ill«F«,i":?4! '^ ,1'^ « '-Ha ( ] K^'ii{'is&:ffi5aEtt9a;5ffljaffi5K!fii'-i'H-ai-i DC- 67 ns2 ^'^>^ s^^ cc ,,T*' .a^^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library DC 146.S7H14 1922 Madame de Stael. her V.%,i,u'iimiiiiiiiiiiiliiiii 3 1924 024 305 793 DATE DUE ■-^^ ^^^ ^tf^ 'flm^nMm L f i/iiTft' -TSiTP'^ ISKsr^V UIbuJQi CAVLORO PRINTED INU.K A. Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024305793 MADAME DE STAEL HER TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS MADAME DE STAEL From an engyavitig after the picture by F. Geraid MADAME DE STAEL HER TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS: By Lieut-Col ANDBEW G. P. HAGQABB, D.S-0. Author of ^^ Sidelights on the Court of France,'' " Louis the XIV. in Court and Camp" " The Regent of the Roues," " Iherese of the Revolution," etc. WITH FOUR PORTRAITS TBIBD EDITION NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN & CO. CORRECTION On page 102 of this volume Tallien's name is included in error with that of Talleyrand as being one of those whom Napoleon ordered to marry their mistresses. Tallien actually married the lovely Th^rise Cabarrus at the end of December, 1794. UU^^ 3 FrinttS, in Great Britain, DEDICATION TO SIR H. RIDER HAGGARD, K.B.E. Dear Rider, As a slight token of brotherly affection I inscribe to you this book, written under the hospitable roof of your picturesque archway house at St. Leonards. A writer yourself of many books, you have delighted the world, offending none. The talented authoress whose vicissitudes I depict was not so fortunate. In the opinion of Napoleon she wrote not wisely and too much, with the result that she endured years of exile at his hands. The following pages dwell to a great extent upon the constant efforts of Madame de Stael to subdue by her pen the giant whom she failed to win by her womanly wiles. That you may be entertained by the relation of the struggles and successes of this wonderful woman is, dear Rider, the hope of your affectionate brother, Andrew C. P. Haggard. St. Leonards-on-Sea, 1922. CONTENTS OBIFTER PAOK FOREWORD - - - - ix I. PRELUDE — EDWARD GIBBON AND SUZANNE CURCHOD - - II II. ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE - "17 III. germaine's early lovers - - 26 IV. THE GATHERING AT JUNIPER HALL - 37 V. BENJAMIN AND MADAME DE CHARRlfeRE 46 VI. BENJAMIN AND MADAME DE STAEL - 55 VII. GERMAINE AND THE BARON DE STAEL 63 VIII. MADAME DE STAEL MEETS NAPOLEON - 72 IX. GERMAINE, SIEVES, BONAPARTE AND BENJAMIN ----- 84 X. germaine's attack — ^AND PUNISHMENT 92 XI. GERMAINE PUBLISHES A NEW BOOK - 100 XII. GERMAINE CONSPIRES WITH BERNADOTTE IO9 XIII. GERMAINE PUBLISHES " DELPHINE " - I15 XIV. THE SPITE OF MADAME DE GENLIS - 124 XV. RUPTURE WITH BONAPARTE - - 134 XVI. GERMAINE IN BERLIN - - 144 XVII. QUARRELS WITH BENJAMIN - - 150 XVIII. MADAME DE STAEL AND MONTI - 159 XIX. GERMAINE, FOUCHi, AND THE EMPEROR - - - . j56 Vlll Contents OBAFTBIt xx. what napoleon thought of "corinne" - - - - 176 XXI. MADAME RECAMIER'S LOVE-AFFAIR - 183 XXII. GERMAINE AND GENTZ - - - 19O xxiiL germaine's apotheosis at blois - 198 XXIV. BETTINA ON MADAME DE STAEL - 207 XXV. THE struggle FOR THE BOOK - 214 XXVI. JULIETTE AND MATHIEU EXILED - 222 XXVII. germaine's love for rocca - 227 XXVIII. THE FLIGHT OF MADAME DE STAEL - 233 XXIX. STRUGGLES IN VIENNA — SUCCESSES AT ST. PETERSBURG - - - 239 XXX. germaine's POLITICAL SUCCESS - 248 XXXI. germaine's TRIUMPH IN LONDON - 258 XXXII. GERMAINE AGAIN IN FLIGHT - - 265 XXXIII. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE TWO MILLIONS 275 INDEX ----- 289 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MADAME DE STAEL - - _ Frontispiece From an engraving after the picture by F. Gerard. Fadng page NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT MALMAISON - - 80 From an engraving after thb picture by Isabey. MADAME RiCAMIER - - - . 186 From the picture by F. Girard. ALEXANDER I., EMPEROR OF RUSSIA - - 250 From an engraving after the painting from Ufe by Wolkoff FOREWORD To gain an accurate insight into the stormy tempera- ment yet magnetic power of attraction of the ardent Germaine de Stael, nothing is so enlightening as a glance taken here and there within the pages of Benjamin Constant's Journal Intime. A couple of extracts will suffice. In March, 1806, we find the distracted friend recording : " Je re9ois une lettre de Madame de Stael. C'est I'ebranlement de I'univers et le mouvement du chaos ! " Et cependant — avec ses d^fauts, elle est pour moi sup6rieure a tout. — Je me decide a la rejoindre k Auxerre." Again, an entry made by Benjamin at the same epoch, when at Dole with his sick father, reveals the soul-shaking effect caused merely by the receipt of a communication from the woman whose nature con- tained the elements of the whirlwind : " Mon pere est avec moi doux et affectueux, cela me fait du Men. Mais une lettre de Madame de Stael vient m'y chercher, Tous les volcans sont moins flamboyants qu'elle ! " Qu'y faire ? La lutte me fatigue, couchons nous dans la barque et dormons au milieu de la tempSte." This woman with the nature of a whirlwind of fire, "more flaming than all the volcanoes," formed early the intention of dominating Napoleon. Failing in this, X Foreword with all her ability she sought to confound his policies. Thus ensued a duel which lasted for years, and in which both the combatants suffered. While Madame de Stael filled Europe with her cries of hatred and distress, the subjugator of that Europe was forced in the midst of his most sanguinary campaigns to remain constantly on the alert, in order to defend himself from the fair antagonist working for his downfall. A. C. P. H. MADAME DE STAEL Her Trials and Triumphs CHAPTER I PRELUDE — EDWARD GIBBON AND SUZANNE CURCHOD In the year 175 1 a young fellow, only fourteen years of age, went to Magdalen College at Oxford, and in the same year displayed his budding talent by writing The Age of Sesostris, Conqueror of Asia, which work he burnt in later years. The boy was Edward Gibbon, who, after becoming a Roman Catholic at the age of sixteen, was sent by his father to Switzerland, to continue his education in the house of a Calvinist minister named M. PaviUiard, under the influence of which gentleman he became a Protestant again at Lausanne eighteen months later. The young fellow, while leading the life of gaiety natural to his age in company with a friend named Deyverdun, became an apt student of the classics and was soon a proficient in French, in which tongue he wrote before long as fluently as in English. With young Deyverdun he worked, and in his company Edward Gibbon also played. After visiting frequently at the house of the celebrated Voltaire at Monrepos, and after being present when the distinguished French 12 Madame de StaSl philosopher played in his own comedies and sentimental pieces, the young fellow's thoughts soon turned to the theme which was the continual subject of conversation of the ladies and gentlemen who were Voltaire's guests and formed the company of amateurs with whom the great dramatic writer was in the habit of rehearsing his plays. This was, as might have been suspected in such a society, the theme of love. As it happened, there was in the habit of visiting Lausanne a young lady who was a perfect paragon. Her name was Suzanne Curchod, and she was half Swiss and half French, her father being a Swiss pastor and her mother a Frenchwoman. Very handsome and sprightly in appearance, the fair Suzanne was well instructed in sciences and languages. Her wit, beauty, and erudition made her a prodigy and an object of universal admiration upon the occasion of her visits to her relations in Lausanne. Soon an intimate connection existed between Edward Gibbon and herself ; he frequently accompanied her to stay at her mountain home at Grassy, while at Lausanne also they indulged in their dream of felicity. Edward loved the brilliant Suzanne with a union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, and was in later years proud of the fact that he was once capable of feeling such an exalted sentiment. There is no doubt that, had he been able to consult his own inclinations alone, Gibbon would have married Mademoiselle Curchod, but, the time coming when he was forced to return to his home in England, his father declared that he would not hea,r of "such a strange allijince," Edward Gibbon and Suzanne Gurchod 13 " Thereupon," says Gibbon in his autobiography, " I yielded to my fate — sighed as a lover, obeyed as a son, and my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and new habits of life." These habits of life included four or five years' service in the Hampshire Militia, in which corps Suzanne's lover became a captain, the regiment being embodied during the period of the Seven Years' War. Upon returning to Lausanne, at the age of twenty- six, in 1763, Edward Gibbon was warmly received by his old love, but he heard that she had been flirting with others, and notably with his friend M. DejTverdun. He himself, while now mixing with an agreeable society of twenty unmarried young ladies who, without any chaperons, mingled with a crowd of young men of all nations, also " lost many hours in dissipation." He was not long in showing Suzanne that he no longer found her indispensable to his happiness, with the result that she assailed him, although in vain, with angry reproaches. Notwithstanding that she begged Gibbon to be her friend if no longer her lover, while vowing herself to be confiding and tender, he acted hard-heartedly and declined to return to his old allegiance, coldly repljdng : " I feel the dangers that continued correspondence may have for both of us." It is impossible to feel otherwise than sorry for the brilliant Suzanne at this period, as although from her subsequent manoeuvres it became evident that her principal object in life was to obtain a rich husband, from the manner in which she humiliated herself to him it is evident that she was passionately in love with 14 Madame de Stael the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Eventually the neglected damsel gave up the siege of an unwilling lover, while assuring her formerly devoted Edward that the day would come " when he would regret the irreparable loss of the too frank and tender heart of Suzanne Curchod." Had the pair been united, one wonders what would have been the characteristics of the offspring of an English literary man like Gibbon, who became perhaps the world's greatest historian, and a beautiful woman of mixed nationality, whose subsequent career, al- though gilded with riches and adorned with a position of power, displays nothing above the mediocre and commonplace. Edward Gibbon's fame, which was not long in coming, was his own, and will remain for so long as a love of history and literature exists in the worl^, whereas that of Suzanne Curchod rests upon two circumstances — the first that she was once the sweet- heart of Gibbon, the second that she was the mother of a Madame de Stael. When finally cast off by the EngUshman, the Swiss pastor's daughter remembered that, if pretty, she was poor, and had her way to make in the world. She commenced to play fast and loose with a M. Correvon, a rich lawyer, whom she said that she would marry " if she had only to live with him for four months in each year." The next lover was a pastor, who was as mercenary as herself, for he threw her over for a lady with a large Bdward Gibbon and Suzanne Gurchod 15 fortune. After this failure to establish herself, Suzanne became tired of seeking a husband in Switzerland and went to Paris as the companion of the rich and hand- some Madame Vermoneux, the supposed mistress of Jacques Necker, the rich Swiss banker, who was established in the French capital. Once in Paris, it was not long before by her seductions Suzanne suc- ceeded in supplanting Madame Vermoneux in the still young banker's affections, with the result that she married him in 1764. Gibbon, whom she had last seen in 1763, returned to the side of his former love when she was at length safely married to another man. We find him writing, in 1765, to his friend Lord Sheffield, formerly Mr. Holroyd, that he had spent ten delicious days in Paris about the end of June. " She was very fond of me, and the husband particularly civU." He con- tinues confidentially : " Could they insvdt me more cruelly ? Ask me every evening to supper, go to bed and leave me alone with his wife — ^what an impertinent security 1 " It was in the month of April in the following year, 1766, that was born Madame Necker's only child, Anne Louise Germaine, who was destined to become one of the most remarkable women of modern times. From the great literary talent displayed by this wonderfully precocious child from girlhood, it is difficult not to imagine hn* that in some, if merely spiritual, way the genius of her mother's old lover had descended through that mother's brain as a mantle upon herself. That she learnt to look upon Gibbon with admiration at an i6 Madame de Sta^l early age is sure. Michelet informs us that owing to the praises showered upon the historian by M. Necker, Germaine was anxious, as her mother had been before her, to become Gibbon's wife. She was, however, destined to have another husband — or rather we should say two other husbands. CHAPTER II ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE The career of Jacques Necker after the birth of his daughter soon became brilliant. After being first appointed as Diplomatic Representative of Geneva at the Court of Versailles, he became Minister of Finances, in which post, whUe listened to for a time by the young King Louis XVI., he became the idol of the people of France. During the years that Necker received little but praise in all directions and was one of the richest men in France he occupied a splendid hotel or mansion, in which his wife, now a very great lady, received a large and very varied society. The receptions of the former Suzanne Curchod were as frequent as they were magnificent, and into the brilliant society of wits, nobles, fair dames, and men of literary distinction the youthftd Germaine was in- troduced at an extremely early age. Beloved by her father, whom she adored in turn with unlimited devotion, a freedom was permitted to the child quite unknown in the salons of Paris. She was no more than eleven when she became the object of admiration of all those who frequented her father's palatial dwel- ling, and, being remarkably self-possessed and full of vanity, her first endeavour was to shine, to dazzle by '7 B i8 Madame de Stael her brilliance, brightness, intelligence, talent for re- partee and literary aspirations. Soon she was primed in the principles of Jean Jacques Rousseau and openly expressing her devotion to that father of the French Revolution ; moreover, the growing girl was steeped in the romantic sensibility of the day. While writing novels, comedies, tragedies, and a book about Rousseau, Germaine was also by the time that she was fifteen carrying on a clandestine love-affair with a middle-aged General quite devoid of moral character, with whom she exchanged a fervid correspondence. From this time onwards her life was dominated by the passion of love — ^it became, indeed, a succession of Ul-regulated love-affairs of varying intensity, love- affairs which were frequently ridiculous but oft-times verging on the tragic, owing to the wild and jealous fervour with which she worshipped one more or less worthless lover after another. Ridiculous was not, however, the love which Germaine bore for her father, whom she elevated upon a pedestal almost as a god. During the period of the earlier stages of the French Revolution, in which by recommending Louis XVI. to summon the States- General Necker bore an active but blameless part, his daughter was always proud to be seen by his side upon any prominent public occasion, while subsequently, after the fallen and discredited Controller-General of Finances had fled to his magnificent Chateau of Coppet on the Lake of Geneva, Germaine was frequently there with him, to act as his solace and encourage his never- to-be-realised ambitions of a triumphant return to Anne Louise Germaine ig France. While living with her father more in the relations of brother and sister than those of father and daughter, she dominated him by her advice and aided him with her powerful pen, but by no means always to his advantage. In fact, Germaine Necker loved her father as a man, admired him as a writer, venerated him as the ideal of the citizen, the philosopher, the wiseacre and statesman. " She tolerated no one who did not hold Necker as a god : virtuous and naive foUy, more touching even than ridiculous." So tells us Michelet, who also informs us that after the first fall of Necker from office, when he was recalled in triumph to preside over the Ministry of the tottering Monarchy, she appeared by his side upon the balcony of the Hotel de ViUe. Germaine was then so overcome with joy at the plaudits of the admiring Paris mob that in an excess of senti- ment she fainted from sheer happiness. Of the rdations between Germaine and her mother, the formerly brilliant lover of Gibbon, her numerous biographers tell us nothing beyond the fact already referred to that from her childish years she was allowed to show off and shine in that beautiful mother's salon. While governing her father by her enthusiasm, driving him forward in his revolutionary career by the Han and ardour of her own confidence in the principles of liberty and the good sense of the human race, for the former Suzanne Curchod, Germaine will appear to have had no more than an amiable indifference. Germaine was aged twenty-three at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, and it was then under the 20 Madame de Stael influence of his daughter's inspiration that Necker plunged so boldly into the hazardous paths of the measure of universal suffrage, from which resulted such momentous issues for a France so little educated to understand the power thus thrust into unaccustomed hands. Later on both the father and the daughter appeared as though seized with affright at their former revolutionary audacity, and as if inclined to draw back. The ebullient Germaine now surrounded herself with those of the more moderate elements, such as the members of the FeuiUants Club, founded in 1790 by Lafayette, Siey^s, and Larochefoucauld. She also became an Anglo-maniac, upon nothing but hearsay evidence extolling everything English, especially the British Constitution. She still, however, continued brilliant and eloquent, and succeeded in satisf5dng her vanity by making people occupy them- selves with her and her opinions. Unlike her mother, Germaine Necker was not beautiful. Her face and form were both somewhat heavy and inclined to coarseness, seeming to betoken the German origin from which sprung the Necker f amUy. She had, however, a strongly accentuated and beautiful bust and also beautiful hands, but what really redeemed her features from mediocrity were her piercing dark, almost black, eyes, burning with the passion with which her whole career shews her to have been consumed. From an early age there was talk of getting her suitably married, a man of the plebeian origin but enormous fortune of Jacques Necker thinking that he Anne Louise Germaine 21 had a right to aspire to the ranks of the nobihty to find a husband for his voluble daughter, for, indulging as was Germaine constantly in floods of eloquence, voluble is the term by which her boundless flow of conversation is best characterised. The members of the French nobility, who were so soon after this period to lose their titles and their ancient rights, partly owing to the action of Necker himself, were not enthusiastic in coming forward to seek the hand of the young heiress. William Pitt, however, who was in France in 1783, asked Necker for his daughter, and Madame Necker supported his suit, but Germaine herself does not appear to have taken a fancy to the great Englishman. Failing to find a French noble, Necker offered his daughter to Count Axel Fersen, the gallant Swedish noble who was the devoted lover of Queen Marie Antoinette. He, however, declined the alliance, but passed on the young lady to his friend, the Baron de Stael-Holstein. To him, after a long dickering con- cerning the dowry, Necker consented to give his daughter, but only after Gustavus III. of Sweden had given a definite promise to retain the Baron as Swedish Ambassador in Paris. De Stael-Holstein was a gambler and always in debt ; he was, however, an amiable man, about seven- teen years older than his bride, who, with all her un- restrained passion, never wasted any of it on her husband. Germaine Necker was married and went to live in the Swedish Embassy in January, 1786, when she 22 Madame de StaSl was almost twenty years of age. The deepest feeling of the young lady's heart, as depicted by her in her novel Delphine, of which book the heroine is evidently herself, was a woman's craving for love. The same craving for love is evident in her later novel, Corinne, in which the romantic and talented heroine possesses all the accomplishments which Madame de Stael attributed to herself. In fact, so evidently was the clever Corinne founded upon her own model and personality that the name is often found apphed to the author in the current literature of the day, where, when speaking of Madame de Stael, she is frequently men- tioned simply as " Corinne." Not having sought for or found love in the mere manage de convenance which she had concluded with the easy, good-natured Swedish Ambassador, while waiting to bestow the whole wealth of her affections upon some other man whom she proposed to dis- tinguish, the young bride gave full vent to the other dream of her heart. This was the desire to please, to shine among all, to become a brilliant society queen with Paris at her feet. In spite of an impulsive, abrupt manner, a careless mode of dressing, and an absence of beauty, in this she succeeded. The pas- sionate and versatile character, the irresistible per- sonality and intensity of the affections of the young wife of M. de Stael carried all before them in society, and men and women were soon at her feet or listening spellbound to her flowing and impromptu eloquence. Her words habitually poured forth in streams, in a kind of glorified inspiration which frequently displayed a Anne Louise Germaine 23 clear understanding on the part of the talker. Nor, in spite of the love of her own voice which distinguished Madame de Stael, was she, as might have been imag- ined, nothing but a mere bore, for she often possessed the charm of making others — especially some of the women — think that she was taking as much interest in their affairs as in her own. Of this fact we find evidence in the pages of various contemporary ladies. Of these, one is the Comtesse de Boigne, and another Madame de Tess6, of whom the latter remarks : " Were I Queen, I would order Madame de Stael to talk to me for ever." Madame de Boigne, while relating in her memoirs how charmed she was by much that she found in Madame de Stael, gives also various instances of her absolute want of tact, or, to put it more plainly, down- right rudeness. One such occurred at the home of the Comtesse, near Chambery, at a dinner of thirty persons, when, narrates the writer : " Madame de Stael was by the side of the master of the house, and the Prefect, opposite to her, at my side. She asked him across the table what had become of a man whom she had known as a sub- Prefect ; he answered that the man was now a Prefect and much respected. " ' I am very glad to hear it ; he was a good fellow. In any case,' she added carelessly, ' I have generally found that class of servant very decent.' " I saw the Prefect turn red and pale and felt my heart in my mouth. Madame de Stael did not seem to notice that she had been rude, nor had she intended to be. I quote the fact to point out a strange anomaly 24 Madame de Stael in this eminently sociable mind, namely, that she was entirely wanting in tact. Madame de Stael never considered her audience in the least when she was talking, and without the smallest intention of causing embarrassment or giving offence she would often choose subjects of conversation and expressions most disagreeable to the persons to whom she spoke." The Comtesse de Boigne continues by giving two other occasions when Madame de Stael proved her disregard of the feelings of others. On the first of these she contrived most cruelly to embarrass Madame de Boigne herself, and on the other it was a poor lady named Madame de Caumont who was the sufferer, to the extent that she was reduced to despair. After coming to the charitable conclusion that Madame de Stael was merely carried away by her eloquence, the Comtesse adds : " Did she, then, forget her manners ? The question may be asked, and the answer is that she considered herself as a privileged person, whose genius justified indiscretions inexcusable in ordinary mortals." The name of the Prefect who was so much insulted was M. Finot, and he was a most intellectual man. During the dinner a letter was handed to him, which after reading he put in his pocket but shewed later to Madame de Boigne. It was an order from Napoleon to the effect that Madame de Stael was to be sent back at once by the police direct to the Chateau of Coppet on the Lake of Geneva, which place she had, as the amiable Prefect well knew, been ordered not to leave. When Madame de Boigne begged M. Finot not to cause a disturbance in her house, he replied that he Anne Louise Germaine 25 had no intention of doing so, but added with some bitterness : "I should be sorry if she changed her opinion concerning servants of my class ! " While characterising the intellectual power of Madame de Stael as being prodigious, the Comtesse says that after a talk with her one left her entirely pleased with oneself. " The talker felt that he had been at his best, for there was kindness as well as the wish to be amused in her mode of the handling of everyone." It is, however, evident that there was not much kindness in the arrogance with which Madame de Stael treated the inhabitants of the city of Geneva, near which was her home of Coppet to which she was banished for so long by Napoleon's order. We learn that the provincials, and especially the Genevese, were crushed beneath her disdainful indifference ; " to such she did not trouble to be rude, but ignored their existence." Nevertheless, although hated by the people of Geneva, they were proud of her notoriety, and in spite of the extraordinary life that Madame de Stael led at Coppet with her lovers, of whom two or three were sometimes present at once, the people of Geneva considered it a distinguished honour to be on calling terms at Coppet. CHAPTER III germaine's early lovers During the period of the Revolutionary era, after M. Necker had, with his wife, fled to Switzerland, and while Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette still remained nominally on the throne, and heads of the State, Madame de Stael remained in Paris with her good- natured, tolerant husband. She was anxious to prove herself an influence in the affairs of Revolutionary France, and this in a manner she succeeded in doing, partly by her intrigues with various public men, with whom her intimacy was, however, but ephemeral. Maurice de Talleyrand was one of her early lovers, if, indeed, a man like Talleyrand, who was habitually at the feet of every attractive woman, is worthy of the dignity of being considered in the light of lover of any one of them. Be that as it may, a considerable friendship, which endured through some of the suc- ceeding years, was the result of her early intimacy with the brilliant political time-server, who first came into notice as Bishop of Autun, to finish his astute diplomatic career as Prince of Benevento. Madame de Stael was, however, still heart-whole ; what she was in search of was the romantic in love, and while possessed of unlimited brains, romantic Germaine's Early Lovers 27 feeling was not an attribute to be expected in Talley- rand de Perigord. In the matter of the disregard of morality, as in everything else, Germaine considered herself as a privileged person, and of this fact the world soon became aware. Not readily finding ready-made the required hero of romance, Madame de Stael determined to make one for herself, and she was not long in discovering a man into whom she thought she could instil her own chalorous, passionate enthusiasm. Such an one was the showy Comte Louis de Nar- bonne. He was a handsome young noble, a bit of a roue, brave, and with a fair share of intelligence, but what made him particularly remarkable in the eyes of the Parisian feminine world was the fact that he was supposed to be the fruit of an incestuous union between that dissolute monarch Louis XV. and one of his daughters. Madame de Stael loved Narbonne, and cared little if all the world knew it. She breathed the passion of her ardent nature upon him, and thus succeeded, as she thought, in transforming the elegant grand seigneur into the hero whom she sought as a second self. Al- though of the Court, where he was distrusted, he was, however, a favourite in many of the salons. In the year 1791 France was trembling on the verge of war with an European coalition of Prussia, Austria, and other States, the coalition to be headed by Gustavus III. of Sweden. This was the moment when the credit of the young wife of the Ambassador of Gustavus in 28 Madame de Stael Paris was sufficient to make of her lover, Louis de Narbonne, a Minister of War. She had now attained the age of twenty-five, but the five years that had elapsed since her marriage had by no means brought discretion to Germaine. Madame de Stael, on the