,

about morality which she doesn’t practice, about the virtue of women which
she doesn’t possess. ... ‘ Benjamin,’ says she, ‘ shall be Consul. I’ll give the

160
Finances to Papa, Justice to my uncle, an ambassadorship somewhere to my
husband. As for me, I’ll keep an eye on the lot.’ ”6

Half a gale, with Bonaparte at the bellows ! She gave a dinner in Benjamin’s
honour. Ten of the guests, including Joseph Bonaparte and Talleyrand, asked to
be excused. What could it mean ? “ Who has been more enthusiastic for
Bonaparte than me ? ” she wrote to Roederer, Bonaparte’s friend.
Her salon emptied. Fouché called one day during business hours. He bowed
many times. No doubt, he said, the First Consul had been misinformed, but that
speech of M. Constant’s ...

“M. Constant,” cried she, “is a man of too lofty a mind to take his views from a
woman.”7

Her despairing eyes saw the Minister of Police bend again before her as he
offered the suggestion that a few days passed in the country, at Saint-Ouen, for
example, would prove beneficial to her health.

She had to go. Talleyrand was giving a ball on the 25th of February, at which
Bonaparte had promised to be present. She wrote to beg an invitation “in the
name of our old friendship.” The Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that he
advised her to keep away “in the name of our old friendship.” He did not send
her an invitation. She returned to Paris and got herself asked to an evening party
at Madame de Montesson’s in the hope of running her quarry to earth. She came
in a tremendous dress of grey satin.8 There was no Bonaparte. Nobody would
speak to her, and she stood alone in a corner of the drawing-room until, at last,
Delphine de Sabran9 took pity and murmured a few words. These people were of
no account. But how to forgive the Bishop ? The more she thought about his
refusal to invite her to his ball the more bitter she grew. Fouché had behaved
better.

“Fouché,” she wrote, 10 “often spoke of virtue as of an old wives’ tale. But a very
wise head made him choose decent behaviour as the most rational, so that his
wits brought him where other people arrive under the promptings of
conscience. ... I had rendered M. de Talleyrand the most vital services and, what
is more important, had been his unflinching friend for years. He was going to
give a ball, and Madame B. (Josephine), who was always kind to the underdog
when possible, had promised that she would arrange for me to have a talk with
the First Consul and had expressed a hope that this talk would completely
remove the anxiety I felt that I might be sent into exile. I counted the days to the
ball, never dreaming that M. de Talleyrand might not invite me. But he didn’t
invite me. No, not even after one of my friends had explained to him how much
my peace of mind depended on being invited. That man, who during ten years
had spent most of his life in my house, who had me to thank for his return from
America, for the management of his business affairs in his absence, that man to
whose good luck, I swear it, I had powerfully contributed and from whom I
received ten letters in which he swore that he owed me his life, that man gave the
signal to my persecutors. ... There is a man very well fitted for this world’s

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commerce. ... He says little and so is able to weigh his words. As he never learns
anything except by listening, he hates arguments, where his lack of solid
knowledge is exposed. He has no eloquence because eloquence demands
movement in the spirit and he has disciplined himself to such an extent as to be
unable, even if he wishes to do so, to let himself go. He cannot express himself,
because to speak easily one must be able to write easily, and, with all his gifts, he
lacks the capacity to write even a page of all the works which have been published
under his name.

“ But, when he likes, his smallest gestures possess an inimitable good taste. He
knows how to possess himself of the intelligence of the whole world. And yet,
excellent judge and most discerning critic as he is, he is also strangely barren, a
man who needs both power and riches for his mind’s as well as for his body’s
comfort. Possessed of them he will let fall, as occasion offers, sarcasms or
compliments, having taken care, beforehand, to be surrounded by people ready to
pick them up and prepare the way for more. ... Mask-like face, silent when it suits
him, insolent in the most calculated fashion when that is necessary, displaying
polished and charming manners when he wants to ... he cannot inspire trust in
anyone.”

On February 19 Bonaparte moved into the Palace of the Tuileries. Germaine

watched him ride by to the house of the Kings of France, where, during ten years,
the revolution had had its lair. Others observed the sudden bowing of his head as
the blackened standards of Arcole and Rivoli were carried past. She saw only the
well-disciplined smartness with which his lackeys lowered the steps of his
carriage before he mounted his horse.11

“As for him,” she sneered, “he looked at nobody and thanked nobody.”

She heard from him, however, through Joseph. On March 19 Joseph brought her
a letter from his brother which declared :12

“M. de Staël is in destitution while his wife is giving dinners and balls. If you’re
still in communication with this woman, might you not suggest to her the
advisability of making her husband an allowance of from £500 to £1,000 a year ?
Or have we reached times where people can trample underfoot not good manners
only but duties also as sacred as those binding children to their fathers, without
at the same time forfeiting the regard of honest folk ? One doesn’t, of course,
judge Madame de Staël’s behaviour by male standards. But would any man who
was heir to the fortune of M. Necker, and who had, for long, enjoyed the privilege
attaching to a distinguished name (de Staël) leave his wife in penury while he
lived in abundance and expect at the same time to be received in decent society ?
”

It was the bitterest moment of her life, though she knew that her father had given
Eric Magnus £1,000 to go home to Sweden, when, for the second time, he lost his
job, and another £1,000 on his unwelcome return to Paris with a small pension
added.13 “No money, no Swiss,” says the French proverb, and where there are

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proverbs there is sensitiveness. But it was not only the financial matter that
troubled her ; she was still living with Benjamin. Did this devil of a Bonaparte
propose to attack her on the score of her private morals ? In lively fear she
appealed to her father, who sent Eric Magnus money and wrote his daughter
letters full of good advice and fulsome praise of Bonaparte—letters meant to be
opened and read by the police. For example :

“ Your hero Bonaparte is admired by all. Be wise. Be prudent.”

Joseph consented to be her advocate with his brother. “She’ll adore you,” he
declared, “if you show her the smallest kindness.”

“No good,” said Bonaparte viciously, “I don’t want her adoration. She’s too fat.”14

In April 1800 Germaine published a new book of 600 pages entitled De la

Littérature, considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions Sociales. Her first
object in writing this book had been to suggest a form of soothing syrup for
Terrorists, but before it was finished these had gone to Sanson for more radical
treatment and she had come into association with Bonaparte. De la Littérature,
therefore, was reshaped for new uses. Its readers were called to witness that the
human spirit—by virtue of its perfectibility—marches from strength to strength,
ascending ever to higher planes of goodness. She had said it all before but felt
compelled now to discuss the Reign of Terror which, after all, was an expression
of the human spirit. The fault—would-be dilators please note !—had been the
denial of Liberty. And the moral : governments could not accomplish for men
and women what (with the help of literature) these must accomplish for
themselves. She was at pains to indicate the kind of literature most likely to
prove useful. It was the literature of passion, eloquent, emotional literature,
appealing directly to the heart, the seat of “perfectibility.” In short, “love
prepares the soul for virtue”; love and liberty are aspects of the environment in
which alone the march to goodness can take place. And literature is the
guarantee of both. A ruler ought, therefore, to show special consideration to
writers. She mentioned Ossian, Bonaparte’s favourite, in the same breath with
Homer.

Bonaparte tried to read the book.

“ I sat down with it,” he told Lucien,15 “for at least a quarter of an hour, in the
hope of making something of it. Devil take me if I can make head or tail. Not
that there are not plenty of words, big words too. But all the concentration of
which my mind is capable has not been enough to make sense of a single one of
these ideas which I am told are so deep.”

Small wonder : Bonaparte was an empiricist, in peace as in war ; an empiricist,

moreover, possessed of a respectable body of information about human nature.
“Savage man is a dog,”16 he had declared in Egypt. He said now : “Men are
always and everywhere the same,”17 using the tones of a research worker who has
proofs of what he alleges. It was not, as Germaine supposed, an indictment ;

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merely a statement of fact. Bonaparte was well enough content with human
nature. There was the issue between the man and the woman. He was labouring
to enlist human nature in his enterprises ; she to change it. But the cleavage
went deeper than that. What she called “the pressure of the social order” had
involved her in “social suffering,” by hampering her activities as a lover. She was
anti-social in the name of the soul which seeks to be prepared for virtue.
Bonaparte, on the contrary, held that religion, discipline, and maternity were the
real needs of women. His dealings with Josephine had convinced him of that.

In April 1800, when Germaine’s book appeared, an Austrian army, with which
the British fleet was co-operating, was besieging Genoa, after having driven the
French out of Northern Italy. The Alps were about to be lost. A second Austrian
army, on the Rhine, awaited the signal to attack. France was at war with
England, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Russia, Sweden, Holland and Turkey,
all of which countries were allied in some fashion, usually as the recipients of
subsidies, with England. Bonaparte, unmindful of Germaine’s advice, suppressed
sixty-three Parisian newspapers and then, on May 6, 1800, left the city
unostentatiously. Next day Germaine left Paris also. They took the same road to
Switzerland, by Dijon, but he reached Geneva long before her. There he spent an
hour with Necker, who seemed to him “a big, fat, wheezy headmaster,” rather ill-
informed even on financial matters. Jacques tactfully avoided mention of his
£100,000, but declared his readiness to shoulder once more, for his country’s
sake, the burden of office. He excused Germaine with such ample diligence that
the Corsican, always susceptible to pleas by parent for child or child for parent,
undertook to forgive her. Necker, when Germaine arrived a few days later, told
her that he had found “nothing very wonderful” in Bonaparte who, for the rest,
had been very kind both about her and about himself.18

She was tired, run-down, disappointed, and not with Bonaparte only. Benjamin
was trying to jilt her.

“ I don’t know,” wrote Mathieu to Albertine Adrienne,19 “if you will reach the
same conclusion as myself when you see her—a conclusion I do my best to avoid
since our friend assures me, so earnestly, that it is mistaken—namely, that this
fellow, by reason of her friendly feelings for him, contrives all the time, in one
way or another and usually wittingly, to make her miserable.”

The excitement of Bonaparte’s crossing of the Alps by the Grand St. Bernard,
which took place within a few days of her return, supplied a tonic. She travelled
up the lake, to get as near as possible to the great event. On May 20 she wrote to
Meister :20

“ Did you resist the temptation to get a glimpse of the hero ? He’s off to conquer
Italy for the second time and sign a new peace of Campo-Formio. Isn’t it
historic ? ”

On June 14 the battle of Marengo was fought. By noon the Austrians were
everywhere victorious ; before sundown Bonaparte had destroyed them.

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Unhappily the news travelled in instalments : the news of defeat and then the
news of victory. The First Consul’s enemies in Paris (the number now included
his brother Lucien) were imprudent enough to show their hands for a moment.
“Do they think,” asked the General on his return, “that I’m a second Louis XVI ?”
Happily for herself, Germaine was out of that intrigue. Her hero-worship of
Bonaparte had taken a new lease of life so that she repented her own and
Benjamin’s attacks on him.

“ This man,” she wrote to Juliette Récamier, “has a will strong enough to lift the
world.”

And to Gérando,21 Mathieu’s friend, who had rented Saint Ouen from her :

“ The marvels of this Italian campaign would turn any head. Enthusiasm has
wrung from me—even from me—praises which spring from my amazed wonder.
The supporters of the Government will be pleased with me in the coming winter,
those of them at least who want praise without servility.”

She began to study German and groaned at her task.

“ I can’t undertand,” she wrote to Meister in July,22 “how you write French so
well, since you are so good at German. It seems to me that the one language
excludes the other.”

In September, however, she was “transported with eagerness ” to master the

German language, which kept her mind occupied. “Benjamin has just left here,”
she added ; “this isn’t a happy time in my life.” In October her gloom had
deepened.

“ I’ve come to the conclusion,” she wrote to Gérando, “that sorrow is the portion
of men. I live with a heartache as some others live with physical pain ... Ah ! Do
you think the heart can ever free itself from such griefs as mine ? The three men
whom I have loved the most, whom I have loved since I was nineteen or twenty,
are Narbonne, Talleyrand and Mathieu. The first is a graceful figure ; the second
can no longer even boast a figure ; and the third no longer has his old tastes,
though his adorable qualities remain to him unimpaired. I’ve got new friends
who are very dear to me ; but it’s the past which can really bid our dreams and
stir our hearts.”

Narbonne lost to Madame de Montmorency-Laval, Talleyrand to Bonaparte,

Mathieu to God, to whom, to what, must she lose Benjamin ? Panic seized her.
She was thirty-four, bedraggled politically and socially, tired, bored ; could she
count on getting suited again if her lover gave notice ? She packed her boxes and
went off, wearily but with stubborn will, in pursuit of him.

“ My daughter,” wrote Jacques rather pathetically on November 30, 1800, “is

ready to take the road for the great city : it isn’t without searching of heart that I
shall see those high mountains thrust between her and myself.”

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She scarcely knew Paris. Marengo and Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden had
destroyed the Coalition so laboriously built up by England. Europe was ready to
make peace with Bonaparte almost on his own terms. And England, England too,
was grown friendly. The First Consul, surveying his work, sketched the future
policy of France in three words : “Ships, Colonies, Commerce.” Frenchmen,
emerged from the horrors of the preceding ten years, supposed that the
Millennium had arrived. Even Germaine was overawed.

“ I get stupid,” she confessed to Lucien,23 “ in your brother’s company, because I

want so much to please him. I want to talk to him and my mind becomes a
blank. I try to wing my words, I want to compel him to give me his attention ;
when the blank in my mind is filled I’m as stupid as ever, as stupid as a goose.”

She met him at dinner one night at Berthier’s house ; she had stuffed her
memory with epigrams and compliments ; he passed the time of day—and
hurried on. But her salon was gay again. She invited everybody, from M. de
Cobenzl the Austrian to Talma the actor. “The lambs,” she wrote to Joseph
Bonaparte, “are lying down here with the wolves as in the youth of the world.”24
A whirlwind of balls, receptions, dinners, theatres and amateur theatricals swept
over Paris, drying the blood in her squares and filling her streets with laughter.

“ I spent a quiet winter at Paris,” she wrote,25 “I never went near the First
Consul ; I never saw M. de Talleyrand. I knew that Bonaparte didn’t like me. ...
The foreigners in the Capital treated me with the utmost consideration. The
diplomatic corps lived in my house and this European atmosphere protected
me. ... Joseph Bonaparte invited M. de Cobenzl to his charming place,
Mortfontaine, and I went there too. ... M. de Cobenzl was a singularly dull
fellow ; he said the same things to everybody with the same cordiality, which
lacked all feeling or wit. His manners were perfect.”

Benjamin, at heel once more, and Mathieu accompanied her to Mortfontaine, and
contrived to amuse a company almost every member of which was indebted to
Bonaparte for something and consequently only too pleased to be merry at his
expense. This was the rival establishment to Malmaison, Josephine’s country
house, where the First Consul spent his week-ends and where wit was frowned
upon. Tale-bearers made the journey between the two establishments and so
Bonaparte missed none of the epigrams. He seems to have been stung more than
once, notably when Germaine countered his word “ideologue” with
“ideophobe.”26

“Ah,” he cried, “how charming ! But why not hydrophobe when they’re about it ?
”

The two were watching one another, Bonaparte even more carefully than
Germaine. If she feared him, he was exceedingly uneasy about her. Nobody was
more firmly persuaded than he of the power of salons over the mind of Paris.
Resentments still smouldered in that mind ; it wanted but a few words, a phrase,
to light them up, and Madame de Staël’s were the lips most capable of uttering

166
those words or that phrase. Bonaparte had been at pains to study the history of
the Revolution and was seized of the evil influence exerted thereon by the
tongues and pens of the philosophers, orators and journalists who had attended
Madame Necker’s “Fridays” and her daughter’s soirées in the rue du Bac. That
was a formidable enemy ; he prepared to crush it.

“ Forcibly remind this woman, Her Illustriousness,” he advised his brother, “that
I am not a Louis XVI. Counsel her not to stand in the way along which I wish to
go. If not, I’ll crush and break her. The best course for her, in present
circumstances, is quietness. ... I won’t hurt her if I don’t have to.”

He warned Fouché that Madame de Staël disturbed people’s minds. The hint was
passed on to her, with a further hint that her influence on Benjamin had been
noticed. Angry, but with a new object dawning in her mind, she took the road to
Switzerland. It was May, and she liked to spend the summer with her father.
Hero-worship, in the last months, had turned to hate. She knew now that
Bonaparte would have none of her. She saw his power growing from day to day,
and began, like everybody else, to realise that its limits lay far in the future. The
innate pugilism of her nature, allied to its unthrifty vanity, prompted attack upon
this tyrant who belonged—she thrilled at the thought—to the authentic race of
tyrants. Certainly, he was not another Louis XVI ; but let him beware. The
weapons which had destroyed Versailles might prove formidable even to Ajaccio.

1 Dix Années d’Exil, Part I, Chap. 1.

2 Souvenirs inédites d’Aime Martin, quoted by Gautier.

3 Memorial, Vol. 3, p. 240.

4 The evidence is that Madame Récamier’s husband was her father.

5 See Madame de Staël et Napoléon, by Gautier. Also Histoires des salons de

Paris, Duchesse d’Abrantés, Part II, p. 451.

6 The Royalist newspaper called “ L’Ange Gabriel."

7 Dix Années d’Exil, Part I, Chap. 2.

8 Madame de Chastenay, Vol. I, p. 420.

9 Madame de Staël returned this kindness by calling her novel Delphine.

10 Dix Années d’Exil, Part I.

11 Considerations, Part IV, p. 259.

12 De Casse : Mémoires du roi Joseph, Vol. I, p. 190.

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13 Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 46. See also Roederer : Œuvres.

14 Archives de Coppet, quoted by Gautier.

15 Jung : Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, Vol. 2, p. 233.

16 Bourrienne recounts this remark, Mémoires.

17 All the memorialists of St. Helena put this statement into Napoleon’s mouth.
It was his philosophy of life and was in direct opposition to the idea of
“perfectibility,” the idea that human nature can be changed.

18 Several accounts of this interview exist. Bourrienne describes it (Mémoires) ;

so does Madame de Staël (Dix Années d’Exil, Chap. 4). Bourrienne got his
account from Bonaparte, Germaine from her father. Naturally they differ.
The Memorial also describes it, and it is mentioned in the Considerations.

19 Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 134.

20 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 166.

21 Baron de Gérando : Lettres inédites.

22 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 171.

23 Jung : Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, Vol. II, p. 235.

24 De Casse : Mémoires du roi Joseph, Vol. X, p. 417.

25 Dix Années d’Exil, Chap. 6.

26 Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires. There is a long conversation there from

which this and succeeding quotations are taken.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXVIII

GENERAL BERNADOTTE

JACQUES, fatter than ever, was pressed immediately into service and bidden
prepare his “swan song,” a call to Frenchmen to defend their liberties. Germaine
herself had a new literary venture in mind, a novel which should defend the
individual against the herd and uphold, in the face of Society, a woman’s right to
love. Not only that ; she would show that the claims of the State on men’s lives
and goods can be justified only if the conscript and the taxpayer have themselves
consented to be conscripted and taxed. Her mind leaped forward to the wedding
of these two ideas in the immemorial challenge to tyrants of wives and sisters and
mothers : “By what right do you take our men-folk away from us ? ”

While she was writing and superintending her father’s writing, Bonaparte, whose
industry was of the same feverish quality as her own, was teaching Frenchmen
that there are no rights which are not founded upon duties. This man had
received an upbringing at the hands of his mother which was in every respect
puritanical. His mother’s influence had been supplemented by that of the Jesuits
in Ajaccio and that of the King’s soldiers who conducted the Military School of
Brienne. Bonaparte, from his childhood, had talked much about “soldier’s
bread”;1 he proposed now that Frenchmen, and Frenchwomen too, should eat it,
in preparation for the task ahead of them. Josephine, in pursuance of this design,
was presented with a list of women whom she was forbidden to receive in the
Tuileries ; the first name on this list was that of her old friend Thérèse Tallien.
Young officers who devoted their attention to married women were apt to find
themselves, very soon, in the forefront of the battle. Meanwhile peace was the
First Consul’s aim, because, without it, France could not recuperate enough to
struggle against England. England dominated this man’s thoughts as completely
as she had dominated those of Louis XVI and Vergennes. When he invited the
Vendéans to send representatives to Paris he suggested that these might be
priests and went out of his way to declare that he liked priests who were the
natural enemies of those “rascally heretics, the English.” The idea grew in his
mind. He had decided already that he needed priests to discipline the common
people, and especially the women, and to afford to the French their accustomed
spiritual anchorage. His gesture had set the church bells ringing in every village
in the land and had opened the frontiers to the shepherds whose sheep for the
most part eagerly awaited them. But now a more excellent vision shaped itself--
namely, a league of Catholic peoples against the citadel of heresy. The Church
throughout the Revolution had been France’s enemy, and therefore England’s
friend ; he would change all that ; by the same act he would unite the French and
give a new orientation to Catholic policy. The importance of Italy and Spain in
the coming conflict was present already to his mind.

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The Concordat was the expression of these views. It was not by accident that on
Easter Sunday, 1802, Bonaparte celebrated the conclusion of peace with England,
and with all England’s allies, by attending a Te Deum in Notre Dame as head of
the State and compelling the officers of his household, military as well as civil, to
accompany him. By that act of worship England was deprived of one of her
greatest advantages, a fact noted with uneasiness by the British Cabinet.

Germaine understood nothing of the motives underlying the Concordat. Like the
Comte de Provence, she was aware of no objection to advertising her admiration
of England and the English. Bonaparte’s churchgoing seemed to her, therefore,
only a modern instance of the immemorial alliance of tyrant with priest for the
enslaving of men and the bringing of women into subjection. She saw in the
Catholic Church the natural enemy of individual freedom and more especially her
own enemy.

“ What do you think of all these treaties of peace,” she wrote to Meister on
October 23, 1801,2 “and of the indifference of Paris as compared with the
transports of London ? Peace was much more necessary to France than to
England. Don’t you think the real explanation is that liberty counts for
something in the interest which people take in their destinies ? . . . Bonaparte,
furious at the unresponsiveness of Paris, demanded of his assembled courtiers ; ‘
What do they want then ? What do they want then ? ’ And nobody dared to rise
(or, if he was standing, to sit down) and answer him : ‘Liberty, Citizen Consul,
liberty.’

“ Don’t you think that the secret clauses of the treaty with Russia probably deal
with Piedmont ? They would never make a treaty merely to tell one another that
they were going to respect each other’s Constitutions. As both (the French and
Russian Constitutions) are based on the same principle (of tyranny) that goes
without saying. You see, I can’t resist following my natural bent. But I’m going
back into chains, back to the amusement which wearies my soul. I’ll be away six
months. I leave (for Paris) on November 10. . . .

“ What do you think of Switzerland ? When are you going to send me your ‘ novel
with a moral ’ ? It ought not to be less passionate in tone than any other novel.
One ought never to explain the triumph of virtue by the weakness of passion.
Paint me, then, a Betty who can resist.”

Her information was inexact. England’s reason for making peace was not
Bonaparte’s victories nor yet love of France, but hunger. The closing of the Baltic
by Paul I of Russia, “Mad Paul,” Bonaparte’s ally, had so seriously interfered with
the importation of wheat that bread in London was selling at famine prices.3 The
peace of Amiens, it is true, followed the assassination of Paul, but it was looked
upon by the English people, nevertheless, as an earnest of better times. Pitt and
his King were much less enthusiastic.

“ Do you know what I call this peace ? ” said George III. “An experimental
peace ; for it is nothing else. But it was unavoidable.”

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Germaine reopened her salon in the rue de Grenelle, but behaved with great
circumspection. The atmosphere of Paris was so favourable to Bonaparte that
she judged any other course impossible. She played a waiting game, nursing her
anger, meanwhile, with sleepless devotion and keeping in touch with everyone
hostile to the Government.

“ The coming of peace,” she wrote to Joseph Bonaparte on December 8,

1801,4 “will have the effect of setting public opinion free. So much so, indeed,
that important concessions will soon have to be made to it (i.e. public opinion) to
reassure it that the future will bring a more lasting and better guaranteed liberty.
But that moment has not yet arrived. . . . Lebrun spoke well of me, the other day,
to Bonaparte, who remarked : ‘Quite so, I agree. I hear nobody speaking about
her now.’ So you see that, by being careful, I’ve got what I want.”

Benjamin, for all his splutterings and protests, fell under her influence again as
soon as she appeared. These two knew how to excite each other and excitement
was what they both valued most in life and found it most difficult to obtain. Both
were egoists and therefore prone to boredom and melancholy. Both resented the
slightest interference. Both possessed the same itch of destruction, the same
hatred of organised effort, any kind of team work--unless, indeed, they could
captain the teams. “Liberty is good,” said Benjamin, “except that men desire it ;
and it is necessary always to oppose men.” But whereas Benjamin was weak,
Germaine was strong. That abounding maternity of which Narbonne, Talleyrand
and Mathieu had availed themselves attracted him irresistibly. In her presence
he was child first, lover and philosopher afterwards. Like a child he protested
screaming ; but like a child he obeyed in the end. And she accepted obedience
not as a favour but as a right. Had she not his best interests at heart ?

