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 MADAME DE STAEL AND HER 
 LOVERS 
 
MADAME DE STAEL 
 AND HER LOVERS 
 
 FRANCIS GRlBBLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE EARLY MOUNTAINEERS," "LAKE GENEVA AND ITS LITERARY 
 
 LANDMARKS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 JAMES POTT & CO. 
 
 LONDON: EVELEIGH NASH ^ 
 1907 
 
J>c ^ 
 
 u 
 
\ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Life of Madame de Stael has been written 
 a good many times. The earlier biographies — 
 up to and including the ambitious work by 
 Dr. Stevens — are inadequate, owing to the 
 scantiness of the material then available. 
 They give a somewhat uncritical relation of 
 Madame de Stael's public life, but leave her 
 personal life wrapped in mystery, without even 
 suggesting that there are secrets unrevealed. 
 Lady Blennerhassett's book, written in German, 
 and translated into both French and English, is 
 much better from every point of view. At the 
 time of its appearance Benjamin Constant's 
 Journal Intime had just been published in 
 the Revue Internationale. That extraordinary 
 document threw quite a fresh light upon Madame 
 de Stael's character. It showed her as the exigent 
 mistress, clinging to a reluctant lover, and refusing 
 to let him go. Lady Blennerhassett quoted a 
 good deal from it. Hers is consequently the 
 first Life in which Madame de Stael appears as 
 a woman with a passionate heart and not as a 
 philosopher in petticoats. 
 
 The story thus brought to light was not 
 
Preface 
 
 absolutely a new one. There had been some 
 gossip about it in articles printed in the Revue 
 des deux Mondes at the time of Benjamin 
 Constant's death. Sainte-Beuve had heard 
 something of it from Madame Recamier, and 
 had repeated what he had heard in certain of 
 his Causer ies du Lundi. There had been 
 references to it in one or two of Sismondi's 
 letters to the Comtesse d'Albany. Details, 
 however, were lacking. The story rested in the 
 main upon oral tradition, and had almost been 
 forgotten when the publication of the Journal 
 Intime revived it. But the Journal Intime, 
 which is probably the most pitiless piece of self- 
 analysis ever put on paper, has never been 
 translated. In so far as it is known at all to 
 English readers, it is known only through the 
 extracts cited by Lady Blennerhassett ; and it 
 merits far more minute attention than is given 
 to it in her pages. 
 
 Moreover, the Journal Intime was not the 
 only document needed for the thorough under- 
 standing of the story. It is further illuminated 
 by a considerable mass of correspondence to which 
 Lady Blennerhassett had not access. Some 
 passages in the Memoirs of B arras show us 
 how the relations of the lovers struck a cynical 
 observer of the period. The letters of Benjamin 
 Constant's cousin Rosalie to her brother Charles, 
 preserved in the Geneva Public Library, are full 
 of picturesque, and sometimes poignant, particulars. 
 
 vi 
 
Preface 
 
 Benjamin Constant's own letters to his cousins and 
 to his aunt, Madame de Nassau, help us to bridge 
 many gaps in the narrative. It is from these that 
 we infer that Benjamin Constant indubitably- 
 believed — what Barras states as a matter of 
 common knowledge — that Madame de Stael's 
 youngest child, Albertine, afterwards Duchesse 
 de Broglie, was not M. de Stael's daughter, but 
 his.^ 
 
 Madame de Stael's own letters to her lover are 
 unfortunately, with few exceptions, missing from 
 the collection ; and the Constant letters tell us 
 why. They were kept in a box, originally stored 
 by Madame Constant at Hanover, but afterwards 
 consigned to the care of other members of the 
 Constant family at Lausanne. Immediately after 
 Benjamin Constant's death, the Duchesse de 
 Broglie wrote to Charles de Constant, asking that 
 the box and its contents might be surrendered to 
 her, as Benjamin Constant had promised that they 
 should be. Charles de Constant complied with 
 her request. The letters were surrendered, and 
 are believed to have been destroyed. If they 
 exist, they are in safe custody in the Tower of the 
 
 1 " Benjamin Constant seemed to me to do justice to the truth of 
 the reciprocal positions Madame de Stael had somewhat distorted 
 for his sake, in order to still further excite his imagination, which 
 was perhaps rather inclined to excitement at that very time, when 
 the public saw proofs which were hardly equivocal of an affection 
 strongly shared, in the birth of a daughter whom Madame de Stael 
 called Albertine, and the resemblance of whose features, hair, 
 everything in fact, appeared to the world as the striking image of 
 Benjamin Constant" {Memoirs of Barras, vol. iii. p. 162). 
 
 vii 
 
Preface 
 
 Archives at Coppet. The Comte d'Haussonville, 
 who at present owns and occupies that mansion, 
 does not consider that the story which they tell 
 concerns the public ; and when he writes of 
 Madame de Stael, as he often does, he ignores 
 Benjamin Constant altogether. 
 