contrary, proceeded to make a pubHc exhibition of herself by acting in open opposition to her husband's poHcy. When Narbonne received instructions to visit and report upon all the defences of the eastern border and north-eastern France, she calmly left Paris and drove all round the frontier with her lover. During the tour of inspection it is evident that the young nobleman was too much taken up with gazing into his fair companion's flaming black eyes. The eyes that have been described as " noirs et inondes de flammes, rayonnants de genie et de toutes les passions," were, alas ! the undoing of the Minister of War. Nar- bonne never saw the defences at all, or, if he did, upon his return he presented such a highly-coloured report of their state of efficiency as to be absolutely fictitious. In the beginning of the following year, when the war broke out, the mistake of having trusted to a Minister of Madame de Stael's making became apparent to the Girondist Ministry of the day, and both of the so-called Stael Ministers, Narbonne and the Foreign Minister, Delessarts, were promptly dismissed, and of these the latter was soon assassinated by the mob. Subsequently, aided by his Germaine to escape in disguise, Louis de Narbonne left France hurriedly for England, in order to save his head, for heads were Germaine's Early Lovers 29 commencing to fall freely in 1792 — the year, more- over, of the terrible September massacres, although those of the King and Queen did not fall upon the guillotine until The Terror of 1793. It was upon September 2nd that Narbonne's ch&re amie herself was rescued in turn and saved from a horrible death at the hands of the bloodstained rabble that slaughtered thousands, including the Queen's great friend, the fair young Princesse de Lamballe. Germaine had been detained at the H6tel de Ville, when Manuel, a municipal councillor of the Commune, contrived to procure her liberty upon the plea that she was enceinte. She then hurried off to Switzerland, which she reached in safety. It had only been by the greatest display of nerve that in the absence of her husband, who had been recalled to Sweden, the young Ambassadress had succeeded in saving Narbonne. With two other friends, Mathieu de Montmorency and Beaumetz, she had concealed him in the Embassy in the Rue du Bac when the Republican commissioners appeared to search the premises. These men were quite ignorant and uneducated, and Madame de Stael succeeded in frightening them by pointing out how heinous a crime they would commit by searching the house of the Ambassador of a friendly Power. When she told them that the frontiers of Sweden were contiguous to those of France, and that the result of the insult would be that a Swedish army would at once march over the border, the officials left the Embassy with apologies, being personally conducted to the door by the clever- 30 Madame de Stael witted and self-possessed young lady who had deceived them. She subsequently got Louis de Narbonne away to England owing to the devoted assistance of a young Hanoverian doctor named Bollmann. This young fellow had an uncle established as an English merchant in Paris, and he contrived to obtain two passports at the English Embassy, one for himself and one for Narbonne, in the name of Heisch. Boldly declaring themselves to be both Englishmen, the pair got safely to Boulogne, and thence to Dover, on August 20th, 1792. The terrible " September massacres " had already commenced in Paris when, on the second of the month, Germaine de Stael endeavoured in turn to make her escape by driving off openly to Switzerland. She had, however, altogether misunderstood the attitude of the people when she thought that she could proceed openly through the streets in a grand coach with six horses, no matter how well she might be furnished with Swedish passports for herself and her attendants. A screaming mob of women and men seized the horses, declaring that she was making her escape with the gold of the nation. They dragged her off at a foot's pace to the H6tel de ViUe, she being threatened all the way by men with pikes. There she was nearly killed on mounting the steps by one of the howHng rabble, who aimed a blow at her, whose weapon was, how- ever, knocked from his hand. While detained for six agonised hours with her maid, the fate of the two women was dehberated on, and in the meantime they Germaine's Early Lovers 31 were placed near a window whence they could see the murderers of the inmates of the prisons returning with bloody hands and arms across the Place de Gr^ve below. At length Manuel told Madame de Stael that the Commune would allow her to go, and himself accompanied her after dark back to the Embassy. Early the next morning the Commune sent her off with only her maid in a travelling carriage, she being escorted by the famous Jacobin leader Tallien to the barriers surrounding Paris, after which she was allowed to proceed unmolested to her father's residence at Coppet, in Switzerland. During the years succeeding her marriage until her providential escape in September, 1792, the young Madame de Stael's salon had been one of the most frequented in Paris. Although never well looked upon by the Court and scarcely recognised by Marie An- toinette, for whom she had no sympathy, the Baronne de Stael had succeeded in gathering together at her house people of all parties. Determined always to be in the eye of the world, to make herself recognised and talked about, at the age of twenty-four Germaine was already celebrated. Her book Letters on Jean Jacques Rousseau had made her famous, while by her agitated personality and her spirit of intrigue during the whole of the Revolutionary period until the moment of escape she had exercised a considerable influence upon public opinion and affairs in general. It was a time when women held their sway in an unprecedented manner in Paris, and among all those who were remarkable the young Swedish Ambassadress shone supreme, her 32 Madame de StaSl influence exceeding that of all the others. It was her delight to gather together at her house those of the opposing factions, especially those of what was called the Constitutional party— that is to say, those who wished to preserve the Royal authority, not on the old despotic lines, but with a constitution which would give the nation the necessary guarantees of being governed with iustice and no longer to be ground down by King, nobility, and the powerful clergy. To this section belonged alike Louis de Narbonne, Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, and the charming young Mathieu de Montmorency, of whom mention has been made above, who were all three of them the lovers of Madame de Stael at this period of her life. Of them, two were married, namely, de Narbonne and Montmorency, while Talleyrand, as a member of the Church, was unable at this time to take a wife, although subsequently, by Napoleon's order, he married his fair mistress, Mrs. Grant. Nevertheless, the irre- sistibly charming Maurice de Talleyrand, who was skilled in the art of pleasing men and women alike, and who, according to Rivarol, could accomplish anything he pleased, had already been famous for his success with both Madame de Buffon and the Comtesse de Flahault. It was to his liaison with the latter of these two great ladies that succeeded his connection with the young wife of the Swedish Ambassador. Rotten indeed was the condition of morality among the so-called privileged classes at this time in France. Notwithstanding the good example set by the good-natured, well-meaning King, Louis XVI., it Germaine*s Early Lovers 33 is doubtful if manners in Paris had improved in the least since the days of the orgies of the Regent Philippe d' Orleans or those of the lifelong debaucheries of the dissolute Louis XV. It is only by the assumption that nobody cared how anybody else lived, whUe it was considered the worst possible form for a husband to be seen about in com- pany with his own wife, that such connections as those of the youthful Baronne de Stael with her early lovers can ever have been possible. Married to a man who had considerable talents and much that was agreeable in his nature, we find her from the first deserting him for other men, these men themselves having other ties, other unions, which it was their duty to respect. Louis de Narbonne was married to an amiable young lady for whom one can but feel sorry. When twenty-seven years old he married Mademoiselle de Montholon, a child of only fourteen but with a very large fortune. By her this gay rake had two daughters, but she died before she had reached her nineteenth birthday. Probably it was the neglect of her roue of a husband that helped to kill her, since while we know that he was beloved by Germaine Necker even before her marriage to Stael, M. Norvins has put it on record in his Memorial that Narbonne had also to his credit a long-standing connection with Madame de Laval, the highly-born mother of Mathieu de Montmorency Laval. Owing to this circumstance, some trouble was to arise later in connection with Benjamin Constant, the best-known lover of Madame c 34 Madame de StaSl de Stael, but for the present we will only speak of Mathieu de Montmorency, This young noble was from early youth a man of parts. A year younger than the precocious Germaine Necker, he was born in 1767, and after distinguishing himself in his studies, entered the army, serving at first in a regiment commanded by his father, the Vicomte de Laval. After going with Lafayette and a number of other young nobles to aid the rebellious colonists in America to fight against the British, the enthusiastic young aristocrat returned to France, not exactly imbued with Republican ideas, but anxious to aid the downtrodden classes in the country, while still pre- serving the Monarchy. When, in 1789, owing to the action of Necker, the States-General of the three orders, nobles, clergy, and people, was assembled, the young ofl&cer, who was now Captain of the Guards of the King's brother, the Comte d'Artois, stood for election and was elected to represent the nobility of Montfort. Although the youngest member of what became known as the Constituent Assembly, de Montmorency soon showed that he had plenty of grit, and on August 5th, 1789, the day after the nobles had voted to resign their titles, he strongly supported the motion to do away with all those old feudal rights by which the French peasantry had been ground down for a thousand years. He had already a few days earlier declared boldly for the Rights of Man, and in June of the following year he proposed the abolition of all armorial bearings and also of ostentatious liveries. Germaine's Early Lovers 35 Mathieu de Montmorency was a blond, handsome young man of singularly distinguished appearance and manners ; physically he had everything to recommend him, while by nature he was chivalrous. He was, in fact, one of the best examples of the higher class of noble of the ancien rdgime — the class whose rights, together with those of the Court, he helped to pull down. Where his morals were concerned he was, however, in his early manhood, no better than the rest. He was married early to his first cousin, the daughter of the Due de Luynes, but, being of an ardently passionate nature, Mathieu fell, soon after his marriage, wildly in love with another cousin — or at aU events a cousin by marriage — the lovely young Marquise de Laval. She encouraged Mathieu and returned his love as pas- sionately as it was bestowed, and the pair were in the very height of their dream of felicity when a tragedy separated them for ever. While attending the Re- publican fete of the Federation, the unhappy young lady got a violent chill, as a result of which a day or two later Mathieu de Montmorency was left with only her memory. It was in all the agonies of his isolation that the young fellow turned to Germaine de Stael for sympathy, nor did he have long to wait for consolation. Concerning this, M. Gautier, a modern French writer, remarks : " Madame de Stael was not exclusive — she never was so. A man bearing one of the finest names of the French aristocracy, young, amiable, elegant, passionate, had every power over her. ' The three men whom I loved the most in my youth,' she wrote, ' — ^Talleyrand, Narbonne, Mathieu.' Would 36 Madame de Stael she have placed M. de Montmorency in the society of the two others if he had not had the same rights on her heart ? " Mathieu remained the most faithful friend of Germaine de Stael for no less than twenty-seven years, during which he was the witness of all her vagaries — amorous, poUtical, and literary. Frequently he sought to restrain her, to protect her from herself. But while remaining bound to her in a sweet and protective intimacy, Mathieu ceased to be Madame de Stael's lover from the time when, in the middle of 1794, he heard that his brother had been guillotined and wife and mother imprisoned. He then abjured his old unbelief and irregular life, and became a Christian and deeply religious. CHAPTER IV THE GATHERING AT JUNIPER HALL From the day when, after undergoing a moral crisis, Mathieu de Montmorency turned to religion, he nevertheless was constantly to be found under the same roof with Madame de Stael, either in one country or another. Germaine was at first inclined to be vexed with him for establishing the new relations between them, being apparently quite unable to understand the motives which actuated him. Finding, however, that Mathieu had quite made up his mind in future to lead a moral life, and not being anxious to resign the agreeable companionship of the handsome young noble, Madame de Stael determined to accept his decision and keep him for a friend. Had she not, for that matter, lovers enough, and could she not always obtain a new one whenever her too susceptible heart was seized with a fresh passionate fancy ? There was already a lover in existence of whom Mathieu, after he became transformed into merely a faithful watch-dog of Germaine, by no means ap- proved. This was a handsome Swedish Count who was named Ribbing. She had conceived for him " une folk passion," which crazy love was only increased after the Count had been involved in the conspiracy 9f 38 Madame de StaSl which had resulted early in the year 1792 in the assassination of Gustavus III. by the hand of Anker- strom. She then wrote to her friend Meister that she admired her handsome Ribbing aU the more for having by his courage known how to uphold the honour of the nobility of Sweden, which was threatened by the King. [It is probable that, in any case, Germaine had no sympathy for the King of Sweden, notwithstanding that she had been in the habit of writing him lengthy epistles containing all the gossip and tittle-tattle of Paris. He had taken up strongly the attitude of defending Queen Marie Antoinette, for whom the Baron de Stael had no personal liking, he being strongly imbued, moreover, with the revolutionary feelings of the Jacobin party in Paris. This fact was plainly ap- parent when subsequently de Stael returned to Paris in his old post of Ambassador after the death of Gustavus III., who had recalled him in a peremptory manner to Sweden on account of his opposition to his wishes concerning support being given to Marie Antoinette. After the enforced return of Madame de Stael to Coppet in September, 1792, it is probable that the handsome regicide. Count Ribbing, was often there to keep her company, for he had been forced to leave Sweden for Switzerland, owing to his share in the conspiracy of the nobles which had brought about the death of their monarch. None of her other lovers were, however, present, for TaUeyxand and de Mont- morency had, like Louis de Narbonne, taken refuge in England. Necker's house was, nevertheless, full of The Gathering at Juniper Hall 39 French refugees, but notwithstanding that her mother was at this time ill and gradually becoming weaker, thus requiring constant attention, Germaine found her existence in Switzerland unbearably dull. She longed for a renewal of past excitements, and wrote to her husband that she " had a magnificent horror for the whole of Switzerland." In her thirst for political prominence and longing to be in the midst of all that was going on, it is more than probable that, had it been possible for her to do so, this agitated young woman would have returned to Paris even before the end of that winter of 1792. She was compelled, however, to possess her soul in patience at Coppet untU the news came, at the end of January, 1793, that the unfortunate Louis XVI. had been guillotined by his revolutionary subjects upon the twenty-first of the month. The Queen was still in prison in the Temple, and it seemed likely that her execution might follow at any time, while no one knew what might not be the fate in store for her young daughter and still younger son the Dauphin, who had been brutally torn from his mother's side. Germaine de Stael might have formerly been opposed to the Queen, whom she knew to have disdained her, partly as the daughter of the abhorred Necker and partly on account of her turbulent and irrepressible nature and mode of life. She was, however, by this time herself the mother of two children, the last, her son Albert, having been born after her return to Coppet. Who was the father of this child it would be difficult tq say,but^inspitQof,Q.ermain,e'^ irregular lif?,^ 40 Madame de Stael it is probable that her first-born son, Augusta, owed his parentage to the Baron de Stael. Some time later, after the birth of her third child— Albertine— Madame de Stael's most celebrated lover, Benjamin Constant, always treated the girl as his own daughter. Being not only a mother, but a woman with a feeling heart, Germaine now grieved for the horror of the unhappy Queen's sad position. During the middle of the year 1793, she accordingly, in the vain hope of saving the life of Marie Antoinette, published a brochure entitled Reflections upon the Prosecution of the Queen. The pamphlet was probably written in England, for, unable longer to stand the boredom of life at Coppet, to that country the restless woman had, against her father's wishes, contrived to foUow her beloved Narbonne very soon after the King's death in Paris. To Germany, ever since the outbreak of the Revolu- tion in 1789, there had been a steady flow of loyalist French nobles and their families, who had emigrated to save their lives and, if possible, save also their fortunes. These emigres, as they were termed, were threatened with death if they did not return to France, but, as they were well aware that death would be their portion if they did return, instead of coming back to their native land the emigres formed themselves into an army upon the Rhine, under the command of the Prince de Conde. In a similar manner there had been a steady flow of French refugees to England, but, instead of being all loyalists, these were, even when of the noblesse, composed often of other factions opposed The Gathering at Juniper Hall 41 to the Monarchists, such as Constitutionalists and Republicans. For the longer the French Revolution lasted, the longer did those who had all started together in the same boat continue to hunt out and proscribe each other, so tl;iat it had soon become, as it were, a gr^e of dog eat dpg. Thus, by a sti^nge law of retribution, those that were top to-day wfere down to-morrow, while on the third day those of the day before had gone down in turn, lost their heads upon the guillotine, or been hunted like wolves from their native land, happy if only they could by any stratagem reach a foreign country alive. It thus happened that those of many classes reached England in safety, but once there, instead of combining against the oppressors of all alike who reipained at the top of the tree in France, they formed into different sections and quarrelled like cat and dog between themselves. It therefore happened that while the Royalists kept together, so did the Constitutionalists keep together and form themselves into groups, and thus it came to pass that a band of these latter were to be found installed not in London, the chief haunt of the Royalists, but near Mickleham, in Surrey. They lived together in a large house named Juniper Hall, and among them were Louis de Narbonne, Maurice de Talleyrand, and Mathieu de Montmorency. Others there whose names were weU known were the senti- mental Lally ToUendal and Malouet, and ito complete the party and become their queen arrived early in February Germaine d§ Stael, who^ being richer than 42 Madame de Stael all the others put together, paid the rent of the house. A great deal has been written about the stay of Madame de Stael and the congenial band of dmigres at Juniper Hall, where each one did as he liked, and there was apparently no quarrelling among the male friends of Germaine, Narbonne apparently being recognised by the others as the reigning consort. For a time, at least, the English neighbours called, and if at first there appeared to be anything odd in the mode of procedure of the inhabitants of Juniper Hall, it was merely put down aslDcing French. Thus some pleasant friendships were formed, everyone being especially anxious to make the acquaintance of the famous young Baronne de Stael, especially as she had just published a pamphlet, addressed to the French nation and Mr. Pitt combined, to each of whom she. extolled the virtues of peace. Among, those who thus at the beginning sought acquaintance with the authoress were Fanny Burney and Mrs. Phillips, the daughters of Dr. Burney, who was the great friend of Dr. Johnson. Of these, Fanny was herself an author, having written two novels, Evelina and Cecilia ; she had, moreover, been a lady- in-waiting'to the Queen of England, wife of George HI. The Burney famUy lived in the neighbourhood of Juniper Hall, but from the first Dr. Burney, who was, by the way, the author of a history of music, appears to have had his suspicions aroused that all was not quite as it should be in the little French colony, which at this time contained another rather doubtful lady in the person of a Madame de LaChatre, who had beeo The, Gathering at Juniper Hall 43 spoken of as having been " the housekeeper of M. de Talleyrand." It was, however, of Madame de Sta6l that Dr. Burney particularly warned his daughters to be careful, but without at first any effect. Fanny was soon teaching Germaine to write English, and they were good friends, but, being by nature a bit of a prude, she took affright and became cold in her manner when she found it difficult to understand the strange relations of friendship existing between the youiig Swedish Am- bassadress and the Comte de Narbonne. She ter- minated her friendship with Germaine, but kept it up with a French General staying at Juniper Hall, named d'Arblay, whom she subsequently married. Fanny's sister, Mrs. Phillips, did not care, however, what the world said, and remained on intimate terms with Madame de Stael, Among those of the French colony at Juniper Hall there was one who was looked upon with suspicion by the English. WhUe they merely smiled tolerantly at the mention of the Comte de Lally ToUendal, whose long-continued sentimental connection with the Prin- cesse d'Henin was well known, they looked askance at Talleyrand de Perigord, who had been previously in an accredited diplomatic position in London and had not given a very favourable impression of his methods. He was now again, while actually nothing but a fugitive from France, in possession of a passport furnished by the bloody Danton, which spoke of him as having been sent over for diplomatic reasons. Talleyrand was, however, unable to impose upon Lord Grenville, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, when he offered to place 44 Madame de Stael himself at the disposal of the English Government for any information required concerning French affairs, and was simply ignored. By the people living in the neighbourhood of Juniper Hall, Talleyrand was looked upon as probably a spy for one or two parties at the same time. While having escaped to England with a passport from Danton, who was supposed to have ordered the " September massacres," the wily ex-Bishop of Autun was strongly suspected of being in the pay of the Royalist party as their secret agent. At the same time he was living and hobnobbing with a party of French emigres who were neither Dantonists nor even openly Republicans, but who called themselves Constitution- alists. The Royalists in England, however, did not trust Talleyrand at all, but called him a renegade in their midst. When the long-spun-out career of Talley- rand is looked into, even casually, it must be owned that those who suspected him were justified. Madame de Stael, his one-time mistress, and who said that she loved him, may possibly have been as sharp as himself and have known the real truth about Talleyrand at this time, but no one else did or could ; for his motto was ever that of the famous vicar of Bray. " For whatsoever king shall reign, I'll still be the vicar of Bray, sirs," might well have applied to Talleyrand, who from administration to administration and under many successive rulers of France was most frequently to be found in one of the most leading positions in the State. After £^bout four months at Micklebam, Germaine The Gathering at Juniper Hall 45 de Stael left England and returned to Coppet. There she awaited with impatience those whom she had left behind her at Juniper Hall, and none was more anxiously awaited than Maurice de Talleyrand. He never came, greatly to her disappointment ; for having received a peremptory order to leave England, and his hf e being unsafe on the Continent, the brilliant Maurice was glad to find a ship to take him to America. CHAPTER V BENJAMIN AND MADAME DE CHARRI6RE It was not long after the return of Madame de Stael to Coppet from England, and after she had been rejoined by her husband, who came from Sweden, before the arrival of tragic news. This was no less than that of the cruel murder of Marie Antoinette in Paris, she having followed her husband to the guillotine on October i6th, 1793. The cry of Germaine to spare the Queen's life had been but as the voice of one crying in the wilderness ; she bitterly realised that her words had been entirely without influence in the ears of Jacobin Paris and the savage party of the Mountain in the National Con- vention, many of whose members were known to her personally. Her disappointment was great, and for a time her sympathetic heart appeared to be crushed by the blow, which came as a shock to the whole of Europe outside France. Quite unable to do any literary work, Madame de Stael sought fresh distrac- tions in the society of such friends as arrived at Coppet, and devoted herself, by a series of cunning devices and employment of false passports, to procuring the means of flight from France of various persons of both sexes who were still there in daily peril of their lives. In 46 Benjamin and Madame de Gharridre 47 these efforts Germaine was eminently successful, and various ladies and gentlemen saved their heads in consequence. Some of these people filtered through to Coppet from time to time, where even if Royal- ists, and thus opposed to the Republican views of Madame de Stael and her father, they found a kindly welcome, which kindness in various instances they merely rewarded by making themselves intensely disagreeable. The Chateau of Coppet, with its numerous occupants, must at times have resembled a rabbit- warren, but unless its roof happened to shelter any of her particular friends at the time being, its peaceful atmosphere, so conducive to quiet reflection and pleasing to others, by no means suited the disposition of Necker's daughter. This fact distressed her mother who, although in failing health, appeared not to regret in the least her past glories in France, while the former powerful Minister, her husband, also after a time seems to have been able to resign himself to the altered conditions of his life. Madame Necker wrote regret- fully to a friend concerning this, that although her husband appeared much happier in his retirement than he had ever been during his worldly honours, her daughter, on the contrary, seemed so occupied with outward events and with the joys and distractions of society that she, her mother, no longer could contribute to her happiness. The poor mother, indeed, got but little pleasure out of her headstrong daughter's life. Her share had been completed when in her youth she had furnished 48 Madame de StaSl Germaine with every means of attaining an excellent education, while allowing her at the same time to meet in her childhood's days all the prominent people in society in her salon. From that time Madame Necker had been relegated to the background. Unlike her daughter, who held the so-called philosophical views of the day, she was inclined to religious ideas ; she remained intensely attached to her husband, and during her last years passed at Coppet indulged her literary inclinations so far as to write a book, which was chiefly remarkable for the strong attitude against divorce maintained throughout its pages. During the year 1794 Madame Necker died ; but before departing from this life she left extraordinary instructions as to the disposition of her remains after death. She asked M. Necker to have her body immersed in some chemical fluid and then placed in a vault in the Park. Her face, howeiver, was to remain visible, being covered with a pane of glass, and she begged her husband to keep the key of the vault so as to be able to come frequently to look upon her features for so long as he lived, and when he died to be buried in the vault by her side. The Chateau of Coppet, in which Madame de Stael passed so many of her days, and where both her father and her