Soon after his return, he began a guerilla warfare against Bonaparte in the
Tribunate. It did not last long. By a process which the First Consul called
“purification” and Germaine called “creaming,” some dozen members of the
Tribunate were deprived of their posts. Benjamin was one of these. Germaine,
really alarmed, began to practise a still more rigid discretion.

“ The other day,” wrote Mathieu5 to Albertine Adrienne, “I was at a most

charming evening party at your cousin’s. Our talk was interspersed by pieces
admirably rendered on flute and harp, which exerted a most delightful effect.
Usually, however, her social life consists of intimate talks with friends which give
relief to feelings hidden with difficulty or swallowed during several days. Her
behaviour has been simple and clever enough : her position is fairly good, much
better than I dared to hope.”

She wrote her novel, stiffened her neck and tried to behave as if nothing had
happened. And people still gathered to her house.

“ We used to see there,” wrote Chenedolle, “Chateaubriand in all the éclat of his
first glory, Madame Récamier in all the delicate flower of her grace and her
youth, Madame Visconti with her majestic Roman beauty, the Chevalier de

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Boufflers in the négligé of a country vicar but with all the exquisite air and all the
arts of a courtier . . . and among the politicians Benjamin Constant, tall, erect,
good-looking, his long hair falling in curls on his neck. He had an extraordinary
expression of mockery and malice in his smile and especially in his eyes. Nothing
could be wittier than his conversation. Always epigrammatic, he discussed the
deepest political questions with lucid, concise and forcible logic, his argument
tinged with sarcasm. When, with marvellous but subtle skill, he led his adversary
into the snare he had laid for him, he left him there confounded and helpless
under the blow of an epigram from which there was no recovery. No one ever
understood so well the art of overthrowing an opponent in conversation in a style
quite worthy of Madame de Staël.”

Benjamin had effected some changes in his personal appearance, for he was
sensitive about his reddish hair.

“ I like,” he wrote to his aunt at this time, “to find in novels heroes with red hair
who inspire great passions. Red hair, in my opinion, ought to be an
indispensable attribute of such heroes ; it is, I feel sure, a great mark
of esprit and sensibility. I’ve been wearing a blond wig this winter, but I have
given it up. . . .”

“ I am condemned,” he wrote wearily to a friend, “to society . . . and of all the

many hells of Dante, I believe that to be the most painful in the long run.”

Bonaparte’s going to Notre Dame aroused so much opposition that Germaine and
her lover could not resist the temptation to turn it to account. The means offered
themselves in the person of General Bernadotte. Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte
was a handsome, dark-skinned fellow, who tempered his Gascon blood with a
caution which kept him perpetually on the hop between two opinions. He had
been Jacobin of the Jacobins, and remained a bitter anti-clerical ; but his
opinions had much less influence on his conduct than his hatred of Bonaparte.
Bernadotte could not forgive Bonaparte for having been the first love of his wife,
Désirée Clary, Joseph Bonaparte’s sister-in-law. The fact that Désirée had been
jilted in favour of Josephine did not help matters, for the girl remained fonder of
Bonaparte than of her husband. Like Germaine, Bernadotte saw his chance in
the business with the Church. They became friendly. A conspiracy, in which a
number of distinguished soldiers, including Macdonald, were involved, was
hatched. There was to be a mutiny of the troops under Bernadotte and Bonaparte
was to be killed.

“ During all this time,” Germaine wrote,6 “I saw General Bernadotte and his
friends at frequent intervals ; that was more than enough to have ruined me if
their plans had been discovered.”

When the plotters hesitated, she stung them to action by telling them that they
had only a minute in which to act, seeing that, on the morrow, the tyrant would
have 40,000 priests enrolled in his service. The conspiracy was discovered.
Bonaparte hushed it up, telling Bernadotte, by the mouth of Bernadotte’s

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brother-in-law Joseph, that if he moved he would be shot out of hand. Germaine
heard nothing. She was in Paris while the negotiations with the Church were in
progress.

“ Finding the French clergy still devoted to Rome,” she wrote,7 “Bonaparte began
to make overtures to them. One day he told some bishops that, in his opinion,
the Catholic religion alone was founded on the teaching of the Fathers (sur les
traditions anciennes) ; he displayed on this occasion an erudition which he had
worked up the night before. Later, among the philosophers, he told Cabanis : ‘
Do you understand the true character of this Concordat which I’m going to sign ?
It is a vaccination against religion. In fifty years there won’t be anymore religion
in France. . . .’ In April 1802 he commanded a great ceremony in Notre Dame.
There he was himself, with all the trappings of royalty. And who, can it be
guessed, was told off to preach the sermon ? No other than the Archbishop of
Aix, the same who had preached at the coronation of Louis XVI in the Cathedral
of Rheims. . . . Bonaparte and his suite journeyed to the Cathedral in the King’s
old carriages, which were driven by their former coachmen and surrounded by
the footmen who had attended them (at Versailles). . . . Nothing, I confess it, has
ever caused me such acute exasperation. I shut myself up in my house so as not
to behold the odious spectacle ; but I couldn’t help hearing the firing of the guns
which celebrated the passing of the French people into slavery. On the way back
from Notre Dame, the First Consul, finding himself surrounded by generals, said
to them : “ ‘ It’s like old times, again, eh ? ’

“ ‘ Yes,’ said one of these generals nobly, ‘ except for the two million Frenchmen
who died for Liberty and can’t be brought back to life.’ ”

A few days after this event a message reached the great house in the rue de
Grenelle that Eric Magnus was lying seriously ill in his lodgings. With
Bonaparte’s eye upon her, Germaine went in search of her husband and
constituted herself his nurse. The poor man was in evil state, sunk again under
the weight of his debts, shabby, hungry, broken. She decided to remove this
thorn from her flesh ; she told the invalid, for his comfort, that if he came with
her to Coppet and proceeded from there to Sweden, all would be forgiven. He
accepted gratefully ; he had never known how to refuse her. She paid his debts,
and then, in spite of his appeals for mercy, sent his library of valuable first
editions to the auction room to reimburse herself. The big berline was ordered.
At the beginning of May, after having made Benjamin promise that he would
follow within a day or two, she bestowed her husband in the carriage and drove
out of Paris. They reached Poligny on the 6th and put up at the inn.

Eric Magnus had a stroke and became unconscious. He died three days later.
Benjamin had caught them up. Germaine and he carried the body to Coppet and
buried it in the parish cemetery.

1 Witness his famous letter on the luxury of the École Militaire at Paris when he
went there.

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2 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 173.

3 See on this subject Holland Rose’s Life of Napoleon and his Napoleonic
Studies.

4 An unpublished letter quoted by Paul Gautier : Madame de Staël et Napoléon,

p. 70.

5 Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 145.

6 Dix Années d’Exil, Chap. 9.

7 Considerations, Part IV, Chap. 6.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXIX

WHEN THE DEVIL WAS SICK

FFRANCE and England were at peace ; but the cause of their quarrel remained,
namely, the empire which France had lost and hoped to regain. Bonaparte, in the
year 1802, thought and spoke and acted as if he had not a moment to lose. He
was everywhere and did everything. The finances were restored, the emigrants
recalled, the civil war ended, the army reconstituted, the fleet reconditioned and
trade and commerce established on a new basis behind the high walls of a
protective tariff. In addition, the Eastern frontier was strengthened by the
formation of the Italian Republic (with Bonaparte as its President), by an
arrangement with Switzerland and by a reshuffle of small states on the Rhine.
The authority of the Government grew from day to day and soon surpassed that
exercised by Louis XIV at the height of his glory. All power was concentrated in
the Master’s hands ; he was made Consul for ten years and then Consul for life
(with power to nominate his successor) by an overwhelming vote of the nation.1

This vote was challenged by Germaine’s friends as a matter of course. From

Coppet she kept urging them to be bolder. At last in July 1802, Camille Jordan,
an ex-member of the Tribunate and Mathieu’s bosom friend, published a
pamphlet called The true meaning of the National Vote on the Consulate for
Life. This pamphlet was not exactly hostile to Bonaparte—the author said he had
voted for him—but it dwelt long and lovingly on Liberty, as upon a dying
mistress. Germaine sent extras to the German Press and refrained with difficulty
from presenting the author with a ring, made of her hair, which she had retrieved
from the dead finger of Eric Magnus. Bonaparte suppressed the pamphlet ; he
failed to prevent the printing in secret of a second edition. In August 1802 the
work to which Necker’s energies had been yoked in the previous year made its
appearance under the title : Derrières Vues de Politique et de Finances. It was
dull stuff (Jacques, as his daughter testified, was trying to live up to the title
which he had recently given himself of Magistrate of the Truth), but it was a
nettle in Bonaparte’s bed. The First Consul was referred to casually as “the
necessary man,” and advised that, sooner or later, he ought to make way for more
intelligent rulers who would know how to secure Liberty. There were sallies,
evidently interpolations by Germaine, about military dilators and people with an
itch to wear a crown. Jacques invited plain speaking ; he got it. Writers who
drew their inspiration from Bonaparte called him the cause of the Revolution and
the murderer of Louis XVI.2

“ Happy man,” they sneered, “who has contributed powerfully to so many

misfortunes without suffering any himself. Happy man, who has never shed a
tear except with a pen in his hand.”

Germaine fell into ecstasies.

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“ He fears me,” she wrote to Lacretelle.2 “ There’s my delight, my pride ; and
there is my terror. I confess it ; I sink at the thought of a proscription and I’m ill-
fitted even to endure the boredom of a long exile. My courage wilts, but not my
will. I suffer ; but I want no humiliating remedies. I have a woman’s fears, but
they can’t make a hypocrite or a slave of me.”

Her twisting of his tail was making the lion roar ! She hastened to publish her
novel. In December 1802 Delphine appeared. Within a few weeks it was the
chief topic of conversation not only in Paris but throughout France and Europe.
The lion crouched to spring. Germaine was warned not to return to Paris.

Delphine offended Bonaparte in four different ways. England was praised at the
moment when his relations with that country were becoming strained ;
Protestantism was praised at the moment when he was re-establishing the
Catholic Church ; liberty was praised at the moment when he was restoring
absolute power ; and the right to love, with its contingent right to divorce, was
upheld in face of his efforts to purge society and rehabilitate marriage. He called
the novel anti-social, and expressed a lively anger that it had been allowed to
appear. Here was a permanent salon which he could not close, the influence of
which grew from day to day with the development of the policy which it attacked
and the unfolding of the mind the validity of whose processes it denied. The
appeal was to women rather than to men ; every woman who felt herself thrilled
by Delphine became, inevitably, an opponent of Bonaparte and of Bonaparte’s
State.

“ Women,” wrote Germaine,4 “have no life outside of love. The histories of their
lives begin and end with love.”

This was the challenge of the novel. Bonaparte was accused indirectly of
dragooning women as he was dragooning men. Was not enforced faithfulness in
marriage as much a part of his system as the conscription of youth or the
censorship of the Press ? “ You are taking liberty from men, she insinuated, and
love from women ; in the name of Church and State you are treating human
beings as pawns in your game. Men and women ought to assert their rights
against you—namely, the rights to speak freely, to act freely and to love freely.
The prodigious success of the novel (of which no fewer than three German
translations were made) stung the First Consul to reply to its teaching by
attacking its author. His friend Fiévée wrote in the Mercure on New Year’s Day,
1803 :

“ If you look closely at these women you will see how unruly are their lusts and
with what imperiousness they conduct their liaisons. To be their lovers is
difficult enough ; but it is much more difficult to be their friends. Listen to them
carefully ; you will hear them complaining against everybody ; you will hear
them sighing in deepest melancholy : their hearts, they will tell you, are bleeding
from the wounds of ingratitude. They keep shrieking for peace of mind, that
peace of mind they say they will never enjoy till they lie in the graves towards
which the grief that consumes them is slowly bearing them. Look at them ! They

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are big, heavy, fat, strong. Their faces, glowing with a superfluity of health, show
not a trace of that anguish which heartache always leaves behind it. And why ?
Because the only trouble they have ever known is wounded vanity. In short, these
women are compounded of excessive egoism.”

What triumph ! Germaine, at Coppet, fed greedily on the torrent of abuse with
which Bonaparte’s newspapers sought to overwhelm her ! Every word was a new
tribute to her success, to her power. He feared her ! Even his love could not have
afforded her a more exquisite enjoyment. Transported to heights of self-
congratulations, she brushed aside Benjamin’s half-hearted offer of marriage—
without, however, forgiving its half-heartedness. Was he really fool enough to
suppose that Madame de Staël could become Madame Constant ? Did he wish to
“turn Europe upside down”? Nor did pious Mathieu’s distress at her advocacy of
divorce and her attacks on the Catholic Church occasion her the least concern.
Mathieu was no politician.

But she wanted to go to Paris, to see and to be seen, to hear and to be heard.
There was the fly in the ointment of her content. Slowly, as she exhauted her
resources of influence and friendship in trying to obtain leave to enter the capital,
she began to realise how many and how formidable were her enemies —
Bonaparte, Josephine (to whom the idea of divorce had become insupportable),
the Catholic Church, the Government, the other women writers who found her
success hard to endure, France herself, on the eve of her great struggle against
England.

“ The French,” Fiévée had written, “have nothing to thank her for ; her whole
love goes out to the English. Don’t let us be surprised. Those minds which float
above our sordid world have no fatherland. Moreover, in Madame de Staël’s case
the right of universal genius is supplemented by a personal right. Born in a land
which no longer enjoys a separate existence, married to a Swede, become French
by chance, never having had a native land except in her imagination, it is quite
likely that she can’t conceive of anybody else having a native land.”

Her will grew more stubborn as obstacles multiplied. At first she thought of
sending her father to plead for her, and poor Jacques actually prepared to travel
to Paris. Then she decided to go herself, and made her father write to various
people who might be expected to be able to influence Bonaparte.
But Delphine had been too successful; everybody was frightened. She learned
that Paris was deriving great amusement from identifying the various characters
in the novel and that Benjamin, her father, Lucchesini the Prussian Ambassador,
and Talleyrand had all been discovered. The fact that Talleyrand had been
presented as a woman was everywhere an occasion of delight.5

“I hear,” remarked that statesman irritably, “that Madame de Staël has presented
both of us, herself and me, disguised as women.”

Surely, her friends urged, it were better to avoid the hornets’ nest. She tried
Benjamin, who had returned to Paris and was looking for a wife—very secretly, it

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is true. She tried Mathieu, Joseph Bonaparte, every friend she had ever
possessed. All made the same reply : there was no hope of leave to return being
granted.

“ I don’t want her to come here,”6 Bonaparte told one of her friends. “Let her go
to live in England as she threatens. . . .” He added : “ If it be true that she
receives people of all shades of opinion at her house it is also true that she
receives these people separately and in intimacy. Every shade of opposition to
the Government is welcomed in succession ; morning, noon and night, people go
to her one after the other to air their grievances. And all who have thus abused
the Government, some for one reason, others for another, spread, each from his
own angle, the idea of the Government’s unpopularity, which consequently seems
like a general feeling and assumes the character of a universal opinion. I don’t
want her to come here.”

Relations with England were growing worse every day. Alarmed at Bonaparte’s
success in buttressing himself against Austria, the British Government had
retained Malta as an obstacle to further attempts by France to open a new way to
India. Bonaparte demanded the evacuation of Malta in accordance with the
terms of the Treaty of Amiens.7 Both nations realised that the conflict, so long
postponed, was at hand, and began to make preparations. Neither would yield
anything, though Bonaparte would certainly have been willing to buy a
prolongation of peace at a price which did not greatly strengthen his adversary’s
hands. The rupture came in the summer of 1803. Bonaparte arrested every
Englishman in France and assembled his army on the cliffs of Boulogne.
Germaine made a point of showing special friendliness to the English in Geneva.

“ If you are still at Zurich,” she wrote to Meister from Coppet on June 29, 1803,8 “
I wish to introduce to you two Englishmen, with whom I have spent two months
during which I have seen them every day and felt, every day, the happier for
seeing them. One is Lord John Campbell, the second son of the Duke of Argyll,
the other Mr. Robertson, a Scotsman of highly cultured mind. Both possess those
charming manners which we, in France, have lost and which it is so delightful to
meet again. But they are diffident and speak French badly. They propose to
spend two or three days at Zurich. . . Mathieu is here. . . . I have been speaking a
great deal about England lately and I can assure you that my respect for, and
interest in, that noble land have not diminished. . . .”

In a letter of August 2, she speaks of France as “a land of iron”9 in which

everything seems motionless. But she was not less determined to return there,
for her prolonged stay in Switzerland had made her “sad, bored and dull.” Early
in September 1803, she took the road and installed herself in a hired house at
Mafliers, near Beaumont-sur-Oise. Her neighbours were Benjamin, at his new
house Les Herbages, and Juliette Récamier at Saint Brice. Bonaparte was busy
with his preparations to cross the Channel and didn’t trouble about her until her
enemies, among whom the women novelists, and notably Madame de Genlis,
were prominent, called his attention to the fact that the salon of the rue de
Grenelle was now reestablished in the Forest of Montmorency. Here, they

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declared, were Benjamin, Juliette, Bernadotte, more hostile to Bonaparte than
ever, Moreau and others of his enemies and critics. Excursions were being made,
too, from time to time, into the capital. Bonaparte gave orders that Germaine
must leave France within twenty-four hours. She was warned by a friend and fled
from Mafliers to the house of Madame de La Tour. From there she wrote
despairing letters to Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte begging them to intercede for
her with their brother.

“ If only he will let me stay in France near Paris, I’ll thank him, I’ll pray to him as
if he was God.”

Joseph wrote to her :

“ Madame, I have received your letters. I went expressly to Saint Cloud this
morning on your behalf and I have done all that the feelings, which you know I
bear you, give you the right to expect of me. But I’m afraid I haven’t succeeded.
The First Consul ended our talk by saying that he would, this evening, see
the Grand Juge. Accept, Madame, the lively regret I feel in not having been able
to justify better the confidence you repose in me and which I deserve by reason of
the friendship I bear you.”

She left Madame de La Tour and went to Juliette Récamier at Saint-Brice. From
there she wrote to Bonaparte :10

“ I was living peacefully at Mafliers, relying on your assurance that I might stay
there, when I learned that gendarmes were coming to arrest me and my two
children. Citizen-Consul, I cannot believe it. If you do this a cruel fame will be
mine and I shall have a line to myself in your history.

“ You will break my good old father’s heart ; he longs, I know it, in spite of his
age, to come to you and ask what crime I have committed, what crime his family
has committed, to deserve such barbarous treatment. If you’re determined to
drive me out of France at least give me a passport for Germany and allow me to
spend eight days in Paris to get money for my journey and take my daughter to a
doctor. The long journey has worn her out.

“ In no country on earth would such a request be refused.

“ Citizen-Consul, the impulse to persecute a woman and her two children never
came from yourself. It is impossible that a hero can be other than the protector
of weakness. I implore you, once again, forgive me ; let me dwell in peace in my
father’s house at Saint-Ouen. That house is near enough to Paris to allow my girl,
when the time comes, to study at the École polytechnique and far enough away to
prevent me keeping open house to visitors. I’ll go there in spring when the
weather makes travelling safe for my children.

“ Citizen-Consul, let me beg you, finally, to pause a moment before bringing

heavy grief on a defenceless soul. You have it in your power, by an act of simple

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justice, to fill my heart with a gratitude truer and more lasting than could perhaps
be inspired by many favours.”

Bonaparte remained unmoved by the picture of Jacques’ grey hairs descending to

an untimely grave. “ When the Devil was ill,” he remarked, “the Devil a saint
would be : when the Devil was well, the Devil a saint was he” (Passato il
Pericolo, Gabbata il Santo). He sent no answer. Germaine returned to Mafliers.
On October 15, 1803, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the dreaded horsemen
arrived. She was at table, eating grapes. Her face stiffened. “I’m going to be
arrested,” she cried.11 She got up and approached the horseman, who showed an
order from Bonaparte to conduct her 12o miles from Paris. She was given 24
hours to get ready. She declared that time too short and asked for three days in
Paris. The horseman, who would give no name, agreed. She ordered her
carriage. He entered it with her and paid her compliments.

“ You see,” she remarked, “what being a literary woman brings one to.”

They stopped at Saint Brice. Germaine rushed to hug her dear Juliette while the
horseman remained in the carriage. It was an affecting scene, both women in
tears with General Junot looking on. Junot, for Juliette’s sake, dashed off to
Saint Cloud to his old companion-in-arms to plead for Germaine. He spoke of
her as he might have spoken of his own sister. Bonaparte stamped his foot.

“ What interest have you in this woman ? ” he cried.

“ The interest I always take in the weak, in the broken hearted, and mind you,
General, if you like you can make this woman your devoted admirer.”

“ Yes. Yes, I know. When the Devil was sick. . . . No. No. No more truces or
reconciliations between her and me. She’s asked for it, let her have it.”

Junot returned crestfallen. Germaine continued her journey to Paris, collected

Benjamin and sent frantic appeals to Brothers Lucien and Joseph. Both tried
again ; Joseph took his wife to Saint Cloud with him ; both failed. Germaine was
receiving her friends and unleashing her eloquence ; but her horseman came
every day “like Bluebeard” to urge her to depart. Joseph’s wife called and invited
her to Mortfontaine “to gain time.” She spent a few days there with these most
un-Bonaparte-like Bonapartes. On October 19 she had to go. Benjamin
accompanied her. She hoped still for a reprieve. Her face was glued to the back
window of the carriage, but she saw only an empty road. Benjamin talked more
wittily, more wisely, than ever before. She found herself beginning to listen to
him, to grow interested in what he was saying,12 to believe that Providence had
called her to play the part of the stripling David before the eyes of all Europe.

1
The question submitted to the nation was : Shall Napoleon Bonaparte be made
Consul for life ? Out of a total electorate of 3,577,259, 3,568,885 voted “Aye.”
The voting for the Consulship itself in 1800 had been : For, 3,001,007 ; Against,

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1,526. No doubt these things can be arranged ; but the figures, nevertheless, are
impressive. There can be no reasonable doubt that, at this period, France
ardently desired Napoleon.
2
“Mercure de France,” article by Fièvée quoted by Gautier, Madame de Staël et
Napoléon, p. 92.
3
Lacretelle : Testament philosophique et Littéraire, Vol. II, pp. 74 et seq.
4
From Delphine.
5
Sainte-Beuve in his essay on Madame de Staël in Portraits de Femmes discusses
the characters in Delphine at length. Madame de Staël always paid off old scores
in her books, but she had a sense of humour.
6
Gautier quotes this letter, which is in the archives of Coppet. It is addressed to
Madame de Staël, but is unsigned.
7
The truth about the rupture of the Peace of Amiens seems to be that both sides
recognised that the struggle must, in the nature of things, go on, and both were
manoeuvring for position. It was against English interest that Napoleon should
be secure on his Eastern frontier. The last time that had happened he had
launched his Egyptian campaign with the object of cutting the Suez canal. Malta
had then been taken in his stride. That, it was resolved in London, should not
happen again. Napoleon said to Gourgaud : “ Qui est maître de l’Egypte l’est de
l’Inde,” Vol. I, p. 315.
8
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 179.
9
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 180.

Gautier : Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 133. The letter is in the Archives de

10

Broglie.
11
Coppet et Weimar, by Madame Lenormant. The letter is discussed by
Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, who points out that there is no mention
of it in Dix Années d’Exil. See also on these doings the Salons de Paris of the
Duchesse d’Abrantés.
12
Dix Années d’Exil, Chap. II.
13
Madame de Staël à Gerando.

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 “ Parler politique pour moi, c’est vivre.”
MADAME DE STAËL to the DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
“ Je déteste parler politique.”
The DUKE OF WELLINGTON to MADAME DE STAËL.

“ Je n’aime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu—enfin rien ; je suis tout à fait un
être politique.”
NAPOLEON.

Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXX

LION HUNTING

BONAPARTE had given her leave to go to Germany. Joseph had supplied as many
letters of introduction to French agents as she wished. It remained only to ask
her father’s consent.