 The box, however, did not contain all the letters 
 that passed between the lovers. A few of them 
 — a very few — were printed by Strodtmann in 
 Germany, and reprinted by Lady Blennerhassett. 
 A larger collection which had remained in the 
 hands of the descendants of Madame Benjamin 
 Constant were published, a few months ago, by 
 that lady's great-granddaughter, in the American 
 Critic. The Critics description of them as " love 
 letters " is not entirely accurate. Only a few of 
 them, at any rate, are rightly so described. Their 
 date is subsequent to what is generally regarded 
 as the final breach between the lovers — subsequent 
 to the locking of the box of which Benjamin 
 Constant's cousins took charge. Their interest 
 is only retrospective ; they only rake dead ashes. 
 But they nevertheless add a good deal to our 
 knowledge not merely of the facts but also of the 
 psychology of the intimacy under review, and form 
 one fresh piece of evidence among many that this 
 intimacy was the one event of really permanent 
 importance in Madame de Stael's life. 
 
 During her lifetime she had several distinct 
 reputations. Her fame, and the story of her 
 persecutions, echoed from end to end of Europe. 
 
 viii 
 
Preface 
 
 Most justly might she have asked : " Quae regio 
 in terris nostri non plena laboris ? " Her con- 
 temporaries reckoned her a great politician, a 
 great philosopher, and a great novelist. They 
 called her after the heroine of her chief romance, 
 and they spoke of her "duel" with Napoleon. 
 Posterity sees these aspects of her renown in a 
 more true proportion. In politics her successes 
 and her failures alike were only those of the wire- 
 puller. As a political philosopher she figures only 
 as the apologist of her father's mediocrity. As a 
 metaphysician she is only the echo of an echo, 
 reproducing Schlegel's reproduction of the thoughts 
 of Kant. As a novelist she only followed the 
 fleeting fashion of the hour, and her Corinne 
 hardly counts for more in the history of literature 
 than Madame de Krudner's Valerie. 
 
 Those were her limitations. Professor Saints- 
 bury has pointed them out in the Encyclopcsdia 
 Britannica\ though he adds that to recite them 
 and then stop "would be in the highest degree 
 unfair." If Madame de Stael was not a great 
 thinker or a great artist, she was at any rate 
 a "live" woman of immense ability and great 
 force of character, whose personality had to be 
 reckoned with in most of the departments of 
 endeavour. Even Talleyrand was, at one time, 
 glad to lean upon her influence ; even Sir James 
 Mackintosh was deceived by the glitter of her 
 writings ; even Byron was jealous of the figure 
 she cut in Society ; even the Duke of Wellington 
 
Preface 
 
 knelt to kiss her hand ; even the Russian Emperor 
 sought her advice. 
 
 Outwardly, therefore, in spite of her limitations, 
 and in spite of Napoleon's hostility, her life was 
 crowned with success. She did not despise her 
 success ; homage and applause were the things 
 for which she appeared to live. But the tribute 
 of flattery and the consciousness of powder did not 
 satisfy her. These things were vain unless she 
 could also love and be loved. That is the secret 
 of her inner life. She tried to be — in a sense and 
 to an extent she was — grande amoureuse. 
 
 Perhaps she loved love better than she loved 
 her lovers ; certainly she did not always love either 
 wisely or well. In her youth she made a foolish 
 marriage with her eyes shut ; in middle life she 
 made a ridiculous marriage with her eyes open. 
 Neither the foolish marriage nor the ridiculous 
 marriage was allowed to be an obstacle to any 
 more passionate or more sentimental appeal to 
 her emotions. Her treatment of Rocca, the 
 infatuated boy, was not a great deal better than 
 her treatment of M. de Stael, the cynical 
 man of the world, who bought her dowry with his 
 title. Even her lovers had some reason to com- 
 plain of the levity of her affections. Benjamin 
 Constant's relatives complained very loudly on 
 his behalf. 
 