mother died, was a very old building, having been buUt as long ago as the year 1257, when the then reigning Count of Savoy seized the Swiss Canton de Vaud. It was a big building enclosing a courtyard, to enter which was an ancient arched gateway, sur- mounted by two towers and with very thick walls. Benjamin and Madame de Gharriere 49 The Chateau was built away from the Lake of Geneva and was surrounded by the tall trees of the Park. The lake, however, as well as the distant city of Geneva, could be seen from an upper storey, as also could a fine panorama of the mountains of Savoy. There was a long gallery in the Chateau, which was used by Jacques Necker for his study, and later by Germaine de Stael and her friends for the performance of amateur theatricals, but from this gallery nothing could be seen except a number of beautiful plane-trees, which concealed from sight a picturesque little vUlage. This ancient castellated building with all the surrounding lands constituted a barony, which had passed through the hands of several aristocratic families of high rank. Eventually it came into the possession of the Scotch banker Thelusson, who sold it to Necker, whose partner he was in the bank in Paris. The Canton de Vaud, of which Lausanne is the capital, was at that time feudally subject to the Canton of Berne, the Supreme CouncU of the Govern- ment of which claimed the payment of about 170,000 francs from M. Necker when he bought the barony of Coppet, the sum which he paid to Mr. Thelusson for the house and grounds being half a miUion francs. One reason why the residence at Coppet was more agreeable to Madame Necker than to her daughter is easy to understand. When there, the former love of Edward Gibbon was practically on her native soil, as at only an hour's distance lay the village of Crassy, where the great historian had in his young days been 50 Madame de Stael wont to go and stay with the fair Suzanne Curchod in her father's parsonage. Germaine de Stael had no such tender recollections. She had been born not in Switzerland but Paris, and always liked to consider herself not Swiss but French. It was but a few months after the death of her mother at Coppet in May, 1794, that there came upon the scene the man with whom Germaine's life was to be linked for years in a series of passionate incidents frequently interspersed with frenzied paroxysms of jealous rage. This was Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, of whom she wrote at one time, just after he had fought a duel : " He is the man in the world whom I love the best, the man to whom I cUng by every fibre that remains to me of life." Many hundreds, indeed thousands, of pages must have been written con- cerning Germaine and her Benjamin, not only by contemporaries but by herself in letters to her friends, and above all by Constant himself in his Journal Intime. This diary, being written for his own eye alone, is absolutely reliable as a history of the man's life, since, the better to prevent it being understood by anyone, he wrote it in the Greek character. Benjamin was undoubtedly one of the most clever men of his day ; he was a publicist, a romance-writer, and a politician and so much mixed up was he with Madame de Stael in the public eye in the troubled time of the Directory in France as to be considered even by Napoleon as her alter ego. More frequently than not, indeed, despite his own Benjamin and Madame de GharriSre 51 powers of initiative, Benjamin Constant was merely the puppet of whom Germaine pulled the strings. She was too strong for him, and therefore forced him at times to act foolishly in political matters merely to gratify her own whims or spite. If eventually she incurred Napoleon's undying hatred and persecution, it was in a great measure owing to her own fault in insisting upon Benjamin making a speech in the " Tribunat," attacking the great First Consul at the very time that he owed him nothing but gratitude and support for having just appointed him to that im- portant body. Benjamin Constant was a young man of about Germaine's own age, that is to say, between twenty- seven ajid twenty-eight, when he first came into the stormy life of the woman who before a couple of years had elapsed was thinking seriously of divorcing her husband to definitely unite her existence to his. As it happened, the Baron de Stael spared her the trouble, since he it was who at length procured a divorce from her, although they became again united for a short time before her husband's death in May, 1802. She did not, however, even then marry Constant, who formed another matrimonial connection — his second — while at the same time, owing to her insistence, continuing his liaison with Madame de Stael, and, from fear of his mistress, forcing his wife to keep herself in the back- ground. Benjamin Constant was a Swiss by birth, being born at Lausanne, the son of noble parents, Colonel Juste de Constant de Rebecque and Henriette de 52 Madame de Stael Chandieu, who died at his birth. His father, who was a clever man, was in the Dutch Service, and, being unable to look after his motherless boy, left him in the hands of his grandmother and his aunt, the Comtesse de Nassau, who spoiled the child thoroughly. To try to understand properly the extraordinary personality of Benjamin, before condemning him outright as nothing but a brilliantly clever scamp, one must take into consideration his birth and upbringing. He had practically no country, had no religious teaching and no family life, but was left to float about from the tender age of seven, when his father placed him in the charge of a tutor in Holland. His precocity was from the first extraordinary, and quite on a par with that of Germaine Necker at a similar age. By the age of twelve he was already a poet, and likewise passionately devoted to gambling games at cards, but two years before that time he had astonished his grandmother by the following letter : "I sometimes see here a young English girl of my age, whom I prefer to Cicero and Seneca, and who teaches me Ovid, whom she has never read or heard speak of, but I find him entirely in her eyes." It was evidently Ovid's book on the art of loving to which the boy here referred, but it was an art in which he was to receive further instruction before long from various other feminine eyes, pre- sumably not so innocent as those of the young EngUsh girl. We must pass over Benjamin's life at Edinburgh and Oxford, and the early dissipations in Paris, which Benjamin and Madame de Gharriere 53 we afterwards find him regretting as " a crazy waste of time, money, and health," but allusion must be made to the intellectual woman of the world and distinguished authoress who made of him her lover. This was Madame de Charriere, a Dutch lady of noble birth, who was forty-seven years of age and already long married when she gathered the twenty-year-old Ben- jamin into her fold at her country-house of Colombier near Neufchatel, in Switzerland. From the still hand- some woman Benjamin Constant learnt other things beside the art of love. Notwithstanding the fact that after a two months' stay at Colombier the lady and the lover exchanged affectionate letters early every day from one bedroom to another, it is very evident that the brilliant woman of letters also developed along other hues the already very clever brains of the young Chamberlain at the Court of Brunswick. For such, by this time, Benjamin Constant had become, his father having obtained him the Court appointment, from which he was absent on leave when accident took him to the house — and arms — of Madame de Charriere. So little was the delicacy of the times that the lady did not hesitate to write later intimate and interesting anecdotes concerning Benjamin in a book that was published. Later Constant returned to visit Madame de Charriere, but after a long period of affectionate and tender epistles being interchanged between the pair, Benjamin eventually made of the sentimental Isabelle Agnes merely the confidante of his subsequent adventures with the fair sex, of his scheme for settling 54 Madame de Stael in America, or his project of writing a history of Civilisa- tion in Greece. At the age of twenty-two Benjamin married a lady of honour of the Duchess of Brunswick. She was the Baroness Wilhelmina von Cram, and not pretty ! CHAPTER VI BENJAMIN AND MADAME DE STAEL Benjamin had been to Colombier on a visit to Madame de Charriere, and was still vibrating under the in- fluence of the intellectual charm of that lady when he first met Madame de Stael. He had not as yet divorced his wife in Brunswick, but was about to do so when he proceeded to Lausanne, which was not so far from Colombier, with the intention of there seeking out the brilUant young lady about whom he had heard so much. Apparently he made the acquaintance of Germaine de Stael without the formality of an introduction. He met her driving along the road, stopped her carriage, spoke to her, and she herself seems to have done the rest, since she took him up in her carriage and after the drive took him back with her to her residence. By this time Narbonne had become one of the inmates of her Chateau. After infinite difficulties and dangers, the showy Comte Louis had lately arrived from England with an English passport. In spite of con- siderable obstacles being placed in his way by the Bernese authorities, he had successfully contrived to gain access to the Canton de Vaud, and had taken up his abode at Mezery, near Lausanne, where Madame de S5 56 Madame de Stael Stael was living for the summer, as was also Mathieu de Montmorency. No sooner had Benjamin arrived upon the scene than he commenced to pay ardent court to Germaine. He paid her nightly visits, which at first she compelled him to terminate when the hands of his watch pointed to the hour of twelve. In vain he begged to be allowed to stay later, the lady was inexorable. One night in his rage he dashed his watch to the ground and smashed it, but he had to go all the same. A day or two subsequently we find, however, a triumphant entry in his diary : " I have no watch ! I no longer require one ! " The success of Benjamin does not seem to have particularly annoyed Comte Louis de Narbonne, but it intensely irritated poor Mathieu, who grieved greatly to see his dear friend gradually falling under the spell of one whom he considered as a mere adventurer. Above all, he would, if he could, have spared Germaine de Stael any more of the acute heart-pangs which he feared her ardent nature might entail upon her in the future. We can see all Mathieu's hopes and fears expressed in his own words, in the numerous letters that he wrote at this time to Germaine's charming and beautiful cousin by marriage, Madame Necker de Saussure, While having evidently a blameless if somewhat sentimental affection for this admirable young lady, de Montmorency had formed with her a kind of pact of union to protect Madame de Stael against herself — her own passions. It proved perfectly useless, but formed a capital excuse for a very pleasant Benjamin and Madame de Stael 57 and intimate correspondence between two interesting young people of opposite sexes between whom there existed, what was so rare at that date, an innocent affection. Alas ! it was greatly owing to Mathieu's own mother that the denouement so greatly feared by him became eventually unfait accompli, with the result that it became a matter of absolurte indifference to Benjamin Constant what might be the hour by day or night ! Madame de Montmorency Laval had been among those saved from the prisons of France and a certain death owing to the exertions of Madame de Stael. She arrived at Lausanne and then at Mezery, to find Narbonne installed on the premises. With him in the years gone by there had been many love-passages, which she had never forgotten. The consequence was that, instead of showing any gratitude to Germaine for having saved her from the guillotine, she was inwardly furious, and anxious only to be able to do anything to separate her for ever from the captivating Comte Louis. Fate played into the hands of Madame de Laval when it brought Benjamin Constant upon the scene. For a time her innocent son Mathieu was at a loss to understand how it was that his mother was upon such intimate terms with one whom he considered as nothing but a most undesirable interloper. The fact was that, eaten up by jealousy, Madame de Laval had conceived a plan whereby to detach Germaine from Comte Louis, while throwing her into the arms of Benjamin. She it was who contrived all the secret meetings between Constant and Madame de Stael 58 Madame de Stael while likewise urging him on in his suit, and at the same time constantly praising him and painting him in the warmest colours to Germaine. When at last poor Mathieu awoke to the facts of the situation and understood his mother's machia- vellian wiles it was too late, and it was never to matter more to Constant whether he possessed a watch or no. The Baron de Stael had returned to Paris. In Sweden the new ruler was the brother of the late King, the Duke of Sodermanland, who was Regent during the minority of his young nephew Gustavus IV. Of all the countries in Europe, Sweden was at this time the only one remaining on terms of friendship with the bloodstained Government of the French Republic. For the price of his friendship the Regent was anxious to extract a substantial subsidy from the National Convention, and for this reason it was that Madame de Stael's husband had been sent back to Paris to negotiate. There, although not at first re-appointed as Ambassador, he was able to assume a semi-official position and to take possession once more of his old Embassy, whence his wife had been forced to fly in September, 1792. Once he was there, his wife longed to follow to Paris and to plunge once more into the fray of party politics. She had, however, many enemies in Paris, where she was looked upon as an object of sus- picion as being known to consort with members not only of the out-of-date Constitutionalist party, but also with nobles who were suspected of favouring a restitu- tion of the Bourbons and monarchical principles in France. There were very good grounds for the distrust Benjamin and Madame de Stael 59 with which the irrepressible Germaine was viewed, for what, indeed, were her friends at M6zery but nobles of the old regime, whose inclinations were certainly rather in favour of monarchical than of the republican in- stitutions by which they remained banished from France ? Her new friend, Benjamin Constant, had, however, no black mark against him ; he was not a French aristocrat, had never been mixed up in any of the preceding political crises, and possessed indeed the merit of being absolutely unknown. Benjamin was, however, as fuU of ambition as Germaine. He hoped that he might be able to do something in Paris — ^make a name somehow, obtain some lucrative post. His inclinations were, moreover, in favour of the Republic to which Madame de Stael was perfectly ready to openly express her devotion, if only by that means she were permitted once more to reside in that beloved Paris, existence away from which she considered as unbearable exile. Thus she and her new lover egged each other on, until no persuasions on the part of Mathieu and the others of her clique in Switzerland could restrain her. It happened accordingly that, leaving her old as- sociates behind, Germaine de Stael, accompanied only by her Benjamin, gaily took the route for Paris on May 15th, 1795. Great was the anxiety of those she left, for reports of disturbances accompanied by some fresh bloodshed reached their ears almost before the couple had crossed the French frontier. The ad- venturous Germaine was not, however, to be deterred 6o Madame de Stael by the reports of recent happenings which met her on her way, but continued her journey and reached her old home in Paris in triumph. The welcome which she met with was not, however, all that she could have wished, for on the last day of May a most violent attack was made upon Madame de Stael in a semi- political journal which seemed very well acquainted with her recent movements. Fearing to be put out of Paris again, Germaine now committed what was looked upon as an act of apostasy by all the friends whom she had left behind her in Switzerland. The Political, National and Foreign News had accused her of having had a last political meeting with her friends, the detested emigres, at a place called Yverdun. As a reply, Madame de Stael rushed into print, and practically went back upon her Constitutional friends by a long letter declaring that the Republican Government of the day alone was what was dear to her heart, vowing, moreover, that it was " the only form of government founded on the sacred bases of justice and humanity." Her letter had the result that she desired, since she was not exiled from the capital, but in Switzerland the faithful Mathieu had an uphill game to play when, both by letter and word of mouth, he sought to defend the apostate from all those whom she had bitterly offended. So greatly upset was Mathieu by this defection that he wrote to his fair friend Germaine's cousin as follows : " I beg you on my knees to explain to me this in- conceivable letter ! What a sad influence is that of Benjamin and Madame de Stagl 6i Paris, and likewise probably that of Benjamin. I have an additional duty to go there to fulfil : it is to fight the impulses of my friend towards such miserable objects." Poor Mathieu ! he could not stand any longer absence from the side of the woman whom he wanted to protect against herself, and soon afterwards we find him too back in Paris, after he had succeeded, with some difficulty, in obtaining a passport for his return. This passport was made out in a Swedish name, and by its use Mathieu de Montmorency arrived in the capital at a critical moment. There was a RoyaUst reaction in full swing, and Madame de Stael, plunging deep into the fray, was doing her best to reconcile all parties. Her endeavour to join both Royalists and Constitutionalists to Republicans was an utter failure with all ahke. When her husband's Embassy had been filled by her with returned emigres, the agitating woman was first violently denounced in the National Con- vention and then formally exiled from Paris. Through her Swedish husband's efforts the decree of exile was soon cancelled, but she could not remain in Paris and was glad to take refuge with Mathieu, who had not arrived a day too soon. He now took his too-impulsive friend to a country house that he possessed at Saint-Gratien, where she stayed for a time in quiet, while writing a political pamphlet entitled Reflections upon Internal Peace This pubUca- tion did Madame de Stael no good, and she found herself continually exposed to the most disagreeable form of police surveillance. Unable to stand the uncomfortable position in 62 Madame de Stael which she found herself, even the stout heart of Madame de Stael gave way, with the result that, within two months of the date of the establishment of the Government of the Directory in France, she turned her back upon Paris and practically fled once more to Switzerland, Germaine left Saint-Gratien at the end of Decem- ber, 1795 ; left also her Benjamin, who was vigorously place-hunting while continuing to write his great book upon all religions, of which Madame de Charriere has informed us he made the commencements upon the backs of playing-cards when staying with her at Colombier, This book it took Constant no less than eleven years to complete. The safety of Mathieu de Montmorency had in the meantime become endangered by his friendship for Madame de Stael. The newly-installed Directory, consisting of five Directors all selected for having been among those who had voted for the King's death, wished to show its power, to frighten its enemies, or possible enemies. Mathieu was arrested, dragged before a Juge de Paix, and put into prison. It was, however, fortunately for him, recognised that he had kept himself perfectly quiet — interfered in no political matters. His action in having harboured Madame de Stael was condoned and he was set at liberty. That lady had in the meantime been joined by Benjamin Constant, and together they had gone to Sweden, CHAPTER VII'^ GERMAINE AND THE BARON DE STAEL It was almost impossible to keep Germaine de Stael long from Paris, no matter what were the dangers or disagreeables awaiting her there. These were, how- ever, entirely of her own creating ; could she have only made up her mind to be quiet she would not have been continually receiving orders of exile, as she termed them, from the Directory. Quiet, however, did not at all suit the restless, active young lady, who felt that she might as well die if not continually figuring at the same time as the attractive hostess in a crowded salon and the chief mover in some poUtical combination. With some of the five members of the Directory she was on good terms, and notably so with the handsome ci- devant noble, General Barras. Barras was the lover of Madame Josephine de Beauharnais, and the man to whom was due the early advancement of his protege, the young Napoleon Bonaparte, who married Josephine at a later date. To Barras' friendship and protection Germaine owed much, for no matter if most of the Directors detested and feared Madame de Stael, he remained her firm friend, and Barras was the leading and most powerful figure in the Directory. Ever faithful to her 63 64 Madame de Stael old friends who were out of pocket or out of employ- ment, Germaine never hesitated to harry Barras on their behalf. Therefore it was through him eventually that she managed to obtain for Talleyrand a position which placed him once more in the highest office and the lap of fortune. After a year or two's residence in America, where he made himself and the French name very unpopular by intriguing with Jefferson against Washington, Talleyrand contrived to get back to Europe after the guillotining of that arch-fiend Robes- pierre in 1794. He landed in Holland, where he found many old acquaintances of both sexes, including his former love the Comtesse de Flahaut, but he was by no means inclined for long to " waste his sweetness on the desert air " among the other emigres. The terms of the passport given him by the now long since guillo- tined Danton were insisted upon by him in Paris, probably by the agency of Madame de Stael, with the result that the decree against him of being proscribed as an emigre was at length rescinded, and he was allowed to return to France. There he found himself free, but starving. In despair, deprived of all re- sources, he vowed that he would kill himself unless he could obtain a place under the Directory. Germaine thought it would be a pity if her former lover should blow out his precious brains with a pistol, as they might be devoted to more useful purposes. Accord- ingly she put herself " en quatre " on Talleyrand's behalf, with the successful result that he was ap- pointed Minister for Foreign Affairs through her influence. Germaine and the Baron de StaSl 65 Once back with his foot in the stirrup, the beloved Maurice of Germaine was soon riding the horse, becoming the most influential member of the Govern- ment of the Directory and making of Barras little more than a tool. Notwithstanding Talleyrand's early pre-eminence and the power of Barras, it was not until the end of 1796 that the presence of Madame de Stael was again tolerated in France, and then she was ordered not to come nearer to Paris than " its environs." Fortunately, Benjamin Constant possessed by this time a country house fifteen leagues from the capital, at H6rivaux. He flew to Coppet and brought his chere amie back with him to this retreat. She had utilised her time during her latest residence at Coppet by writing her work named On the Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of Individuals and Nations. From the effect of the book with this terribly lengthy title she had expected much — ^to influence public opinion in her favour being her principal object in its publication. Everybody read the new work by the so-well- known authoress, and many were greatly struck by the charm of expression, by the penetrating analysis of all the revolutionary passions, such as the fury of crime, ambition, party spirit, and the love of glory. It was a remarkable epitome of the terrible epoch through which France had been passing, and its pages struck home. Further, the book was meant to be also an exponent of the mind and nature of the writer, to give a picture 66 Madame de Stagl of her melancholy, passionate soul. Being anxious to provoke sympathy with her in her sorrows, the author stated that she had wished to give a real idea of her life, habits, and the nature of her character. Germaine had counted upon the literary efforts of her friend, the writer Rcederer, and also on the pen of Benjamin, to write up the book and prepare pubhc opinion in Paris before she left Coppet, and thus to ensure its favourable reception, and through its success to impose a permission for herself to return. > There is no doubt that in this instance the manoeuvres of Madame de Stael were successful, but she was, nevertheless, opposed at the very moment of her success by a serious set-back. This concerned her husband, who, owing to diplomatic relations with Sweden having been stretched almost to breaking-point, had been ordered to absent himself from Paris — to leave the Embassy and France. Obeying his instructions to take a holiday, the Baron de Stael had suddenly made his appearance in Switzerland, when he informed his wife that he intended to return to Sweden and, further, to tike her off with him to live upon his estates. When his wife refused he began to be insistent, whereupon it was that, to the horror of Mathieu de Montmorency, Madame de Stael commenced to talk of procuring a divorce in order that she might marry her Benjamin. The consternation of Mathieu was great indeed. He had lately arrived at the stage of having recognised Benjamin^ to the extent of looking upon him as a Germaine and the Baron de StaSl 67 necessary ev51, calculated to keep Germaine's mind occupied so that she might no longer dwell upon one whom he considered as being by far the most dangerous element in her life. This was the Swedish Count Ribbing ; but Ribbing had recently gone off to America, greatly to the relief of mind not only of Mathieu but of Germaine's father, M. Necker. That faithful friend, de Montmorency, had been deceived by Madame de Stael concerning Benjamin, she causing him to think that she found in him merely the distraction of the moment. Thus he had believed that it was owing to a spirit of coquetry, an admiration for Benjamin's intellectual capabilities, that Germaine had taken the man up for a time as a mere relief from her boredom, her melancholy. But now, horror ! she was talking of divorcing Stael, of marrying the detested red-haired adventurer ! This, then, was a real passion, with all its possible storms ahead — the very kind of thing from which the honest Mathieu had longed to preserve his friend ; a passion, too, for such a man, one whose irritating mannerisms and poUtical ideas appalled him — a mere revolutionary ! Had it been as a result of a deep- rooted passion for an aristocrat of refined manners, like a Narbonne, a Talleyrand, or even himself, that Germaine de Stael had thought of thus letting herself go, Mathieu would not have been so appalled. But for a Benjamin Constant I What was to be done ? In his despair, poor Mathieu sat down and poured out his woes on paper in many pages to his amiable confidante, Madame Necker de Saussure. 