But she had no intention of going back to Coppet. The carriage which contained
her son Auguste and her daughter Albertine, as well as Benjamin, was stopped at
Metz, while a courier was sent off to Jacques. Germaine, so miserable and
depressed yesterday, was, to-day, full of fight. She had discovered in Metz a
famous emigrant,1 Charles de Villers, who, as it happened, was on his way to
Paris to see her. Instantly the tabernacle was pitched in the wilderness, though
Villers’ mistress, Madame de Rodde, proved rather an encumbrance. Germaine
shone : Benjamin flashed, while Villers pounded out the superiority of Prussia to
all other nations and peoples. With hearts uplifted and refreshed the travellers
addressed themselves anew to their journey. It was not very prosperous.
Germaine fell ill at Forbach ; at Frankfort little Albertine got scarlet fever.
Benjamin, who was on the point of returning to France, was retained. Perplexed
but not in despair, he became nurse, comforter and interpreter while worthy
Jacques, made aware of these distresses, sent letters full of encouragement. On
December 13, towards evening, the berline rolled into Weimar, the “German
Athens.” Germaine had not recovered her spirits, lost at Forbach and again at
Frankfort.

“ By dint of high thinking,” she wrote to Gerando, “I am enduring the meagre life
of an exile ; but my heart is shut. There’s a proverb, the simplicity of which
appeals to me : ‘ God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.’ May He save me
from a heavier burden than I can bear.”

Benjamin had lingered at Gottingen, in the library of that town. In his absence
the tabernacle was erected once more and Goethe, Wieland and Schiller invited
to pass in and hold converse with the Sibyl. They exhibited a strange reluctante.
Goethe fled to Jena ; Schiller, at work on William Tell, cried bitterly : “ And now
the Devil brings me this philosophising Frenchwoman,” and hid himself.
Germaine had come lionhunting and was determined to flush her quarry. She

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soon showed these good Germans that a season of conflict with Bonaparte had
wrought powerfully upon her courage and resource. One by one they were
compelled to break covert. She travelled to Jena and forced herself on Goethe.

“ If you don’t come back with me to Weimar on Monday,” she told him, “ I warn
you that I shall be a little hurt.”

The hills were covered with snow, but the poor man crossed them. Schiller had
already succumbed, finding that the easiest course. “ She takes all the poetry out
of me,” he wailed. She received them, clad in her great robes of green or grey or
yellow, with the green turban she had lately adopted, coiled over her black hair,
and her little wand, another innovation, held like a sceptre in her right hand. She
told them she had come to enter into their minds and to open her mind to them.
When somebody suggested that, perhaps, she did not fully understand Goethe,
she declared :

“ Sir, I understand all that is worth understanding ; what I don’t understand is

nothing.”

“ I have dreadful hours to live through,” groaned Schiller. But he did not dare to
absent himself from the tabernacle. By the time Benjamin arrived, towards the
end of January, Germaine was master of the situation. She carried him off to
Goethe with whom for an hour she discussed the difference between French and
German poetry.

“ I’ve seen Goethe,” wrote Benjamin in his Journal,2 “subtlety, vanity, almost
painful physical irritability, remarkable wit, a beautiful expression, a rather
dilapidated appearance, there is his portrait.”

Benjamin was more flattering when face to face with the great man. “ The world,”
he stated, “is wonder-struck at your stupendous genius.”

“ I know it. I know it all,” Goethe cried. “I know too that the world looks on me
as a carpenter who has built a ship of the first class upon a mountain thousands
of miles from the sea. But the water will rise. My ship will float and carry her
builder in triumph where human genius never reached before.” Benjamin and
Goethe did not see eye to eye, but they grew to respect one another. Of Wieland,
Benjamin wrote : “ He has a French mind, is cold as a philosopher, as a poet
trivial, interesting, a great agnostic.” Of Schiller : “ Almost solely a poet.” The
women who worshipped these gods he dismissed as “insipid.”

Germaine felt her soul expanding. With a flourish of trumpets she abandoned,
formally, the doctrine of happiness in favour of the doctrine of duty. There, in
duty, she proclaimed, was the chief end of man, her own from this day forward.
The holy light of conversion shone in her face. But Benjamin wrote in his
journal :

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“ That which constitutes what are called femmes d’esprit is agitation without
object. They are wholly a social creation and consequently artificial. As long as
there is a certain amount of beauty, that makes them passable ; a little physical
interest sustains and wins indulgence for the useless and fruitless agitation of
their moral natures. But after middle-life women are not adapted for society.
The role of friend remains to them, but of friend in retirement, receiving
confidences and giving advice to the man with whom they rank as the second or
third interest in life. A sad lot is that of women. . . After they are thirty of what
use is their liberty to them if they can only offer what nobody wants ? ”

Germaine was thirty-seven. Everybody, she was convinced, wanted what she had
to offer. And even if they didn’t want it, they had to swallow it. She preached her
gospel of liberty and love to the blinking Germans, marrying it, easily, to their
gospel of duty. Love, she argued, prepared the soul for duty. The newspapers
gave her columns ; the Duke and Duchess of Weimar gave her receptions ; the
common people cheered. She buzzed from house to house, from dinner-table to
dinner-table, from the theatre to the lecture-room, making so prodigious a stir
that the echoes reached Paris and penetrated even to the ears of Bonaparte.

By the end of February everybody in Weimar was exhausted. Never before had
these dreamy souls been hustled with such unmerciful diligence. They begged for
rest. Germaine packed up ; if they had had enough of her, she was tired of them.
They talked, they wrote ; but they did nothing. She decided to go to Berlin,
where words were transformed into acts. When Benjamin pleaded a nervous
breakdown and a wish to stay and study in the Duke’s library, she offered no
objection. She had testified. Germany knew her now, the priestess of liberty and
love and duty. Thanks to Weimar the moral law, as she declared, had been
established in her heart. Thanks to Weimar her name had been borne across
Europe so that even Bonaparte had not been able to avoid hearing it.

She wrote to Albertine Adrienne :3

“ Your kind letter, my dear friend, has carried me right back to you. Excluding
the annoyances of the place where you live (Geneva), there’s no society which I
prefer to yours. . . I continue to be pleased with the life I am leading here. The
Court circle, which gets bigger and bigger as neighbouring Courts keep on joining
it, produces on me the usual effect. When great nobles who have no sort of need
of us choose to be interested in us, we are naturally flattered. Far above the
general run, I place the Duke, who is an enlightened man, and the Duchess, a
woman of exceptional goodness, who treats me like a mother or an elder sister,
that is to say who admires me and protects me at the same time. The women
enthuse about me in the German way and pay court to me like lovers. As for the
men, they are literary men. . . . Goethe, Schiller and Wieland have more
originality and depth of mind in literature and in philosophy than any others I
know. Their talk bristles with ideas. There is no question, of course, of making
brilliant remarks ; but never do they leave me without my feeling impelled to jot
down new thoughts. I’m sure the diary I’m keeping will interest both my father
and you this summer. The German stage supplies me with new material. Schiller

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and Goethe are trying all kinds of experiments in dramatic art : Greek chorus
and fantasias. I find our art superior everywhere and I love to detect the causes
of our superiority. The Germans, heavy as they are, have more of the spirit of
youth than the French because they aren’t blase and because they surrender
themselves cheerfully to anyone who tries to amuse them. Their comic operas are
full of mechanical figures which delight Albertine greatly and in which one sees a
kind of romantic imagination able to evolve peaceably before people who are not
exacting and who do not find such things ridiculous. Thus originality exists here
in literary works rather than in individuals.

“ Enough about Germany. Although my stay here pleases me I would feel very
lonely and isolated without Benjamin, who has been, and is, truly, kinder to me
than ever. He’s a great success here and I believe that he will be sincerely sorry to
leave. As for me, the thought of going away is so sorrowful that I keep putting off
my departure as long as possible.

“ I hope my letters no longer worry my father ; I hope I have regained my self-

control, though that is perhaps only because I feel less wretched. . . . Tell me, I
beg you, how you find my father in health and spirits. Assure him, I beg you,
dear friend, that we are all physically in the best of health. . . . I know now for a
fact that the French Ambassador has demanded of the Elector of Saxony that he
shall forbid the sale of Delphine. They believe in France that they can prevent the
success of my novel in Germany by prohibiting its sale in the Leipzig book
market. They deceive themselves. Good-bye, dear, I embrace you. No woman
for an instant approaches the place you occupy in my heart.”

She wrote again, on January 31, 1804 :

“ I keep prolonging my stay here to delay my parting from Benjamin and to avoid
the Carnival at Berlin, which is too noisy and big. . . . The truly unheard-of
success I’ve had in Germany would satisfy the greediest vanity. But it isn’t my
vanity which is difficult to satisfy, but a certain need of change, of interest, of
distraction which only Paris can supply. Again, I can’t be happy away from the
place where I want to live and die ; temporary resting-places, in my case, are
even more shadowy than in the case of others. I have a constancy of heart and an
inconstancy of mind for which the land where my old friends dwell and where the
scenes are unceasingly being changed, was created by Providence. In short my
imagination decks out the unattainable in charms which pierce my heart.

“ There, dear friend, there is what I feel and what I tell you with absolute
frankness. I’ve acquired rather a bad trait in Germany—though a natural one—
namely, enough self-confidence to parade my eccentricities. For anybody who
has written four lines gets enough notoriety here to make it possible for such as I
am to magnify and emphasise prodigiously. I’ve always felt that there’s
something in literary ability which upsets the ordinary way of life and I say this
knowing that you possess literary ability. But you haven’t delivered yourself over
to it and moreover you were brought up in a land which is like a bee-hive :
everybody there behaves exactly like everybody else. This place, on the contrary,

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is full of eccentric people ; I like it all the better for that. I like it, too, because
they think a million times more of me here (than in Switzerland). All the same,
even if there were no strong bonds to draw me back to Geneva I wouldn’t
establish myself here. If I was free to live where I chose I would live in England.
The few English whom I meet here have far more ideas in common with me (than
the Germans), and get to like me with a quickness which pleases me very much.
But will England weather the storm which threatens her ? It is reported
everywhere that (Bonaparte’s) expedition against her has been postponed till
next winter—which makes me feel pretty sure that I won’t be able to spend next
winter at Paris. What I really mean to do is to spend two months during the
summer somewhere about sixty miles from Paris so as to see my friends again ; I
hope to pass the autumn and winter with you. But everything is so uncertain !

“ Do send me news of my father’s health. All my being is centred there. Why do

you accuse me of having written a poetic description of the snow here ? It had
gone when I wrote ; and as I had to wait to get clear roads to Berlin, I just tried to
give you a few amusing details. My father is truly awfully kind to be so worried
about my physical health ; I would much prefer that he should worry about my
state of mind. But don’t let us speak about that and perhaps we shall avoid
thinking about it.

“ You were wrong to be anxious about my friend Benjamin. Nobody could have
had a better reception that he has enjoyed here. Both Duke and Duchess have
made a thousand times more fuss about him than has any member of the
(Genevan) circle (of big-wigs). Aristocrat for aristocrat, give me the great nobles
every time ! He’s asked to Court twice a day ; and every day of his life, the
literary men keep buzzing round him. In short, he’s got a position here because
these are people with opinions of their own and not mere party hacks, and
because the taste for literature and culture is very highly developed even among
quite commonplace people. They don’t sneer at the talents they don’t possess.
How little you say about yourself ; and how I plague you with myself. But you
have managed to master the wildness in your nature ; whereas that element rules
me. Good-bye, dear friend, I’ll bring you some new ideas and will talk and talk
about them. . . .”

She reached Berlin early in March 1804 and wrote to her father :

“ I was presented yesterday to the King and Queen. Let me tell you all about it. It
was the Queen’s birthday. When she entered the room, which was full of men
and women covered with gold braid and diamonds, the cymbals clashed, a form
of music which increased the emotion I felt. The Queen is charming. I don’t
flatter when I say that she’s the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. Her toilets are
splendid and in the very best taste. She overwhelmed me with the warmth of her
welcome. When she greeted me she paid me some charming compliments and
then said :

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“ ‘ Madame, I hope you give me credit for too much good taste not to be flattered
that you have chosen to come to Berlin. You’ve been admired here for many a
day and you’ve got no more sincere admirer than myself.’

“ I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t answer her. But a little later I did say how
much I regretted having written a novel before I had had the pleasure of meeting
her, and that my imagination was on fire with a personality of which, until now, I
had possessed not the least conception. All the princesses who accompanied the
Queen greeted me and those whom I knew embraced me. I was so touched by
these great kindnesses that my heart was swept by a wave of tenderness towards
you, my dear father, and my friend, who could not see me, and towards my native
land which is so little interested in me.

“ Next I was presented to the King, who spoke charmingly of his hope that I
would enjoy my stay in Berlin. The King has a charming face and is so simple and
kind. The rest of the evening was spent in paying me court in every conceivable
way. . . .”

She wrote to Albertine Adrienne :

“ What a delightful letter I’ve received from you, dear friend ; how richly
rewarded I feel for having given you, absolutely and exclusively, the whole of
those feelings which one woman alone can inspire in the breast of another. Your
letter affords me a new proof of one of my most cherished beliefs, namely, that in
personal matters, what we write displays our souls more than our talents and
reveals our whole being and not only the mind, the most superficial of our
faculties. To write as you do, a woman must have a solid character, capable of
true affections and deep thoughts, and in addition a highly cultivated mind. So I
can feel that there is nobody like you. The same is true, in other ways, of my
father, of Benjamin, of Mathieu ; indeed the huge throng of new acquaintances
whom I have made in Germany serves only to emphasise the distinctive qualities
of my real friends.

“ Who has interested me most in this great city of Berlin ? The famous Prince
Louis ? No. One or other of the great nobles who abound here ? No. A
professor, a German professor ! What do you say to that, dear friend ? Doesn’t
that make you think that I must have lost something already in Germany and set
you coining jests about my being a Parisienne no longer ? If you’re telling
yourself that this is a new love affair, you’re mistaken. One glance at the man’s
face would convince you, however unbelieving you were ; moreover Benjamin
has robbed me of the capacity for love affairs. But if you want more mind and
originality in literature than the whole world has so far been able to give you, I’ve
got it here. As I think I may be able to bring him to you, I won’t say any more.

“ What do I think of Berlin ? My impression is far less clear-cut than my

impression of Weimar. I don’t know if Benjamin’s company at Weimar made a
difference and if, in his absence, I have not been able to look below the surface ;
but it’s certain that, though I find much more stir here, much more that, in

187
appearance, recalls Paris, I would never willingly make Berlin my abode.
Germany is seen at her best in a University, not in a salon on the French model.
The two social worlds, that of the learned and that of the Court, are completely
separate, with the result that the learned cannot talk and the smart people do not
think. Frivolity, without French charm to support it, is quite intolerable, and as
the Germans are not naturally frivolous there is a sadness in their gaiety which
always makes one want to say : ‘ Why do it ? ’ But they have funds of good nature
and respect for ability which saves one from the need of being always on one’s
guard as one must always be in France. On the other hand, you may very well
meet two hundred people and not have a word to say to one of them ; and they’re
so like each other that I’ve actually been introduced ten times to people and yet
been unable to recognise them.

“ Among them all, however, there are people well worth getting hold of ; learned
men, foreigners, the diplomatic corps. Nothing much worth while among
the Berlinois themselves. They give parties every night, just like Geneva ; and
each of these is furnished with a colossal supper of excellent food at which the
men drink as much as their dinners allow them. Can you believe that the
charming Prince Louis, who certainly does possess wit and a handsome Prussian
face, can never speak after dinner, and that I find it much more pleasant to meet
him in the morning ? And he’s the German Lovelace ! The simplicity of Weimar,
the highly educated women, the keen interest everybody takes in literature, all
these make a stay in that town much more agreeable to me than a stay here. I
learned there how charming a small town can be ; here I see that every great city
makes one long the more for Paris. Alas ! All the same I’ve had a welcome here
of the kind which one has a right to expert only from one’s native land, but so far
this welcome has brought me no new friend. They gather up my words. I’ve had
a success which might well have turned my head if my head could be turned by
anything but my heart. But when there’s nothing in the heart, nothing at all, life
is sad. I’ve given up a tremendous supper to-night, for example, to write to you ;
but really there’s nobody likely to be there with whom I wish to talk intimately.

“ I must tell you about your dear friend the Princess Louise of Prussia, with whom
I often sup. Her house is charmingly furnished ; everything French except the
people. She has charm in her raillery but something buffoonish in her way of
telling a story which makes sharp contrast with her general bearing and her
determination to play the princess. I can’t say that I’ve found in her a single word
or even tone that can be called sincere. Her good taste in the matter of the novels
she enjoys is inexplicable because one feels that what she ought to like are such
books as the Roman Comique orCléopâtre. Sometimes she’s dignified,
sometimes mocking ; always she’s spiritual ; but she’s dry, and though she says
that I charm her, I don’t think the effect is likely to last long, because I don’t see
how or where we can advance (in knowledge of each other). Her enthusiasm for
your letters is proof, though, of her good taste. I’ll see if I can find something new
and more important in her character ; let this be between ourselves. The really
charming person is the Queen. She has irresistible sweetness and grace. The
King too is an awfully good fellow. There’s a niece of the Duchess of Weimar

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here, the bride of Prince William, the King’s brother, in whom I find myself
tremendously interested. But one sees the Royal Family very little ; the most
open of their houses is that of the Princess Louise. Apart from Society there’s the
theatre where I go often, though more from reasons of study than from reasons of
pleasure. There are public concerts, too, which are sometimes very wonderful.
For example, on Good Friday they sang a cantata on the death of Jesus Christ
which affected me and saddened me more than anything I have ever listened to
before. I’m bringing you this cantata, because you must learn German so that we
can speak it and read it together.

“ I’ve written to Mathieu to suggest a meeting lasting about a fortnight and to

take place somewhere 120 miles from Paris. If he agrees, as I hope he will, my
arrangements for this year are complete. The visit to France excepted, I’ll spend
ten continuous months with you. I’ve sent you my time-table. I know my father
laughs at it. I’ll keep to it, none the less, day for day. You don’t know what a joy
it is to me to tick off the days on my calendar. I’m staying on here at present to
kill time, to keep up appearances and to be sure of good weather when I travel.
But I feel that my task is finished and if you can suggest any reason for hurrying
home I won’t hesitate to set out.

“ Ah, how I’m relying on your promise to take care of my father’s health. I’m
terrified about what I heard at Weimar. If Providence hadn’t denied me faith in
the future, which lack I find a blessing for the first time, I’d be more frightened
still, for I don’t believe that I could survive his loss. During the last three days
I’ve examined my heart and satisfied myself that my whole life is centred on him.
He is part of every memory ; partner in every thought. Without him nothing in
the past, nothing in the present, nothing in the future. Nothing but despair ! It’s
a fearful thought, for Nature certainly did not intend that anyone should love
thus another so far advanced beyond her in years. But he found means to inspire
in me a loving tenderness of so inexpressible a strength that when, sometimes, I
have tried to weaken its influence over me, the result has been, merely, an
enormous increase of that influence.

“ What a long letter I’ve written you, dear friend ; and how much I still have to
say. Benjamin should be arriving near you now. . . .

“ Dear friend, let me say it without seeming fatuous, my letter has been
interrupted by Prince Louis, who has supped alone with me. I’ve been burning
the candle at both ends. I’m weary and must go to bed. Ah ! how I long to
return ! ”

1
Charles de Villers was already well known for his writings on Kant. Though a
Frenchman, he had become a violent apostle of Prussianism.
2
Benjamin Constant : Journal Intime.

189
3
These letters are given in the Appendix to Dix Années d’Exil, in the edition
produced by Paul Gautier.

190
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXI

MIST ON THE MOUNTAINS

GERMAINE had ruled once in France by setting Paris against the King and so
defeating the King’s policy against England. The memory of those golden days
dwelt with her for ever. Might not Paris and England, combined, do for her again
what they had done before ?

This was not conscious treachery ; “Louis XVIII” fell into the same fault when he
called English ships to help him against his rebellious subjects. Both the woman
and the man counted their leadership so necessary that the want of it seemed to
them the heaviest of all misfortunes for France, and so justification enough of any
alliance with France’s enemies. They saw Bonaparte as thief of liberty, as thief of
legitimacy, as usurper of both their crowns ; Bonaparte, leader of the French
people in its greatest enterprise, was hidden from them.

And so Germaine allowed the good Prussians, England’s allies, to kiss her hands
and pay her compliments and felt surprised when she learned that her triumph in
Berlin was hateful to patriotic Frenchmen. No need for Bonaparte to point the
finger at the great travelling carriage, so like his own, which carried the Sibyl, her
children, her lovers and her lackeys across Europe. No need for him to make
sport of the big woman, in her flaming robes, crowned and sceptred, journeying
like some missioner of alien faith, from city to city. France was watching with
darkened brows and bared teeth. Never had hatred of England reached such a
pitch of fury in France. Thanks to the Corsican, all men were seeing now with the
eyes of the King they had murdered. England alone was the enemy. The lost
empire, the ruined trade, the armies on every frontier ; these were England’s
works. Bonaparte’s army on the cliffs of Boulogne was beloved of Frenchmen as
no other army had ever before been beloved.

And so, when the news leaked out that a body of men pledged to kill their leader
had been landed from an English warship and were in Paris, Frenchmen lost
control of themselves. Who were the assassins ? The name of Moreau was
mentioned ; not even the victor of Hohenlinden could command pity in such
circumstances. Bonaparte struck with sudden ferocity and gathered, among his
victims, the young Duc d’Enghien, a prince of the blood-royal of France whom he
seized in Baden and carried across the frontier to Paris. This charming young
man had not plotted ; but he was making ready to fight for England, in whose
army he was an officer, against France. Bonaparte, on the advice of
Talleyrand,1 had him shot. The French nation as a whole showed very little
concern. But England and all Europe cried to Heaven for vengeance. When the
news of the execution reached Berlin, Prince Louis leaped onto his horse and
rode to Germaine’s door. It was eight o’clock in the morning.

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“ He looked charming on horseback,” she wrote, “and his emotion added to the
nobility of his face.”

“ ‘ Revenge or death ! ’ he cried. ”2

She unleashed her tongue and for days ran about magnifying this “horrible
murder,” which, she declared, had revealed Bonaparte’s true character. The King
and Queen heard her with delight ; every word she said was treasured. Moral
indignation swelled in her bosom, obliterating any recollection of the fact that she
herself had been privy to Bernadotte’s plot to assassinate Bonaparte. What a
monster ! And how sacred a duty to deliver unhappy, suffering France from his
bloody hands ! It had been worth while, after all, to kill time in Berlin. She
would leave now with a halo round her head. Had she not been the first to hurl
defiance at this enemy of mankind ?

On April 18 news reached her that her father was dangerously ill. Weeping, she
gathered her flock, which now included Augustus William Schlegel, the paragon
of German professors, about whom she had written to Albertine Adrienne.
Augustus William had become tutor to her son. He sat beside her, in the great
carriage, comforting her heavily with abuse of Bonaparte and flattery of England,
while they rolled and lurched across the Saxon plain. At Weimar Benjamin, very
grave, joined them. Jacques had died on the 10th in the arms of Albertine
Adrienne. Germaine fell into convulsions, uttered dreadful cries, raved and wrote
letters. On the day following her arrival in Weimar (April 23) she informed
Albertine Adrienne :3

“ All I can tell you, my friend, is that I live, and that the utter ruin of all
happiness, of all existence, of all future, of all rest, leaves me, in spite of myself,
physically alive. I’m not fit, and neither is my poor friend (Benjamin) to travel
from here for four days. I’ll write to beg you to come and meet me at Berne. I
need you to lead me to the tomb which awaits me. Adieu. I can write no more.
Adieu. You’ve been with him five months longer than I. Five months which I
have lost. Ah, if I could die in saying these words ! Adieu ! ”

Benjamin added a postscript :

“ I’ll only add a word. I can’t conceive of anything more touching, more angelic !
What use am I to console her ? For, except for the unjust reproaches which she
heaps on herself, I share all her feelings about the splendid soul whom she has
lost. Adieu, I daren’t hurt my eyes any more. . . .”

Albertine Adrienne and her husband met the travelling carriage at Zurich. They
brought Albert, Germaine’s second son, with them. All three journeyed to
Coppet. Germaine on arrival saw, on Mont Blanc, “a cloud like a man’s face,
which disappeared towards evening.”4 Jacques, with his dying hand, had written
to Bonaparte to plead for his daughter. She despatched the letter. There was no
answer. But Bonaparte remarked, as he read it :

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“ She may well regret her father. Poor divinity ! Never was a more commonplace
man with his flonflon, his self-importance, and his columns of figures.”

Germaine composed a prayer :5

“ O my God, forgive feeble creatures, if hearts which have loved so much can see
in Thy Heaven only a father’s smile welcoming them into Thy courts. Strong
natures do not know the evil they do ; what is religion to them but an instrument
of tyranny in the hands of men ? But when religion is the last, the very last, hope
remaining to the heart, let them leave it alone, let them pass by without
touching.”