68 Madame de Stael In all of the outcry that he makes, it is worthy of note that never does the pious Mathieu let fall one single word of pity or sympathy for that so oft- deceived husband, the Baron Eric-Magnus de Stael- Holstein. Nor when, later, it is the Baron himself who is thinking of removing the millstone from round his neck does Mathieu think of anyone's feelings save those of the woman causing all the trouble. He then writes that he will " see the man," to find out if anything can be done to save Madame de Stael from the pain of open scandal ! Surely, however, there was much to be said on behalf of the deeply-wronged M. de Stael. He was by no means a nonentity. A man of good birth and distinguished appearance, he had had a considerable success in his earher years at Versailles and Paris. The lovely Queen Marie Antoinette allowed her smiles to fall upon him ; indeed, she took the greatest interest in the distinguished Swede. So did various great ladies of the highest rank, only they committed themselves deeper than the Queen. Among de Stael's friends were to be reckoned such fashionable ladies as the Duchesse de Luxembourg, the Marquise de Boufiflers, and the Comtesse de La Marck. Through their good offices and those of the Queen it was that the young diplomat became first Minister Plenipo- tentiary and then Ambassador Extraordinary at the Court of France. The Queen herself took an interest in finding a suitable wife for the generous Swedish noble, who made such a good figure at the Court. He was, it is true, open-handed to a fault, but who, then, Germaine and the Baron de Stael 6g so suitable for him as a mate as the daughter of the exceedingly rich, if bourgeois, Necker ? Behold him, then, after long and calculating negotiations on the part of her father, duly provided with that already adulated and very self-satisfied young lady, the daughter of the great Swiss banker. Germaine was, it will be admitted, a difficult girl to marry. Already spoilt to excess, she wished for everything and sought to give nothing in return except in the instances where her passions were concerned. Unfortunately, in the case of the man whom she accepted as her husband in order that she might be able the better to shine under his name, her passions had nothing to do with the case. He had a title, a grand and honourable position, a Swedish Embassy wherein she might display her talents. There her husband might be permitted to see her shine — ^that was enough for him ! He might also, if he chose to take the trouble, observe the smiles and coquetries, the display of wits with which she sought to lure other men to her side — that did not trouble her. He brought the title, she brought the money: what else was there to worry about ? Why talk of such things as love — as fidelity ? — ^there was nothing else to think of. Unfortunately for the Baron de Stael, he did think of other things. He thought from the first that he loved his wife ; thought, moreover, that he suffered deeply from her infidelities, which dishonoured his name. While himself ever faithful, he suffered at the hands of Germaine in other ways. She showed plainly 70 Madame de Stael that she did not love him, and treated him to a haughty disdain, so that, while tied to a distinguished wife, the sole comfort that he got from her was to be allowed to figure in her train as one of her humble adorers. What wonder is it if, in need of distraction, and having none in any liaison with any other woman, he took to the gaming-table and played highly as a means of such distraction ? Putting to one side aU questions of love and fidelity, the diplomatic functions of the Baron de Stael were often seriously interfered with owing to the political tricks of his wife, who was well known to hold views concerning French affairs quite at variance with his own. To possess such a wife, one constantly apt to come backwards and forwards from Switzerland to Paris like a whirlwind, was a great disadvantage to the Baron in the difficult part that he had to play in order to make the mutual interests of France and Sweden run smoothly. The unfortunate man had, however, to put up with those comings and goings to Paris on the part of his wife under the Directory, which was con- stantly sending her away for her intrigues, as he had later under the Consulate of which Bonaparte was the head. In the year 1798, when Madame de Stael was again exiled, M. de Stael had after infinite difficulty reconquered the position of Swedish Ambassador, of which he had been deprived. He then was troubled by one constant, ever-present fear. This was that Madame de Stael would suddenly reappear from Coppet to trouble his newly-found security. But he had borne enough, and was determined what to do.^ If Germaine and the Baron de Stael 71 she came to disturb him again he would demand a divorce. We find Mathieu very anxious on this point at this time. He, however, warned Germaine, who herself understood that her husband had reached the limit, and she accordingly remained quiet. CHAPTER VIII MADAME DE STAJEL MEETS NAPOLEON It was an unfortunate circumstance in Madame de Stael's life that from the commencement of her married existence she elected to treat her husband as though he were a man of no account. Had she, instead of dis- regarding him as not worthy of consideration, but given him a little of the devotion which she knew so well how to bestow upon others, they might have led together an agreeable, happy existence, and yet one which woidd not in any way have militated against her making herself remarkable, whether in politics or in literature. One notoriety, it is true, would have been denied to her, that of a woman with a palpitating, over- sensitive heart, ever allowing herself to be led by the violence of her passions from one folly to another. But would not she have been just as well able to write a Delphine or a Corinne, to portray herself in the colours in which she wished to appear, had she never given to Benjamin Constant the opportunity of painting her as he had actually found her in EUenore, the heroine of his romance Adolpke ? The wild quarrels, the tearing of the heart-strings to tatters of that book, made painful reading, but they might as well have been extracts from Constant's Journal In- time, since they represent the actual scenes of terrible 7» Madame de Stael Meets Napoleon 73 discord and passionate reconciliation which he so often describes as taking place between himself and Germaine de Stael. To return to this lady and her husband. Seeing that his wife accorded him none of the usual marital rights, it is satisfactory to learn that his father-in-law paid M. de Stael's debts from time to time. But neither this fact nor the efforts of M. Necker were availing to prevent the Baron from procuring a separation from his wife in the year 1798. Madame de Stael then did her utmost to induce him to return to Sweden, while M. Necker seconded his daughter's efforts by sending his son-in-law the sum of 18,000 francs to defray the expenses of the journey. This, however, he continued no further than Holland, when for some reason he returned to Paris — to his wife's consternation. He was now in great poverty, his diplomatic functions having once more ceased. A little later we find Napoleon sending his brother Joseph Bonaparte to remonstrate with Madame de Stael upon the scandal of a rich woman like her leaving her distinguished husband in a destitute condition. For upon the Baron de Stael having very properly refused to allow his openly immoral wife once more to claim the shelter of his roof, Germaine had procured an order of " separation of goods " from the Paris Courts. The remonstrance of Napoleon was, however, not Without avail, as M. Necker came once more to the rescue and made the Baron an allowance. Eventually, when she learned that the Baron was very ill, Germaine 74 Madame de Stael took pity on her husband's condition, sold off all his furniture and valuable objects, and started off with him to Coppet. He deserved this recognition at her hands. The last occasion upon which he had stayed with his wife at Coppet had been when she gave birth to her daughter Albertine. Then Mathieu, who had also hurried to Coppet to be with his friend in her trouble, wrote that the behaviour of the Baron had not been expansive, but absolutely correct. When it is to be remembered that Benjamin Constant always treated Albertine as his own daughter, it says a good deal for the deceived husband that he was able to control his feelings so well as to appear " correct " when the child made its appearance in the world. The Baron de Stael di^ not live to reach Coppet once more, but expired suddenly when on the journey, at a place called Poligny . The sad — or j oyf ul — event which made of Madame de Stael a widow did not take place untn May 5th, 1802, previous to which date various events had taken place in Paris to bring to the fore the man of destiny with whom Germaine was to become involved in a struggle of many years' duration. The first of these memorable occurrences dates back to the year 1795, when took place the uprising of the 13th Vendemaire of the year IV. in the Republican calendar — Octobeir 5th according to the Christian era. This date is celebrated in the history of the Revolution from the part taken by the young Corsican artillery officer. Napoleon Bonaparte, who had previously been heard of in connection with the good services he had rendered at the Siege of Toulon. Madame de Stael Meets Napoleon 75 Upon the i3thVendemaire, the Paris Sections, worked upon by Royalist reactionaries, rose in great strength to attack the National Convention sitting in the Palace of the Tuileries. All seemed lost for the Republican Government, when Barras called upon his young protege for aid. With the small force at his disposal, the Corsican took the responsibility of firing with cannon upon the insurgent mob. This was the " historic whiff of grapeshot " which saved the RepubUc. The Government of the Directory was formed three weeks after the successful quelling of this revolt, when the grateful Directors, of whom Barras was one, soon conferred a post of high command upon the brave and capable officer to whom they owed their salvation. Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-six years of age, was appointed General in Command of the Army - of Italy, over the heads of many of his seniors. He proceeded to Italy and to Austria, and the world was soon ringing with his wonderful feats of arms, by which he completely eclipsed the Generals in command of the RepubHcan armies in the field in other parts of Europe. With his victorious army behind him to back him up, young Bonaparte soon found himself in the position to be able to disregard the instructions of the Directory, of which he apparently considered himself more as the master than the servant. In the meantime that Directory was in difficulties from internal dissensions. From the machinations of the RoyaUsts and the Moderates in the two Assembhes under the Directors, it seemed as if the Jacobin, which 76 Madame de Stael was the ruling and Republican, element, would be overturned. The Moderates were only anxious for a reputable form of Government, but they were very unpopular with the military element in the nation. Bonaparte was appealed to for help by three of the Directors, when, being unable to come himself, he sent General Augereau to their aid. Early on the morning of September 4th, 1797, Paris awoke surprised to find the city full of soldiers, who had marched in in the night. The Assemblies were surrounded, and all who were ob- noxious to the Republican party, including two of the Directors, were arrested or proscribed. This was the famous coup d'etat of the i8th Fructidor, and all those who were in the secret and on the successful side were spoken of later as " Fructidoreans." Among those sympathisers who knew in advance what was going to take place on the i8th Fructidor was Madame de Stael. So barbarous and cruel, however, were the methods adopted on the following day towards all those of the overthrown RoyaUst and Moderate parties, that the friends of that lady, to shield her name, declared that Madame de Stael belonged to the i8th, but not to the 19th Fructidor. From the effects of Fructidor some of Germaine's former friends suffered banishment to the terrible climate of Guiana, while Mathieu de Montmorency and others whom she had warned in time made good their escape to Switzerland. Forty-two newspaper editors were, however, deported or imprisoned. It was hardly a month later than this coup d'etat Madame de StaSl Meets Napoleon >j'j that the youthful General Bonaparte, acting as though he were an independent king and conqueror, imposed upon defeated Austria a crushing treaty of peace. By this Treaty of Campo Formio, Belgium and the Ionian Islands were ceded to France, while Austria was also compelled to acknowledge the Cisalpine Republic founded by Bonaparte in Italy. In return, however, with a lordly hand, the French General gave to Austria the territory of the Republic of Venice, which State he had overrun with his arms, although it had stood out as neutral in the war. Very soon afterwards, with the treaty in his pocket, the victorious General arrived in Paris to present the document officially to the Directors. Talleyrand, now Minister for Foreign Affairs, warned his friend Madame de Stael that Bonaparte was to arrive at his official residence on the morning of December 6th, 1797. She, of all those in Paris, was burning to gaze upon the features of the young conqueror, of whom it was said that not only was he a disinterested lover of liberty, but an ardent student of the modern philosophers and the poets of present and past ages. Germaine's romantic enthusiasm was aroused to the highest pitch by the successful Corsican's feats of arms, and for long past she had been impatiently awaiting the opportunity of, as herself a distinguished person, patting him on the back and expressing to him her unqualified approbation and admiration. Madame de Stael had not, however, waited for General Bonaparte's arrival crowned with bays, but had already written to him more than once when at the 78 Madame de Stael head of his army, comparing him in highflown terms to Scipio and other heroes of old. The object of her admiration at a later epoch discanted sarcastically on the bad taste of Madame de Stael as displayed in one of her letters. Bonaparte was already married to the widowed Josephine de Beauharnais, whom he had caused to follow him to Italy, and notwithstanding her habits of indulging in violent flirtations with other men, was still deeply in love with her. Germaine de Stael in her eulogium had gone so far as to tell him that it was " a monstrosity that a man of his genius should be united to a httle insignificant Creole, incapable of either appreciating or understanding him." General Bourrienne relates in his Memoir es that the young Commander-in-Chief would read to him the letters he received from the ardent lady, and remark : " Bourrienne, can you conceive such extravagances ? The woman is crazy ! A woman of a fine intelligence, a maker of sentiment, to compare herself to Josephine ! Bourrienne, I will not answer such letters." Upon the occasion of the i8th Fructidor, when General Augereau was in Paris, Germaine consulted him eagerly concerning Bonaparte. Fearing lest he might be carried away by ambition and crush Liberty, she asked if it was true that he thought of making himself the King of Lombardy. Knowing the woman he had to deal with, Augereau replied diplomatically : " Oh dear no, he is a young man far too well brought up for that ! " The answer pleased her ; by it she was convinced that Napoleon Bonaparte was as fond Madame de Stael Meets Napoleon 79 of liberty and as good a Republican as she was herself. In a great state of excitement, Germaine was in Talleyrand's reception room an hour at least before the ai;rival of the short, pale young man, the hero of the day. He was tired-looking, as though wearied from his journey or his campaigns. Talleyrand presented her to Bonaparte, who merely made a few civil phrases. After telling Madame de Stael poUtely that in passing through Switzerland he had been sorry to have missed seeing her father, he turned to speak to someone else. She was, as she tells as in her Considerations on the French Revolution, for once tongue-tied ; she felt a difficulty in breathing while speaking to the conquering hero that she had never experienced with anyone else. Thus took place the first interview, in which, according to Talleyrand, Bonaparte " paid but little attention " to Madame de Stael. From the day of this first meeting it was almost as if the couple — ^the famous young man of twenty-eight, the celebrated young woman of thirty — ^stood on the greensward facing each other, as duellists, rapier in hand. The one would henceforth seek to dominate, the other, while always presenting the point, artfully contrive to retire, to side-step, to elude, until the time should come for an overpowering counter-attack which would prove fatal. The first public function in honour of Bonaparte took place a few days later. Then, after the Directors had solemnly received the Treaty of Campo Formio 8o Madame de StaSl from the hands of the General, now surrounded by a brilliant staff, they all embraced him. Talleyrand pronounced an adulatory address, the bands played, the cannons thundered. Among those present to join in the universal homage was Germaine. With her burning black eyes fixed piercingly upon his, She was thenceforth always en evidence where Napoleon Bonaparte was present. She " harried " him at dinners, balls, official receptions, while trying to take possession of him, to bring him under her sway, to cause his glory thenceforth to shine with a reflected light emanating from her own illus- trious person. It was in vain, however ! The young hero had no wish to share his glory with Madame de Stael. He neither wanted the passion which she seemed so ready to shower upon him nor her patronage. For the present he was contented with his eminently feminine Josephine ; he did not like mannish women, literary women. The kind of women that were always getting themselves talked about were not to his fancy, He feared them, and, accordingly, systematically withheld himself from Germaine. In vain she asked him to a ball at her house — ^he was engaged elsewhere. He had divined that she wished to make of him the flagstaff from which to fly the colours of her political projects, but Napoleon Bonaparte intended to be nobody's flagstaff but his own. Nor would he be chained to the triumphal car of any woman, no matter how celebrated she might be. That might be all well enough for some ambitious young literary man picked up in NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT MALMAISON From ail eiigmiing after the picture by Isabey [FaciHg ^. 80 Madame de StaSl Meets Napoleon 8i Switzerland — a Benjamin Constant, for instance — but it was not good enough for the saviour of the Republic, the man who had inflicted a crushing defeat upon the enemies of France. If nothing else were required to instil caution at this period into the mind of Bonaparte, there was the instinct of self-preservation. He was not yet firmly installed in his seat, and it was nepessary for him to consolidate his position, to go slow. The Directors might embrace him, but they were jealous of him and would very gladly welcome an opportunity of kicking him down the ladder again. For this reason it was that the time-serving Talleyrand, anxious to follow the fortunes of the rising man, had introduced into his welcoming speech some carefully chosen phrases. " Ah ! " he exclaimed. " Far from fearing that which one would call his ambition, I feel that it may perhaps be necessary to solicit him one day to tear himself from the sweetness of studious retreat. The whole of France may be free, he perhaps never." Napoleon Bonaparte was himself working along these lines, dressing modestly, living modestly, praising up men of science, literary institutions, education, declaring that his greatest ambition was to merit to be appointed to the National Institute. When actually appointed, he signed himself not merely Bonaparte, " Commander-in-Chief," but Bonaparte, " Member of the National Institute," an act of modesty which greatly prepossessed numbers of people in his favour, and none more so than the woman who was continually F S2 Madame de Stael endeavouring to make of him something in her life, as she sought to become a great deal in his. Bonaparte, however, was well aware of the re- putation of Madame de Stael for getting her friends into trouble. He knew how under both the National Convention and the Directory she had been asked to leave France, where she was indeed only living at that very moment under a suspended sentence of banish- ment. It had but been owing to the prayer of Ben- jamin Constant to the Directory that an order for her to retire to Switzerland had been recently revoked. Should Bonaparte now commit the folly of uniting himself with one who was the constant anxiety of the ruling party of the day, and detested, moreover, by those of the other parties, the Royalists, the Moderates, who had suffered so greatly at the time of the i8th Fructidor, when Madame de Stael had supported the cou/p d'etat? Napoleon decided that he would do no such thing ! The Baroness de Stael was constantly compromising her friends, and he could not afford to become her friend merely to be compromised. So he would leave her alone ; that is to say, he would be civil, nothing more than that. This, then, was the line he followed. Compelled to meet Madame de Stael, and often to find himself under the fire of her burning glances, he never committed himself, never melted. She herself tells us as much. In her Considerations upon the French Revolution Madame de Stael mentions the fact that when Napoleon Bonaparte felt her eyes upon him " his face became as marble." Madame de Stael Meets Napoleon 83 She did not, however, cease upon that account to pursue the man for whom she felt such an unbounded admiration, but for a long time still endeavoured to bend him to her purpose, to bring him to her feet. Only when she found Napoleon absolutely im- pervious to the assaults of her coquetry did she abandon the pursuit. Then it was that she decided to oppose his policy. CHAPTER IX GERMAINE, SIEVES, BONAPARTE, AND BENJAMIN There are a couple of instances on record of occasions upon which, in these early days. Napoleon scored off Germaine by his quickness of repartee. This lady, selecting an opportunity when plenty of people were assembled, accosted the General and asked him pointedly : " Whom do you think the most celebrated woman in the world, alive or dead ? " If Madame de Stael thought that she was going to extract a fulsome compliment, she was very soon undeceived. With a freedom savouring more of the camp than the boudoir, Bonaparte replied, with a mocking smile : " The woman who has brought the most children into the world ! " (" Celle qui a fait Uplus d'enfants.") Upon another public occasion Germaine asked pointedly, " Are you fond of women ? " "I love my wife," was the smart reply of Napoleon. In spite of rebuffs which might have discouraged a less enterprising woman, Madame de Stael was never disconcerted, and even boldly attacked Bonaparte upon the subject of the proposed occupation of Switzer- land by the French arms. This occupation she told him that she " would not have." The nominal reason for the invasion was the constant quarrelling in Germaine, Sieyte, Bonaparte, and Benjamin 85 Switzerland between the aristocratic and popular parties, the Government of the Directory professing the intention to protect the latter from the aggression of the former. Madame de Stael had at heart a very good reason why she " would not have " the French in Switzerland. This was that her father's name was still recorded on the list of the emigres, notwithstanding the fact that he was Swiss and not French. According to the Re- publican law, any emigrd ionnd residing in any territory occupied by French troops was subject to death. M. Jacques Necker would therefore be in peril of his life. The argument advanced, however, by Madame de Stael with Bonaparte was that it would be dishonouring for any country to obtain its liberty save by its own efforts. Upon this subject she embarked with her usual flow of words. Seeing Germaine becoming excited over her own flowery descriptions of the happiness, the beauty of Switzerland, Bonaparte replied dryly : " Yes, that is all very weU, but the in- habitants require political rights all the same." And then he in turn launched forth upon the subject of the beauty of the country, while quite evading the question of the proposed occupation, to which Madame de Stael had vainly sought to pin him down. Not very long after this Napoleon started off for his Egyptian campaign. While he was away in the East, Germaine's mind was kindled with a renewed enthusiasm concerning her hero, who now appeared to her fervent imagination to shine on a par with an Alexander the Great, or some other Eastern conqueror 86 Madame de Stael of old. Could she but have done so, she would willingly have embarked upon a ship to share Bonaparte's fortunes in the Orient. He was not allowed to ignore the fact that he was not forgotten by his ardent admirer, and, feeling safer at a distance, Bonaparte allowed himself in return to indulge a little on paper in compliment to the woman of whom he was anxious not to make an enemy. When he wrote that he had read her books, which he had had sent him to Cairo, and that they had interested him deeply, Madame de Stael was in the seventh heaven of delight ; and she wrote off to her father, who replied that he shared in her joy upon" having become glorious upon the banks of the Nile." Politically, Germaine was exerting herself greatly at this time, preaching the principles of moderation, and in especial begging Barras for the recall of the un- fortunate beings who after Fructidor had been exiled to die of fever in Guiana. An eloquent appeal for pity and justice which she sent to him was really very fine. She declared that " pity was the one passion of her heart." Her Republican friends were not, however, pleased with her, and said that if she had felt that way she had better have left Fructidor alone. Among Madame de Stael's political friends was Sieyes, one of the most remarkable figures of the whole of the Revolutionary period. A man of immense brain-power, the Abbe Sieyes had been mainly instru- mental in drawing up the varying forms of Constitutions which had been tried in turn in France, only to be discarded one after another. Having been one of the Germaine, Sieyes, Bonaparte, and Benjamin 87 regicides, Sieyes was available from the first for a seat on the Directorate, but had refused to become a Director until the year 1799. By that time, like Barras, who had been truckling with the Royalist party, Sieyes had become sick of the cruelly-disposed Jacobin element, which had become secured in power by the coup d'itat of Fructidor. He wanted something new, and was anxious to be the leading element in bringing about a change by which the Jacobin element should be got rid of. Like him, Madame de Stael, Benjamin Constant the able journalist Roederer, and half a dozen others were quietly preparing a new coup d'etat, one by which the real ideas of the Revolution should be preserved ; that is to say, they wished to save the Republic from the domination of the party which appeared quite ready to plunge France back into a reign of bloodshed and terror as a means of maintaining its own ascendancy. Before the return of Bonaparte from Egypt at the end of October, 1799, the partisans of Sieyes were already casting about in their minds for a means to establish the proposed new Constitution. Sieyes him- self said : " One can found nothing by the aid of blunderers and chatterboxes ; two things are needed : a head and a sword." There was no difficulty about the former ; the Abbe thought that his own head was good enough — ^but the sword? Someone of great determination was required, and yet he should be a General who, after being used, would be ready to step aside and take a back seat, allowing the civil power tp reipqin supreme. 