Jacques left his daughter £150,000, not including the £100,000 still in the
French Treasury, an immense fortune in those days. She set about investing it.
Mathieu arrived in July, dimmer, more gentle, more religious than ever, and he
and Albertine Adrienne resumed their contemplation of Mont Blanc, the more
hallowed now that Necker had chosen its summit for his appearance in cloud-like
form. On August 16 Germaine wrote to Gouverneur Morris :6

“ There was nobody like him ; there never will be anybody like him. I’ve lost not
my father, but my friend, my brother, the best part of me, the only noble part of
me ! Ah, tell me, how, in your America where men love, in your America where
men believe in God, how do you endure the anguish of death ? . . . I hope you
won’t cease to look after my interests. It’s to M. Necker’s family that you are
being helpful. I need advice. When, again and again, my father wanted me to
hear about his fortune, I always refused. Now there’s need to look after the
interests of three children, especially under a Government which can seize
everybody’s goods, because it acts by a force uncontrolled by any consent.”

In a letter to an American, who had bought some of her land in the United States,
she expressed the hope :

“ that you will take pleasure in increasing the fortune of a mother of three
children and of a daughter of M. Necker.”

She wrote in English for the first time.7 Both by her investments in real estate
and by her study of the English language she was preparing a line of retreat in
case Bonaparte drove her out of Europe. The diligence, indeed, with which she
provided against misfortune was worthy of Bonaparte. Nothing was left to
chance, and all the chances were counted. Bonaparte and she resembled one
another more than either of them would gladly have allowed. Restless, eager,
dominating, easily moved on the surface, immovable under it, infinitely long-
sighted, reckless within the bounds of an extreme carefulness, they blasted their
several ways through the lives of others. Each travelled like a touring company,
talked like a missioner, gathered crowds like a showman and dressed like a
cheap-jack. Politics was the breath of life of both ; literature only
pamphleteering ; rhetoric a loud advertisement. If she had wit, he had sarcasm ;
and he matched her martyrdom with his glory. But the man served a vision.

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He was Emperor now, with the Pope en route to crown him. Versailles was
rebuilding in the heart of Paris. When Napoleon identified himself with the
Revolution he meant by that word not the achievements of Assemblies but the
gift offered by Sovereignty and rejected long ago at the Royal Sitting of the States-
General at Versailles.

“ The great principle of the French Revolution,” he said, “is civil liberty, that is
to say equal justice everywhere. . . . Every citizen obeys the same law,
appears before the same judge, suffers the same punishment, receives
the same reward, pays the same taxes and is subject to the same
military service, is eligible for and attains the same rank whatever
may be his birth, his religion or his place of origin.”

So had Louis XVI defined liberty ; so had Mirabeau conceived it. France was to
learn that this liberty was compatible with an absolute monarchy and an
established church. She was to learn, too, in her struggle with England, that the
years spent in the pursuit of liberty as Germaine and her friends defined it were
lost years, barren of advantage except to her enemies. Could Napoleon, crowned
and anointed, accomplish what Louis had failed to accomplish ? England had
gained a long start.

1
Talleyrand’s share in the execution of the Duc d’Enghien remains unexplored.
But the evidence that he played a part of decisive importance is strong. Napoleon
accused him, to his face, of having recommended the execution, and the charge
was never denied. Talleyrand burned most of his papers.
2
Dix Années d’Exil.
3
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 192. Gautier gives a graphic
picture of this sad scene.
4
Dix Années d’Exil.
5
Madame de Staël : Du caractère de Monsieur Necker et de sa vie privée.
6
Madame de Staël and the United States, by R.L. Hawkins.
7
Madame de Staël and the United States, by R.L. Hawkins. This was probably
the first letter written by her in English.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXIII

MAURICE O’DONNELL

NAPOLEON’S victory over the Russians at Friedland on June 15, 1807, and his
subsequent alliance with the Emperor Alexander of Russia, left England without
an ally. The Treaty of Tilsit with Alexander contained secret clauses designed to
place the Danish navy in French hands and to secure the closing both of the Baltic
and the Mediterranean against English ships, while the “Continental System,”
enforced the year before, excluded English manufactured goods from Europe.
The great struggle seemed to be entering on its decisive phase. Discouraged and
despairing, Germaine went back to Coppet “trailing her wings and dragging her
feet.” She wrote to Meister :1

“ I wish that noble England would make peace. For I want to go there. But I
don’t know if she would gain by it. To remain standing alone is better, and it
seems to me that it has now been proved that feebleness and compliance are
useless.”

She had no part with France. This daughter of the banking house of Thelusson
and Necker of London and Paris was stranger to those feelings which bind men
and women to the soil from which they have sprung. Patriotism, as Frenchmen
and Englishmen understood that word, had small place among her emotions.
Towards Switzerland she was indifferent :

“ Tell me,” she wrote to Meister2 at the time when it was proposed to unite the
area in which Coppet is situated to France, “what you know about the joining of
the Pays de Vaud to France. It’s on account of my feudal dues that I’m
interested in the matter.”

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 Juliette Récamier came to stay
with her. A little later Madame Vignée Lebrun, Marie Antoinette’s portrait
3

painter, arrived. Germaine decided to be painted as “Corinne,” and sat, with a

harp in her hands, reciting passages from Corneille while the artist worked.

“ We’re playing tragedies here,” she wrote to Meister in September 1807.4 “

Coppet is nothing if not dramatic. Madame Lebrun has painted a portrait of me
which everybody thinks wonderful. She’s taken it with her to Paris. I appear as a
Sibyl, or, if you like, as Corinne. . . All the rest is sad.”

It was a complicated sadness. Napoleon dominated it ; Prosper de Barante had

begun to increase it ; but the villain of the piece was Benjamin. That young man
no longer hid his wish to escape. So desperate had he become that he thought
even of marrying a woman of forty who had two bastards, but who seemed to
possess the strength of mind necessary to the inevitable encounter with
Germaine.

“ Alas,” he wrote in his Journal, “if I could only get away from these monotonous
lamentations about unreal troubles, about the laws of Nature, about old age !
Truth to tell, I’ve no stomach for this job of being the butt of the complaints of a
woman whom youth is forsaking. If only she wouldn’t demand love of me—after
a liaison ten years old, when we’re both nearly forty and when I’ve told her, a
hundred times, that I haven’t got any love left. I’ve never gone back on that plain
statement except, temporarily, to soothe her convulsions of grief and rage which

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frighten me. Since my feelings have no correspondence with my actions, I do
wish that these actions, so feeble in any case, were no longer required of me. I
must rescue my life from her either by becoming merely her friend or by running
away. . . . It’s too bad : not to have the pleasure to which one sacrifices dignity
nor yet the dignity to which one sacrifices pleasure.”

He addressed himself to writing a novel about his trouble and produced Adolphe,
a masterpiece, the first parent of psychological novels of every kind. Before
coming to Coppet he had met again the German nobleman’s wife who had fallen
in love with him, years before, in Brunswick. Charlotte von Hardenberg had been
divorced by her husband ; she had married a M. Dutertre and had come to live
with him in Paris. But her heart was still in Benjamin’s keeping.

“ Mad day, but delicious by reason of love,” he had written in his Journal.
“During twelve long years I’ve not known such enjoyment. It’s too wildly
absurd ! This woman, whom I’ve rejected a hundred times, who has never ceased
to love me, whom I’ve thrust away and left without a qualm during the past
eighteen months, from whom only last Monday I took back my letters—this
woman, to-day, has completely bowled me over. I believe the reason is to be
found in the contrast between her and Madame de Staël—between Madame de
Staël’s impetuousness, egoism and constant preoccupation with herself, and
Charlotte’s sweetness, calmness and humility. These last qualities have made
Charlotte a hundred times dearer to me than the other. I’m weary to death of the
man-woman whose iron hand has gripped me for ten years, and especially so now
when I have another woman who seduces and charms me. Everything depends,
though, on what M. Dutertre will do.”

M. Dutertre had shown himself prepared to do anything provided he was well

enough paid. Divorce proceedings were in progress. Meanwhile Benjamin’s
Journal shows that he had had his moments of doubt :

“ Spent the evening with Charlotte. Is the fever passing ? And boredom
beginning ? I’m devilishly afraid of it. She has much charm, truly ; but little
variety, and her feelings are dreadfully disturbing.”

Letters meanwhile had poured in from Germaine, terrific, screeching letters

which threatened suicide if he delayed an hour in rushing to join her.5 And,
fatally weak, he had yielded. But now the longing to be free returned with
overwhelming force. One day he told Germaine about his liaison with Charlotte
and announced, at the same time, his intention to return to Paris. “Ungrateful
scoundrel, deceiver, liar,” she screamed, and before he could prevent her, rang
for her servants, whom she ordered to summon her guests and her children. The
room filled up ; she denounced him to them all, declared that she would not
survive the blow and called them to witness that he had killed her. Benjamin lost
his nerve, promised to remain at Coppet, and was soon playing the part of
Pyrrhus in Andromaque. But the wish to escape remained. He managed to get to
Rosalie’s house in Lausanne ; once there he sent his excuses to Coppet. A few
days later the big berline drove up to Rosalie’s door. It was crammed with lovers

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and children—Augustus William, Sismondi, Albert, Albertine. Benjamin learned
that performances of Andromaque were to be given in Lausanne, and that the
troupe would remain in the town meanwhile. He wrote in his Journal :

“ Horrible scene which lasts till 5 o’clock in the morning. I am violent ; I glory in
my fault. The best thing will be to get away without giving any warning.”

He refused to go back to Coppet when the performances ended. He and Rosalie

spent their time together and amused themselves in mocking Germaine. The
proposed marriage with Charlotte was discussed and approved. Suddenly,
without rhyme or reason, Benjamin returned to Coppet and offered to marry his
mistress. It was an ultimatum ; if she refused he would marry Charlotte. In an
instant the house resounded again with clanging bells. The troupe assembled like
a stage chorus.

“Look at this fellow,” cried Germaine to her children, “he gives me the alternative
of your ruin or my own death. If I marry him, as he wants, you’ll lose everything.
If he leaves me, as he wants to do, the deceiver, I shall die.”

She flung herself on the floor, screamed and tried to strangle herself with her
handkerchief. Her boys glared ; Albertine began to sob. There were murmurs
among the Faithful. Benjamin hauled down his flag. But as soon as it was dawn
he rose and saddled his horse. He rode back to Rosalie, covering the 25 miles to
Lausanne in two and a-half hours, told her what had happened and went upstairs
to bed. He had fallen asleep when a carriage dashed up to the door. Rosalie had
just time to lock the door of Benjamin’s bedroom before Germaine appeared on
the stairs. Seeing what had happened, the frantic woman flung herself down on
the stairs, tore her hair and her clothing, and uttered terrible screams. “Where is
Benjamin ? ” she shrieked. “I must see Benjamin ! ” Rosalie barred the way.
Germaine turned on her. “Wretched hypocrite !” she shouted, “it is you who is
taking him from me. He’s here. I know it. I insist on seeing him.”

Benjamin, awake and terrified, began to knock on his door and beg to be
released. When he came out of his room, Germaine threw herself at his feet,
begging him to give her back her life. He let himself be taken prisoner and
descended to the carriage. Augustus William awaited him inside of it.

“ She came,” he wrote in his Journal (September 1807), “she threw herself at my
feet. Fearful shrieks, full of anguish and desolation, broke from her lips. A heart
of iron could not have resisted her. Here I am back with her at Coppet. I’ve
agreed to stay six weeks. And Charlotte expects me at the end of September !
What am I to do ? Good God ! I’m trampling future and happiness under my
feet.” He added, later, the pious reflection : “People who accuse me of weakness
cannot judge me truly. To know what they’d do in my position, they must be in
my position, and (I say it with deep conviction) I believe that to do better one
would have to be a less decent fellow.”

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Even Germaine realised that Benjamin was no longer to be counted on. Where
could she find a new lover ? Her thoughts returned to Maurice O’Donnell. After
Berlin and Rome, Vienna. She could kill two birds with one stone—three birds
perhaps because, since Napoleon had gotten Alexander of Russia for an ally and
possessed himself of Prussia, Austria alone stood in his way.

She had kept up a correspondence with Maurice. On June 16, 1807, she had
informed him of her expulsion from France, adding :6

“Napoleon refuses to pay me the £100,000 which are owing to me. I’m told I
could have been paid if I had inserted certain prescribed sentences in Corinne.
But how should I thank him for a double injustice ? . . . It’s true that I want to
spend the winter at Vienna, for the education of my son,”

She wrote again on October 3, 1807,7 to ask if it was certain that Maurice would
be in Vienna during the winter, and mentioning that Prince Augustus of Prussia
was staying at Coppet. On November 17 she announced her coming.8

“ I can’t leave here,” she wrote, “without the permission of the mighty Emperor of
the French. He’s given it, and has even added that he wishes his Ambassadors to
treat me well.”

Benjamin left for Paris. The berline, charged with its teeming freight of children
and servants—including Augustus William—took the road early in December. On
the 6th it arrived at Berne, on the 14th at Munich, Vienna was reached on the
26th. Rooms had been engaged at the White Swan Hotel. No sooner was she
installed there than Maurice called. He had constituted himself advance agent of
the illustrious lady ; Vienna was already on tiptoe to see her. She was invited to
dine at the French Embassy where Comte Charles Zinzendorf, a man mature in
the uses of society, who kept a diary, sat next to her. Zinzendorf saw her a few
days later at the wedding of the Emperor Francis to his third wife.

“ Madame de Staël,” he noted,9 “was presented to the Empress in the

Geheimratstube. She was very warmly welcomed everywhere, and if we are to
believe the Comtesse Thurheim, her coming has aroused as much interest as that
of the young Empress.”

The “White Swan” was not adapted to the uses of a salon. So rooms were rented
in the house of Madame d’Alchelburg, Plankengasse. On January 15, Germaine
gave her first party. It was a great success ; so much so, indeed, that the Austrian
police, seeing this Frenchwoman surrounded by the leaders of Society, asked
themselves if it was possible that she was a spy in Napoleon’s pay, and kept an
eye on her. She lost not a moment in opening her campaign for liberty and love,
and soon began to make enemies. Zinzendorf was told that the new Empress had
been at pains to snub her. No matter, every great nobleman in the Austrian
Empire and the whole Diplomatic Corps paid her court, and she was invited, as
an honoured guest, to every house of importance. Everywhere she went, Maurice
went also—to the distress of Christine de Ligne, a girl of excellent beauty, whom

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everybody called “Titine.” Germaine decided to show her powers as an actress
and, with her son and daughter, gave a performance of a Biblical play she had
written about Hagar and Ishmael.

“ Madame de Staël,” wrote Zinzendorf, “was in sandals in her part of Hagar ; you
could see all her toes. Her big toe was in convulsions, when her body was in
action.”

He saw her again in another play and wrote :

“ It’s much to be wished that one could avoid seeing her fat, heavy, masculine face
which is so terribly badly matched to her part.”

On March 30 she played her own piece, Geneviève de Brabant, at Prince

Lichenstein’s house. Zinzendorf saw that too, and wrote :

“ Geneviève !—Madame de Staël—A touching little play, pious, full of reverence,

full of prayers to God. Professor Schlegel, as a hermit, declaimed at the end, like
the prophet Elijah, about the reunion of the two spouses, while Geneviève, with
her heavy face, like a cook’s, lay dead on the grass, with her arms outstretched. It
seems to me that Madame de Staël ought to shriek less in a part which is meant
to be pathetic. The daughter played splendidly. The mother’s gestures and her
bearing are dreadful.”

A woman who saw the performance wrote that Madame de Staël was dressed “in
the skins of animals, with dishevelled hair and without any ornament. The
playing was too violent, the play trivial.”

Germaine herself was well pleased. She wrote to Sismondi :

Vienna, April 1, 1808.

“ I’ve played Geneviève. We are, as the saying is, ‘on the top of the fashion.’ ”

Zinzendorf heard her discussing Napoleon, andwrote in his diary :

“ She said that Napoleon was a despot in every one of his relationships. For
example, he ordered the actress, Mdlle. Mezerai, to come to him. When she
entered his apartment he was writing. ‘Sit down,’ he snapped, ‘undress. Get into
bed !’ She declared that he told the King of Prussia that he was going to deprive
him of a part of the Mark of Brandenburg but meant to leave him Silesia. The
King begged : ‘Leave me the inheritance of my fathers and take Silesia, which is
only conquered territory.’ Napoleon jeered : ‘Ah yes, Papa and Mama.’ The
King, Madame de Staël said, should have answered : ‘Exactly what you haven’t
got.’ ”

These apocryphal tales were part of the good seed which Germaine had come to
sow in the fertile minds of Napoleon’s enemies. The Austrian Court and the

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Austrian aristocracy had no reason to like Necker’s daughter ; her share in the
ruin of Versailles and of Marie Antoinette was by no means forgotten. But on the
principle that any stick is good enough with which to beat a dog, they swallowed
their resentment. Meanwhile, behind the façade of social life Germaine was
pursuing the main purpose of her visit, which was to marry Maurice O’Donnell.
She flattered him, petted him, mothered him, and, as day followed day, lashed
herself into a frenzy of passion.

“ I’m so rushed,” she wrote to him, “that I daren’t hope to see you this morning.
But at nine o’clock or half-past nine I’ll be at your door, to carry you off to supper
here. Don’t you realise, Maurice dear, that the only hours which I enjoy to the
whole day are those that I spend talking to you ? ”

Again : “It’s three o’clock and I haven’t seen you yet. That upsets me. Dear
Maurice, are you ill ? Reassure me and don’t forget that at seven o’clock I’m
going to Madame de Vrbna’s, where you’ve been invited.”

And again : “How are your eyes ? It’s snowing. I’ll send my carriage for you at
half-past one, to take you, if you wish, to your uncle’s. I beg you not to expose
yourself to the air while the snow lasts. Did you find last evening tedious ? I
don’t want to tell you how much I want to see you : people are apt to abuse
sovereignty.”

Maurice was too fond of his relations, Flora and Titine de Ligne, for Germaine’s
taste. One morning she could no longer contain herself.

“ In a dinner-party of twelve you were the only one,” she wrote to him, “who
didn’t share in the general conversation. You kept up a continuous rattle with the
Princess Flore. After dinner, the same behaviour ! What said, what the Prince de
Ligne said, interested you not a rap. . . . Why does my intimate friend cold-
shoulder me in this fashion . . . in order to devote himself to a girl to whom he
had promised not to speak and on account of whom he had already, a fortnight
ago, made me suffer ? . . . I didn’t know what I was saying. I spoke like an
automaton. I don’t suppose that the Princess Flore is very dear to you, but, in
society, one thinks most of saving one’s face, and I insist on reigning alone over
your heart. What would you be like in a country where the women laid
themselves out to attract you ? . . . I’ll dine and sup with you, if you like ; but I
warn you that I’m very upset.”

She sent her carriage for him daily. She made him soup when he was ill,
lamenting at the same time that she was not living in the same house with him.

“ What’s the use of this sort of life which fame permits me, if I can’t do here what
would be simplicity itself in France ? Dear Maurice, do you suppose that a world
writhing under the heel of a tyrant is concerned that you and I should sacrifice
the sweetest affections of our hearts ? ”

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Maurice had no wish to see her install herself in his flat. Scenes of anguish
followed ; reproaches were hurled at the poor young man and then washed out in
floods of adoration. As spring advanced the pace grew hotter. She began to hint
at suicide, grew sleepless and suffered dreadful fits of depression.

“ Count yourself happy that you don’t know this depression which seizes me and
of which I haven’t had so bad an attack for a very long time. Exile, the need to go
back home, loneliness of heart, the struggles which await me, the sorrow of leave-
taking, complete lack of interest in everything but love, and no hope of happiness
in that—in short, a kind of disgust of myself, a feeling that I exemplify
Chateaubriand’s picture of souls condemned to eternal solitude. . . I have a
tenderness, a respect for you which deserves not that you fight against my nature,
but that you harmonise yourself with it. All my enthusiasm has been devoted to
you. . . . I’m a lonely soul in spite of my taste for social life. . . .”

She wrote to Benjamin at the same time :

“ Vienna, May 16, 18o810

“ I’m writing you on the eve of my leaving here. I still hope to get a letter from
you to-morrow morning. When I receive a kind letter from you, it helps me
during two or three days. But then I tell myself that your liking for me is a thing
of the past, and that I deceive myself in allowing my soul to lean upon yours. God
disposes of us all ! I come back with the same attachment to you, an attachment
which no neglect can weaken, an attachment which does not permit that you be
compared with anyone else on earth. My heart, my life, all are yours, if you wish
them and in whatever way you wish them. Think about that ! I feel sure that
nobody can replace Albertine and me in your affections and that you risk your
happiness and glory in this world by so cruelly disturbing our relations. . . The
only thing that does my soul any good is tender treatment from you. I want
nothing but that. . . . I feel sad at leaving all the kind people here ; not that I love
anyone much. . . . Love me but one-hundredth part as much as I love you ! ”

This eve of departure from Vienna was memorable in several ways. Germaine
and Maurice made an excursion together out of the city, and Maurice carved their
names on the trunk of a tree. They did not get back until nearly midnight, and it
was necessary to warn the servants to be discreet. Next day Maurice
accompanied the berline to the first post, at the village of Stockerau, where, on
May 22, 1808, a scene of high emotional quality marked the final leave-taking.
Germaine had not secured her husband ; but she was not without hope. At the
second post she sent off a letter to Maurice :

“ Ah, give me, all my life, the joy of loving you. . . . Noble friend of my heart,
helper who cannot fail, I give you all the powers of my soul. . . I took ill at this
second post and they had to lay me on the grass by the roadside. I thought of the
protecteing goodness of my friend. I asked myself if all the care that was being
taken of me possessed any value at all as compared with the words ‘Dear Child,’
which your ravishing voice has so often spoken—Ah never, never forget that I

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can’t live without you. . . Your soul is a treasure of heaven. . . . I’ll make you more
religious and you’ll make me more worthy to be religious. . . . We will lead, I
hope, our common life with a noble objet in view. And when, as must happen, I
precede you into the next world, I will go to wait for you beside my father, to
whom I will say that, for the first time since his leaving me, hope of strength in
another was given me by you.”

Maurice found the prospect of an eternal life with Jacques and his daughter so
little to his taste that he did not unduly hasten his reply to this and subsequent
letters. At Toéplitz, Germaine met Gentz, Stadion’s friend, a German whose
hatred of Napoleon and love of England equalled her own.

“ I made the acquaintance of Madame de Staël,” Gentz noted, “who was on her
way, with Augustus William Schlegel and Sismondi, to Northern Germany. I
spent some memorable weeks with her and accompanied her to Pirna, for I didn’t
dare to go to Dresden. I found myself quite carried away by the flatteries she
heaped on me and which, in the end, became so passionate as to make her two
travelling companions jealous. She wrote to Vienna, where she had spent the
winter, that I was Germany’s ‘Big Man.’ ”

Germany was waking up. There was intrigue in the air. Germaine filled her
lungs, and studied the political situation. Her heart swelled with pride when she
was assured that her novels were playing a part in turning men’s minds against
Napoleon. The French army of occupation was an object lesson in the value of
liberty—and love too—by which the Germans were profiting every day. When her
carriage reached the frontier of Saxony, the commissioner on duty opened the
door and told her that for several years his greatest wish had been to see her, and
that now, having seen her, he would die happy. For she was Germany’s friend
and Napoleon’s enemy.11

Napoleon had his eye on her. He was engaged in securing the throne of Spain for
his brother Joseph, her old friend, but he was far from feeling at ease. His plan to
close the Baltic and the Mediterranean against England had been upset already
by the bombardment of Copenhagen by the English navy, and the consequent
surrender of the Danish fleet. The Emperor of the French was accustomed to
look on Europe as one great battlefield with England for the enemy. He saw
Denmark, the entrance to the Baltic, as his right wing ; Spain, the entrance to the
Mediterranean, as his left wing, and Germany as his rear. Canning’s stroke
against Copenhagen had broken his right wing ; England was preparing to attack
his left in Portugal ; the safety of his central position gave him much anxiety.
For, though the Emperor Alexander of Russia was acting, meanwhile, as
watchdog over Prussia and Austria, Napoleon was far from placing implicit trust
in him. If the Germans or Austrians gave trouble, the strategy against England
would be paralysed. These considerations were present to Napoleon, when he
wrote to Fouché:12

“Bayonne, June 28, 1808

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“ I enclose some letters which have passed between Madame de Staël and the
man named Gentz. Madame de Staël has become mixed up with the clique of
German plotters and with the gamblers in London (who are egging them on).
Please place this woman under police supervision at Coppet and give orders
accordingly to the Prefect of Geneva and the Commander of the Gendarmerie.
Her relations with Gentz cannot but do France harm. Until now I’ve looked on
her as a mere fool : now, as I want you to understand, I place her among those
who are trying to disturb the public peace. I’ve intrusted my Foreign Minister to
inform all my agents at Foreign Courts about this change of attitude and to tell
them to keep a sharp eye on her wherever she goes.”