88 Madame de Stael That successful General, Moreau, was thought of, but was rejected by Sieyes as not having sufficient decision of character. And then, just in the nick of time, Bonaparte returned from Egypt. It seemed to Sieyfes and those behind him that Bonaparte would be just the man that they wanted. After the famous occasion of " the whiff of grapeshot " in Paris he had not attempted to assert himself. Why, then, should he now attempt to do more than was needed of him ; why attempt to dominate the Government, which would remain secure in power after the two Assemblies had been purged of all those whom it was sought to get rid of ? No time was lost by Sieyes in indulging in an intrigue with Bonaparte, the result of which was that by the use of armed forces, which invaded the Assemblies, there was on November 9th, 1799, accomplished the Revolution known as that of the i8th Brumaire of the RepubUcan year VIII. This Revolution differed from that of the 18th Fructidor in that, although the same means were employed upon both occasions, that of Brumaire had for object to destroy not the power of the Royalists but that of the Jacobins. It proved absolutely successful, and that, too, without the actual shedding of any blood. Now, however, came in a factor upon which Sieyes, Madame de Stael, and the others who had plotted for this revolution of Brumaire had by no means reckoned. This was the ambition of Bonaparte. While Barras was sent off to the country under an armed escort, and Germaine, Sieyes, Bonaparte, and Benjamin 8g many other, prominent men were put under arrest, Bonaparte, the successful General with an army behind him, was left at the top of the tree. Moreover, that was where he intended to remain ! Thus Brumaire had brought about the commencement of the Dictatorship by which France was to be dominated for so many years, although at first the result appeared to be merely the establishment of a triumvirate of three Consuls, they being Sieyes, Bonaparte, and Roger DucoS. Before very long Sieyes retired, accepting a very large sum of money, an estate, and the title of Comte de Crone. For he had found in Napoleon Bonaparte, who became First Consul, a master instead of the ser- vant that he had bargained for. An amusing but sarcastic skit was published upon the occasion of the gilded retreat of Sieyes : " Sieyes d Bonaparte avait promts un trSne, Sous ses dibris brUlants votdatU I'enseveUr, Bonaparte d Sieyis a fait prisent de Crdne Pour le payer et I'aviUr." The enthusiasm and joy of Madame de Stael at the success of Bonaparte were intense. She was absolutely enchanted at the result of the bloodless revolution, and especially when the first results of the accession of the Consuls to power became evident in an unlimited tolerance and universal justice. All of the still surviving wretches who had been sent after Fructidor to Guiana were recalled ; the churches, which had been closed for years, were reopened ; many of the imigris had their names expunged from the lists of those forbidden to return to France. An era of peace 90 Madame de Stael and concord seemed indeed commencing, especially as even those who were imprisoned at first after the coup d'dtat of Brumaire were released. Germaine was particularly grateful to Bonaparte for recalling the exiles from the plague-stricken swamps of Guiana. Her own name had been among those held up to execration by the Royalists and Moderates in connection with those banishments after Fructidor, She hoped that now by the clemency of the First Consul her own share in bringing about that terrible coup d'dtat would be forgotten. Another cause of pleasure to Madame de Stael was the prospect now opened of obtaining some profitable post under the new Government for her clever and ambitious lover, Benjamin Constant. The merits and capabilities of this young man had long been recog- nised in Paris, but his birth as a Swiss had been against him hitherto. This bar to the advancement of Con- stant might now perhaps be overcome. Under the new Constitution, below the three Consuls there were to be formed a Senate and two legislative bodies, one called the Assembly, the other named the Tribunat. This latter, which was to be eminently the debating chamber, would, it seemed to Germaine, be exactly the place in which Benjamin should be able to display his talents to advantage. No time was lost by Madame de Stael in getting a powerful friend, named Chabaud-Latour, to present Benjamin Constant to Bonaparte, who had already heard of him and read some of his works. This gentle- man took Benjamin first to Bonaparte and then to Germaine, Sieyes, Bonaparte, and Benjamin qi Siey^s, but was, according to his own account, as- tounded by the assurance and duplicity he displayed. To each of the Consuls in turn Benjamin expressed his devotion; upon each he showered compliments and flatteries. But to Bonaparte he cleverly ran down Sieyes as " not a man of action, but an idealist," while to Sieyes he expressed his delight that he was " a man of principle and justice, not a man of the sword." Constant obtained his appointment to the Tribunat ! CHAPTER X GERMAINE'S attack — AND^ PUNISHMENT By the new Constitution, which was, incidentally, the fourth adopted since 1789, Bonaparte was appointed First Consul for ten years. Though only the first out of three, he practically ruled France. The country still retained the name of Republic, but it was a Republic where one man was supreme. " In future," he said, " we will have no parties, no Jacobins, no Royalists, but only Frenchmen." The better to support his supremacy. Napoleon Bonaparte suppressed a number of the newspapers, while warning the re- mainder to be cautious. One or two of the papers, however, he maintained as semi-official organs of the Government; one of these was edited by Rcederer hitherto the friend of the Baroness de Stael, and another by an able writer named M. de Fontanes. As mentioned already. Constant was appointed to the Tribunat, which was to speak without voting, while the other Assembly, the legislative body, was to vote without speaking. The Senate and these two bodies first came into operation at the beginning of January, 1800, and there was at once an active dis- cussion as to whether the Tribunat was to figure as an organised opposition to the Government or, as Rcederer maintained in a vigorous signed article iii 92 Germaine's Attack^and Punishment 93 the Journal de Paris, as an assembly to support its efficiency. From an entry in Napoleon's diary in St. Helena it is evident that he himself was the direct cause of putting Benjamin into the Tribunat. His brother, Joseph Bonaparte, was for long an intimate friend of Madame de Stael, and Napoleon states in his above- mentioned Journal : " Joseph worried me to cause the nomination of Constant to the Tribunat. I was shy of doing so at first, but I ended by yielding. I wrote about it to Lebrun, and Benjamin was appointed." The article by Roederer mentioned above was brought about as follows. At the first meeting of the Tribunat, one of its members, named Duveyrier, made a spiteful speech. The hall of the Tribunat was on the site of the Palais Royal, where in 1789 that ill-fated journalist Camille Desmoulins was the first to mount the cockade which became the tricolour emblem of revolutionary France. In his speech Duveyrier, after referring to this national cockade and to Camille, spoke of the historic spot upon which he and his colleagues were assembled, making use of the following expression : " This place, where, if one spoke of an idol of fifteen days, one would recall to oneself the fact that an idol of fifteen centuries had been shattered in a single day." The allusion to the First Consul was too plain, and Paris was up in arms at this first attack made upon the popular hero. As a result, Duveyrier was forced to eat humble pie, while for a day or two Constant sat quietly saying nothing. 94 Madame de Stael Meanwhile, it is well to consider what was the state of mind at this period of Germaine, who had been the sponsor of her Benjamin. She, like Constant himself, had it in her mind to re-establish a regular Republican form of government, and vainly imagined that if General Bonaparte made any menacing show of ambition it would be easy enough to unseat him. Added to this delusion, she wished herself, if not actually to dominate the First Consul, at all events to share his power on equal terms, and thought that such a state of things could be easily brought about if only the situation were properly exploited. He had not, it is true, fallen at her feet as a result of the exercise of her fascinations, but the time had come for other measures. She still admired Bonaparte deeply, even if he ap- peared to disdain her. Germaine had not yet arrived at the stage when " hell holds no fury like a woman scorned," but she was sore, and felt that the time had come when she would compel Napoleon to acknowledge the fact that she, Madame la Baronne de Stael, was one whom he would do well to reckon with. All that would be necessary would be to instil a little fear of her into his heart. This accomplished — and it would not be difficult — all would go well. Then she would no longer be disdained, her wounded pride would be salved, and her innate ambition gratified ; she would become a power in the State. With her Benjamin safely seated in the Tribunat had come about Germaine's opportunity. No longer would it be necessary to ask for favours, for on the morrow of the execution of her plan it would be the Germaine's Attack — and Punishment 95 First Consul who would be coming round to her, hat in hand. So argued the self-confident young woman, and she proceeded to put her plan into execution ; but she had not waited until this moment to irritate, if not to alarm, the First Consul. Hearing of the daily reunions in Madame de Stael's salon, where in an agitated manner she declaimed upon the subject of the alarm that she felt for the cause of liberty. Napoleon sent his brother Joseph to her, to remind her as a friend that what the nation required at the moment was peace, not political discussion calculated to set everybody and everything once more upside down. Joseph Bonaparte fulfilled to the best of his ability his mission of peace. He told her that his brother was ready to accord her anything she wanted — leave to reside in Paris, the return of the two millions of francs lent by her father, Necker, to the Government of Louis XVI., anything else in reason she might desire, if only she would stop talking, disturbing Paris. " Ask her what it is she really wants," Napoleon had said to his brother. Instead of meeting these friendly overtures in a friendly manner, Ger- maine assumed a noble attitude, and replied crushingly : " It is not a matter of what I want, but of what I think." Joseph was obhged to go back to his brother with his tail between his legs. After this failure to come to an agreement with the unreasonable woman had followed the bombshell of Duveyrier's speech. Napoleon no doubt knew that there was more to be expected of the same nature, but g6 Madame de Stael doubtless hoped for good results from Roederer'^ article, which represented the duty of a cessation of agitation at a moment when the Government was only seeking to bring about universal calm, Benjamin Constant proved now more far-seeing than Madame de Stael, and before obeying the behest of his arbitrary mistress warned her what she would have to expect. She had her salon crowded on the night of January 4th, 1800. Among others present was Lucien Bona- parte, Napoleon's second brother. Benjamin came up to Germaine and said : " To-night your house is crowded ; all the world is here — people whom you like to have about you — ^but if I speak in the Tribunat as you desire, to-morrow it will be a desert ; think it well over." According to the Duchesse d'Abrant^s, he added : " He knows where you are vulnerable : be prudent." Her reply was : " One must act according to one's convictions." The foolish woman was too sure of heir power, and determined, in spite of good advice, to brave the First Consul, to throw down the gauntlet to the man before whom already the nation bowed. On the morrow, accordingly, Benjamin spoke in the Tribunat against the propositions of the Government. He spoke with nervous eloquence well besprinkled with sarcasm. We need not give the words of his speech which, while nominally merely an assertion of the independence of the Tribunat, was a powerful and bitter attack upon the powers of the First Consul. The speech was most eloquent. Germaine's Attack — and Punishment 97 The deed was done ; all the fat was in the fire ! The rage of Bonaparte was unbounded. It was not the ingratitude of Benjamin that he felt, for he, like all the world, knew whence came the blow. Nor was he long before he struck back at the woman who to indulge her pride had attacked him before all France. The press of Paris, instigated by Napoleon, was bitter, and in the most bitingly sarcastic terms inveighed against Madame de Stael, while denouncing her for having inspired Constant. All parties alike fell upon the unfortunate woman, the Royalist press vieing with the Jacobin organs in abuse. One Royalist paper, with the extra-r ordinary name of The Angel Gabriel, had evidently not forgotten the old Royalist hatred against Necker, who had in the latter days of the monarchy cut down right and left the charges of the indolent nobles who battened upon the people. It was really humorous in the way in which it described how, while running about after glory, Madame de Stael was ready to pardon any amount of abuse so long as she succeeded in getting herself talked about. The Angel Gabriel had plenty to say on the subject of metaphysics, " which she wrote of without understanding"; on that of morality, ' ' which she talked of without practising ' ' ; and of the virtues of her sex, " which she did not possess." Nor was she spared on the subject of her association with Constant, to whom, after having invested him with the toga of the Tribune, she is supposed to say : " Cry, my friend ; be tempestuous ; make a row ! Let yourself loose against authority — that's the way to get on in the world ! " e 98 Madame de Stagl In the end, the paper was particularly playful in the way in which it summarised Germaine's ambitions. Benjamin was to become a Consul, to Papa Necker she would give the Ministry of Finances, her husband would have an ambassadorial post, a long way off, while she herself would boss everything, not forgetting the National Institute. A Jacobin paper called Le Peuple, if not so witty, was downright abusive and even threatening in the advice which it gave to Madame de Stael, addressing her as follows : " It is not your fault if you are ugly, but it is your fault if you are an intriguer. Correct yourself promptly, for your reign is no longer Here. You know well the road to Switzerland ; you had better try it once again if you do not wish some evil to befall you. I have judged you, judged also your talents. Since you arrived in my house everything has gone topsy-turvy. Carry off your Benjamin with you, let him go and try his talents in the Swiss Senate. Let him beware of coming to trouble a people that is as sick of his manoeuvres as it is of your own." In no paper perhaps did Madame de Stael meet with more severe treatment than in one belonging to the Jacobin press which was at this time the property of Fouche, the celebrated head of the Police of Bona- parte and afterwards Duke of Otranto, but it would be tedious to make further quotations. Suffice it to say that, to quote a modern phrase, Germaine " had asked for it, and she had got it," and from all directions alike. It was not, however, only from the press of Paris Germaine's Attack — and Punishment 99 that Madame de Stael was to receive punishment, but greater than she could bear. For the great man whom she had so unjustifiably provoked knew how to strike back at her in the way which she would feel most, and no doubt took a malicious pleasure in so doing. At a hint from him, she found herself deserted by her friends. In her triumph at what she considered the success of Benjamin's speech, which was highly praised in some malcontent quarters, Madame de Stael sent out invitations for a big dinner to celebrate the event. Hardly a soul that she cared to receive would come to it. She received refusal after refusal. Even Talleyrand, her old friend, who owed his position to her, sent a letter declining to come to her house. At this defection more than all Germaine was overcome. When it was too late, she regretted the mad impulse which had driven her to make an unprovoked attack upon forces stronger than her own. The punishment of Madame de Stael was not, however, yet complete. She was sent for by Fouch^, then Minister of Police, who in terms of the greatest politeness — ^for Fouche was always polite — informed her that, no doubt through being misinformed, the First Consul seemed to think that she it was who had stirred Constant up against him. And Fouche sug- gested that it would be a good idea if for the benefit of her health Madame de Stael should retire for a time to her country residence at Saint-Ouen. Resistance to the poUte appeal was useless. Germaine had to leave Paris. CHAPTER XI GERMAINE PUBLISHES A NEW BOOK When, after her temporary seclusion at Saint-Ouen, Germaine returned to Paris, it might have been thought that solitude and reflection would have brought her sense, and that for a period, at all events, she would have left the First Consul alone, and thus have given him time, if not to forget her, to forget his irritation with her. Could she but have done this, being on the friendly terms that she was with his brothers Joseph and Lucien, all might have been patched up. Bonaparte would have forgiven her ; they might even have become friends. Unfortunately, Madame de Stael took a contrary line and did every- thing that she could to recall her existence to the man whom she had offended. Wherever the First Consul was to be found, there, if only she could contrive to be present, was Germaine likewise to be seen. At any price she was dete^Txiined to see Bonaparte ; above all to compel him to notice her. For his part, when he could contrive to avoid her, to avoid even appearing to see that she was present at any public function, he did so. In her pursuit, Madame de Stael met with con- tinued rebuffs. When, by asking the hostess, she had Germaine Publishes a New Book loi obtained an invitation to a house where Bonaparte was expected, he did not come. On another occasion, at a ball, she was left alone in a corner ; not a single person came near her save one young lady, who took pity on the deserted woman and moved to her side to keep her company. This kindly-hearted person was a widow, and her name before marriage had been Delphine de Sabran. It was as a sign of her grati- tude that, subsequently, Madame de Stael made use of her name, Delphine, as the title of the first of her famous novels, the heroine of which was a young widow. From Talleyrand, her old lover, Germaine expected kinder treatment than she had received when he had refused to come to her dinner given in honour of Benjamin. She thought that she would try him again when he was giving a ball in Bonaparte's honour, and accordingly wrote to him, asking him to give her an invitation, " in the name of their old friendship." But the man whom she had loved, and for whom she had done so much, once more failed her. Talleyrand's reply was : " In the name of our old friendship, I beg of you not to come." Much as one may despise the character of Talley- rand de Perigord, it must be admitted that upon this occasion he could not well do otherwise than ask Germaine to stay away if he wished his ball to be a success. Bonaparte from the first commenced, with the aid of his wife, Josephine, to form the nucleus of what was eventually to become a brilliant Court. Not by any 102 Madame de Stael means a moral man in his own private life, he never- theless before long endeavoured to establish decency in the outward relations of those who consorted with his by no means too straitlaced spouse. Accord- ingly, he gave orders to those about him, like TaUien and Talleyrand, who in the old free-and-easy way of the Directory lived openly with their mistresses, to amend their ways, and to turn their beautiful paramours into their wives. The habits of one person, however, the First Consul found himself unable to control, and it was a subject of great annoyance to him to see how openly Ger- maine flouted all morality. He brought up as a cause of reproach against her the fact that she pubHcly exhibited her relations with Benjamin Constant, while appearing to be entirely oblivious of the fact that there existed such a person as the Baron de Stael. He resolutely closed the doors of the TuUeries to those early friends of Josephine who made themselves too conspicuous by the manner of their lives, but throughout the whole of Napoleon's career as the ruler of France he found Madame de Stael a thorn in his side. The bad example set by this great lady, who never troubled herself to alter her free mode of living, upset greatly Bonaparte's efforts at social reform and gave him constantly cause to rail against the liberty of her conduct, which, he said, " displayed a return to the worst habits of the society of the eighteenth century." The manner in which Germaine chose to lead her private existence did not, however, really tend to upset Germaine Publishes a New Book 103 the First Consul very greatly. Probably he was not sorry to be able to make use of it as a means of de- preciating the woman who was constantly behaving in a way to make it appear as though she looked upon him as an enemy. This, however, for a long time she by no means did in her heart. Indeed, it was the opinion of Joseph Bonaparte that more than ever after the affair of Benjamin in the Tribunat was she anxious to become Napoleon's friend. Joseph told his brother so in the following words : "If only you would show a little goodwill towards her, she would adore you." Ac- cording to Lucien Bonaparte, in his Memoires, the answer to this remark that Napoleon made was : "Oh, that's too much ! I don't fancy those sorts of adora- tions ; she's too ugly ! " Ugly Germaine was, speaking technically, but there was that about her to make one forget her ugliness. Those challenging black eyes, which only too often contained an invitation, made many a man's heart beat quicker when he found them fixed upon his own. It is more than probable that had not Madame de Stael been so determined from the first to chain him openly to her car, the First Consul, young as he was and full of the ardour of living, would not have so piqued himself to resist the compelling power of those burning eyes. But she attacked him in the wrong way ; it was not by a display of her superior strength of mind, her noisy advocacy of opinions opposed to his own, that she could compel Napoleon to recognise her as desir- able, whether as a woman or a poUtical associate. fo4 Madame de Stael There was undoubtedly something about Necker^s daughter, in addition to her eyes, to make her attractive to men possessing brains, and this something was evidently beyond that of the mere sensuahty of a buxom woman standing at the corner of a street leering at the passers-by with a bold look of invitation. Had this been all, how could she have not only won to her side, but been able to retain as her friends for years, such a string of those possessed with perhaps more than the usual amount of brain-power ? To quote a few of those with whom we know Madame de Stael to have been on intimate terms, we find Narbonne, Talleyrand, Mathieu de Montmorency, Benjamin Constant, Camille Jordan, Henri Meister, M. de Gerando, and Auguste Schlegel. We do not select these names as those of lovers for whom she entertained a passion, but as intellectual companions who found pleasure in her society owing to a personal attraction which they found in her quite apart from her looks or femininity; in- telligent men who continued for long to enjoy that companionship without the passion of love having anything to do with the case. What was, then, the cause of this attraction ? Surely it must have been that Madame de Stael was possessed of an intelli- gence above the ordinary. She called it her genius. In the beginning of the year 1802 Bonaparte cleared Benjamin Constant with nineteen others out of the Tribunat. There then ensued a violent outburst on the part of Constant's mistress, who started what was described as "an opposition of talk "—chiefly talk Germaine Publishes a New Book 105 about liberty, which had been outraged by the First Consul in laying his sacrilegious hand upon the Tri- bunat — upon her Benjamin ! The declamations of Germaine in her salon became acrimonious and satirical. She said that Bonaparte had " not purified, but skimmed the cream off," the Assembly which he had mutilated. Further, she became abusive. Bonaparte called all of the party of the eighteenth-century Philosophers, whose tenets Madame de Stael still professed, by the name of " ideologues," which means persons occupied with ideas having no significance. Germaine replied by saying that for her part she considered Bonaparte as an " ideophobe," a hater of all ideas. This expression touched the First Consul upon the raw ; he was quite excited when he heard of his new appellation. " Ideophobe ! " he exclaimed. " That's pretty ! That smells of Madame de Stael a league away ! Ideophobe ! It's quite gracious ! But why not hydrophobe ? Oh, she wants war, does she ? How on earth is one going to govern when there are people of that class about ? " He sent Talleyrand round to warn the too voluble lady to take care or she might get herself into trouble. To this message Madame de Stael proudly made reply : " Genius is also a power ! " In the previous year Madame de Stael had brought out a new work which indeed proved her to be one of the ideologues — one of the old eighteenth-century Philosophical party whose tenets had brought about the Revolution of 1789. The lengthy name of this io6 Madame de Stael weighty book was On Literature Considered in its Relations with Social Institutions. The pubhcation, coming as it did soon after Ben- jamin Constant's speech in the Tribunat, was looked upon more as an act of defiance to the First Consul than a literary event. The book was indeed apolitical profession of faith. Madame de Stael in its pages held the pen on behalf of the party of the Philosophers, whose apology it was. It preached the author's belief in the law of progress and of " Perfectibility " — this perfectibility of mankind to be attained not by the action of a despotic Govern- ment, but by the maintenance of those principles from the exercise of which the institution of the French Republic had been attained. According to the author, from nothing else could any good arise ; anything done contrary to the ideas which had resulted in the over- throw of personal government in the days of the Revolu- tion was an arbitrary exercise of force, destructive of liberty and inimical to the State. Although the name of Bonaparte was never men- tioned in this book On Literature, from beginning to end of its pages he was attacked in allusions of which it was impossible to mistake the meaning. As might have been expected, the publication resulted in a renewal of political excitement. From Madame de Stael's point of view it attained its object at once, by showing that the writer was by no means dead, that she could not be crushed or treated as a nonentity, even if her talents had not been recognised by the First Consul in the way that they merite4. By Germaine Publishes a New Book 107 those who thought as she did, those still imbued with the spirit of the eighteenth century, the author was applauded warmly. Those who, on the other hand, had witnessed all the horrors brought about by the Revolution, and now were grateful to the First Consul for having instituted a rule of social peace, were infuriated at this new presentation of antiquated ideas, this attack upon a system which had restored law and order. One of the veiled attacks made upon Bonaparte consisted in a general deprecation of military ambition. Madame de Stael enlarged upon the subject of the miUtary spirit being subversive of freedom. It was, she said, a danger in free States. She further drew an analogy between military discipline and that of the Church, which had not, by the way, as yet been re- established in France, pointing out that the discipline to which the priests were subjected was one calculated to destroy the freedom of reason. When, in addition, Germaine let her pen go freely to attack as a purely frivolous glory the glory at- tained by the use of arms, she set the seal definitely upon her act of defiance. For in what way, save on the wave of military glory, had the First Consul been swept to his commanding position at the head of the State ? No one had hitherto ventured to accuse Bonaparte of tyranny. The book On Literature had the result of making the malcontents, who had hitherto been dumb, commence to murmur the word between their teeth. io8 Madame de Stael It is no wonder if the bold authoress was soon driven to exasperation by the attacks made in the press upon her doctrine of Perf ectibihty, attacks which accused her of seeking to revive the revolutionary spirit. Upon the whole, she was, however, satisfied with what she had done. She had compelled the world to talk about her. CHAPTER XII GERMAINE CONSPIRES WITH BERNADOTTE It was in vain that Bonaparte from time to time sent his brothers Joseph and Lucien to Germaine to repre- sent to her how very much wiser she would be if she would keep quiet and not agitate the minds of people, for she paid no attention to them. The First Consul told his brothers to point out that he was not a Louis XVI. or even a Barras, who could be got rid of, and that it was futile on the part of Madame de Stael to endeavour to bar his road or block him in his projects. Finally, he threatened that " if she would not leave him alone he would break her," but, at the same time, Bonaparte told his brothers that " he did not wish to harm her unnecessarily." Nothing, however, that Bonaparte could do, no hint that he could convey, was of any use, for Madame de Stael continued her eternal intrigues as gaily as ever. Whenever, in especial, any- thing of importance took place in the State, and it did not agree with her principles or suit her personal views, Napoleon was bound to hear of it before long, to be made in some way or other to feel the weight of Ger- maine's displeasure. There is no doubt that she succeeded in making Bonaparte fear her, for, quite apart from her drawing-room intrigues, he never knew how she might not get at him by the use of her facile pen. In the year 1801, owing to the very important step loe no Madame de Stael taken in religious matters by the First Consul, Ger- maine experienced a bitter disappointment. Her ideas on religion were nebulous in the extreme, imbued as she was with the philosophical views of Jean Jacques Rousseau, but she possessed, or seemed to possess, a vague kind of religiosity. Madame de Stael, however, never forgot that she had been born in a Protestant household, of Protestant parents, and therefore affected occasionally to talk about " we Protestants " or " we Calvinists." During the years before the re-estabhshment of religion in France, Madame de Stael, who, as all the Philosophers of the eighteenth century, hated the Catholic priesthood, hoped for the establishment of Protestantism as the State religion. Bonaparte ap- pears to have thought over the matter well, but he came to the conclusion that as a political move he would do far better to re-introduce the Roman Catholic faith, and thus secure the support of a powerful party in the country to back up the army and himself, instead of remaining as a secret and dangerous counter- influence. Accordingly the First Consul came to the famous agreement called the Concordat with Pope Pius VII., and on Easter Day, 1802, the union with the old Church of France was celebrated with the greatest pomp in Paris. While cannons thundered aU day long, the three Consuls, all the other great officials of State, and the archbishops and bishops who for years had been destitute of their clerical appointments, proceeded to the Cathedral of N6tre Dame in the midst of thousands Germaine Conspires with Bernadotte iii of the veterans of the wars of the Republic. Never had there been seen such a grand ceremony in France, While the enthusiastic crowds cried " Vive Bona- parte ! " until they were hoarse, at the gates of the cathedral a hundred and fifty of the finest musicians discoursed sacred music. The Archbishop who de- livered the sermon, and cried for the blessing of God upon a France which had once again become Christian, was no less than he who, in 1774, the year of his acces- sion, had consecrated the unfortunate Louis XVI. at Rheims. On this occasion the Archbishop of Aix did not forget to praise up the wisdom and moderation of the First Consul, by whose agency such a miraculous reversal of the irreligious spirit of the Revolution had become possible. What must not have been, however, the secret ironical jeers of thousands of those