Napoleon realised at last that the salon which he had closed in the rue de
Grenelle had been reopened in Europe on the centre of his battlefield, and that, in
this position, its power of influencing opinion was magnified a thousand-fold.

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 193.
2
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 186.
3
The fame enjoyed by Madame Lebrun was very great. She painted most of the
famous women of Versailles including the Queen and Madame de Polignac. She
escaped from Paris early in the Revolution and went to Italy. Later she toured
Europe painting famous people. She painted both M. and Madame Necker.
4
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 195.
5
Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that Benjamin Constant showed him
Madame de Staël’s letters which were “more than passionate.” In one of them,
said Napoleon, she threatened to kill her son if Benjamin didn’t return to her
(Gourgaud : St. Heléne, Vol. II).
6
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 18.
7
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 21.
8
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 23.
9
Mistler gives these details. His work is of the utmost interest to Students of
Madame de Staël and reveals a careful and exact scholarship. All the letters to
Maurice O’Donnell are from his work,Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell.
Until the work was published, the reason for the visit to Vienna remained more or
less a mystery.
10
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 105.
11
She tells this story herself in Dix Années d’Exil.

204
12
Lettres inédites, Lecestre.

205
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXIV

WOMEN MUST WEEP

FROM Dresden Germaine wrote to Maurice :

“ I’ve already spoken of Austria with patriotic feelings ; I can’t tell you how sore
my heart is at taking leave of her eagles. . . I’ll spare you the tale of my successes
at Dresden ; they’re tremendous. . . .”

She left Dresden on June 6, and went to Weimar, where she found awaiting her,
as she told Maurice :

“ Eleven letters from Benjamin ; isn’t he kind ? Eight from Auguste which are as
tender as poor Albert’s, two from M. de Sabran, one from Prosper, two business
letters, two from Mathieu, one from Madame Récamier and three from
Geneva. . . . How I long to know your father’s attitude to me. I await a letter from
you before writing him. . . . The Emperor (Napoleon) has remarked that in
dealing with the French one needs an iron hand in a velvet glove ; it seems to me
that where women are concerned the velvet glove is wanting.”

She wrote to Maurice at every stopping place on the way back to Coppet, at
Gotha, on June 20, at Frankfurt on the 26th, at Basle on the 30th. And every
letter bore further witness to her wish to marry him. Back at Coppet this
determination gave her no rest.

“ You must agree to what I want to propose for you,” she told him. “I shall send
you on Tuesday an order for £1251 on a banker who is in business relations with
Geneva and not with me. I implore you on my bended knees to allow me to do
this for you. . . . If you don’t realise that I love you more than anybody on earth
you have very little acumen. Everybody asks me why I look so sad. . . Remember
that I have an income of £5,000 without a penny of debt. . . .

“ I find here, awaiting me, the bas-relief of Tieck for the tombs of my father, my
mother and myself. My mother is taking my father by the hand to lead him into
Heaven. As for him, he casts a glance full of kindness upon a kneeling and veiled
figure. It’s truly very beautiful. . . .”

Again :

“ Dear friend, shall I spend the winter with you ? We won’t go out into Society,
what do you say ? I want to lead a different kind of life ; my whole nature has
changed. I’ve changed for your sake ; I shall live only for you. Your uncle and
the Prince de Ligne—there shall be my social circle. If I lose you I’ll go mad with
grief. . . I’m thinking about sending my eldest son to America a year hence. I’ve
got a good deal of land there. . . He wants to go, and I’ll come back to Vienna in

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spring to bid him good-bye. . . . Coppet was exceedingly lovely this evening. I’ve
been looking at the moon reflected in the lake like a column of fire. Ah, if you
were with me. You, who are the life of Nature for me ! Adieu, Maurice, noble
choice of my heart. Adieu.”

Meanwhile there was Benjamin : that young man, in Germaine’s absence, had
grown melancholy. He wrote in April to Prosper de Barante that he had been
turning out old love-letters.

“ I gaze on all these letters, written by hands which now are dust, and on those
letters which can no longer be answered, and to which, when I did answer, I
opposed so many arguments based on life and circumstance and the future—all
those arguments, all those uncertainties, all this future is buried in the grave
which has itself disappeared.”

He was wondering whether or not he should marry Charlotte before “my harpy”
returned from Vienna. Charlotte had been divorced ; there was no obstacle. He
took her to his father at Dôle, and the old man urged him to marry. On June 5 a
secret wedding which, however, was not performed in accordance with French
law—and was therefore invalid—was celebrated by the pastor of Besançon.
Benjamin took his bride to Lausanne and introduced her to Rosalie. Then his
nerve shook. He left her and rushed off to Coppet, meaning to tell Germaine
what he had done. He told her, instead, what he was going to do—namely, to
marry Charlotte in the autumn.

“ I’ve had it out with Benjamin,” Germaine wrote to Maurice on July 12, 1808,
“and I believe that our summer will be calm, though necessarily sad.”

Troubles soon multiplied for her. On August 5 she got a letter from Maurice in
which he reproached her bitterly and told her that he meant to break off his
relations with her. A second letter reached her on the 14th which announced
itself as the last she would ever receive from him.

“ This morning,” she wrote to him, “I got your letter from Baden of July 3o and I
simply can’t believe that the expressions you use are meant to apply to me :
‘artfulness ! ’ ‘deception !’ ‘abuse of confidence !’ If I had shown your letter to the
friends who are with me, Camille,2 Mathieu, Elzear, etc., they would have thought
you mad. But your madness has none the less given me a dagger thrust from
which I shall never recover. What shall I say to you when you have believed such
absurdity, such vileness, such stupidity of me ? You accuse me of delighting to let
it be thought that you love me, when everybody can see that I love you. That’s a
feeling so natural in a woman that it’s incredible that anybody could find fault
with it. . . But to have told anybody that you want to marry me and that I don’t
want to marry you—that would have been as wicked as it would have been
absurd. . . .

“ I know I’m very rich, and when I was a girl I used to say that only the attentions
of the Knights of Malta flattered me, because they can’t marry ; since I became a

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widow men have written or spoken to me to that sense on ten occasions, but I
told you nothing about it in case a reference to my fortune disturbed you. That
isn’t all. I have had it on my tongue ten times this winter to tell you that, if your
feeling for me was genuine, I would be happy and proud to devote my life to you. .
. . When I begged you to come to Coppet, when I offered to accompany you to
Italy, was I not taking on myself all the consequences of that association ? When
a woman does not love a man, does she leave all her friends to go travelling with
him ? Does she think of marrying a man she doesn’t love when she has need of
no support except that of the heart ? And you call all that trickery ! Torrents of
tears, convulsions at Madame de Vrbna’s, forty letters in two months, the resolve
to return to Vienna—artifice to make people think that you want to marry me ! . . .

“ After having told me at Stockerau that it was ‘for our mutual happiness’ that
the Prince de Ligne had joined our hands at Madame Palfy’s, after having
written to me to Dresden that I was ‘the first love of your heart,’ you end by
wishing me an eternal good-bye. Wretched man ; what an expression ! How can
any one of God’s creatures make use of it ? And to whom ? If my heart was as
guilty as it is pure, as ungrateful as it is devoted, how could you say that to me ?
Do you think you show manliness in tearing out my heart ? What harm can it do
you ? What danger do you run ? Who is going to punish you for plunging me
into despair ? Your own conscience, perhaps, but certainly no human voice. In a
land where I lived only for you no voice is likely to ask you : ‘ Why do you force
her to die of grief ? ’ Your letter is a poison ; I’ll never be cured. I’ve been
accused in my life of inconsequence, impetuousness, but no living being, no
enemy, has called me other than true and generous.”

She returned to that theme day after day, in an avalanche of self-pity. Her tears
were not dried for more than a month, and they stained her letters. Thus :

“ I swear before God that I have loved you and do love you with all my soul. . . I
call God and one of his Saints, my father, to witness again that I have loved you
and do love you. . . . The only real things in life are religion and the capacity to
love. . . When I try to rise up I have to cling to things and I tremble frequently. . . .
If you never wish to hear again that voice which has told you that it loves you with
such abandon and enthusiasm, my decision is taken. I shall go to America. . . .
You exile me with a force equal to Bonaparte’s.”

She was working on her book De l’Allemagne. It was to be a compendium of the

gospel which she had preached all over Europe as well as a plea for the good
Germans on whom Napoleon was trampling, a political act, in short, like
everything she wrote. Maurice’s treason made Benjamin necessary again, and he
was bidden to remain. Coppet had become a prison with policemen peeping
through all the hedges, for Napoleon’s suspicions were growing stronger as the
dangers which threatened him increased. The Tilsit plan, upset at Copenhagen,
had suffered a fresh reverse in Spain. A French army laid down its arms, there, at
Baylen on July 23, 18o8, and King Joseph thought it well to leave Madrid for the
frontier. The left wing of the battle against England was broken. Napoleon’s eyes
turned to the countries in his rear : Russia, Austria. Could he count on

208
Alexander if he went in person to restore the position in Spain ? He knew that
Austria was arming and that the zeal of the Germans for liberty was growing
warmer every day. It would be necessary to send troops from the Rhine to the
Pyrenees ; it would be necessary to replace these troops. A fresh conscription
must be ordered. Would the French people willingly give him their young lads ?
Soon he heard the bitter reproaches of mothers and wives, French mothers and
French wives this time. He had robbed them of liberty ; now he was taking love
as well. And for what ? Merely to satisfy his dreadful ambition.

He tried to tell these simple people that this was a life-and-death struggle and
that England’s victory meant the final loss by France of the first place among the
nations. He tried to show them his plan. (“Who,” he lamented later, “saw in my
Spanish policy the control of the Mediterranean?”) Their minds could not grasp
his ideas ; but fastened instead on the ideas opposed to him. They saw their lads
march away and, in their anguish, cried that this was a crime against humanity.
Frenchwomen began to think the same thoughts and use the same phrases as
German women and Austrian women and Russian women. And Germaine,
speaking through the millions of copies of her books and through her
ubiquitous salon, became their High Priestess. She was as famous as Napoleon ;
she was “The Woman” in the sense that he was “The Man.”

“ I regard as my personal enemy,” said Napoleon, “every foreigner who shows

himself in Madame Récamier’s salon.” That was because Juliette Récamier was
Germaine’s friend. “I’m torn,” wrote Germaine to Juliette, “between my longing
to see you and my fear of getting you into trouble.” Madame Récamier’s most
honoured guest was Metternich, the Austrian Ambassador. The Germans were
her close friends. And when they left her, they travelled to Coppet. Napoleon
announced that those who wished to please him would, for the future, avoid
Coppet. Germaine saw many old friends pass her door. She grew depressed,
nervous, afraid and sleepless. She took much opium and began to lose all her
self-control. The idea of going to America grew in her mind. She resolved to ask
for leave to embark at a French port. This was given on condition that she did
not approach nearer to Paris than 150 miles.

She spent the winter waiting and watching. Napoleon met the Emperor
Alexander of Russia at Erfurt with the object of binding that sovereign anew to
his policy. Goethe was of the party and succumbed to Napoleon’s flattery.
Alexander, on the contrary, paid compliments, made promises, drank toasts, and
met Talleyrand privily by night. Napoleon, more or less dissatisfied, bustled off
to Spain. Within a few weeks he was at Madrid ; the English army under Sir
John Moore was forced to re-embark. But victory came too late. Talleyrand’s
whispers that if Austria drew her sword the Russian cock would not fight for
Napoleon were spreading terror in Paris and filling Metternich’s letter-box with
offers of help. Even Josephine showed herself ready to leave a ship which the
most sanguine believed to be sinking. Napoleon rushed back to his capital,
scattered the plotters and recruited a new army. In April he led it against the
Austrians. He was in Vienna in May.

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But the reverse which he suffered outside that city, at Aspern-Essling, robbed
him of the fruits of his energy. The news of the reverse was wine in the blood of
his enemies ; Spain set her teeth ; Russian opposition hardened ; a shiver ran
through the prostrate body of Germany. Germaine, throbbing with hope, ordered
the berline and went galloping into France. She was off, she said, to see Talma
acteing in Lyons ; but Juliette had been called from Paris to meet her. For a few
days they planned and plotted together ; then the bells of Lyons rang out the
victory of Wagram and the end of the campaign. She fled back to Coppet. There
she heard of the divorce of Josephine and of Napoleon’s forthcoming marriage
with the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. She heard, too, that Benjamin
proposed to marry Charlotte. On August 22, 1809, one of her guests wrote to
Meister :3

“ Madame de Staël is frightfully upset just now because of the forthcoming

marriage of Benjamin, fixed for this autumn. She’s refused during the last six
years to marry him, but she can’t endure the idea of his marrying somebody else.
This contradiction ought to look absurd enough ; but for those who know the
human heart, it’s easy to understand. It’s our thwarted wills and the contrasts in
our natures which give the touch of reality.

“ Madame de Staël has forbidden all those who surround her and all who come to
see her to utter a word about the event which occupies and devours her mind.
She wishes to find the means of resigning herself in her own spirit and she has
turned on one or two people who have attempted to discuss the matter. They
have complained to me of the treatment meted out to them.

“ Benjamin is to leave here in September or October to go and get married and

establish himself with his wife in Paris, where his house awaits him.”

1
She seems to have insisted on giving money to all her lovers, and she knew that
these gifts helped to bind them to her. The admission is not without its pathos.
2
Camille Jordan, Mathieu’s friend ; Elzear de Sabran.
3
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 206.

210
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXV

"JOHN" ROCCA

NAPOLEON had weathered the storm ; Germaine decided to go to England.

“ I avow,” she wrote to Meister,1 “in the presence of my guardian angel and of
Heaven, her Fatherland, that I have made up my mind to leave the Continent ; I
have taken this decision solely from reasons of high-mindedness and pride. Only
one thing can reverse it ; when my book on Germany appears . . . my children are
going to beg the Emperor to recall me. If he grants that petition, I’ll stay ; if not,
I’ll leave sorrowfully but with a firm heart.”

She told all her friends that her destination was America, and obtained passports
for the United States. In April 1810 she left Coppet and travelled by way of Lyons
and Blois to Chaumont-sur-Loire, where her friend Le Ray de Chaumont owned a
castle that he had placed at her disposal during his absence in New York.
Mathieu hurried to her. The house party included Prosper, Elzéar de Sabran,
Augustus William, Juliette and Benjamin. Germaine drank the air of France and
grew dizzy. She began to show herself in Blois in an open carriage. She went to
the theatre, she paid calls, she gave parties. When her host returned, she
accepted another invitation and installed herself in the Castle of Fossé. Here the
final proofs of De l’Allemagne reached her. Her spirits soared ; her wit flashed.
She made a list of 100 friends who were to have presentation copies of her book
on the day of publication. Towards the end of September she went to spend a few
days with Mathieu at his place La Godinière, near Blois. On the 26th they lost
themselves in the forest while out walking. A young squire, to whose castle they
came, offered hospitality for the night. Scarcely had they gone to bed when a
horseman galloped to the door. There was loud knocking ; Mathieu, at his
devotions, put his head out of the window and recognised Auguste de Staël.

The lad brought sorrowful tidings. Napoleon’s police were at Fossé with orders
for his mother to embark at once for America or leave France within twenty-four
hours. De l’Allemagne had been condemned, manuscripts and proofs were to be
destroyed. Mathieu broke the news to Germaine. They set out in the darkness
for Fossil. The place, when they reached it, was surrounded bygendarmes ; but
the woman’s courage did not fail. Instantly, she began to fight a rearguard action,
displaying a resource of which Napoleon might have been proud : she needed
money ; she must get into touch with her printer ; she was about to ask for an
audience of the Emperor ; before sailing for America, she must consult her man
of business.

“ I saw in the newspapers,” she wrote, “that American ships were lying in the
Channel ports. I made up my mind to use my passport for America because I
hoped by means of it to reach England.”2

211
She wrote to Savary, who had replaced Fouché as Minister of Police. He replied :

“ Your exile is the inevitable result of the line of conduct you have followed during
the past few years. It seems to me that the air of this country does not suit you,
and for ourselves, we are not yet reduced to seeking models among the peoples
whom you admire. Your last work, De l’Allemagne, is not French in sentiment.
I’ve ’topped its publication.

“ You know, Madame, that you were only allowed to leave Coppet because you
stated your intention of going to America. . . .

“ I have reason, Madame, for indicating to you the Western ports, La Rochelle,
Bordeaux and Rochefort, as the only ones where you may take ship. Kindly let
me know upon which your choice falls.”

They had seen through her design to go to England. The spectre of Coppet rose
again before her. She sent her two sons off to Fontainebleau to plead with
Napoleon. He, meanwhile, had read her book.

“ I send you Madame de Staël’s book,” he wrote to Savary. “Has she any right to
call herself Baroness ? Did she use that title in her earlier works ? Suppress the
passage about the Duke of Brunswick and cut out three-quarters of the passages
in which she praises England to the skies. This wretched enthusiasm has already
done us harm enough.”

Her sons were informed that they could not see the Emperor and that if they
stayed at Fontainebleau they would be arrested. She played her last card and
wrote herself to Napoleon :3

“ Your Majesty has been told that I lament my absence from Paris because of
the Musée and Talma. It’s a pleasant jest about exile, that is to say about the
calamity that Cicero and Bolingbroke have called the most unbearable. But
surely you, sire, do not blame me for loving the masterpieces of art which France
owes to your Majesty's conquests or those great tragedies that are immortal
pictures of heroism ! Does not every man’s happiness depend on the bent of his
mind ? And if Heaven has given me talents, is it not true to say that my
imagination needs the pleasures of the arts and of the mind ? Everybody is
asking benefits of your Majesty. Need I blush to ask friendship, poetry, music,
pictures, all that ideal life which, surely, I can enjoy without detriment to the duty
which I owe to the ruler of France ? ”

“When the Devil was sick,” repeated Napoleon. No answer was sent. A few days
later Metternich ventured to plead for the exile, doing her, thereby, no service.4

“I don’t want Madame de Staël back here in Paris,” the Emperor told him. “And
I’ve got the best possible reasons for my decision. It’s no concern of mine if
Madame de Staël is a Royalist or a Republican, and I should have nothing against
her on either of these counts ; but she’s an agitator who excites the salons. It’s

212
only in France that a woman of that kind is dangerous. I don’t wish her to come
back.”

He changed his mind about her book and ordered its total suppression.5 When
the period of grace which had been granted her expired, she departed once more
for Switzerland, travelling by Orleans. In that town she gazed upon the statue of
Jeanne d’Arc, and thought that, when the English ruled in France, France was
freer, more truly herself than now.6 She reached Coppet early in October. Soon
afterwards she received a message from Benjamin, whom she supposed to be in
Paris, inviting her to come to the hotel at Sécheron between Geneva and
Lausanne. She obeyed.7 Charlotte received her in the salon.

“I am Madame Constant,” Charlotte announced, “and my husband . . .”

“Madame Constant ? My husband ? What do you mean ? ” “We were married a

year ago.”

Germaine delivered herself to her feelings, pretended that she had no idea that
Benjamin so much as dreamed of marriage and unloosed a torrent of abuse which
frightened Charlotte so much that she could only protest feebly that her husband
was a good man.

“ Good ? He ? Good ?” screamed Germaine. “He’s the biggest scoundrel on

earth. The vainest, the most unfeeling that any woman could meet for her
undoing. Good ? . . . Mark me, Madame, I’ve loaded this fellow with benefits. If
he counts for anything to-day, he owes that position wholly to me. I fetched him
out of obscurity, out of total darkness. I’ve given him everything, everything,
Madame, do you hear ? and the only thanks I’ve had are ingratitude and
betrayal.”

Charlotte repeated that Benjamin was a good man.

“ Where is he ?” cried Germaine. “Where is the coward hiding himself ? I want to

see him.”

Benjamin was listening. Like a naughty schoolboy he came skulking into the
room. Madame de Staël reduced him, in a few minutes, to babbling
helplessness. He begged her to forgive him. Both he and Charlotte promised, in
trembling tones, to obey any instructions she might choose to give them.
Germaine ordered that the marriage should be kept secret during her pleasure
and that Benjamin should return to Coppet. They accepted. When they were
alone again, Charlotte wept bitterly. But she had to pack up and go to her
husband’s father’s home. Benjamin went to Coppet.

Germaine, however, was done with him and was concerned only to save her face
till she found a husband. He lived, despised and humiliated, while she made
violent love to Prosper de Barante, who had fallen in love with Juliette Récamier,
and at the same time conducted a brisk but unsuccessful affair with a young

213
American named O’Brien. Towards the end of the year 1810, Benjamin was
allowed to slink away, almost unnoticed. She had just met “John” Rocca.

He was twenty-three, very pale, beautiful as Italian boys can be beautiful, the
victim of a ghastly wound taken in Napoleon’s Spanish campaign, where he had
served as Second-Lieutenant of the 2nd Regiment of Hussars. He limped a little,
but in the saddle displayed an excellent grace. Courage and passion glowed in his
eyes. The lad came of distinguished Italian-Swiss stock and possessed some
money of his own. His sufferings, the delicate state of his health, his boyish
vehemence and his gallant bearing challenged her motherhood. She showed him
kindness ; he fell in love with her.

Even she was embarrassed. She was forty-five, twenty-three years his senior.
She protested her motherhood, opening the door for his escape. “I’ll love her so
much,” cried he to a friend, “that she’ll end by marrying me.” He rode gaily under
her windows, displaying his horsemanship and winning tender glances from
every woman who saw him. But he had eyes only for her. Love and motherhood
became allies in her heart. When he taught his horse to kneel to her she yielded.
They were married, secretly, at Coppet early in the year 1811.

It was part of the bargain that her bridegroom was to keep his lips sealed ; for
she knew that Napoleon awaited a pretext to snatch from her the name she had
made famous, and even in her ecstasy she was resolved to yield nothing to that
man. But she and Rocca lived together at Coppet and in Geneva. Tongues began
to wag, and Benjamin, a little weary already of Charlotte, paid them a visit. He
got no satisfaction. His wit flashed out from the smouldering embers of his
exasperation and kindled John Rocca’s temper. In an instant, to Germaine’s
dismay, the outraged husband demanded satisfaction and named a place of
meeting. Benjamin fled. He made his will.

“I beg my wife’s forgiveness,” he declared, “for the trouble I have caused her and
for this last catastrophe which will be the cause of still more misery for her. I beg
her on no account to believe that I did anything to provoke it. My true, deep and
unchangeable love for her was an obstacle which prevented any act of gallantry
on my part towards any other woman. I love no one as I love her ; she has been
an angel to me, and my last feelings are those of Dante towards his beloved. I
forgive Madame de Staël for the fatality of which she will have been the cause,
and I do not hold her responsible for the savagery of a young barbarian.”

Germaine called the duel off. Her “young barbarian” was very dear to her. She
sent Benjamin packing out of her life, and he wrote in his diary :

“On this day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, on the stairs of the Hôtel de la
Couronne at Lausanne, I parted from Madame de Staël, who said that she felt
that we were destined not to meet again during our lives. That is as it should be.
Alas, dear Albertine ! ”

214
Her happiness was increased by a piece of news. She learned that her old friend
Bernadotte had persuaded Napoleon to nominate him to the succession to the
Swedish throne. The state of the King of Sweden’s health made that sovereign’s
death an early probability ; meanwhile the Gascon had assumed the title of
Prince Royal of Sweden, with the blessing of the Emperor of the French (a little
reluctantly given, it is true) and to the great contentment of the Swedes. News of
Rocca’s stay at Coppet reached France, and moral lectures from old friends began
to arrive by post ; was it quite decent to be living with this lad ?

“ I’m of opinion,” she wrote to Jordan, “that, in point of moral dignity, my

circumstances place me as high as it is possible to be placed, and I’m astonished
that you . . . should launch your thunders against an unhappy woman who,
battling to the last, defending her children and her genius at the expense of her
happiness, her safety, her life, is momentarily touched by the fact that a gallant
lad should be willing to sacrifice everything for the pleasure of seeing her.”

Love, as usual, directed her thoughts towards religion. She began to interest
herself in mysticism and in the life after death. She had need of these
consolations, for her enemy was closing in on her. She was forbidden to leave
Coppet, even to travel more than six miles from her own door. Her friends were
warned to keep away from her, and Augustus William received his passport with
orders to use it. Even Mathieu and Juliette thought it better to decline an
invitation to visit the exile.

“Until now,” she wrote to Mathieu, “I have known only the roses of exile ; it was
reserved to those I love the best to show me the thorns or rather to stab me in the
heart in making it clear to me that I’m an object of horror and repulsion.”