who participated in the triumphant spectacle, as they recalled the brutality with which the Church had been cast down, and the thousands of lives, including that of the King, which had been lost in its overthrow ? Now was being celebrated in turn the destruction of the influence of the National Institute, which had assumed to replace religion by science, and to act in a manner as the official regulator of the moral life of France. Had not the First Consul himself publicly declared, " I am of the religion of the Institute ' ' ? And now here he was restoring Catholicism ! Well, wonders would, indeed, never cease ! Among those whose irritation was most excessive was Madame de Stael. As the cannons roared and the 112 Madame de Stael bands played, as the thousands of soldiers with their gold-bedizened officers tramped along the streets, the angry woman closed all her doors and windows, deter- mined not to see, and vainly endeavouring not to hear what was taking place. To restore the Catholic religion of all others ! The religion that had been responsible for the horrors of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew and of the long-drawn-out cruelties of the dragonnades in France ! The Roman Catholic religion which, with its Inquisition, had burnt and tortured to death thousands upon thousands of un- happy people in Spain and in the Low Countries ! The religion of a Catherine de Medicis, of a Philip II. — which had driven a million or so of Protestant refugees to seek an asylum far from their own country across the seas ! Oh, it was inconceivable ! It is probable that as Germaine vainly strove to exclude from her senses the knowledge of what was taking place at Notre Dame upon that Easter Sunday in April she at length forgot all her old admiration. She now hated the man who had dashed to pieces all her hopes for the institution of Protestantism, upon the subject of which many representations had been made to Bonaparte by the very people who had helped him to power on the occasion of the coup d'ttat of the 1 8th Brumaire. From that moment of the ceremony at Notre Dame Germaine threw herself boldly into the lists against the restorer of the Catholic religion. She no longer merely spoke and wrote against the First Consul, she now actually planned and plotted his overthrow. Germaine Conspires with Bernadotte 113 Before long Madame de Stael was in secret com- munion with one of the most renowned soldiers of the day, one who was jealous of Bonaparte. The am- bitious General Bernadotte, who subsequently became King of Sweden, over which country he reigned as Charles XIV., was her co-conspirator, and soon they were in league with some dozen other officers to cast down the First Consul, to get rid of him altogether. The question was, how was this result to be attained ? One or two of the plotters were for killing Bonaparte, an officer named Fournier boldly undertaking to him- self shoot him down when at the head of his troops on parade. The caution of General Bernadbtte would not, however, admit of this drastic means of getting rid of their enemy, for prudence was the most prominent trait in the character of Germaine's chief ally. So much was this the case that she strove to drive Bernadotte along more quickly to cause Napoleon to be carried off, which was the plan that he proposed. Madame de Stael in her ardour reminded the General that he had better hurry up, for " to-morrow the tyrant would have forty thousand priests at his service." Bonaparte was informed by his spies of what was going on long before the conspirators had any idea that they were suspected. He sent word by his brother Joseph to Bernadotte that if he continued to plot he would have him shot down in the Place du Carrousel. Half a dozen other officers, some being of high rank, were quietly arrested and thrust into prison, whereupon General Bernadotte took himself off. The matter was kept quite secret by the H 114 Madame de Stael Government, which was anxious not to excite the public mind by making the conspiracy known. The leading share of Madame de Stael in the plot was quite well known to Bonaparte, and he was in a fury with her. For the moment, however, he deter- mined to let her, like her fellow-conspirator Bernadotte, get out of Paris unpunished. She was just about to leave for Coppet with her sick husband, who, as already mentioned, died on the journey. It was only after her arrival in Switzerland that she was informed of the First^Consul's opinions concerning her treacherous action. CHAPTER XIII GERMAINE PUBLISHES " DELPHINE " Instead of there being any question of carrying off the First Consul by some legalised method, which had seemed possible to the prudent Bernadotte, his power was greatly increased. By a plebiscite of the nation, Bonaparte was appointed Consul for life in August, 1802, while directly afterwards the second and third Consuls were placed under his authority, to him being given the power of appointing them. As if this were not enough, the principle of heredity was recognised, Bonaparte being granted the right of naming any citizen whom he might choose to succeed himself. Madame de Stael was not far wrong when, in her exasperation, she declared that the time was coming when the First Consul must infallibly attain the summit of Olympus. If, however, Germaine could do anything to clog his feet while mounting the slope to the clouds, she was not going to neglect taking the opportunity of so doing. Therefore, after first encouraging her clever friend, or more than friend, Camille Jordan, to pubhsh an irritating brochure, she supported her father, M. Necker, in the production of a political work, which he called Last Views on Policy and Finance. "S 1x6 Madame de Stael In this work the former Controller-General of the Finances patronisingly spoke of Bonaparte as " the necessary man." The book, in which the First Consul, and, indeed, others, declared that they saw the hand of Necker's daughter, fell fiat ; it was found boring and altogether out of date, full of antiquated ideas on the subject of the formation of yet one more new Constitution, which nobody wanted to listen to. As for the press of Paris, it fell upon Necker Uke thunder, denounced his political incapacity, his vanity, and his ignorance of mankind. Nor was Jacques Necker spared on the subject of having been the cause of endless misfortunes to others, while himself escaping all the sufferings entailed by the Revolution by living in comfort in his luxurious chateau beyond the borders of France. Germaine was pleased rather than otherwise when she learned that Bonaparte had declared, truly, that hers had been the instigating power to force upon the public a work suggesting another form of government to that which left him at the head of the State. Never- theless, she, most irrationally, wrote to " her dear Camille " that it was most unfair that Bonaparte should be vexed with her for her handiwork. While pleased at having angered Bonaparte, and declaring that it delighted her to think that she had made him fear her, she also confessed that it was " her terror." The cause of her terror was that she might find herself proscribed and forbidden to return to France. Meanwhile her father's self-sufficiency had been so great as to cause him to send a copy of his Last Views Germaine Publishes " Delphine *' 117 by the hand of Lebrun, the Second Consul, to Bona- parte, at the same time offering himself once more for high employment in France. The freezing reply that Lebrun wrote, evidently under instructions from the First Consul, dashed all the hopes of the vain old man. Lebrun informed Necker that " the man whom he called necessary " had no use for him, and proceeded to add some home truths concerning Madame de Stael's part in her father's publication, saying that Bonaparte was convinced that she had " worked his opinions and influenced his work." The letter ended up with a few polite sarcasms and regrets, even with Lebrun's condolences, that never more need Necker seek for employment, as there was not the slightest hope of his desires being gratified. While nobody in Paris was reading poor Necker's book, the First Consul was quite making up his mind that never again should his turbulent daughter be allowed to return to the city, where her sole object appeared to be to agitate public opinion. Without being officially informed that the capital of France was barred to her, Germaine's devoted friend Mathieu de Montmorency had been keeping her au courant, and through his relations with Joseph Bonaparte he had a very good idea that it would be wiser for Germaine not for the present to attempt to return. Her thoughts therefore turned towards Italy, to which country she projected a pleasant journey with an agreeable com- panion. The companion selected was Camille Jordan, but, to Madame de Stael's disappointment, when she invited him to go for the trip to the south, and, ii8 Madame de Stael moreover, herself offered to pay all the expenses, Camille refused to join the party. He said he did not want to go to Italy. Madame de Stael was suffering from melancholy, bored with the seclusion of Coppet, and longing for diversion, if not in one place then in another. Accordingly she wrote to Jordan in Paris that she had decided not to believe what Mathieu had told her, but to come to France. She added that CamUle was to find her some place to live in near Paris, where he could come to visit her. It must be admitted that Germaine de Stael was a courageous woman in the way that, after affronting him, she braved Napoleon Bonaparte time after time. In spite of her bravado, however, she did not feel very happy in her mind about going back to Paris after having had it reported to her that the First Consul had expressed himself in his home circle in the words: " She would do better not to return." Germaine, judging by the way in which she had been allowed to get off scot-free after her plotting with Bernadotte, must surely have learned to understand something about Bonaparte's wishes concerning her. She had far too much intelligence not to be able to see that, for one thing, he did not want to seem to give her too much importance by any drastic action where she was concerned, and that, for another, he would infinitely prefer that without any public scandal she would just peaceably stop away in Switzerland, or, indeed, any place where her noisy insistence to push herself to the fore would not be a source of disturbance and possible danger to the peace of France. Germaine Publishes " Delphine " 119 Germaine, however, could not live without excite- ment — constantly more excitement — her lovers, her salon full of people, in which she could display her talents. She was not, therefore, content to accept a quiet place in the background ; she would not give up her friends, her concerts, her theatres — above all, her 'political intrigues. To do so would be to acknowledge herself vanquished, whereas, on the other hand, she proposed to show herself in the light of Victor in a society of which she would be queen and excite universal admiration. There was only one place in the world for her : that was Paris. There was the society in which, amid the storms of passion, she had in the past known how to conquer the leading place, to become the most prominent figure ; back to Paris she would go. Before actually returning, however, she would prepare the way by launching a new book ; not this time a mere political treatise, but a novel, which would on publica- tion at once mark her supremacy as a woman of letters. Germaine had already got her novel written. It was named Delphine. When it appeared, and the First Consul had read it, even he would be compelled to admit that a woman as clever as its author was not one to be shut out of France. Even he would be ready to welcome her, to offer her his congratulations on her success. Unfortunately, instead of Bonaparte being dis- armed, the only result of the pubhcation of Madame de Stael's romance was to increase his anger against her. 120 Madame de Stael The publication of Delpjime took place in December, 1802, and the book was an immediate success ; every- body was at once reading it, and it became, in fact, the sole subject of conversation in Paris. Apart from the merit of its passionate love-story, jthe chief reason of the popularity of the novel lay in the fact of its being a roman d clef— a. book in which the characters could be recognised. To begin with, there was Delphine d'Alb^mar, the young and romantic heroine, who with her enthusiasm and brilliancy of conversation, her resistless charm and utter disdain of public opinion, could not possibly be mistaken for anyone but the authoress herself. Again, that celebrated beauty, Madame Recamier, at whose feet so many hearts were laid in vain, figured under the name of Th^rese d'Ervins. The lovely Juliette Recamier, as all the world knew well, was the wife of an old banker. When, therefore, Therese d'Ervins was described as " the most seductive beauty of the day, and married to a man older than herself by a quarter of a century," there could be no doubt as to her identity. Talleyrand, Germaine's old and un- trustworthy friend, was introduced into the book in feminine garb, figuring under the name of Madame de Vernon, whose character was described as that of a person believing in nothing, unless it were success, and whose soul was dry and cold. Madame de Vernon was, however, credited with a charm of manner which no one could resist, and this was Talleyrand to the life. Concerning this representation of himself, the astute diplomatist gave vent to his well-known epigram: Giermaine Publishes "Delphine^' 121 " They say that Madame de Stael has put us both into her book, and disguised us both as women ! " Among other characters whom everybody recog- nised were Benjamin Constant, who figured as a Protestant gentleman, brought up in England and a great partisan of divorce, and, one who was an ob- sequious flatterer of Bonaparte, the Prussian Am- bassador Lucchesini, who was introduced under the name of the Due de Mendoce. The above-mentioned do not complete the list of recognisable characters in Delphine, one of those painted as possessing all the talents and all the virtues being Germaine's own father, M. Necker. As may easily be imagined, with such a " caste " the book gave people plenty to talk about. Then, too, the book was immoral in tendency. One of the papers criticised it as being " very dangerous and anti- social ; a bad book, written with much cleverness and talent." While in another quarter fault was found with the " licentiousness of mind and imagination of Delphine." This represented the views of the First Consul, who was especially angry at two things in the book : the praise of England and the defence of divorce. His family, all of whom hated the childless Josephine, had been urging their brother to divorce her and marry some foreign princess. Although he did so eventually, at this period Bonaparte considered that the restora- tion of decency in manners was closely wrapped up with the question of divorce, which he declared favoured the development of the passions and the relaxation of 122 Madame de Stael the ties of married life. An advocacy of divorce he considered at this time as an attack upon himself. We have already mentioned the efforts of the First Consul to wipe out in his household all resemblance to the fetes of gallantry which in the days of the ascen- dency of Barras had been so frequent at the Palace of the Luxembourg. During the merry days of the Directory Greek costumes were greatly affected by the ladies. These Bonaparte now chose to characterise as being licentious. In consequence, when that perfectly lovely young woman, Madame Tallien, appeared at the opera in the becoming but airy costume of the goddess Diana, Bonaparte informed her that the day had gone by for that kind of thing, and that for the future he expected her to be decent. Madame Tallien was one of the great friends of the lively Josephine, but in his efforts at the purification of society Bonaparte was endeavouring to make his wife give up all her old friends of light reputation and confine herself to receiving the decent-living but very uninteresting wives of functionaries of State. In his efforts at home, Bonaparte was meeting with constant opposition, but in spite of the lamentations of Josephine that the women he imposed upon her dressed like scarecrows, and were distasteful to her, he eventually banished both Madame Tallien and the beautiful Mrs. Grant, whom he had ordered Talleyrand to marry, from his wife's society. It was just while the First Consul was in the midst of his efforts to purify society, and while a bill con- cerning the regularisation of marriage and divorce was Germaine Publishes " Delphine " 123 being discussed in the legislative chamber, that Madame de Stael's novel, advocating the untram- melled freedom of life of the individual, came upon the tapis. The book Delphine was a distinct revolt against aU social convention, a revolt also against the Roman Catholic Church, which Bonaparte had re-imposed on France. So much was this the case, that the heroine, after becoming a nun, breaks her vows to rejoin her lover, is perfectly prepared to marry him, and finally, in the original edition, commits the deadly crime of suicide when the hero is executed. So great was the outcry against Madame de Stael concerning this act of suicide, that in subsequent editions she was obliged to allow her heroine to die a natural death. Bonaparte, who had excluded at least half a dozen divorced women from his wife's salon, considered the publication of Germaine's novel as a distinct act of bravado directed against his opinions. And then, worst crime of all, it praised up the detested Enghsh ! CHAPTER XIV THE SPITE OF MADAME DE GENLIS Not only did Germaine anger Bonaparte with her Delphine, but she contrived by its publication also to make an enemy of Josephine, by the facile manner in which the M. de Lebensei of the story prattled about divorce, Josephine was well aware of the fact that her husband's brother Lucien, who was French Am- bassador at Madrid, was proposing at this time that Napoleon should divorce her and marry a young Infanta of Spain. Owing to this, the poor woman was living in a state of continual anxiety, Bonaparte's sisters at the same time were pointing out that as his marriage had been merely a civil one, without any religious ceremony, it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to get rid of the wife of whom they so greatly disapproved. In the novel, M, de Lebensei is the more closely drawn to resemble Benjamin Constant owing to the fact that he actually marries a divorced woman. Now let us take a glance at Benjamin's marriage and divorce record. He married his first wife, Wil- helmina von Cram, in 1789, and divorced her five years later. He had a love-affair with the celebrated Madame Talma, who divorced her husband, Madame de Stall's separation from her husband amounted to a The Spite of Madame de Genlis 125 divorce, and everyone knew of Benjamin's relations with her. He made a second marriage with Charlotte de Hardenberg, a lady who, according to his own confessions, had offered herself to him while young, when he had refused her. This lady's career was varied. She had first married M. de Mahrenholz, who had divorced her. She then married a General named Dutertre. When she wanted to marry Constant, who, after the lapse of many years, had made up his mind that he wanted Charlotte after all, Benjamin was obliged to buy her from her second husband, who divorced her in return for cash paid down. Some, if not aU, of these incidents in Benjamin's career were known, and hence it Seemed the worst taste on the part of his open mistress to put him in a book in which, to quote one of the newspapers, he advocated divorces " as though he were prescribing piUs." When the above facts are taken into consideration, it becomes easy to understand the reasons that Josephine had for detesting a book according to which a divorce was such a simple affair. There were additional causes of annoyance to Bonaparte in the book Delphine to those mentioned above, the chief of which was that the same M. de Lebensei who so praises divorce also expands upon the beauties and virtues of the Protestant religion, while systematically tearing to pieces the tenets and cere- monial of that Catholic faith which by his Concordat with the Pope the First Consul had just instituted as the religion of regenerate France. 126 Madame de StaSl The odd thing is that, with all this, the authoress of Delphine had the assurance to write in her preface that it was not a political book, and that in its pages she had concealed the opinions which she was proud to profess. At the end of it all, it must be admitted that the naivete of the woman who could bring out such a book at such a time, and imagine that it would open for her the gates of Paris, was remarkable in the extreme. By the publication of her remarkable novel, Madame de Stael had stirred up in France all the latent op- position to Bonaparte ; by it new hopes were aroused, old dislikes revived. The First Consul knew by her letters to her friends, all of which were read in the post, that she was only waiting for the effect of her book as a bridge to return to France, but he had made up his mind that she should soon discover in that bridge nothing but a rotten plank. Nor was Bona- parte the only enemy that Germaine had aroused. All of her enemies combined to rise up in arms against her, and at the head of them was she whom Michelet has described as " a mass of sensibility and ink." This jealous woman, Madame de Genlis, wrote a book in parody of Delphine, and was further mean enough, in return for pecuniary reward, to constitute herself a spy upon Madame de Stael and report all her actions to the First Consul ; and not only to report truly, but to exaggerate facts. In Geneva, which by this time had been annexed to France, Germaine, had she but known it, was already under police surveillance. While making up her mind The Spite of Madame de Genlis 127 finally to make a bold dash for Paris, she spoke very imprudently against Bonaparte at an inn to some English friends and a French gentleman. The latter was secretly arrested and carried off to France, where he was imprisoned ; but beyond the fact that her fooUsh remarks were transmitted to Paris, no in- terference was attempted with Madame de Stael's liberty or actions. At length Mathieu de Montmorency, who was at Coppet, and Germaine together wrote a letter to Joseph Bonaparte. In the body of the letter Mathieu told the First Consul's brother to expect him back in Paris soon, while in the postscript Madame de Stael added that she too might be expected very shortly, and that " he must do what he liked about it." The letter to Joseph was sent from Geneva on August loth, 1803, and by the middle of September Germaine was actually in France ; not at Paris, but installed in a country house some few leagues away, the name of the place being Mafliers. From Mafliers her intention was to make oc- casional expeditions to see what was going on in the city, while having her friends from Paris out to see her. It is evident that her good friend Joseph Bona- parte must have spoken up for her to his brother ; indeed, it is certain that he had repeated to him a remark in the August letter. This was to the effect that she had "lost all taste for tempestuous con- versations," that she had become so " sad, bored, and stupid " that she had nearly lost also any talent that she had ever possessed. 128 Madame de Stael To back up this intimation that in future she was going to make of herself nothing but a kind of tame lamb, Germaine wrote a letter to the First Consul, asking him to allow her to remain quietly at Mafiiers. He was at this time very much taken up with his great project for making a descent on England, and was preparing armies and flat-bottomed boats at Boulogne and other places in the north of France. At such a time he did not think it worth while to set people's tongues going by any harsh treatment of Madame de Stael, and therefore would seem to have accorded the woman who had attacked him so often the permission that she had demanded. This seems to have been a written permission, since we find Germaine writing her thanks in reply from Saint Brice, the home of her friend Madame Recamier, which was near Mafiiers. In this reply Germaine makes Bonaparte a distinct promise : " I will live in peace at Mafiiers," Behold, then, a truce established, which might have developed into a permanent peace between the pro- tagonists in a piece d deux which had already for nearly six years seemed to present nothing but the spectacle of a quarrel between a remarkable man and a distinguished and clever woman. With but an ordinary element of good luck, the rough asperities of the past might at this moment have been smoothed over, and Madame de Stael and Napoleon Bonaparte have become friends after all. As, however, the poet Burns has so aptly told us : " the ways of mice and men gang aft agley," and, all unknown to Germaine, there was at this critical period The Spite of Madame de Genlis 129 of her life a woman waiting to be avenged upon her. Avenged for what ? Not for having stolen a lover : that was an everyday occurrence and, moreover, did not apply in the least, not because the woman hap- pened to be twenty years the senior, but because she who was seeking for vengeance had already possessed a lover far more highly placed than any of the numerous train who throughout the whole of her lifetime hung on to the skirts of Madame de Stael, who never was sought by any of the Princes of the Blood Royal of France. The woman was the Comtesse de Genlis, and the petty reason owing to which she wished for vengeance upon Madame de Stael was that by her Uterary renown she had thrown her own prior literary successes into the shade. Stephanie FeUcite Ducrest married her husband, the Marquis de Sillery, subsequently Comte de Genlis, at the age of sixteen. She was already a remarkable girl, with musical tastes, and, although of noble birth, glad to earn a living by playing the harp in great houses before her marriage. Her husband, while he lived, was in the household of the Due de Chartres, who became afterwards the Due d'0rl6ans, known as Philippe Egalite during the Revolution. The intimacy between the Due d'Orleans and the Comtesse de Genlis became notorious. By him she was the mother of at least one daughter, and was strongly suspected also of being the mother of that remarkably beautifvil girl, the mysterious Pamela, who married the unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald. This royal prince having conferred upon his 130 Madame de Stael favourite, Madame de GenKs, the title of " Governor " of his children, one of whom became King Louis- Philippe, she at first lived in his household at the Palais-Royal, despite the unavailing protests of the neglected Duchesse d' Orleans. Later she removed to another residence, taking her pupils with her, and early devoted herself to literary pursuits. Having been born in 1746, the Comtesse de GenHs had won for herself great and merited renown as a writer before Germaine Necker was out of her teens, and later, after having been compelled by the events of the Revolution to fly to Switzerland and HoUand, she continued her Uterary efforts in exile, winning fame for her plays, novels, memoirs, and scandalous, satirical writings. The most renowned of these last was The Dinners of Baron Holbach, which work struck very hard and maliciously at the Philosophical party of the eighteenth century, from which Madame de Stael took her early ideas. When Bonaparte became First Consul, Madame de Genlis returned from exile, obtained a pension from him, and was not ashamed to become his spy concerning events that went on in Society. Her principal novel was named Mademoiselle de Clermont, a book that appeared in 1802, but only to be put entirely in the shade by the wonderful success of Madame de Stael's Delphine, published at about the same time. Long before the publication of her Mademoiselle de Clermont, Madame de Genlis had been enraged at the manner in which she had been cut out by M. Necker's brilliant daughter. She had passed for the cleverest The Spite of Madame de Genlls X31 woman in Paris ; her salon had been formerly that which was the most frequented by all the best of the old Society ; to her had come the savants, the men and the women with brains — ^in fact, the Comtessp de Genlis had been at the top of the tree, whether social, artistic, or literary. Then, on her return to Paris, she had found her place occupied by another and more illustrious woman, one much younger than herself, in the person of the Baronne de Stael. Her vanity was bitterly offended, her spiteful instincts aroused against one whose name she could not bear to hear mentioned, imless it were by herself, to defame it. No sooner did Delphine make its appearance than Madame de Genlis posed as the defender of the public virtue, and noisily declaimed against the immorality of the novel. With reference to this, an amusingly epigrammatic remark was made by Madame de Remusat, to the effect that when Madame de Genlis wished to define virtue, " she always spoke of it as though it were a discovery." The people who knew of her past history could not, indeed, easily beheve in the sincerity of her outcry in favour of morality, and sndled sarcastically at the vicious vapourings of the Comtesse. j,It happened, however, that it was in the power of the jealous woman to do Madame de Stael an injury by tale-bearing, and she did not neglect it. It was through M. de Remusat, the husband of the lady men- tioned above, that the First Consul