Mathieu’s holy spirit could not endure that reproach. He hurried to her side. In
August: 1811 he took rooms at the inn at Secheron. An order came immediately
from Savary forbidding him to come within 120 miles of Paris. Shortly
afterwards, Juliette announced by letter that she was on her way to Coppet.
Germaine sent Auguste to meet her and turn her back, but the plan miscarried.
Juliette arrived and was duly forbidden to return to the capital. These orders
were not issued solely on account of Madame de Staël. Both Mathieu and Juliette
had been intriguing against the Imperial Government. Their stay at Coppet
added anxiety about their friend to their other troubles. Germaine, they both
thought, was suffering from dropsy. When they went away, husband and wife
discussed with anguish the calamity that had befallen. Germaine was pregnant.
What were they to do ?

She would not announce her marriage. She applied for leave to go to America. It
was refused. Then she would go to Italy. Another refusal. To Vienna ? She was
ordered to stay where she was. She grew ill and became a nervous wreck. But
Rocca’s pleas that they should be honest about their relationship were swept
aside. Would he have her haul down her flag ? Change her name ? Turn Europe
upside down ? She wrote to the Grand Duchess Louise begging her to obtain
from the Emperor Alexander of Russia a passport for Riga. Despair, fear, shame,

215
rage swept her spirit. Napoleon was killing her. He would expose her before the
world when her hour came. He would snatch John Rocca—who was still an
officer of Hussars—away from her. Why was he holding her captive if not to be
revenged upon her in signal fashion ? Love, hate, and vanity were robbers of her
reason and her energy, so that all who surrounded her grew afraid. But not once
did that stubborn will relax. She would not announce her marriage.

“I have no more genius, no more ideas, no more inspiration,” she wrote to

Meister on October 5, 1811,8 “and I’m grown passive, a quality I did not believe
existed in my nature. The great event of my life just now is the sun. When the
sun shines I hope once more that the Good God will not forsake me.”

On December 10 she wrote :9

“I live far from all news. . . . I await better days as men waited for the Messiah. . . .
Write to me. Think of me. And you, whom Heaven has won, pray sometimes for
the family of M. Necker.”

The early months of 1811 were spent in preparations for a confinement which was
to be kept absolutely secret. Husband and wife spread assiduously the story of a
severe illness which would require prolonged treatment for its cure.

“My health is in a wretched state,” wrote Germaine to Meister on April 3,

181210 “and if you could see me, thin, weak, pale, you would find it hard to
understand how so strong a woman as myself has been thus brought low. But it
is the power of powers (puissant des puissants) which has wrought my downfall. .
. Be kind to me in this world until we are united to him (her father) in the next.”

Exactly a fortnight later (on April 17, 182) she was delivered of a male child. It
was smuggled out of the house and placed in charge of Dr. Jurine of Longirod in
the Jura.

“Louis Alphonse,” says the baptismal register of that parish, “son of Theodore
Giles of Boston, America, and of Henrietta née Preston, his wife, born the 7th
(sic, the date was the 17th) April, 1812, has been presented for Holy Baptism at
Longirod on May 11 following, by Louis Jurine, Professor at the Academy of
Geneva.”

But the truth leaked out. A Parisian wit celebrated it.

“ Even her dropsy, as we see,

Is defined for posterity,”

he wrote. She was up and about as soon as possible, and paid an early visit to
Geneva, but the reception she met with in that city cured her of the wish to
return. Meanwhile an invitation reached her from the Emperor Alexander of
Russia to come to his capital. It was no more, perhaps, than a hint of a warm
welcome, but the course of events lent it the utmost significance. Napoleon and

216
Alexander had broken with each other and were preparing for war. The quarrel
had the immediate effect of upsetting the campaign of the Emperor of the French
against England, for that campaign, in its economic and military aspects, was
based on Russia. “Without Russia,” Napoleon declared, “the Continental System
is an absurdity.” Without Russia to overawe them, both Prussia and Austria were
certain, the moment they got the chance, to attack France. For these reasons
Napoleon, who believed that there was not a moment to be lost, made ready, in
1812, to exert his utmost strength against Alexander. He judged the moment
favourable for two reasons. In the first place, Russia was at war with Sweden
about Finland and also with Turkey ; secondly, he himself was still strong
enough to compel Prussia and Austria to join him. In these circumstances the
attitude of Sweden became a matter of importance to both Emperors. Napoleon
felt that he had a right to expect help from the new Prince Royal of Sweden,
Bernadotte, his former lieutenant and a Frenchman. Alexander, on the contrary,
remembered Bernadotte’s hatred of his master and recalled the plot against
Napoleon’s life which the Crown Prince had hatched in Madame de Staël’s salon.
As the friend of Bernadotte, the widow of a Swedish nobleman for long
Ambassador to France, the special object of Napoleon’s persecution and the most
illustrious of Frenchwomen, Germaine interested the Russian profoundly. Who
better fitted than she to influence the shifty mind of Bernadotte against
Napoleon, and so make it possible to withdraw the Russian troops from Finland
for service against the Grand Army ? Who, again, more able to mobilise liberal
opinion in Europe against the Emperor of the French ? The presence of Madame
de Staël at St. Petersburg or Moscow, Alexander saw, would be the sufficient
justification of his claim that in opposing Napoleon, he was acting as the true
friend of France and the saviour of humanity.

She was not less well persuaded than he of the soundness of this reasoning. The
resounding success of her novels and the fame with which Napoleon’s
persecution had dowered her, had made of her, in these last years, almost a
legendary figure. Russians, Swedes, Englishmen, Germans, Spaniards,
Frenchmen even, spoke of her gratefully as the martyr of liberty ; her doctrine of
love had been transmuted to an evangel, which challenged all the Tyrant’s
demands. By what right was this Corsican devouring humble homes and tearing
men from women’s embraces to feed his greedy guns ? Germaine was Mother-
Superior of the new sisterhood of the women of Europe. Wives, mothers,
sweethearts fed on her gospel and vowed themselves to the crusade against
Napoleon. In France the effect was to hinder recruiting ; everywhere else, and
especially in Germany, the effect was to stimulate it. National spirit was reborn
in women’s hearts and sanctified on humble hearths. Was this the moment to
proclaim a second marriage to a soldier-lad of twenty-three and renounce the
name that was on every lip ? How could Madame Rocca accomplish the task to
which Heaven had called Madame de Staël ?

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 2o9.
2
Dix Années d’Exil.

217
3
Coppet et Weimar, p. 165.
4
Metternich : Mémoires, Vol. I, p, 289.
5
On his return from Elba, Napoleon stated that the advice to prohibit publication
of De l’Allemagne had been given him by his censors. Paul Gautier proves that,
in fact, it was he himself who ordered suppression. See Madame de Staël et
Napoléon, pp. 254 et seq.
6
Dix Années d’Exil.
7
Some doubt exists about the actual date of this famous scene. It has been put a
whole year earlier, the idea being that Benjamin travelled with Madame de Staël
into France after confessing that he was married. But a careful review of the
evidence has led the present writer to regard that idea as mistaken. The words
used in the interview are well attested.
8
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 222.
9
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 223.
10
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 225.

218
Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXVI

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES

THAT task had dominated her thoughts during her pregnancy. She had just
written an essay on Suicide, the object of which was to recall the German peoples
from despair and summon them to arms. England was held up in this work as
the shining example among the nations, and there was a preface in which the
excellent merits of Bernadotte were extolled. No sooner was she out of her child-
bed than she began to prepare for action.

“I fixed May 15 for my departure,” she wrote. “Preparations had been begun long
before this date and had been carried on in the most profound secrecy.”

She was going to Russia and had no time to lose, because already Napoleon was
massing his forces at Dresden.

“On Saturday, May 23, 1812,”1 she wrote, “at two o’clock in the afternoon I
entered my carriage, remarking that I would be back for dinner. I took no
luggage of any sort with me. I carried my fan in my hand. My daughter had hers
also. My son and M. Rocca had stuffed their pockets with such articles as were
indispensable for a journey of a few days.”

She travelled day and night, at the utmost speed of which her horses were
capable, until she reached a farm-house, near Berne, where Augustus William
had been ordered to await her. Her son Auguste hurried into Berne to the
Austrian Minister, who supplied him with passports made out in assumed
names. The young man then returned with Rocca to Coppet. She continued her
journey, travelling now in her berline, which had followed her. At Salzburg Rocca
rejoined her. On June 6 she reached Vienna.

Austria had already been forced by Napoleon to declare war on Russia, and the
Emperor Francis had gone to Dresden to attend his son-in-law. She was
compelled, therefore, to use great circumspection in applying for her passports to
enter Russia. The Austrian police, at the bidding of the French Embassy, began
to trouble her and she was shadowed wherever she went. Worse still, a formal
demand was made by the French that Rocca, as a French officer, should be
handed over to the authorities of his country. Terrified, she rushed to police
headquarters where a courteous official asked :

“Do you suggest, Madame, that we should go to war because of M. Rocca ? ”

“Why not ? ”2

Day followed day without bringing the Russian passports. In lively anxiety she
thought of trying to reach Constantinople. She would, she told herself, be able to

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sail from that city for England. She demanded and was granted a passport
entitling her to travel through Galicia, and towards the end of June, resumed her
journey, leaving Rocca and Augustus William behind her to await the Russian
passports. The Austrian police used every effort to speed the parting guest, and
followed her wherever she went, so that, after a time, she grew to hate them.
Were these the good Germans whose praises she had so often sung ? She reached
Brunn in Marovia on June 3o. They hurried her on. On July 7 she was at
Wadoyitz. A few days later she spent the night with the Princess Lubomirska at
Lanzut.

“I travelled slowly,” she wrote, “to allow the Russian passports time to follow
me. . . . At last they came, for which deliverance I shall be grateful all my life, so
lively was my joy.”

On July 14, the anniversary, as she duly noted, of the taking of the Bastille, she
crossed the Russian frontier, vowing, as she did so, never again to set foot in any
country under Napoleon’s rule. Napoleon, on that day, was also in Russia,
advancing at the head of his great host towards Moscow. He had Narbonne with
him, and placed so much trust in Germaine’s old lover that he had him sent on a
special mission to the Emperor Alexander.

She was compelled to change her route so as to avoid the French army. She gazed
on the wide, sad spaces of the great land through which her carriage went rolling
and bumping, and noted the eternal horizons, the insignificant villages, the sense
of standing still which attended even the hottest pace. Life, in this wilderness,
was expressed only by the silhouette, seen now and again, of a Cossack, on his
lean nag, with his long lance trailed across the sky. As usual, the people
interested her more than the country. She heard the folk-songs of the Ukraine
with delight, for they told of love and liberty. And she felt, dimly perhaps, that
“quelque chose de gigantesque” in the soul of the Russian peasant. She was
received everywhere with rapture, for the Emperor Alexander had issued a ukase
commanding that she be hospitably entreated. The local squires and their wives
hurried to shake her hand as she passed among them ; they convinced her that
they had read her books, and that they knew how much she had suffered at
Napoleon’s hands. With shining eyes and a heart full of gratitude she drove, on
August 1, into the city of Moscow.

She had outstripped her enemy, who was still far from the Imperial city. But
already the fear of him was hovering over the golden cupolas. Alexander had left
the city on the previous day, but the German patriot, Stein, was still there. He
visited her hotel on the night of her arrival. She had gone to bed. Moscow, even
in its extremity, did her honour. Day after day, while Napoleon drew nearer, she
was feasted and praised. But there were critics here and there.

“Men and women came running from all quarters to see her,” wrote a Russian
woman,“3 and were rather disappointed. They saw a big, fat woman of fifty,
dressed in a fashion very little suited to her age. Her tone did not please ; her

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speeches were too long, her sleeves too short. She sat (at dinner) in the place of
honour, with her elbows on the table, rolling and unrolling a spill of paper.4

“She seemed rather out of humour. On several occasions she tried to speak but
failed to express herself. Our wits ate and drank in their usual fashion and
seemed much better pleased with their fish soup than with the conversation of
Madame de Staël. Few said a word. How empty must our high society have
seemed to this woman ! She is accustomed to be surrounded by men quick to
understand every expression of feeling, every eager word ; and here not a
thought, not a clever saying in three long hours. . . . How bored she was ! How
weary she seemed ! She has seen how much these apes of civilisation can take
in.”

She did not stay long in Moscow. On August 10 the berline reached St.
Petersburg, and the first sight which greeted her was the Union Jack flying at the
mast-head of an English ship.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that in confiding myself to the ocean, I should be passing into
the powerful safe keeping of God.”

Petersburg, in fact, was become the metropolis of all the enemies not of Napoleon
only but of France. The city was full of Germans, Spaniards, French emigrés and
Englishmen, each of whom was concerned, first of all, to defeat the French bid for
world-power. Into this anxious company Germaine was received as “the
conscience of outraged Europe.” She took her cue in an instant, and declared,
with all the emphasis at her command, that the Emperor Alexander was become
the chief hope of Mankind, of the French as well as of their enemies. This was
exactly what the Prussian patriots, and notably Stein, desired that she should
say. They knew their Alexander and had not forgotten Tilsit. What would
happen if Napoleon reached Moscow ? The young Emperor must be stiffened in
his resistance and confirmed in his faith. He must be flattered and cajoled. Stein
hurried to pay his court to Madame de Staël. He sat on the same sofa with the
great lady and flirted with her, in spite of his dismay at her ugliness and his
astonishment at the freedom of her speech. They dined together and heard,
together, the cheering strains of “God Save the King,” which she called “the
National Anthem of Europe.” She read a page or two of her unpublished book on
Germany, and he was so moved that he asked leave to copy out what he had
heard and send it to his wife.

“She moved me much,” the Prussian confessed, “by the depth and nobility of her
feelings and the elevation of her thought, which she expresses with an eloquence
that goes straight to the heart.”5

A few days later Germaine met Alexander. This was a sovereign who prided
himself on being the greatest Liberal in Europe. A dreamy fellow, mystical,
superstitious, fond of women, but too vain to give himself wholly to anything.
Alexander’s share in the murder of his father, Paul I, had left its mark on his
character. He was subject to fits of horror. But he felt himself caught up,

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sometimes, to the clouds in moral ecstasies, which ravished his soul. Gentle as a
purring tiger, candid, devout, he was also more crafty than any other sovereign of
Europe, and autocratic in the tradition of the Tsars. “He wants men to be free,”
said one of his friends, “so that they may be free to do what he tells them.” In
that respect he resembled Germaine very closely. These two did not cease to talk
about Liberty and to proclaim themselves her apostles. But they kept their
doctrines well away from their lives.

“As I talked with the Empress,” wrote Germaine,6 “the door opened and the
Emperor Alexander did me the honour of coming to speak to me. What most
struck me about him, when I first set eyes on him, was an expression of goodness
and of dignity of so remarkable a nature that it seemed that these two qualities
had been fused into one. Then I found myself deeply touched by the simplicity
with which from his first word he discussed the great issues of European policy. I
have always considered the reluctance of most European sovereigns to talk of
serious questions as a sign of their mediocrity. They are afraid to utter words to
which a real meaning attaches. Alexander, on the contrary, spoke to me as had
done the English statesmen who are accustomed to find their strength within
themselves and not in the barriers with which power can surround itself. The
Emperor Alexander, whom Napoleon has tried to present in a false light, is a man
of remarkable mind and of wide culture, and I do not believe that he could find
anybody in his realm better endowed than himself with judgment and with
leadership. He did not hide from me the admiration he had felt for Napoleon
during his dealings with him. . . . He painted with much acumen the effect upon
his mind exerted by Bonaparte’s conversation. . . .

“Alexander told me how much he regretted that he was not a great captain ; I
answered this noble modesty by saying that a sovereign was harder to come by
than a general and that the greatest victory he could win was to support the
public spirit of his people by his example. The Emperor spoke to me with
enthusiasm of his nation and of its possible evolution. He expressed the desire,
which everybody knows that he feels, to improve the lot of the peasants who are
still slaves.

“ ‘Sire,’ I said to him, ‘your character is a Constitution for your Empire, and your
conscience is its guarantee.’

“ ‘If that is so,’ he answered, ‘I’m only a happy accident.’

“Splendid words, the first of the kind, I believe, ever uttered by an absolute
monarch ! How truly good one must be to be able to pronounce judgment on
despotism when one is a despot ! And how good never to abuse power when the
nation one governs is merely astonished at so much moderation.”

In short, these two admirable actors fell on each others’ necks. They had need of
one another. Alexander explained that he had still 20,000 men tied up in
Finland because he could not feel sure of Bernadotte ; and Napoleon and his host
were already at the gates of Smolensk. Germaine told what she knew of the

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Prince Royal of Sweden, of his weaknesses and his vanity, and instructed the
Russian how to play upon those chords. She emphasised the usefulness of
Bernadotte’s thorough knowledge of Napoleon’s methods and of the condition of
the French army. Further, she urged that the presence of so illustrious a
Frenchman among the enemies of the Emperor of the French could not fail to
impress the public mind of Europe. Alexander was about to meet Bernadotte at
Abo in Finland. He went to the meeting determined to win the man at all costs,
offered him Norway in exchange for Finland and returned with a promise of
neutrality in his pocket.

“I saw the Emperor Alexander on a second occasion,” wrote Germaine, “on his
return from Abo, and the interview I had the honour to have with him completely
convinced me of the firmness of his determination. He was good enough to tell
me that, after the taking of Smolensk, Marshal Berthier wrote to the Russian
Commander-in-Chief about some military matters and ended his letter by saying
that the Emperor Napoleon retained the warmest feelings of friendship for the
Emperor Alexander--absurd hypocrisy which the Emperor of Russia measured at
its true value.”

Alexander then spoke “with the highest esteem” of Bernadotte. It was decided
that Madame de Staël should leave at once for Stockholm to place herself beside
that man so that, if he was tempted to change his policy, she might help him to
resist temptation. A few days later she took leave. Among those who came to bid
her good-bye were Sir Robert Wilson and Stein, for both England and Germany
were as deeply interested in her enterprise as Alexander himself.

The supreme moment of the struggle was at hand. If Alexander, repeating his
performance of Tilsit, made peace with the Emperor of the French, Napoleon
would have achieved his purpose, and won such a position of strength as must
have shaken British world-power to its foundations. France, in that event, might
conceivably have regained the first place among the nations. The Russian
Emperor, for all his protesting, was harassed by doubts and anxieties upon which
the supporters of Napoleon’s policy among his advisers played unceasingly. In
these circumstances a declaration of war by Sweden, from which country Russia
had just taken Finland, might easily have broken Alexander’s resistance. The
Swedish nation was anxious that war against Russia should be declared ; only
Bernadotte had prevented a rupture.

Madame de Staël sailed from Abo with Albert, Albertine, Rocca and Augustus
William, was nearly shipwrecked on the island of Aland, and did not reach
Stockholm till September 24, 1812. She came not a moment too soon. The news
of Napoleon’s victory over the Russian army on the Borodino and of his entry into
Moscow arrived at Stockholm almost at the same time as herself. It caused
something like a panic among the Swedes. As soon as she heard it she rushed to
the palace. She found Bernadotte in such dreadful anxiety that she almost lost
her own nerve. The fellow pulled himself together in her presence and told her
Napoleon was lost ; but she knew that, behind her back, he was trying, already,

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to wriggle out of his promises to Alexander. His ministers were urging him to
declare war on Russia.

She gathered her courage and set her teeth. She plied him with flatteries,
arguments, promises. Within a few days she had opened a salon and plunged
into politics. Englishmen and Germans thronged her rooms. She talked, she
plotted, she planned, rushing from Embassy to Embassy and minister to
minister. An intelligence service was organised and relations established not only
with Petersburg but also with Berlin and Vienna. Bernadotte was compelled,
daily, to hear what was passing in the Russian capital ; he was challenged daily to
renew his assurances. She called him the saviour of Europe and the hope of
humanity. When he fainted, her eloquence revived him ; when he would have
bolted, she was standing, sword in hand, in his path.

And meanwhile, in the Kremlin, among the smoking ashes of Moscow, Napoleon
lingered in an agony of alternating hope and despair, while the days of salvation
marched away into the winter darkness. Would Alexander make peace ? Would
Bernadotte make war ? Couriers were despatched almost hourly to Petersburg,
where the irresolute Russian, in his Winter Palace, was giving himself to all the
demons which resided in his own dark spirit. Alexander had reached so
hysterical a condition of mind that he would have welcomed any good excuse for
a reconciliation with Napoleon. Would Bernadotte declare war ?7

On the contrary, Bernadotte wrote to point out the weakness of the French
position. He counselled courage and resolution. October passed ; the Retreat
from Moscow began. A world breathless with astonishment beheld the wreckage
of the Grand Army sinking among the snowdrifts.

It was all over.

1
Her descriptions of her travels are taken from Dix Années d’Exil.
2
Metternich goes out of his way to recount this incident. See Blennerhasset, Vol.
III, p. 444 (after the unpublished papers of Metternich).
3
Pouchrine : Fragments et Mémoires inédites d’une dame, published by the
Russian review Sovremenike and quoted by Paul Gautier, Madame de Staël et
Napoléon, pp. 307, 311.
4
Sometimes it was a spill of paper, sometimes a wand, sometimes a sprig of
laurel. She always held a “sceptre” of some kind when talking at meals.
5
See Pertz : Life of Stein.
6
Dix Années d’Exil.

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7
Alexander’s doubts and hesitations at this time were soon forgotten in the tide
of victory, but they were real. He was several times on the point of treating with
Napoleon, and Sir Robert Wilson and Stein had an anxious time. The Imperial
family, too, was divided in its attitude to Napoleon. The Emperor’s brother was
for negotiations ; his womenfolk were against. A threat by Bernadotte must, in
these circumstances, have “tipped the balance” in Napoleon’s favour.

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CONCLUSION

“ Le Juge suprème évaluera tout. Il sera clément envers le génie.”

ALBERTINE ADRIENNE on MADAME DE STAËL.

Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXVII

“THE PRINCE”

NOT in vain had Madame de Staël come galloping across Europe. The hour of
crisis had found her in the place where her influence was decisive.

She set to work, now, to follow up her victory by inducing Bernadotte to throw in
his lot with Alexander. Her activity was doubled. She entertained on a scale
unprecedented even in her history, and made of Stockholm a chief centre of
opposition to Napoleon. While the wounded eagle, back in Paris, was calling up
his last reserves, she was comforting and reconciling his enemies and securing a
constant interchange of news between England and Russia. And meanwhile the
seed which she had sowed was sprouting in millions of hearts. In the name of the
liberty and love she had preached to them, Germans were marching to war,
Frenchmen demanding to be released from it.

She published her essay on Suicide with its preface in which Bernadotte was
advanced as a reason for continuing to live. Why kill yourself, ran the argument,
when, under the leadership of the Prince Royal of Sweden, you can kill
Frenchmen instead ? Another pamphlet, published anonymously in Hamburg,
adjured the Swedes to follow this modern Bayard to the battlefields of liberty.
Bernadotte, fortified by the spectacle of the Retreat from Moscow, announced
himself Napoleon’s enemy. He appointed Albert de Staël his aide-de-camp, made
Augustus William his secretary and, in April, 1813, left Stockholm for the front.
Germaine wrote to Augustus William on May 10, 1813, from Stockholm :1

“Auguste has arrived, dear William, but nothing can heal the wound your absence
has inflicted on me. Only with those of our own age and our own mental stature
can we communicate freely. I send you a letter he has brought for you and
another from my cousin (Albertine Adrienne). His most interesting news is that
the Russian proclamations have wounded the military pride of the French, with
the result that the conscription of the 1814 classes is going smoothly.

“Madame Humboldt writes me that Austria will declare war in the middle of May
and that there’s great enthusiasm there for the Prince Royal. Tell him this. He
will have heard from M. d’Engestrom that Neipperg has received bitter
complaints about the obstacles being placed in M. de Weissenburg’s way in
Sweden and about the great uneasiness felt lest he (the Prince Royal) should turn
aside to concern himself about Norway to the detriment of the Common Cause.
What Engestrom will not tell, but what I want you to inform the Prince Royal

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about, is that he (Weissenburg) received, the day before yesterday, an order from
his Court to furnish explanations of the relations between Sweden and Denmark
and that he has obeyed this order, as has also Wetterstedt. . . . Assure the Prince
that I am for him in life and in death. . . .”

Augustus William was charged with the duty of keeping a tight hold on
Bernadotte. Germaine kept a tight hold on Augustus William and corresponded
at the same time with the Emperor Alexander and with the German princes. She
suggested to Alexander that, if Napoleon fell, Bernadotte should be placed on the
French throne, since a return of the Bourbons was not to be desired. It was partly
this intrigue, and partly the boredom she experienced in Stockholm, when her
work there was finished, which sent her to London towards the end of June,
1813. She took Auguste, Albertine and Rocca with her. Of Rocca she was growing
tired, as her letters to Augustus William show. Nevertheless, she had taken the
precaution of going through a second marriage with him during her stay at
Stockholm.

“It seemed,” he remarked, “that she couldn’t be married enough to me.”

She had also, on May 20, written to Benjamin :2

“Do you remember saying that we ought not to be separated ? I can honestly say
that, apart from everything else, you have allowed a fine career to escape you.
And what is to become of me in my spiritual solitude ? With whom can I talk and
how shall I exist on my own resources ? My daughter will write you. . . . It will be
her last farewell and mine ; but I hope that you will still feel the need of seeing us
again and not neglect that which God has given you (i.e., Albertine). I keep your
letters always. I never take out my writing materials without looking at them. All
that I have suffered through that handwriting makes me shudder ; and yet I
would fain see it again. My father and you and Mathieu share a part of my heart
which is eternally closed. I live in the past, and were I about to be swallowed up
by the waves my voice would utter those names, one of which alone was harmful
to me. Is it possible that you brought such ruin ? That despair such as mine
could not restrain you ? No, you are guilty ; only your admirable intellect can
cause me any further illusions. Farewell, farewell. What I suffer you cannot
understand.”

She wrote again :

“Benjamin, you have ruined my life. For ten years no day has gone by without
some suffering on your account.”

He was not so glad to be rid of her as he had expected.

“The thought of her and Albertine,” he wrote in his journal, “distracts me. My
heart is weary of everything it does not possess. Perhaps Charlotte’s gentleness
will at last destroy this perpetual recollection. How sad life is and what a
madman I am ! I am planning a trip to Vienna. That recalls Madame de Staël’s

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efforts to take me there with her.3 Thus, what I did not want to do with the most
spiritual of women I am to-day thinking of doing with Charlotte. Judgment of
Heaven ! ”

Immediately on reaching London, Germaine wrote to Augustus William :

“London, June 24, 1813.

“I can’t understand the reason of your silence, and I refrain from passing
judgment on it. . . . I have been received here in a manner that baffles
description. You can have no idea of the goodness and the enthusiasm. I’m
seeing the Prince Regent to-morrow. Tell our Prince (Bernadotte) that I’m
delaying writing to him till I have seen this Prince. I’ve had a letter from Albert,
who is crazy. Call him to reason. . . . I’m very much disturbed because I love you.”

“London, July 2, 1813.

“Dear friend, I apologise ; your letter deserves it. But if I’ve grumbled, I’m not
the less interested in you. . . The other day the Duke of Cambridge told me that he
had talked with you lately at Gottingen, and that he was charmed with you. Your
pamphlet has had a great success here, and I think you’ll get a pension (from the
English Government). That’s the first step. Later on you may get a post. The
important thing is that you should be independent, for I don’t believe that, in the
long run, this country will please you. What I hope is that we may travel together
in Greece. They’ve received me like a princess. But the crowds are so big, the
women so many and the monotony of their society so great that I’m more wearied
than amused. English people who have not travelled have very little to say for
themselves and seem to be about Albertine’s age. In short, I’m sad and
discouraged. More than ever I need you. What astonishes me is that, as everyone
will tell you, I am received with rapture and that, meanwhile, I have no clear
impression except a sea of faces each of which is exactly like all the others.
Nevertheless they’re a worthy folk and will give you a hearty welcome.

“When you like I’ll make overtures about your pension. I was advised to wait till
my book is published (her book on Germany). I’ve sold it for £1,500. Your
French writings will do you no good here. My book tells of you ; and it is on the
strength of what I have said there that I mean to ask for a pension for you of
£3oo. Tell me what you think yourself. Tell me, too, how I can send you a credit
of £200.

“Give Albert the enclosed letter and tell him that I refuse to mix myself up in his
affairs except in so far as I can serve Sweden and please the Prince Royal. He
seems to think that physical courage is very rare ; it isn’t.

“Here they pay very little attention to the news of the outside world. One might
be living in a convent. The Prince Regent, the Queen and the Duchess of York
have been very good to me. I haven’t dared as yet to see the Princess of Wales.

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Every day I long to talk to you. . . I seem to have no ideas since you left me. My
children will write to you. Don’t forget that we are your family.”

“London, September 26, 1813.

“You hurt me by your constant references to money, my dear friend. You know
that all my happiness in this world consists in seeing you beside me. When you
accept money from me, you seem to say ‘ I’ll come back.’ Don’t have any feelings
about it, and if you want a fresh letter of credit, ask me without the least
diffidence and think of your request as a declaration of your attachment to me.

“How I admire our Prince I (Bernadotte). Can’t you tell him so ? Haven’t you got
a moment to assure him that I kneel at his feet ? They speak of him here with
lively admiration. But tell him, in my name, never to forget France. He ought to
remain on the banks of the Rhine, he and Moreau together. What a terrible fate
has befallen poor Moreau.4 I suffer for his poor wife and pity her with all my
heart. Do you happen to know if he still lives ? He has written a letter to his wife,
since he was wounded, which is a beautiful historic document. I’m getting
Albertine to send you a copy of it. I repeat again what I’ve said before. If
Germany regains her freedom, I’ll go and live there after you’ve spent some time
here (in England) with me. . . . I see nothing here but the veil for Albertine ; it
would suit my plans about going to Berlin. But alas, doesn’t he (Napoleon) mean
to throw himself against you with all his force ? Take care of the Prince
(Bernadotte) ; keep him from exposing himself. And you, dear friend, take care
of yourself and come back to me. The winter will be too harsh for you. Let me be
your pretext for getting away if you feel that you can’t stand it.

“Poor Albert ! What a career he has lost. Don’t pay any of his debts. Send them
all on to me. . . .”

Albert had been killed in a duel. By a curious chance his father, Narbonne, lost
his life about the same time while serving Napoleon. The news of these two
deaths threw Germaine into one of her fits of depression. But not for an instant
did she relax her activity. In London as elsewhere the lions of politics and
literature were beaten from covert for her sport. She met Byron, Sheridan,
Whitbread, Grattan, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Sir Walter Scott, Grey, Canning,
Holland, Wellesley, Wilberforce, Mrs. Siddons, Sir Humphry Davy—all the
celebrities. Byron had stayed at Coppet on his way to Italy.5

“She is sadly changed,” he wrote to Thomas Moore. “She is for the Lord of Israel
and the Lord of Liverpool—a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory—talks of
nothing but devotion to the Ministry and, I presume, expects that God and the
Government will help her to a pension. . . . She’s published an essay
against Suicide which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself.”

He wrote again :

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“I saw the woman of whom I had heard marvels ; she justified what I had heard,
but she was still a mortal and made long speeches. Nay, the very day of this
philosophical feast in her honour, she made very long speeches to those who had
been accustomed to hear such only in the two Houses. She interrupted
Whitbread ; she declaimed to Lord L(iverpool), she misunderstood Sheridan’s
jokes for assent ; she harangued, she lectured, she preached English politics to
the first of our English Whig politicians the day after her arrival in England and
(if I am not much misinformed) preached politics no less to our Tory politicians
the day after. The Sovereign himself, if I am not in error, was not exempt from
this flow of eloquence.”

Germaine called Byron “the most seductive man in England.” He agreed that
“She was vain ; but who had an excuse for vanity if she had not ? ” The letters to
Augustus William continued without interruption :

“I’m staying eight days in London. Then I go to stay three weeks with the
Marquis of Lansdowne, where your letters will reach me twelve hours later.
There you are.

“I admire this land ; in some ways it pleases me. But you have to be a native to
like it better than all others. Our Continental ways are less worthy of esteem, no
doubt, but they suit us better. What is so admirable is the safety, the freedom
and the enlightenment. I find reading a new experience here. Their books are so
full of life. What society lacks the books of travel and history supply. And then
the newspapers are waited for like a returning traveller. But the winds make a
prison of the beautiful island where I wait for news of you.

“Adieu, dear friend, adieu. Count on me. Remember me. For I have learned,
better than I knew before, that you are incomparable.”

Her next letter was dated October 8, 1813, and was addressed formally to :

“M.A. William Schlegel, Secretary of his Royal Highness the Prince of Sweden,
Chevalier of the Order of Vasa, etc., at the Headquarters of the Prince Royal of
Sweden.”

In it she confessed that Auguste and Albertine were sadly bored and that she
herself was not very happy.

“But I think that may be due to your absence, for there are lots of things here of
which we could talk. My children have nothing to say for themselves. A curious
effect that of my flair ! That poor Albert gave me plenty of trouble but he had the
flair ! I repeat again, you are necessary to me. You’re unique and I can’t live
without you.”

“London, November 9, 1813.

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“Two months have passed and not a line from you. That’s cruel. I wouldn’t have
believed that you could have behaved in that fashion and that, knowing how
unhappy I am, you could have hurled poison into my heart. Here everybody gets
letters from their friends at Headquarters. The busiest men find time to write. I
alone get nothing from my closest friend, from the man I have sent away from
me, sacrificing my interests to his, but flattering myself meanwhile that
separation could never weaken his interest in me. That’s not all, either. Your
little letter to my son is proof that you’re not troubling to secure the goodwill of
the Prince Royal for us. You promised to do that. Surely the common gratitude
in your nature should remind you that you owe your glorious connection with
him to me. How should success change such a heart as yours ? Don’t you feel
that your forgetfulness is wounding my soul ? Never a mail arrives but costs me
sleepless rights. I feel humiliated in the eyes of others when I’m asked : ‘ Have
you news of M. Schlegel ? ’ I am desolated in loneliness by the loss of my faith in
your friendship, which was my greatest treasure in this world. My son and my
daughter are also deeply affected at your indifference for us all ; when we’re
together we talk of nothing else. Since the loss of my poor son, I’ve suffered no
more bitter experience. These two calamities are joined together ; I tell myself
that if he was there still I wouldn’t be forgotten by you, nor by the Prince. . . . Ah,
if you needed me as I need you you wouldn’t abandon me in this fashion ! Did I
desert you at Stockholm ? If prosperity came my way would I not share it with
you ?

“I’ve published that book (De l’Allemagne), every line of which recalls you to my
mind. The edition was bought up in three days. But what does that matter ?
When can I talk to you about it ? You did well to be nasty to me during the last
few days of our stay together ; but for that I would never have allowed you to
leave me. What have I not lost in losing you ! If you can come back, I’ll do all in
my power to keep you. I’m prostrate with spleen, although everyone is so kind to
me ; and it’s your fault. M. de Wetterstadt doesn’t treat his wife in this fashion ;
and am I not, though I say it myself, the person who interests you most ? Isn’t
my house yours ? My family ? My children ? Ah, what harm you do me by your
silence. I’ll forgive you, though, if you come back to me.

“Can you stand this war ? I go from irritation to anxiety. For pity’s sake don’t let
a courier go without a few lines from you, and believe that in destroying me
you’re ruining your own prosperity.

“Adieu. My health continues very poor. You’ll miss me one of these days.”

“November 30, 1813.

“How your letter has rejoiced me, my dear friend. I can’t bear your silence, and
you have several of my nights on your conscience during which I wept over
our liaison. It is true that absence is necessary to teach us how dear a dear
person really is ; and undoubtedly we’re basely ungrateful to God for youth, love
and life. If then, I find fault with you, remind me of what I have suffered in being
separated from you, and I’ll be as douce as a sheep.

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“I’ll go to live in Germany if you come here in spring. But don’t let it be Hanover.
Let us choose Berlin. . . . There’s nothing suitable here for my daughter and she’s
not happy in this country, beautiful as it is. So I think, and so does she, of
Baudissin. Write him, as if from yourself, that his imprisonment has greatly
touched us. Tell him that I’ve written him twice from here. I want my son-in-law
to be your admirer and to love Greece.

“You must come here for a year, see Scotland and Ireland with me, and publish,
in England, an account of what you’ve seen. You’ll make £1000 out of it. . . . My
book’s a howling success (un succés fou). But nothing lifts the weight from my
heart. Since our separation and Albert’s death I feel isolated. The air presses on
me. My health’s destroyed. In short, it hurts me to live and I know of no other
remedy than the sight of you. I’ve always thought that you were the one selected
by my father to close my eyes.

“I’ll pay the Hamburg debt . . . because you’ve put your name to it and your name
must be honoured. But I won’t pay more. Dear friend, we must think of our
future and of the future of the children who have been wise and obedient.

“I want to speak about our Prince (Bernadotte) ; for I never stop thinking about
him. It’s being said in the circle of the Prince Regent that, in the Prince’s bulletin
(Bernadotte’s) a fault has been committed in speaking of ‘the King of Saxony’
instead of ‘the Elector,’ and that another fault was committed in speaking of ‘the
King of Westphalia,’ and of the frontier of the Rhine for France.6 In short, people
have suggested for the first time that the Prince is playing up to France so as to be
made the Emperor Napoleon’s successor. Tell him these tales, which have no
importance. They come from the Bourbons.

“I’ll tell you all I hear. Speak well of me to the Prince. What I mean by that is, tell
him how I love him. . . But, in short, the good God will perhaps protect us. What
France lacks, in the matter of getting rid of her present ruler, is a clear and
satisfactory conception of what is going to happen afterwards. Tell that to the
Prince from me ; he’ll understand what I want. The letters from Paris express
the hate of what is, but also the doubt of what may be in store.

“Adieu, dear friend. Write me for the repose of my nights and the delight of my
days. God bless you. Can I send you some English poetry ? Have you time to
read it ? Tell me what they’re saying about my book in Germany.

“Have the goodness to take this letter for Benjamin. I’ve received a letter from
him, more passionate than in the days when he loved me most. Do make it your
business to deliver this letter to Benjamin’s address.

“I want you to think about Baudissin, to write to me and above all to love me.
Adieu.

“I add a few small details which the Prince may like to know. The Comte Lieven
is very often closeted with the Comte d’Artois ;7 the rumour runs that they have a

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body of supporters in the Midi and in the Senate. There is an idea of sending
them to Lord Wellington. England has urged the Prince of Brazil to return to
Lisbon. The Duc de Berry, second son of the Comte d’Artois, wants to marry his
daughter. An emigrant of the lower order has remarked : ‘The Prince Royal of
Sweden will certainly play the part of Monk for, at the counter-revolution, he
won’t be able to remain on the throne (of France).’

“The English have compelled the Portuguese army to march into France without
any ‘by-your-leave’; the Portuguese are rather annoyed at this parade of English
power. . . .

“As I finished this letter, the Comte Edouard Dillon came to me from the chief
Minister of Louis XVIII, M. de Blacas, to ask me to receive him and to lend my
pen and my talk to their design of restoring him to the throne. ‘Ask what you
want,’ he said, ‘as the reward of this service.’ I answered that I could do nothing.
He said that the English newspapers and poets called me the first woman in the
world (it’s true ; they have done), and that, with such a title, I could accomplish
anything. I answered again that I wasn’t going to dabble any more in politics.
There the matter rests. If this M. de Blacas comes to see me, I’ll tell you what he
says ; but if you can, get our Prince (Bernadotte) to instruct me. Edouard Dillon
told me that he (Bernadotte) was the hero of the century and that if he wished to
restore the Bourbons he would be more King of France than them. . . .

“I love you in life and in death. . . . Persuade the Prince of my limitless

attachment. My God, what a campaign ! ”8

“December 12, 1813.

“Prosperity turns your head, my dear Schlegel, and you forget the friends who are
most attached to you. . . . You would enable me to help you better if you would
write to me oftener. I’m constantly with the Ministers, and I’ve read them one of
your letters. . . .

“You are all at a critical moment, and what you have accomplished was easier
than what remains to be done ; you want to set up sovereign princes in Holland,
to attack Switzerland, to attack France. Undoubtedly so long as The Man lives,
there’s nothing else to be done. But it’s difficult to assail 24,ooo,ooo men in order
to attack one man.

“My position here grows better every day ; but my heart is only the sadder. But
why tell you that ? Are you even interested ? . . .

“What’s Benjamin doing ? Is he employed by your Prince ? For goodness’ sake

tell me if the Prince is well disposed towards me. He ought to be, because of the
zeal with which I support his admirers and oppose his detractors. . . .

“In God’s name, have you written to Baudissin to ask him to come here ? There’s
nobody I want more for Albertine.

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“Is Benjamin with you ? ”

He was. He, too, believed in Bernadotte. But his faith was growing at the
moment when Germaine’s faith was beginning to ebb. Her stay in London was
opening her eyes to the truth about Napoleon and England or rather about
France and England. She knew now that the English Government was
determined to restore the Bourbons, and to reduce France within her old
frontiers—in short, to render her for ever incapable of challenging British world-
power. With Napoleon would pass, for good and all, the hope of recovering the
lost Empire.

“The fact is,” she wrote to Benjamin, “that once Bonaparte is overthrown the old
Government will be re-established.”

1
This letter to Schlegel and those which follow it are published in Madame de
Staël à Henri Meister, pp. 252 et seq.
2
These letters are quoted in Benjamin Constant, by E.W. Schermerhorn.
3
Germaine was never off with the old love in order to be on with the new. She
would have enjoyed nothing better than that Benjamin should be witness of the
affair with Maurice O’Donnell. In her youth, on her own showing, she conducted
affairs simultaneously with Narbonne, Mathieu and Talleyrand—to say nothing of
her husband. Later Narbonne, Benjamin and Ribbing existed side by side. Then
Benjamin and Prosper de Barante, Schlegel and Rocca were also contemporaries
in her affection.
4
There is some evidence that it was on Madame de Staël’s advice that Moreau
was recalled from America to fight with the Allies against Napoleon. The
presence of the victor of Hohenlinden in the army attacking France was a clever
piece of propaganda, well worthy of Germaine’s fertile mind. Moreau was killed
at the battle of Dresden, Napoleon’s last great victory.
5
Blennerhasset : Madame de Staël, Vol. III.
6
Napoleon turned the Electors of Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg into Kings as
the reward of supporting him. He made his brother Jerome “King of
Westphalia.” England was eternally opposed to the “natural frontiers” of the
Rhine and the Alps because these afforded France too high a degree of security on
her eastern side and so left her free to take action on the sea. The Bourbons
secured their restoration at English hands by adopting the English policy towards
France, hence their unpopularity and ultimate fall. Hence, too, perhaps,
Napoleon’s return from Elba. Napoleon made the most of the Bourbon-British
alliance.

234
7
Louis XVI’s youngest brother. After the death of Louis XVIII he became King of
France as Charles X. His reactionary behaviour led to the July Revolution of
1830, when his throne was upset. He died in exile in England.
8
Napoleon received his death-blow at Leipzig in October.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXVIII

THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

ONE of the English Ministers asked Madame de Staël early in 18141 what she
thought of the political situation.

“I hope,” she replied, “that Bonaparte will win and be killed.”

To Benjamin she wrote on March z2, 1814 :

“ Your associations have made a flunkey of you. Do you seriously believe that
Bonaparte isn’t fit to take his place in a meeting of princes ? Forty battles are a
patent of nobility.”

As she had wept for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, levying tribute even upon
their anguish, so now she grieved for Napoleon. He was the central figure still ;
still must she share the limelight with him, greedy of the greatness of his fall.

“ There was grandeur,” she wrote, “in the farewells of Napoleon to his soldiers
and to their eagles, so long victorious. His last campaign had been long and
wisely conducted. In short, the calamitous prestige of the military glory of France
which attached to him was not yet destroyed.”2

Perhaps it was not all vanity on her part. Anxious as she was to hunt with any
hounds which looked like making a kill of her enemy, she was more French than
English, so much more indeed that the longer she stayed in England the less she
trusted the professions of the Ministers. Benjamin sent her a memorandum for
official consumption in which he suggested that France ought to be treated as the
outlaw of the nations.

“ I’ve read your memorandum,” she rebuked him. “God forbid that I should show
it to anybody. I’ll do nothing against France. I will not use against her in her
misfortune either the reputation I owe to her or the name of my father who loved
her. These burnt villages are on the very road where the women threw
themselves on their knees to see him (my father) pass (at the time of the taking of
the Bastille). You’re no Frenchman, Benjamin.”

In April, 1814, she wrote to him again : “ Be faithful to France and to liberty.”
These ideas were in her mind when she left London on May 8, 1814, to return to
Paris.3

“ After ten years of exile, I landed at Calais,” she wrote, “and I promised myself a
great joy in seeing again this beautiful land of France which I had so sorely
regretted. My feelings were very different from what I had expected. The first

236
men I saw on the shore wore Prussian uniforms ; they were masters of the town,
and that by right of conquest. . . . O France, O France. . . .

“ I continued my journey, my heart always suffering by reason of the same

thought. As I drew near Paris, Germans, Russians, Cossacks, Baskirs were
everywhere to be seen ; they were encamped round the Church of Saint-Denis,
where repose the ashes of the Kings of France. The discipline, ordained by the
leaders of these soldiers, prevented them from doing any harm to anybody—any
harm except the oppression of soul which one could not help feeling. In short, I
entered this town where the happiest and most brilliant days of my life had been
spent, as if I was suffering a bad dream. Was I in Germany or in Russia ? Had
they copied the streets and the squares of the capital of France to recall memories
at a moment when the capital itself existed no longer ? Indeed, all was confusion
in my spirit ; for in spite of the bitterness of my thoughts, I felt that these
foreigners had removed the yoke from our necks. I admired them without
reserve at this period ; but to see Paris occupied by them, the Tuileries, the
Louvre, guarded by troops, fetched from the limits of Asia, to whom our
language, our history, our great men—all were less well known than the latest
Khan of Tartary, that was an unbearable distress. If that was my feeling, who had
not been able to come back to France during Bonaparte’s reign, what must have
been the feelings of the warriors, covered with wounds, and the more proud of
their military glory in that, during a long time, they had been unable to claim any
other kind of glory for France ?

“ Some days after my return, I went to the Opera. Often, during my exile, I had
recalled this daily fête of Paris, more gracious and more brilliant than all the
special fêtes of other countries. They were giving the ballet of Psyche, which,
during twenty years, had been presented continuously in very different
circumstances. The staircase of the Opera was decorated with Russian sentries.
In entering the house, I looked about me for a familiar face but saw nothing but
foreign uniforms. A few old Parisians of the middle class still showed themselves
among the audience, from force of habit. Otherwise all the spectators were
changed ; only the spectacle remained the same. The decorations, the music, the
dancing, had lost nothing of their delight, and I felt humiliated to see this
amazing French grace displayed before these swords and moustaches, as if it was
the duty of the conquered to amuse their conquerors. . . .

“ They (the French officers) walked about sadly, in plain clothes because they
could not endure to wear their military decorations since they had failed to
defend the sacred land, the keeping of which had been committed to them. . . .
The position of the King, who had come back with the foreigners, was full of
difficulty so far as the army, which detested those foreigners, was concerned.”

Germaine quickly forgot her emotions ; as the memory of Napoleon at Elba

began to fade, her interest in him evaporated. She opened her salon, this time in
the rue Royal, and offered lavish hospitality to all the victors of Leipzig—
Alexander of Russia, Francis of Austria, Frederick William of Prussia, Bernadotte,
Wellington—the new idols basking in the new limelight. “In Europe to-day,”

237
wrote Madame de Chastenay, “there are three powers : England, Russia and
Madame de Staël.” Her drawing-room was crowded to suffocation with kings and
princes, ambassadors and ministers, men of the ancien régime, Liberals, even
Bonapartists such as Queen Hortense. The King, Louis XVIII, though he had
forgotten nothing, found it expedient to be kind ; Talleyrand was reconciled to
her, so was Fouché. Mathieu was back again, Benjamin too. They rubbed
shoulders with Lafayette, Lally-Telendal, Boissy d’Anglas, with Gentz, the
Humboldts, Sir James Mackintosh, Canning, Harrowby, the Duke of Saxe-
Weimar, above all with Alexander of Russia himself.

She spent hours with Alexander—the hours that good young man could spare
from the society of Josephine and Hortense at Malmaison. The Russian was
piqued because England and Talleyrand had upset his plan to put Bernadotte on
the throne ; still more, because Louis XVIII did not seem to understand that he,
Alexander, was the real deliverer. She flattered him, soothed him, spoiled and
petted him. And together, in delicious twilights, they discussed the rights of man,
liberty and love. Alexander forced King Louis to give his subjects a Constitution.
What matter, England was the real sovereign. The kings went their way.
Germaine returned to Coppet for the summer.

“ We’re here in a flat calm,” she wrote to her friend Miss Berry in London, “. . . as
for Society, it is nothing now. I’ve been gathering some wreckage in my drawing-
room, but there’s no cohesion.”