gave assistance to Madame de Genlis upon her return in a very im- pecunious condition from Holland, and a little later she was deputed to write to Napoleon fortnightly 13^ Madame de StaSl letters concerning the scandal of the day or any other subject of interest. Thus she had the most ample opportunity of defaming her literary rival. It hap- pened that a good many visitors were in the habit of going to Mafliers. Benjamin Constant had a country place close by, called Les Herbages, while Madame Recamier's ChS,teau of Clichy was also in the neighbour- hood ; and, naturally, there was a good deal of harmless coming and going backwards and forwards to the houses of these intimate friends. The pohce, however, kept a constant watch upon Madame de Stael, but the Due de Rovigo, originally known as Savary, who was the head of the Police at that time, distinctly mentions in his Memoires that it was through no action of his that Madame de Stael was interfered with. Rovigo states that it was entirely owing to the devices of a literary rival that Germaine was ordered to leave Mafliers. This rival was Madame de Genlis, who alarmed the First Consul by telling him that Madame de Stael was constantly paying secret visits to Paris, and, further, that the roads were continually covered with the crowds of visitors coming to her house. As a result of this act of feminine mahgnity, an order was received by Madame de Stael to leave France within twenty-four hours. She did not obey the order, but left Mafliers and went to stay with Madame Recamier at Saint Brice while awaiting the result of appeals that she made to Bona- parte through his brothers Lucien and Joseph. Both of these good friends did their utmost on behalf of Germaine, but wrote that their efforts were The Spite of Madame de Genlis 133 without success. In spite of her promises to keep quiet, she had not neglected both to write and say sarcastic things concerning the fleet of flat-bottomed boats with which the First Consul proposed to make his descent on England. Moreover, she had made a loud outcry upon the subject of the unfortunate English travellers ordered to be placed under arrest in France, upon the occasion of the breach of the Treaty of Amiens and the consequent resumption of the war with Great Britain. One cannot, therefore, feel much sympathy when reading the pitiable appeal made by Madame de Stael to Joseph Bonaparte, but is on the contrary astounded at the want of pride of the woman who could write as follows : " Only let me die in France, if but at ten leagues from Paris, and I will thank him ; I will pray to him as to God Himself " ! Napoleon laughed, and told his brother sarcastically that he knew the woman, and that once the danger of the moment was past she would be the same as ever. Germaine was undefeated. She wrote a letter to the First Consul, imploring in the name of her " respect- able father," M. Necker, to be allowed a week in Paris, and, without waiting for the reply, returned to Mafliers. The reply came, in the shape of a very polite lieutenant of police, who invited Madame de Stael to remove herself forty leagues from Paris. CHAPTER XV RUPTURE WITH BONAPARTE Having been instructed to handle Madame de Stael with kid gloves, the gendarmerie officer, whose name was Gaudriot, was not hard upon her, and even allowed her to go to Paris for three days, to make her monetary and other arrangements before leaving the country. As he had been selected as a man of known literary attainments, Germaine did not find the presence in her carriage of the urbane Gaudriot too irksome. She seems, on the contrary, to have enjoyed relieving her mind to this gentleman on the subject of the mis- fortunes likely to accrue to a distinguished femme d' esprit like herself. Passing the Chclteau of Saint-Brice, and leaving her guardian in the carriage, Germaine ran in to fling herself in -floods of tears into the friendly arms of Juliette Recamier, who from that moment, according to her Souvenirs, commenced to feel herself in viplent opposition to Bonaparte, and to long for the curtail- ment of his powers. Present with her friend, Germaine found General Junot, the old comrade-in-arms and friend of the First Consul. Moved by the distress of Madame de Stael, the excellent Junot rushed off to Saint Cloud to plead Ijer cause. He begged for her to Napoleon as though m Rupture with Bonaparte 135 for his own sister, with the only result of angering his old companion. " What is the woman to you ? " demanded Bonaparte fiercely, while stamping on the floor. " I know her, I tell you. She will always be the same." In vain was it for Junot to attempt to reassure Bonaparte by saying : " This woman would become enthusiastic for you, my General, if only you would allow her. . . ." He was cut short. " No, no ! No more truce or peace between us ! She has asked for it — let her suffer what she has brought upon herself." If she had enemies, surely no woman had better friends than Madame de Stael, and during the next day or two, during which she calmly stayed in a house which she owned in the Rue de Lille in Paris, these friends piled in one after another upon the First Consul at Saint Cloud to plead for her cause. The distinguished writer M. de Fontanes, Lucien Bonaparte, Joseph, and his amiable wife Julie, all came in turn, and when at last it became evident that no amount of begging would induce Bonaparte to rescind his sentence of banishment upon Germaine, the two latter invited her to come for a last visit to them at their ChS,teau of Mortfontainfe, just outside Paris. Meanwhile the friendly gendarme, Gaudriot, had been calling daily in the Rue de Lille to remind Madame de Stael that time was up and that she must really go, or he would be obliged, much against the grain, to adopt forcible measures. Accordingly she went off to Mortfontaine, where she felt that under the roof of 136 Madame de StaSl Joseph Bonaparte she would be at all events safe from arrest. At last she left Paris in despair, and still not quite having given up all hope, waited outside the city at the village of Bondy for a message from Joseph, who had gone over to Saint Cloud for a final interview with his brother, to see if at the last moment he naight not be induced to relent. Joseph sent, however, a message to say that aU that he had been able to do for Germaine was to obtain for her permission to go if she liked to Prussia, instead of being compelled to bury herself in the duU retreat of Coppet. There was evidently nothing more to be done ; all suspense was over. Accepting her defeat, and taking Benjamin Constant with her, Madame de Stael drove off to Germany in the third week of October, 1803. As she travelled along towards the Rhine, animated by the intellectual and -consolatory conversation of Benjamin, Germaine recovered her spirits while making up her mind upon the future course that she proposed to pursue. In the twelfth chapter of her book. Ten Years of Exile, Madame de Stael tells us what her thoughts were as her carriage rolled on its way. " I desired," she says, " by the good reception that was promised to me in Germany, to lift myself up from the outrage put upon me by the First Consul, and I wished to oppose the friendly welcome of the ancient dynasties to the impertinence of that which was preparing to subjugate France." She had for years wished to visit Germany, as the Rupture with Bonaparte 137 home of poetry and philosophical thought. She had long since become interested in Kant, and now hoped to make the personal acquaintance of Schiller and Goethe, while visiting the various German Courts, which she hoped to interest in her quarrel with the First Consul while representing to them the tyrannous nature of her oppressor. Germaine was determined that she would take up the challenge that had been thrown down and injure the name of her opponent every- where. That of Madame de Stael was well known by reputa- tion already in Germany, where she was soon to find many friends among the royal families, diplomatists and men of letters. Among all of these she was to preach her crusade against tyranny — ^not always fairly, but rather in a spirit of hatred which would entail con- viction, while painting herself in the light of the sincere friend of liberty and of the countries that she visited, in which she declared that she wished to see that liberty maintained. The result of the rupture between Napoleon and Germaine was to entail serious consequences, if not all at once, by degrees, and to injure the Corsican all over Europe. While armies were assembling and diplomats were conferring, the far-spreading influence of the slighted woman of letters was to unite in many direc- tions a hitherto unknown love of liberty and national sentiment, to stir up a united Europe against an aggressive France. Madame de Stael did not, however, turn her back on France without regret that she had not comported 138 Madame de Stael herself in a way to be allowed to reside there in peace. This was evident from a letter which she wrote to the faithful Mathieu, in which she said : "I had no idea that I should suffer as I do ; if I had foreseen it, I should have behaved differently." How celebrated her name had already become soon became evident. At the town of Metz, in Lorraine, she was received with honour, even the Prefect joining in the fetes offered to her, notwithstanding that he might well compromise himself by so doing. At Metz it was that Germaine met for the first time a man who had indirectly a considerable influence on her life, in the person of Charles de ViUers. He was a French noble and an dmigrd, greatly interested in German Ufe and literature, and it was through reading a book by Villers on Kant's philosophy that she had already been in correspondence with this officer. For two weeks she remained at Metz, talking, and, it must be owned, often disputing with Villers con- cerning everything German. She got on well with him, but was considerably bored at finding him in company with a German married lady, for Germaine always preferred to have her male friends all to herself. As, however, Charles de Villers had settled in Metz on purpose to be near Dorothea von Rodde, Madame de Stael was unable to take the one without the other. She did not, however, neglect to write to Mathieu that she found " the intellectual and interesting Villers in company with a stout German woman, Madame von Rodde, whose power of attraction has not yet reached me." Rupture with Bonaparte 139 Upon reaching the town of Mayence she met the great Goethe's mother, who wrote to her son in Weimar in a disparaging manner concerning Madame de Stael, who was pushing forward to meet the celebrated writer of Faust and The Sorrows of Werther. The good lady expressed herself as follows : " She weighed like a millstone round my neck. I avoided her on every occasion, declined aU the parties [to which she was invited, and breathed more freely when she went away. What could the woman want with me?" Germaine's first impressions upon crossing the Rhine were discordant and rather discouraging. " The coffee-rooms blackened with smoke, where woollen clothing was spread out to dry before iron stoves, offered no shelter from the obtrusive pianos." It seemed to her that the whole of the intellectual Ger- many of which she was in search was like this. There was poetry in the soul but no external elegance. It all seemed very crude to her after the beloved Paris from which she was banished by what she considered the tyrannical persecution of Bonaparte. To make things worse for Madame de Stael, while she could read German, she could not speak the language, and consequently found herself greatly at a disadvantage. Life assumed, however, a more rosy tint for the disconsolate traveller after her arrival at Weimar. This town, the capital of the grand duchy of Saxe- Weimar Eisenach, was at that time the centre of Gerinan thought and culture. It was the residence of 140 Madame de Stael the Grand Duke Karl August and his very amiable wife, wMle Schiller, Gk)ethe, and other literary celebrities lived either there or in the neighbourhood. The Grand Duke was himself a man of a very cultivated mind, and, what pleased Madame de Stael greatly, she found him not only an admirer of England but very much so of herself. At the little Court, in connection with which Goethe had some functions, she was received in the most friendly manner by the Grand Duchess Louise, and amid her very pleasant sur- roundings she soon began to regain courage, Goethe wrote at the time of Germaine's visit as follows: " She wishes to learn to know Weimar, moral, social, and literary ; but she wants also herself to be known, and seeks therefore to set off the value of her own ideas, with which she seems desirous to imbue ours." What Madame de Stael was evidently chiefly anxious to do during her residence in Weimar was to extend the bounds of her own intelligence, while assimilating the best from the elevated German mind in the realms of poetry, philosophy, and literature. Above all, she sought to get at the hidden meaning of the thoughts that had animated the works of Schiller and Goethe, At Weimar Germaine found a happy home-life at the Court, where she was made so welcome, while the whole place seemed to her impregnated with poetic thought and a simplicity that she sought for in vain later at Berlin or elsewhere in Germany. She was distressed, however, to find a blind submission among the dreamy inhabitants to the brutal force, so Rupture with Bmapatt^ X4t subversive of liberty, already being exemplified by Bonaparte. This she sought to counteract by her vigorous protestations in favour of liberty, with which, however, she did not greatly succeed in impressing Goethe, with whom she had much animated argument, as he frankly said that he did not look upon the value of liberty from the same standpoint as Madame de Stael. He spoke French well ; but not so poor Schiller, who complained piteously that this dominating woman forced him to talk whether he would or whether he could. " I really have a hard time of it," he wrote to his friend Komer . She endeavoured to impose her royal will on Goethe also. When he was absent at Jena, and in the bitter wintry weather did not want to undertake the moun- tainous journey to come to Weimar to see Madame de Stael, she wrote to him that if he did not come of his own accord she would come and fetch him. Grumbling, the author of Faust yielded — and came ! Germaine had plenty to say about liberty in the abstract, but she showed the German savants very plainly that she believed in herself ruling them des- potically. An amusing instance of this was made evident when she was told that, knowing German so little, she was unable to understand Goethe's works properly. Impatiently tapping her foot on the ground, Madame de Stael replied : " Sir, I understand all that is worth understanding. What I do not understand is not worth reading ! " i4^ Madame de Stael In spite of a certain clashing of intellects, the literary men of Weimar got on well with Madame de Stael on the whole, and Schiller wrote very nicely of her, sa5dng : " She is charming throughout, and there is not a single strange or false or unhealthy trait in her." He added, however: " Of what we call poetry she has no perception," and also added : " The only defect is her extraordinary volubility. One must be turned into a listening machine to be able to follow her." At this time Germaine de Stael was about thirty-six years of age and still full of personal attraction. Indeed, Goethe, who was from early youth a lover of the female sex, seems to have recognised this fact, since he mentions that she was just as well pleased to receive compliments on her physical charms as on her intellectual qualities. It is, however, pleasant to be able occasionally to turn from the numerous men by whom all her Ufe Germaine was surrounded, and their frequent comments upon Madame de Stael, to one of her own sex for a frank opinion. One such critic, and a good-natured one, we find in a young lady named Henriette Knebel. She was the companion of Princess Caroline, the daughter of the Grand Duke of Weimar, and in a letter to her brother she says that she found the distinguished literary lady " very lively, good-natured and talkative, extra- ordinarily voluble, but clear and pleasant. She is a woman of the world, and mostly addresses herself to the most distinguished members of society, but is very Rupture with Bonaparte 143 polite and friendly to everybody." In another letter, after mentioning that Germaine's " liveliness electrifies and delights the Duchess," Henriette Knebel adds : " There is nothing pedantic or priggish about her ; she is healthy in all her cleverness. Madame de Stael's conversation is the most unusual talent I have ever come across — so gentle, yet full of power." CHAPTER XVI GERMAINE IN BERLIN However "gentle and full of power" Henriette Knebel may have found the conversation of Necker's daughter, it is evident that both Schiller and Goethe got rather more of it than they desired. When the former was writing a play, for instance, he found it distinctly distracting, and we find him writing to his friend Korner : " My play takes up the whole of my attention, and now the devil brings me this philosophis- ing Frenchwoman, who is the most active, combative, and voluble of all the human beings I have ever met But she is also the cleverest and most intellectual of women, or she would remain unnoticed by me." He adds : " She takes all the poetry out of me, and I only wonder how I can do anything at all." We find also Goethe and Schiller talking over Madame de Stael, and while the former writes : " As I am now out of health and morose, it seems nearly impossible to carry on these eternal discussions," the latter replies : " She stays here three weeks longer. I fear she will realise from personal ex- perience that we Germans in Weimar are also change- able people, and that it is well to know the right time to depart." Goethe cannot help having more than one dig at Germaine, with all her talk about liberty. Germaine in Berlin 145 " Everyone," he says, " may easily have enough of it, if only he knows when to be satisfied and submit to circumstances." He further philosophises : "It is not liberty to ignore our superiors. It is liberty to honour a higher nature, for while we honour such we raise ourselves by our recognition that we too have and are worthy of a higher nature." At length Madame de Stael left her literary friends in Weimar to pursue their avocations in peace, and proceeded to Berlin, There she was at once on friendly terms with all the Royalties, particularly so with the Prince Louis Ferdinand, a handsome and warlike young man of thirty, who was to be fated to die within a few years fighting against Napoleon. The young and lovely Queen Louise was then the princess of all hearts in Berlin, and by her Germaine was received in the most distinguished manner. As though she too were, indeed, one of the great ones of the earth, the young Queen addressed her at a great Court ball as follows : "I hope, Madame, that you believe that we have good enough taste to be flattered at your arrival in Berlin. I was very impatient to know you." What made matters easier for Ma,dame de Stael in Prussia was that before her departure from France the friendly Joseph Bonaparte had written a letter warmly recommending her to the good offices of La Forest, the French Ambassador in Berlin. Although some of the German States were seething with intrigue against the First Consul, which was inspired by secret English emissaries, the French influence was still predominant K 146 jMadame de StaSl in Prussia at the time of Germaine's visit. She found the Court and society apparently given up entirely to amusement, unfitted for any spirit of high endeavour, and quite indifferent as to the danger of the overthrow of European institutions by the ambitious schemes of Bonaparte. With aU the intelligence at her command, Madame de Stael set herself at once to work to combat this spirit of indifference. As it happened, fortune played into her hands owing to the cruel action of her enemy by his cold-blooded seizure, and subsequent murder at Vincennes, of that unfortunate Bourbon prince, the Due d'Enghien. German pride was deeply wounded by the manner of the arrest of the grandson of the Prince de Conde in the neutral territory of the Duke of Baden, while the Enghsh coterie in Berlin and the party opposed to France were thrown into a state of exultation that Napoleon should have committed a crime likely to cause him to be execrated in all countries. Talleyrand is accused by many of having been the real author of the barbarous and illegal execution, concerning which Fouch6 did not hesitate to say that it was worse than a crime — ^it was a blunder ! The manner in which Madame de Stael was apprised of the tragic event was as follows. Before eight in the morning' an officer on horseback galloped up to the house where she was lodging. In her Ten Years of Exile she expatiates upon the remarkable grace of the rider, and " his eyes flashing with an air of vengeance or death," as the Prince Louis Ferdinand briefly called to her through the window the news that the Germaine in Berlin 147 Due d'Enghien had been arrested, delivered to a military commission, and shot. When Madame de Stael refused to believe the Prince, he replied : " Very well, I wiU send you the Moniteur, where you can read for yourself that ' the person named Louis d'Enghien ' has been so murdered." The Prince sent her the journal, with a note, which in his anger at the insult to one of Royal blood he signed, " The person named Louis de Prusse." Madame de Stael reaped much of the sympathy felt for the unhappy Bourbon prince, for had she not made it clear to all whom she had met in BerHn that she also was the victim of the First Consul's barbarity ? She now represented Bonaparte in the worst possible light, as a tyrant, and especially the enemy of women, " one who delighted to dishonour them by his remarks, without any regard to their quality or rank." In the presence of the excited Prussian Court, Germaine gave full flow to her eloquence ; her indigna- tion was sublime and carried aU with it. Above all, the young Queen Louise was carried away, and vowed vengeance upon the murderer. Her influence over her husband, the King, was paramount — to what lengths might she not lead him ? Now was the moment of Germaine's triumph. She had rejoiced already at the idea that when he heard of the manner in which she was feted and received with honour everywhere Bonaparte must have felt angry, while regretting that he had not made more of her himself. She now rejoiced that by giving full 148 Madame de Stael swing to her feelings of rancorous hate he would soon be obliged to feel the effects of her power, which, at all events, he must be compelled to recognise. All that she said, indeed, was reported to the First Consul, but he merely jeered on the subject of Madame de Stael and her successes at Berlin; above all, at her friendship with " that marvel of her sex. Queen Louise." With a sneer, Bonaparte remarked : "Of course, the Prussians are much finer fellows than the French." Further, he asked ironically how Germaine was getting on with her Prince Louis Ferdinand. Judging by after events, Bonaparte was scarcely wise so greatly to despise his antagonist, the woman who would have Uked to have been his lover and to have shared the world with him on equal terms ; but save by shutting her up in prison, which he only once thought of doing, in what way could Napoleon have muzzled Madame de Stael ? It was not very long before, hearing of the serious illness of her beloved father, Germaine turned her face homewards, passing once more through Weimar. Before leaving Berlin she had, however, picked up an adherent who remained either in her household or at her disposition for the rest of her life. There were two brothers, savants and literary men, named Schlegel — August William and Frederick — ^both distinguished al- though still young. Wanting a tutor for her two sons, she applied to Goethe to help her, and through his friendly ofl&ces August William consented to go for a large salary and live with Madame de Stael in the pro- posed capacity. From that time forward " William/' Germaine in Berlin 149 H as we soon find her calling Schlegel, proved far more her tutor than that of her boys. He was also a very strong recruit in her war against Bonaparte, for this man of great erudition exerted his influence consistently to combat Napoleon in Europe, in the same way in which he always sought to promote the spirit of the German literature above that of France. Ac- companied by Schlegel, Germaine reached Weimar, only to learn of M. Necker's death. She fell into agonies of grief, but Benjamin came back from Switzer- land to console the poor woman in the greatest sorrow of her Ufe. CHAPTER XVII QUARRELS WITH BENJAMIN Poor old Necker had passed away at Coppet on April loth, 1804, and his daughter had been uppermost in his thoughts during his last hours. With self-reproach, he accused himself of having by the publication of his book. Last Views of Policy and Finance, been the cause of the exile from Paris of his beloved Germaine. While dying, he strove to right matters, writing a last letter to the First Consul and assuring him that, instead of persuading him to publish the book, Madame de Stael had sought to restrain him from sending it to the press. Bonaparte paid no attention to this letter from a dying man. His sole comment was that Madame de Stael had every reason to regret her father, whom for that matter he had found to be only a person of very mediocre intelligence, eaten up by a sense of his own importance and knowledge of strings of figures. A curious circumstance in the career of one so intelligent as Madame de Stael was that she seemed to have absolutely no perception of the fitness of things. Thus, just before the death of her father and at the very time that she was doing her best to injure Bona- parte at Berlin, she wrote once more to Joseph to ask him if he could not move his brother's heart to allow IJO Quarrels with Benjamin 151 her to return to Paris, or at any rate to the neighbour- hood of Mortfontaine. Joseph Bonaparte was at the time in camp in the north of France, in command of a regiment which formed part of the army which was being prepared to invade England. He wrote most kindly in return to Germaine, telHng her to have confidence in him, but adding that, if he could not succeed, nobody could. When, as might have been expected, he failed in obtaining the required permission, he sent to Madame de Stael letters of introduction to people in Italy, to which country she was talking of going, including one to his uncle, his mother's half- brother, Cardinal Fesch, at Rome. In the month after Germaine's return to mourn her father at Coppet, the First Consul, by the immense majority of the votes of the people, was elected Emperor of the French (May i8th, 1804). The exile now hoped for an act of grace on the part of Napoleon, and that on the occasion of his approaching coronation by the Pope, who was to come for the purpose to Paris, she with all other exiles would be allowed to return to France. The foolish woman could not, however, keep her tongue quiet ; above all, she could not keep her too easy pen from scribbUng, She was bitterly sarcastic on the subject of the new French Court being established by the Emperor Napoleon at the Tuileries ; she jeered, moreover, at the elevation by the Corsican of his brothers and sisters to the rank of princes and princesses, even going so far as to laugh at the new princesses, caUing them the " bourgeoises of Ajaccio," and saying that they could not help splitting with 152 Madame de Stael laughter upon hearing themselves addressed by their new titles of Royalty — they were too comic. The witty sajdngs and writings of Madame de Stael were repeated from mouth to mouth in Paris, where there were already plenty of others ready to rail and sneer at the elevation of the First Consul and at the manner in which he showered titles of nobility in all directions. The jeers Napoleon did not mind, for he soon found plenty of members of the oldest families in France ready to flock to his Court, around which, moreover, many of the old aristocracy hung in the hopes of obtaining well-paid posts. What he did not, how6ver, appreciate was the openly expressed indignation of Germaine against the nobles of the old Monarchy who shewed themselves willing to incline themselves before the newly-risen star and her efforts to keep them from rallying to the side of the Emperor. One of these nobles, who was apparently willing to accept a role at the Imperial Court, was Germaine's former lover, Comte Louis de Narbonne. She wrote him a furious letter, which was full of insulting remarks concerning the members of the new Royal family and reproaches of those nobles of the ancien regime who were base enough to accept their favours and posts under them. The better to ensure the safe deliyery of this very compromising epistle, Madame de Stael sent it from Switzerland by the hand of a gentleman whom she thought that she could trust. Unfortunately for her, the gentleman happened to be a spy in the pay of Quarrels with Benjamin 153 Fouche, who had now for the second time become Minister of PoUce. Fouche read the letter, copied it, and then sent it on to the Comte de Narbonne, after having had it carefvilly re-sealed. It was when the Emperor read this copy that he became so angry that he wished to cause the writer to be imprisoned. The astute Fouche argued, however, that it was better to leave Madame de Stael at large and read her letters than to lock her up and thus give people an opportunity of making an outcry on the subject of the cruel treatment of women. Napoleon saw the point of the argument, and especially that through Ger- maine's imprudent letters it would be possible to discover the names of those conspiring against him. In consequence he gave Fouche instructions not in any way to interfere with her liberty. The Emperor did not, however, confer upon the writer of the letter to Narbonne the favour that she hoped for upon the occasion of his coronation. In no way other than by keeping her out of France did Napoleon now indulge what might have been considered a justifiable rancour agaipst Necker's daughter. On the other hand, the Emperor behaved towards her in the most gentlemanly manner, giving direct instructions that all his agents in Italy were to behave with the utmost courtesy to Madame de Stael. His politeness went even further than this. After reaching Milan, where she was just after the time that Napoleon had crowned himself King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy, Madame de Stael wrote to his brother. In a letter to Joseph of June 14th, 1805, 154 Madame de Stael she tells him that the Emperor had declared " that if she had been arrested by the Queen of Naples he would have sent 20,000 men to her aid." Before starting on her journey to Italy there had been fearful scenes between Germaine and her lover Benjamin Constant. For long Benjamin had been tugging against the chain which bound him, although at heart it seemed as if he could really not do entirely without Madame de Stael's society, any more than she could do without keeping him at her beck and call. Benjamin pointed out, however, after the death of her father, that the time had come to regularise the situation between them, and therefore urged her to marry him. She refused unless allowed to keep her own name or if the marriage were kept secret. In their quarrel Germaine even fell into convulsions. There had already been many similar scenes between the lovers. When the Baron de Stael died in 1802 Benjandn had represented that the time had come for a cessation of the equivocal position in which he and Germaine stood to each other. Not only did he himself wish for marriage, but his relations urged it upon him, and especially his faithful cousin and confidante, Rosalie Constant, who strove also to make Madame de Stael see the propriety of a regular union with Benjamin. The woman who professed such a passionate attachment for him was, however, too selfish to be willing to resign the name by which she was known. She wished expressly to have it agreed in any marriage contract that she should reserve before all Europe the name of Baroness de Stael, by which Quarrels with Benjamin 155 she had become celebrated as a writer. Benjamin was piqued. Neither he nor Germaine had ever been true to each other, and, in the same manner as she had had her love affairs, he had indulged in various intrigues, notably with Julie, the divorced wife of the great actor Talma, and with a Mrs. Lindsay. Never- theless, they had continued to be associated together publicly and privately for many years, constantly seeking each other out and depending upon one another for counsel, advice, comfort, or, as happened at the time of the death of M. Necker, consolation. Although already thinking of making another marriage in 1804, when Germaine's father died, Benjamin felt that he could not abandon her in the hour of her deep affliction, and flew back to her side in Weimar, to accompany her back to her desolate home at Coppet. When she proposed to go to Italy, although long since worn out by the wild scenes of jealousy and rage to which Madame de Stael treated him, Benjamin offered again to make the definite sacrifice of his independence and to become her husband. The only result was the refusal and bitter quarrel mentioned above. Although unwilling to marry Benjamin herself, unless on her own terms, Germaine was resolved not to allow the man whom she was still determined to hold in her thrall to make another existence for himself and marry another woman. Such, then, was the situation, and it was painful enough, in all conscience. Nevertheless, Constant accompanied Madame de Stael on the road as far as Lyons when she started for Italy. Then he left her, 156 Madame de Sta^l and with a joyful heart at feeling himself free once more flew back to Paris. It might have been imagined that the pair of lovers, or perhaps the term " associates " is more applicable, had now done with each other for ever. Nothing of the sort ! They could not do without each other, and in the following year Benjamin Constant was once more back again with Germaine at Coppet, where he formed the chief member of the group of men with whom she constantly surrounded herself, and whom she encouraged in their literary activities and often helped with her money. It is probable that there never was another such extraordinary association between two beings, each of a very high order of intelligence, as that between Madame de Stael and Constant. Upon one occasion, when Benjamin had fled on horseback from Coppet and hidden himself in his cousin Rosalie's house, we find Germaine pursuing him, throwing herself with loud agonised screams down on the staircase, her bosom all bare and her black hair flowing wildly over her shoulders ! Nevertheless, not long afterwards we find the distraught lady indulging in a new amour with an Italian poet, to whom she writes as though he were the only man in the world for her. The episode with the poet Monti was but an interlude After her adoration for him Madame de Stael was quite ready to return for awhile to her Benjamin with a renewed zest. As for Constant, notwithstanding all the fantasies of his senses or his heart, the real great love of his life was that for Germaine. It was the only complete one : something was wanting from all the others. He may Quarrels with Benjamin 157 abuse Madame de Stael, fly from her — she none the less is the only being who responds to all the many sides of his nature. Even when he has voluntarily given her up, he infinitely regrets her; she alone fills his thoughts. It is both interesting and enlightening to follow Benjamin's revelations of his true self in his Journal Intime. The celebrated Swiss publicist, Charles Bon- stetten, and the attractive young Sismondi, who became a distinguished historian, were among the most intimate members of Madame de Stael's circle ; indeed, the latter would appear almost to have lived at Coppet. One day when Germaine was away we find Benjamin writing : " To-day she is at Geneva. Bonstetten, Sismondi and I have dined at twelve o'clock, like school- boys enjoying a holiday. Extraordinary woman ! Her dominion over everything surrounding her is in- explicable and yet undoubted. Did she but know ho\^ to govern herself she could govern the world." Speaking of Coppet, at a time when there is a breach and he is asked there no longer, Benjamin says : " I am seized by an extreme longing to go back there. To tell the truth, it is the only place where I feel intellectually and spiritually at ease." In another place he laments that Madame de Stael will not be contented with mere friendship now that he has ceased to love her, and considers that love should no longer be expected now that he and Germaine are both approaching forty. He tells her that he is no longer capable of feeling love, whereupon there is a scene, and he writes : " I only withdrew this assertion 158 Madame de Stael to soothe an outbreak of grief and passion, the sight of which frightened me." Unhappy couple ! The story of their passions makes but painful reading. Constantly in Benjamin's Journal one comes across some such sentences as : ' ' A terrible encounter with Madame de Stael. Greatest excitement ! Reconciliation impossible. Difl&cult to get away ! Madame de Stael has again won me back." Even after the pair have both married again, they continue to meet, to live under the same roof, to be intimate and to quarrel as before, while others are drawn into the fray. New storms constantly arise. Upon one occasion, after Benjamin's marriage to his Charlotte, which for a long time he has concealed, Madame de Stael appears to him, " like a fury, dagger in hand." Charlotte is so upset when Benjamin is won back again that she attempts to poison herself, as Benjamin had also done once when sta3dng at Coppet. Auguste, Madame de Stael's eldest son, challenges Benjamin to a duel, because Constant is determined no longer to remain with his mother. Young Rocca, the officer who, after being Madame de Stael's lover and becoming the father of a son by her, is allowed to become, in secret, her second husband, is also drawn into the quarrels, and Rocca likewise challenges Constant to fight because of his disregard of the lady who is so much to them both ! It is an extraordinary story, perhaps the oddest thing concerning which is that Madame de Stael never resents Constant's action in embodjTing it in his romance Adolphe, which gives it all to the world. CHAPTER XVIIl MADAME DE STAEL AND MONTI Madame de Stael's friend, Joseph Bonaparte, might, if he had chosen, have become King of Italy shortly after his brother became Emperor, and she was hoping accordingly to meet him in Milan. By the decree of the Senate in 1804, the succession to the Empire had, in the absence of any children to Napoleon, been settled upon his elder brother Joseph and upon his younger brother Louis, the other two male members of the family, Jerome and Lucien, being cut out on account of their indifferent marriages. Joseph, whose character was humane and agree- able, was none the less ambitious. Accordingly, he refused to accept the Italian Crown, preferring to retain his position as heir-apparent to that of France. Under these circumstances. Napoleon determined to take the Italian Crown for himself, although later, after Joseph had been Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Naples, he persuaded him to accept the throne of that country and, subsequently, that of Spain. Although disappointed in not meeting her friend, his letters were useful to Germaine, who made her appearance in Italy with all the glory of a celebrity. She found that everywhere Napoleon was most popular, 169 i6o Madame de Stael being looked upon by the Italians as the saviour of their country from Austria. Having been assured by Mathieu de Montmorency that the Emperor had said that she would be allowed to move about freely everywhere, for once Madame de Stael behaved herself with moderation. There may have been a bit of policy in this restraint, which she was, however, well advised to exercise, especially as she was anxious to obtain from Napoleon the restitution of the two millions of francs which M. Necker had lent to the Government of Louis XVI. It is possible that the Emperor, during this period of apparent truce with his fair antagonist, would not have been averse to giving the order for the repayment of this sum to Necker's daughter if only he could have been sure of her. Two millions were, however, a large sum to disburse to any lady, especially when one could not be certain if it would purchase her friendship or no. For the moment the Emperor, who had been approached by one, if not two, of his brothers on behalf of Madame de Stael, determined to be cautious in the matter of the repayment. She, in the meantime, paid a visit to his brother Lucien at Pesaro, but secretly, as Lucien was now not on very friendly terms with the Emperor. On the occasion of her visit to MUan, which she timed to take place after the completion of the corona- tion ceremonies, Germaine would appear to have visited the Empress Josephine, who spoke nicely about her to the Princess Lambertini, and also she there met Madame de Stael and Monti i6i Talleyrand once more, who wrote to Paris that the lady whose early love he had been had every reason to be contented with her journey to Italy. Her enthusiasm about Italy, or anything Italian except Monti the poet, was, however, limited. Madame de Stael found the people superstitious and devoid of any ardour for liberty ; quite indifferent, moreover, if in falling under the rule of Bonaparte they had but exchanged one despotism for another. Everywhere she found too many priests, too many beggars ! The Italian sea interested Germaine, however, to such an extent that later on her little daughter Alber- tine remarked naTvely : " The only two things that mamma cared for in Italy were the sea and Monti." Although when writing her romance Corinne Madame de Stael was able to make use of Italy as an admirable background for the novel, she was not when there imbued with any depth of artistic feeling. Her thoughts ran rather in political than architectural grooves, and that which she wished to see in Italy was rather an inclination to a revolution or a republic than ruins. The latter, she exclaimed, only reminded her of death. Nor had Germaine a good word to say for the pictures or the statues, but displayed her absolute want of the artistic sense by her sententious remark that " a beautiful thought or a fine sentiment would touch her a thousand times more than those beautiful feet or those beautiful hands." Madame de Stael might have enjoyed Italy better as a field for artistic exploration had but her one-time lover, Camille Jordan, accompanied her; But on the L i62 Madame de Stael second occasion that she asked Camille to come with her to Italy he again failed her. Mathieu, the ever- faithful, was with her at Coppet just before her departure, accompanied by the unwilling Benjamin, to Lyons. Jordan was the friend of Montmorency, and Germaine wrote and urged him to come first to Coppet while Mathieu was with her there and then to ac- company her on her journey to the South. In spite of his having been assured that he was expected, and being begged by Madame de Stael not to fail her, Camille Jordan showed himself distinctly wanting in sympathy, and listened not to the voice of the charmer. Germaine was not, however, left without male escort, as she took William Schlegel with her on her journey. The poet Monti was at the time of her visit to Italy the natural successor to the better-known Alfieri, the lover of the wife of Charles Edward, the young Pre- tender. Alfieri died in 1803, and Monti came to the fore shortly after by his celebration of Napoleon's prowess at the battle of Marengo. After various vicissitudes, he was appointed under the Emperor as Poet Laureate to the kingdom of Italy, and he had already attained this official position when Madame de Stael, having made his acquaintance through an Italian friend, wrote and asked him to come and visit her at the inn where she was staying. Monti had already sung in favour of republican institutions, and in later years he was to invoke the muse in praise of Austria ; but in those days, when the poet was tuning his lyre in celebration of the Emperor, Madame de Stael, showing more caution than she Madame de Stael and Monti 163 usually displayed, was careful to express herself in her letters to him with marked moderation. Doubtless she was influenced by the knowledge that while Italy was hailing Napoleon as its liberator it would be useless to expect a man in that liberator's pay to join in her hatred of the paymaster, Madame de Stael was much attracted to Monti from the first, and she soon was writing to him as follows : " Your strength and your independence lie in your talent and in the masterpieces that it creates ; social relations with the reigning powers may cease from one moment to another . . . your admirable genius only requires the support of an untarnished name. If you want to produce an independent work, come and stay with me at Coppet." After a fortnight with Monti at Milan, Germaine wrote that it had become such a habit for her to spend her days with him that she must write to him in future. Write she certainly did, and in the warmest terms of mingled affection and adulation. In one of her letters to the poet Madame de Stael makes a strange com- parison. She had previously been much entranced by the sight of Vesuvius in a state of eruption, and to Monti she expressed herself as follows : "I have had only four great pleasures in Italy : to have heard you, to have seen St, Peter's, the sea, and Vesuvius, with the reservation that you and Vesuvius might be counted as one and the same thing." Subsequently Monti accepted Germaine's invitation and came and stayed with her at Coppet. While he was there, Benjamin Constant met the i64 Madame de Stael poet and evidently approved of him, since, without the slightest trace of any feeling of jealousy, he writes of his handsome appearance and agreeable attributes. As to the sentiments of Monti for Germaine, we get a little glimpse in a letter from an Italian author named Ferdinando Arrivabene, who, after praising her up and saying that she has " the face of Ceres and the arm and hand of Venus," describes her habit of always holding in her hand a laurel twig, and toying with it, even at table. He adds : " We are all in love with her, especially Monti, who takes the lead." This custom of Madame de Stael, of constantly holding a green twig in her hand and playing with it, is commented on by the Comtesse de Boigne, who says, a little maliciously, that she supposes that she does it the better to display her beautiful arm. It is evident, however, that it was a trick which she always indulged in, to hold and fiddle with some object in her fingers. Bollmann, the young Hanoverian doctor, who at her request saved the Comte Louis de Narbonne in Paris and accompanied him to England, gives an example of this habit. Having called upon Madame de Stael in London, she made him accompany her up to her bedroom, when, says Bollmann, " she called to her maid to come and undress her. At last we were alone, for the servants are as nobody according to French notions. I stood at one corner of the chimneypiece, dressed entirely in black, and beautifully powdered, hat in hand ; she at the other corner, with nothing on but her petticoat and chemise, rolling a bit of paper in her fingers, without which she cannot exist. She Madame de Stael and Monti 165 gets up with it in the morning and goes to bed with it." This habit of receiving gentlemen in her bedroom when she was dressing or undressing was as constant with Germaine as that of rolling paper or a twig in her hand. The straitlaced people of Geneva were terribly exercised in their minds about it, as also at her custom of calling all her male friends by their Christian names. She, however, snapped her fingers at the inhabitants of Geneva, as she did at public opinion everywhere, and, accordingly, whenever it suited her, Germaine received her male friends not only in her bedroom, but without taking the trouble to riSe from her bed. Madame de Stael ended her Italian visit in June, 1805, when she returned to Coppet. There, although numbers of her friends crowded to see her, she was oppressed with melancholy ; for her heart was in Paris, and there she could not go. CHAPTER XIX GERMAINE, FOUCHE, AND THE EMPEROR It is not to be supposed that Germaine had been long back in Switzerland before she sent to ask leave to return to Paris, for she soon did so, giving as a reason the necessity of her presence in order to prove her claim to her father's two millions. The Emperor was at the time at the camp at Boulogne, preparing to invade England. He found time, however, to think about Madame de Stael, and to write to Fouche that he would be an imbecile if he allowed her nearer than forty leagues to Paris. After complaining that she was continually meddling with French affairs at Geneva, he said to Fouche : " Let her friends know that she is to stay at forty leagues. I must keep all elements of discord at a distance from Paris. It is not possible that when I may be perhaps a couple of thousand leagues away, at the other side of Europe, I should leave the field open to bad citizens to agitate my capital." Not long after this, being compelled to give up his idea of a descent on England, owing to his Admiral, Villeneuve, being cooped up in the harbour of Cadiz, Napoleon broke up the camp at Boulogne and marched ofiE |to make his famous surprise attack on Austria. While smashing the Austrians at Ulm, while m Germaine, Fouche, and the Emperor 167 capturing Vienna, while crushing both the Russians and the Austrians together on the ice at AusterHtz, in all his wonderful military combinations and manoeuvres. Napoleon never forgot to keep a watchful eye upon the feminine manoeuvres of Madame de Stagl. His actual watchdog for the moment was the Prefect of the Department of the Leman, which included the now French territory of Geneva. He was the ex- cellent M. de Barante. While Germaine was always trying to circumvent this good-natured official, she contrived to make a complete conquest of his son Prosper, whom she added to the list of her adorers. Prosper de Barante was at this time about twenty- three years old. He was a young fellow of literary tastes, which were developed by the encouragement of Madame de Stael, who saw a good deal of him later in France and elsewhere. Prosper obtained various posts under Napoleon and later became a shining light in the party known as the Doctrinaires. M. de Barante, the father, was a gentleman of distinction, who had in the days before the Revolution been employed under the Bourbon regime. He had known M. Necker, and therefore was on visiting terms with Necker's daughter, whose movements he was ordered to watch and control. It was rather an invidious position for M. de Barante, entailing that of accepting the hospitaUty of Germaine, but he was nevertheless, while occasionally a guest at Coppet, both puzzled and interested by Madame de Stael. M. de Barante could not understand why Germaine should appear to be so interested in the literature of other countries, such as i68 Madame de Stael England or Germany, while almost entirely dis- regarding that of France. Germaine, however, won the Prefect over to a great degree, so that in his reports concerning her he represented her as being very circumspect in her words and actions. With her time taken up with literary pursuits, such as the writing of Corinne, with her house crowded with friends and the evenings given up to amateur theatrical representations, often of a very high order, it is difficult to understand why at this period Madame de Stael should have suffered so from melancholic depression and boredom. It seemed quite inexplicable to her friend, the Vicomte Rene de Chateaubriand, when he formed one of the intellectual group surrounding the hostess of Coppet, and he frankly expressed himself to her on the subject, taking her to task, and telling her that she had got everything necessary for happiness. Chateaubriand envied Germaine her fine ch&,teau and her beautiful lake, her opportunity of leading a peaceful and regular life in comfort ; he only wished that fate had cast his lot on similar pleasant lines. He told Madame de Stael that, while he was only a humble gnat, without even a little hole in a tree to hide himself in, she was in the happy position of the bee, with a comfortable hive to dwell in and a good supply of honey for the winter. Germaine, however, snapped her fingers at the brilliant author of Atala, with his " regular and peaceful life," the very thing that she most abhorred. Paris and plenty of movement were more to her than all the beehives and honeycombs of lovely Switzerland. Germaine, Fouche, and the Emperor 169 Her book Corinne was all but finished, and she longed to be where she could, better than from her retreat at Coppet, prepare the minds of people for the reception of the novel. By the middle of April, 1806, Madame de Stael was off to France, taking with her WiUiam Schlegel and her two younger children, and settling at Auxerre, forty-three leagues from Paris. All her old friends were once more working in her interests : Madame Recamier, Mathieu, Junot, Constant, Joseph — every one of them busily employed in begging the Emperor and those around him on behalf of the exile, who had hired a fine country house named the Chateau de Vincelles. The country was soon too much for her ; it got on her nerves; while Schlegel also could not stand the bucolic existence. They moved into the town of Auxerre, but Germaine found it but a desert con- taining nothing in the world to interest her. Oh, for Paris ! Such a life was enough to kill one with melan- choly ! Letter after letter poured upon the friends in Paris. " For heaven's sake, save me ! Get me out of this ! " In the meantime, there was plenty of excitement brewing. Benjamin had not travelled to Auxerre fast enough. He had delayed on the way — he said that it was to see his father. A rod was ready waiting in pickle, and when at last he arrived it descended upon him with all its sting. Unfortunately poor Benjamin could not bring good news with him. He writes concerning his reception as follows : " The fire is in all the timbers — the news from 170 Madame de Stael Paris is bad, the master is inexorable. Thus I suffer the consequences ! " Poor unhappy scapegoat ! these consequences seem to have been somewhat terrible. Germaine was abso- lutely without restraint. " In the evening," says he in his Journal, " a mad scene ! Fearful, horrible, sense- less ! Atrocious expressions ! Either she is crazy or I am mad. How on earth will it all end ? " Glad to make his escape, Benjamin flies to Paris — stirs everybody up once more. The Emperor mean- while knows all that is going on, and laughs heartily about it. All the gossip concerning Madame de Stael reaches him regularly, besides which he has the resource of reading her letters to her friends and their answers, which are unsealed and copied in the office known as the Black Cabinet. No good news coming, Madame de Stael goes almost wild, and for about six months tries to relieve her anxiety by dashing about the country in post-chaise from one place to another, always being followed by a regular suite as though she were a queen. She goes to Blois, to Rouen, causing a sensation wherever she appears. However, being deeply occupied with her new and passionate affection for Prosper de Barante, she commits no overt act of folly, and the Prefect of the district reports very favourably upon her. The result is that Fouche, the Minister of PoHce, at length sends word to Germaine that she may approach Paris to a distance of only twelve leagues, and she immediately moves to the Chateau d'Acosta, the house of a friend. There, in a little better spirits, she finishes Germaine, FouchS, and the Emperor 171 her novel Corinne in peace, and is able to supervise its printing and correct the proofs. This move to her friend M. de Castellane's house, which was near the town of Aubergenville, took place at the beginning of the year 1807, when Napoleon was at a distance from France at the head of his armies in Prussia. It would seem as if in permitting Germaine to approach closer to Paris Fouche had acted entirely upon his own responsibility, and certainly not in ac- cordance with the views of his master, who had written a month earlier telling him not to allow " that in- triguing rascal of a Madame de Stael " any nearer than forty leagues. The Emperor could not, however, rely upon his arch-spy Fouche, and kept his own spies spying upon him, as he well knew his tricky nature and habit of trying to have a foot in everybody's camp at once. Thus he was aware of his friendly ways with and semi- protection of Madame de Stael, even whUe he was watching her and reading her letters. Also Napoleon knew when Fouche was trying to deceive him, and wrote to tell him so and confound him with facts. Germaine, trying to encroach a little on the permission given her, early in March, 1807, bought a property called Cernay only ten leagues from Paris, and was actually preparing to go and live upon it when pre- vented by the Prefect of the Department of Seine-et- Oise. After this attempt to steal a few miles, she was warned that she must retire once more at the beginning of April to a distance of forty leagues. This order she evaded, with specious excuses, such 172 Madame de Stael as that she had no money and that her daughter Albertine was unwell. She said, however, that she would be able to retire from the Ch§.teau d'Acosta on the twenty-fifth of the month. In consequence, two letters, written by the Emperor on the two following days, April i8th and 19th, 1807, were received by Fouche. Both concerned the disobedient woman, and the second one was very angry. In Prussia, where he was, a letter from Germaine fell into his hands. It was evidently to one of the enemies of France in that country. This letter the Emperor forwards to the Minister of Police, with the remarks : " You will see by this letter what sort of a good Frenchwoman we have got to deal with ! She would, if she could have managed it, have done anything to see the Prince Louis the bitter enemy of our Monarchy. To-day she is making up to the great. To-morrow she is a patriot or a democrat ! It is difficult to contain one's indigna- tion with this creature. And, with it all, she is ugly to boot. Let her go off if she likes with the friends of Prince Louis. I do not inform you of all the projects made by this ridiculous coterie in case they had the happiness to hear that I had been kiUed — a Minister of Police ought to be aware of all that. All that this miserable woman merits from me is that I leave her in her Coppet, with her Genevese and her Necker House." On April 20th, the Emperor writes concerning Germaine again, this time to a gentleman who has written to excuse himself for his relations with the recalcitrant lady. This letter contains the sentence : " Every day I acquire fresh proofs that one cannot be G