She had grown thin, nervous, unfit. As for Rocca, he had fallen into consumption
and was spitting blood. But he remained faithful. “Since I left you,” she wrote to
Albertine Adrienne, “only John has given me real affection, all my strength is in
him.” Sleeplessness was again afflicting her and she was taking opium freely.
“This wretched insomnia makes life too long,” she cried. “There isn’t enough
interest in life to spread over twenty-four hours.” Nevertheless, she worked with
merciless energy. The Bourbons were not friendly. Interest in her was flagging.
Even Mathieu, who had becomechevalier d’honneur to the Duchesse
d’Angouleme, Louis XVI’s daughter, and aide-de-camp to Monsieur (the Comte
d’Artois), and was concerned only to forget his past, had grown shy. Mathieu
wrote and spoke about “Our Glorious Restoration”; she failed to see the glory.
She returned to Paris in the autumn of 1814 and at once began to make
arrangements for her daughter’s marriage. It was no longer a question of the veil
or M. de Baudissin ; a suitor of the most desirable kind had been found in the
person of the Duc de Broglie, a young man of 29, whom Madame de Staël had
known from the time when she rescued his mother from Robespierre. An
excellent young man who had learned wisdom serving Napoleon and who
remarked of himself with becoming modesty : “My feelings were healthy ; my
intentions right ; my views sensible.”

His purse was not in so good a state. A big dowry was necessary therefore.
Germaine applied to the King for her £100,000, still hidden in the Treasury. And
Louis XVIII promised to pay. Only one fly appeared in the ointment—namely,
Benjamin. Become more Royalist than the King, this fellow had now, very

238
unseasonably, fallen in love with Juliette Récamier and, because she remained, as
ever in the presence of a lover, quite unmoved, had sought the help of the
prophetess Madame de Krudener, a hysterical woman who had acquired
influence over Alexander of Russia, and was, by that means, established as a
fashionable mystic. Madame de Krudener contracted to produce a “soul-bond”
between Benjamin and Juliette, and gave him a “writing” for the lady which so
moved him that he cried :

“It is here the truth lies. I see it all. All my emotion is calmed. Good and
powerful God, finish my healing.”

He spent his nights in tears, on his knees in prayer or lying on the floor in
ecstasies. The “conversion” of this hardened sinner made a great stir and
annoyed Germaine so much that she resolved once more to be done with him for
ever. She had other troubles. She had been writing treasonably to Murat, the
King of Naples, Napoleon’s brother-in-law. Her letters were opened and read.
Louis XVIII sent them back to her by the hand of M. Dandré who told her :

“ Madame, here is your correspondence with the King of Naples. I bring it you
and you can send it to its degination. The King has read it. You may, Madame,
continue to write and receive letters, you may travel in France, go out of France
and come back. You may make your home here. We attach so little importance
to what you do or say or write, that the Government wishes neither to know nor
to disturb you nor ever to give you any anxiety about your plans and your
mysteries.”

That she could not bear.

1
Considerations, Part IV, p. 418.
2
Considerations, Part IV, p. 419.
3
Considerations, Part V, p. 55 et seq.
4
Quoted by Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 368, from Intermédiaire
des chercheurs, Vol. XXIII.

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XXXIX

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

AND so when, a little later, she heard that a plot was being formed to assassinate
Napoleon in Elba, she offered to go herself to that island to warn the victim. But
the news of his return from Elba struck her nevertheless with panic. “I felt,” she
wrote, “that the ground was opening under my feet.”1 Someone tried to reassure
her. “He’ll arrive,” she cried. “He’ll be here in a day or two, I’ve got no illusions.”
She added, as she ordered the berline : “He hates me. In me, too, he hates my
father, my friends, all our views, the spirit of 1789, the Charter, the liberty of
France.”2

She went to the Tuileries and bade the King farewell. She looked ill with misery
and was speechless. At midnight on March 9, 1815, she drove out of Paris. Her
thoughts turned again to Benjamin, who had just published a violent
denunciation of Napoleon, and she wrote, in her carriage, to Juliette :

“ Do me a favour ; make Benjamin Constant go away. I feel the greatest anxiety

about him after what he has written. The road on which I’m travelling is perfectly
safe. Nothing ought to keep him in Paris. Ah ! if you would only rejoin me on
the shores of the lake. . . . Ah ! what sorrow.”

She need not have worried. Napoleon had heard about her offer to go to Elba ;
and in any case he was concerned no longer to ruin the world for France. That
hope, as he very well knew and said, was extinguished for ever.

“I’ve been wrong,” he said to his brother Lucien ; “ Madame de Staël has made
me more enemies in her exile than she would have made if she had stayed in
France.”3

He told Fouché to write to her, and a courier came to Coppet with this letter :4

“ It gives me great pleasure to tell you that the Emperor has shown interest in the
condition of your affairs and in the delicate position in which Mademoiselle de
Staël finds herself. I’ve just got back from the Council of Ministers. I’ve only just
got time to offer you my homage and to tell you that I’ll be very glad when the day
comes on which I can contribute to hasten the conclusion of the marriage of your
dear daughter. I can well understand the impatience of the young man who has
had the happiness to win her hand. Believe, Madame, that I hold you in my
memory. It is not only your mind which attaches me to you but your excellent
heart.”

So Napoleon was offering to pay the £100,000 ! He, at any rate, understood her
importance. Her heart warmed to him ; they were necessary, it seemed, to each

240
other’s greatness. But did he mean what he said ? “ When the Devil was sick. . .”
She wrote to her old friend Joseph Bonaparte for confirmation. He replied :

“ Paris, April 5, 1815.

“ Madame, I’ve received your letter of March 30. I’ll be delighted to do all I can to
obtain for you the justice which you ask for ; feeling is very friendly towards you,
and I have no doubt that I shall succeed. Just now we are much occupied with
the great questions of internal solidarity on which depend the interests and the
relations of France with foreign powers. France is to-day one with the Emperor ;
he wants to give her more liberty even than you have wished for her ; his feelings
and his views are in accord with his words and with the wishes of men of good
sense. These men of good sense seem to me, to-day, to be all Frenchmen. Never,
not even in ’89, has there been such an unanimity of opinion and of movement
towards a stable and reasonable state of public affairs. I see you are happy where
you are and I hope you will be happy everywhere. Your feelings, your views can
be freely expressed to-day ; they are those of the whole nation and I am much
mistaken if the Emperor will not prove greater in this new phase of his life than
he has ever been, greater indeed than any other prince whose virtues and
moderation historians have held up to honour. Those who attack him will find a
Hercules. . . If he is left in peace he will be the happiness of France and will
contribute powerfully to that of Europe.

“ You can’t be insensible to anything that is great and generous ; I shall,

therefore, be delighted at the fresh titles you will acquire to spread abroad the
doctrines of eternal truth which have brought such great honour to you. No
doubt it will please you to know that I heard the Emperor say, when he abolished
the Censorship :

“ ‘ There is nothing against Madame de Staël’s last book (on Germany) which the
censors made me ban. I read it at Elba. There isn’t a thought in it which should
be suppressed. I want no more censorship. Let people say what they think, and
think what they choose.’

“ I beg you to count on me, . . . I assure you that your personal affairs are being
dealt with. Farewell.”

She had no difficulty in believing this old friend. She knew that Napoleon had
summoned Benjamin and asked for his help in drafting a Constitution. That
Constitution was called officially the “Additional Act,” popularly it was known as
“Le benjamin.” She replied to Joseph :5

“ The additional articles are all that France needs, only what France needs, and
not more than France needs. Your brother’s return is prodigious and baffles all
imagining. I recommend my son to you.”

She wrote to Benjamin to tell him that his Constitution pleased her and to urge
him to use his new position of influence to obtain her £100,000. This matter was

241
of very great importance because the money was needed urgently for
Albertine’s dot. As she had already informed Meister :6

“ If the King had not had the goodness to promise two-thirds of my father’s
deposit (without interest) this marriage must have been a very difficult one to
arrange, for the Duc de Broglie has every good quality except a fortune.”

She grew more and more uneasy. Did Napoleon mean to pay ? Would Benjamin
help ? In any case, was the Emperor’s position really strong ? She had just had a
letter from Talleyrand, from Vienna, where the Allied Sovereigns, in council, had
declared Napoleon the enemy of the human race and had sworn to wage eternal
war against him. Talleyrand wrote :7

“ Ignorant as I am of your whereabouts and your views, I’ll write only four words.
I want Benjamin Constant to come here of his own will. Bring him to that way of
thinking and tell him that I’m not the only person here who wants him. To some
extent I write on behalf of those who signed the declaration of March 13 (against
Napoleon).

“ Tell me about your daughter’s affairs.

“ Farewell. Send me a letter by the hand of the Austrian agent. . . . A thousand

tender regards.”

This letter made her still more uneasy about Napoleon’s position. She began to
think that, after all, Louis XVIII might come back, and wrote to his Minister, the
Comte de Blacas :8

Coppet, April 17, 1815.

“. . . Lucien (Bonaparte) doesn’t wish to accept the position of a French prince

until after the Constitution has been made. He has come to stay very near here
and his conversation is very amusing, but I can’t any longer enjoy even mental
exercise. . . . Do please lay my regards at the feet of the King. All that remains in
France now is love for him but a great hatred also against the foreigners.”

Meanwhile she had been invited from Paris to write a letter to some friend in
England which could be placed in the American Minister’s wallet9 and brought
ultimately, in the most artless way, to the notice of her old friends the Prince
Regent and his Ministers. On April 23 she produced this document. It
proclaimed Napoleon’s pacific intentions, declared that his army, purged of
traitors, was now very formidable and promised that if England abstained from
war France would give no occasion of anxiety. This precious mixture of threats
and cajolery, which affected to give an accurate picture of the state of France,
ended with an appeal to the Prince Regent :

242
“ The Prince Regent can prevent all these calamities. Oh, how great, how
magnanimous he will be if he acts as mediator and uses his name, his strength,
his glory to say to all nations : ‘ I want peace and you will remain in peace.’ ”

The Prince Regent was asked, further, if he wished the Emperor of Russia to play
again the part of “the Agamemnon, the King of Kings,” as in the previous year,
and urged to replace the “vanity” of Alexander by his own wisdom in making
himself the “God of the peace.” Napoleon, it was stated finally, was more anxious
for peace even than his army, which burned to be avenged. It was a handsome
tribute, but its value as proof of its author’s patriotism is diminished by the letter
she wrote to Talleyrand two days later :10

“ I’ve been greatly moved that you should have written to me in my retreat. You
ask me what I think ? Can you doubt ? Had you been in Paris you would have
said effectively what I keep saying in vain : ‘ Your Congress has done us harm ;
you’ve obeyed your instructions with plenty of cleverness but these instructions
have wrought our ruin.’ There was only one thing that mattered—namely, Elba.
All the rest was merely yesterday’s bother. But we were so happy, they were all so
kind, so just. Such a year can never be forgotten ; if any hope still exists it is that
that time will remain enshrined in the hearts of all honest Frenchmen. How
difficult your position is now ! The nation loves the King, but it hates the
foreigners. How can you present him as a mediator11 when he has the air of
making an appeal (to foreigners) ? Work on that, for there lies the difficulty.
Lucien is staying three miles from here. He’s been to the gates of Paris, but not
having got the guarantees he wants, he waits at the frontier to find out what the
position of a French prince will be under the new Constitution. . . .12 Joseph has
informed me that his brother is very much pleased that I wrote nothing against
him during his time of misfortune and that he invites me to come to Paris. He
writes : ‘ In the Constitution that is suggested there will be more liberty than
even you wish.’ I await this superfluity ; that’s very necessary. My Benjamin is
in Paris and has seen The Man twice. For all you say, he (i.e. Napoleon) is the
more formidable in that he possesses inconceivable faculties. I’m sending your
offers on to Benjamin : I’d accept them with all my heart if I was in his place.
But I don’t budge from here. Some day I’ll begin my tour of Europe again, but
before that I’ve got to know what I’m going to do with my daughter. Is it not a
singular mishap that HE should appear exactly four days before I was due to be
paid. M. de Broglie has little or no fortune and mine is so much reduced by all
that has happened that I don’t know whether or not I ought to break off the
marriage.13 I’ll decide one way or the other when I know further from my son,
who is collecting all he can of what remains to me in France.

“ Don’t hide from yourself that in the army there’s a terrible impulsion (towards
Napoleon) and that the inhabitants of the northern departments share it. I’m not
sure that a Continental blockade of France might not serve better than an attack.
In short, you should judge everything in the light of your experience of the past
and by means of your own excellent acumen ; for you mustn’t be led away by the
illusions of the emigrées. Courage meanwhile from the feeling of righteousness
and divine approval ! All the art, all the power of evil is in HIM ; but there’s a

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supernatural cleverness in a good conscience. Your enlightened mind is,
meanwhile, in the right place. At this moment it is you who have in your hands
the issues for us and for our children. I hope to see you again soon. Until then I
beg of you a few lines to tell me what you are doing. . . . ”

Five days later, on the 30th, she wrote to Benjamin :

“ It’s left to you to persuade the Emperor that I’m a person whose gratitude is
stronger than her memory.”

On May 4 she wrote to Bernadotte :14

“ Monseigneur,

“ Lucien has received this evening a courier from Prince Joseph urging him to
return to Paris, and, because he is satisfied with the terms of the Constitution, he
has agreed to go. But it seems that, in Paris, the Jacobin party is in full cry
against the hereditary chamber and does not wish to agree to it. The Emperor, in
consequence, speaks of convoking the old Corps legislatif, which leads back at
once to the old despotic Imperial Constitution. There is undoubtedly, according
to all I have learned from the Princes,15 a great eagerness to stand firm and
repulse the foreigners ; but it doesn’t seem to me that the Emperor is as strong as
he was in the country itself. Your name has been mentioned in the Journal de
Paris with the suggestion that the Emperor of Russia wishes to see you at the
head of affairs in France. Others think of the Duc d’Orleans, others still of a
Republic. In short, it’s rather by the memory of the past than by the present state
of affairs that one forms ideas about the stability of existing institutions . . . I’d
give a great deal, Monseigneur, to know what part your Royal Highness thinks of
taking. If you come into the Low Countries I’ll certainly come and see you. Louis
XVIII has left behind him regrets rather than a party.16 Meanwhile his name . . .
still possesses influence. There’s no trace of insurrection in the Midi but it’s from
that quarter that the foreigners will be most clearly seen. . . .”

She had exhausted all the “possibles”—Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Bernadotte—and

put herself right at the same time with Talleyrand. What more could a woman do
for her daughter ? Meanwhile Benjamin’s reply came to hand : “On dit que le
Duc de Broglie pense à votre fille.” And he was Albertine’s father ! She thought
of all the money she had lent him17 and the large salary he was now receiving
from Napoleon as a Councillor of State and, on May 25, wrote to him :

“ What a man, who, being to-day in fortunate circumstances . . . does not try to be
useful to my daughter ! What a man, who injures as greatly the child as he has
injured the mother ! What a man ! Imagination chills with horror at this
revelation. . . . However, all is over between you and me, between you and
Albertine, between you and anyone capable of decent feeling. In future I shall
deal with you only through my lawyers.”18

She wrote again on May 28 :

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“ It’s worthy of you ! To threaten a woman with the publication of intimate letters
which may compromise her and her family ! And for the purpose of avoiding
payment of money he owes her ! You owe me £4000. . . . If I should die of grief
to-morrow that would upset you much less than if you had to pay your debts. . . .
You say you wanted to break with me and that I held you by . . . money. I believe
it’s true ;19 but it’s vile to say it. . . The horror of the memory of my youth,
devastated by your frightful temper ! ”

She felt sure now that Napoleon had no intention of paying ; Benjamin’s letters
were proof enough of that. She felt, too, more and more doubtful about the
Emperor’s chances. So on June 8 she wrote once more to Alexander of Russia :20

“ Everything, sire, points to the need which exists that you should begin your
work again. In your name, be ever yourself. That’s my only prayer.”

She called Napoleon “the Man we loathe.” Four days later she wrote again to
Benjamin :

“ You’re the bitterest and most coarse-minded man in the world. You say that for
six thousand years women have abused men for not loving them. . . You say that
there was a time when my sadness made more impression on you. Did it prevent
you marrying when you had made me a promise of marriage ? There’s no place
in my heart which your continuing hate has not desolated. I tried to find refuge
in the past ; you thought it necessary to tell my daughter and me that you had
never loved any woman ! ”

Within a week Waterloo had been fought.

1
Considerations, Part V, p. 143.
2
Villemain : Souvenirs, Vol. II.
3
Jung : Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, Vol. III.
4
Quoted by Paul Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 372, from
the Archives de Broglie.
5
Sismonde de Sismondi : Examen de la Constitution Française.
Gautier : Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 381.
6
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 231.
7
Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 383, from the Archives de Broglie.
8
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 328. Taken from the Archives of the
foreign office at Vienna.

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9
The American Minister’s name was Crawfurd. The letter is given in the Letters
and Dispatches of Lord Castlereagh, Vol. 2, p. 336. Its authenticity has been
denied. But see the conclusive arguments in favour of its authenticity
in Madame de Staël et Napoldon, by Gautier, p. 387.
10
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 329. M. Mistler has performed a
real service in unearthing this letter from the Foreign Office in Vienna.
11
It is interesting to note that this word mediator (médiateur) appears also in the
letter carried by Crawfurd. The Prince Regent, according to the letter in
Crawfurd’s post-bag, was to be the mediator. The idea that mediation between
France and the Allies was necessary was uppermost in Madame de Staël’s mind.
12
Lucien Bonaparte had early removed himself from his brother’s jurisdiction.
They quarrelled over Lucien’s second marriage, and Lucien refused, at
Napoleon’s dictation, to divorce his wife. Lucien at last took ship for America,
but fell into English hands and spent the years of his brother’s greatness in an
easy captivity. He was shy of putting himself in Napoleon’s power even in 1815.
13
Madame de Staël, like most very rich people, was apt to minimise her wealth.
She had £150,000 in American real estate. See Madame de Staël and the United
States, R.L. Hawkins. This was a prodigious fortune at that period.
14
Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, p. 331.
15
Princes, i.e. Joseph and Lucien.
16
Compare this with the statements to Blacas, Louis XVIII’s Minister.
17
Adolphe Strodtmann : Profils et Poètes et caractères de la littérature
étrangère, Vol. II.
18
The lawyers agreed that Benjamin was in the right, and Madame de Staël, angry
no longer, assured Benjamin : “Your justification is perfect. There is no
possibility of asking you legally. Do not think any more of what is in question
between us.” After her death her family praised Benjamin’s behaviour.
19
Many of her other lovers had been held in the same way.
20
Quoted by Gautier (Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 390).

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Germaine de Staël

Chapter XL

THE END

GERMAINE was in no hurry to return to Paris to which, as Talleyrand sneered,

Louis XVIII had returned, “ in the baggage of the English Army.” Reaction, as
she clearly saw, was inevitable.

“ I don’t feel any great keenness for France,” she wrote to Meister on August
2,1 1815, “in the condition to which it is now reduced ; for I love it too much not
to suffer from seeing that condition. My son is going there ; we’ll see what he
reports. I send him as my raven after the flood. . . . What sort of position does the
poor King find himself in ? Can he carry on without the Allies ? And France, will
she endure the presence of those Allies if they cut down the numbers of their
troops ?

“ I don’t know if my personal business (the £100,000) though settled, will be

carried through. It seems to me that nothing more can be done.”

Still, she did not abandon hope, as her next letter to Meister shows :

Coppet, August 25, 1815.2

“ I haven’t replied sooner because I don’t know what I’m going to do. My demand
to be paid may recall me (to Paris) at any moment but, that apart, I’m sure I shall
stay here, if it pleases God, until September 12, at least. . . . I hope that this debt
to my father will be paid. The King has promised to pay. But when and how ? I
shall know during this coming winter, which I shall spend in Paris.

“ Will you do me a favour ? You’ve told me that Madame de la Riandrie

possesses, as a legacy from Mademoiselle Clairon, letters of M. de Staël which
might cause me distress. Can’t you get her to send them to me at Paris ? She will
earn, thus, the right to my gratitude, and who knows whether or not I may be able
to give her proof of it.”

She remained at Coppet busy with her last and in some respects her greatest
work, Considérations sur les Principaux evénements de la Révolution Françoise,
which she had begun as a justification of her father. The book outgrew its
original purpose. It became her political testament and the testament also of the
Constitutional party. It suffers from the same defects as her other posthumous
work Dix Années d’Exil. It is journalism rather than literature, and political
journalism at that. Germaine wrote, as always, with a purpose. In the year 1815
her purpose was still to convince France that all the misfortunes and calamities,
Napoleon included, had flowed from the rejection of Necker’s advice to adopt the
English Constitution. The merits of both books reside in their swift
impressionism. This woman saw all the lands of Europe with the eyes of a special

247
correspondent. Often faulty, her observation was never wholly at fault. But it
was always coloured by the need of the moment and by the prejudice which was
its occasion. Modern readers are likely to experience that sense of melancholy
interest which is so often occasioned by the study of the files of a newspaper.

Madame de Staël never mastered the art of living, which is the art of being
reconciled with oneself. A Puritan at heart, she did not cease to deplore her
unruly lusts. They drove her, fatally, from lover to lover, so that the number of
her lovers defeated all her hopes of love. And so she passed, ceaselessly, from
desire to disappointment and from disappointment to disgust and loathing.

“ The mystery of human life,” she told Albertine, “is the relationship existing
between our faults and our sufferings. I have never committed a sin which has
not brought me to unhappiness.”3

That she was kind, impulsively generous, inspired by maternal feelings as

licentious as her passions is attested by witnesses innumerable. But beneath that
agitated surface were the deep waters of vanity and calculation. Nevertheless, if
she found no sure way of life for herself, she offered suggestions many of which
have become commonplaces of present-day thought.

Rocca’s health became very bad during the autumn of 1815. In October she left
Coppet with him and went, by way of Piedmont, to Pisa. She nursed this
husband, whom she still refused to acknowledge, with an excellent care and he
became stronger. Early in 1816, her debt was paid by Louis XVIII and she found
herself possessed of a fortune, including the £150,000 which she had invested in
American land, of more than £250,000, a sum worth to-day well over a million.
Albertine’s marriage was now finally arranged. The bridegroom, accompanied by
Augustus William, arrived in Pisa in January, and the wedding took place there a
month later.4 In May she wrote to Benjamin, who had gone to London :

“ My health is failing and still more my interest in this short life. But I value my
life because it is now a happy one ; I deplore the time of which I was robbed by
unhappiness. Who shall account for all those days to the Giver of such a
wonderful gift ? ”

The reference is to Rocca ; writing about him to Juliette Récamier, she declared :

“ Such patience, such thorough appreciation of, and thankfulness for, my care
have made him the most perfect friend imaginable.”

In June 1816 she was back in Coppet. Byron, Hobhouse, Stein, Lord Bredalbane,
Lord Lansdowne, Henry Brougham and La Harpe came to visit her. “ She was,”
said Byron when recalling that visit, “the best creature in the world.” Stein was of
the same opinion. They lamented together the spirit of reaction which was
sweeping over Europe. “Are the shadows or the lights,” she demanded of
Meister, “going to triumph in Europe ? ”5

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She returned to Paris in October and renewed her acquaintance with Wellington.
The Bourbons no longer pleased her and she began to intrigue with the Duc
d’Orleans. Her salon, as ever, was a centre of agitation. When in the following
year she heard that her daughter was going to be confined she presented her with
a portrait of Necker for use during the pains of labour. “Gaze on his picture,” she
urged, “it will give you strength.”

In February 1817, while descending the staircase of the Hôtel Decazes, where a
brilliant reception was in progress, she collapsed. It was soon evident that she
had lost the use of both hands and feet probably as the result of a cerebral
thrombosis. A new house with a big garden was leased in the rue Neuve des
Mathurins, and there, seated in a wheeled chair, she continued to receive her
friends. Mathieu, recalled by this aflliction to his old allegiance, was best beloved
of them all.

At first some hopes of recovery were held out, but when July came it was seen
that the end was near. She sent a message to Wellington asking him to visit her,
but he was away from Paris. To Chateaubriand she declared :

“ I have always been the same, lively and sad. I have loved God, my father and
liberty.”

A few days later she presented her friends with roses and blessed them solemnly.
Benjamin was not of this number. The next day, July 13, 1817, she received
Mathieu and the Duc d’Orleans in her bedroom. She seemed overwrought
towards evening, and opium was administered. Miss Randall, her English nurse,
asked her if she thought she would be able to sleep and received the answer :
“Lourdement et profondément.”

She was right. The next morning, July 14, of glorious memory, at five o’clock and
while still sleeping, she died. She was buried at Coppet beside her father and
mother. It was left to Benjamin, who watched during a whole night beside her
body, to write her epitaph, thus :

“ In their misfortunes her friends counted on her as on a kind of Providence.”

THE END

1
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 237.
2
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 238.
3
Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 302.
4
Albertine remained a Protestant, and there were therefore two marriages.
5
Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 240.

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