 None the less, she never lost sight of the ideal. 
 She craved for happiness, and believed that 
 happiness was only to be found in love ; she 
 
Preface 
 
 always did her best to persuade herself that her 
 first love was her last and that her last love was 
 her first. But she was weak, and circumstances 
 were strong, and, in her infidelities, she was only 
 following the example which men set her. M. de 
 Stael forsook her society for that of actresses ; 
 M. de Narbonne tired of her. Again and again she 
 was driven to make a fresh start in her sentimental 
 life. That is why her case is so profoundly in- 
 teresting. Her conduct, viewed without reference 
 to its motives, was that of a loose woman ; but the 
 motives transfigure it. Madame de Stael meant 
 well, and felt good. Her aim was not merely to 
 achieve happiness, but also to impart it ; her real 
 life was in that struggle, and not in any political 
 adventure or any literary undertaking. Every 
 new document that comes to light confirms that 
 estimate of her character, and suggests that it may 
 be worth while to re-write her Life from a fresh 
 point of view. 
 
 XI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEP I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod — Her flirtations with the 
 ministers of religion — Her engagement to Gibbon — Did 
 Gibbon treat her badly? — His proposal that the corre- 
 spondence should cease — Mademoiselle Curchod's flirta- 
 tion with the Yverdon lawyer — She throws him over to 
 marry Necker ...... I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Necker's genealogical tree — How he got it and what he paid 
 for it — The Neckers at Geneva — The scandalous frivolity 
 of Louis Necker — Jacques Necker in Vernet's and 
 Thelusson's banks — His rise in life — His courtship of 
 Suzanne Curchod — " Each became the other's thurifer " . 13 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The grandeur of the Neckers — Madame Necker and her 
 poor relations — Birth of a daughter — Her education in a 
 salon — And in a garden — Necker in office — And out of 
 office — A course of foreign travel — The purchase of 
 Coppet — The place of exile . . . .24 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Mademoiselle Necker's early writings — Her secrets revealed 
 in her short stories — Her love for General Guibert — The 
 match-makers at work — Marriage to the Baron de Stael- 
 Holstein . . . ... . -34 
 
 xiii 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Necker recalled to office — Dismissed — Recalled again after 
 the fall of the Bastille — Fails — Resigns — Retires to 
 Coppet — Madame de Stael's essay on the works of 
 Rousseau — Inferences that can be drawn from it — 
 Madame de Stael's salon — Description of it by Gouver- 
 neur Morris — Progress of the Revolution — Madame de 
 Stael saves her friends and then leaves Paris . . 46 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 From Coppet to Mickleham — The motive for the journey — 
 The emigres at Juniper Hall — Madame de Stael's friend- 
 ship with Fanny Burney — M. de Narbonne "behaves 
 badly" ....... 60 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Madame de Stael returns to Switzerland — Her exertions on 
 behalf of the emigres — Correspondence on this subject 
 with Henri Meister — Death of Madame Necker — 
 Benjamin Constant introduces himself . . .71 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Benjamin Constant de Rebecque — His ancestors — His pre- 
 cocious childhood — His dissolute youth — He meets 
 Madame de Charriere at Paris and visits her at 
 Colombier — ^ Writes the History of Religion on the backs 
 of playing-cards — Departure for Brunswick — Affectionate 
 correspondence — Colombier revisited — The end of the 
 liaison ....... 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Benjamin Constant's intimacy with Madame de Stael — What 
 
 Rosalie de Constant thought — The Paris salon re-opened 
 
 — Services rendered to Talleyrand — And to Benjamin 
 
 Constant — Revolt and reconquest — The birth of Albertine 
 
 xiv 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAGE 
 
 M. and Madame de Stael separate — The alleged " duel " with 
 Napoleon — Publication of De la Litterature — Death of 
 M, de Stael — Why Madame de Stael did not then marry 
 Benjamin ....... 109 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Publication of Delphine — A roman-d-c/ef—'N ecker writes a 
 novel — Social life at Coppet — And at Geneva — Corre- 
 spondence with Camille Jordan — He refuses to travel with 
 Madame de Stael in Italy — She goes to Germany with 
 Benjamin Constant instead . . . -123 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Travel in Germany — The German view of Madame de Stael 
 — Life at Weimar — And at Berlin — Benjamin Constant's 
 studies and amusements — Extracts from his Diary — 
 Death of Necker . . . . . -5 34 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Madame de Stael returns to Coppet — The reason why she 
 was not allowed to go to Paris — She decides to visit 
 Italy — Benjamin Constant drags at his chain — Further 
 extracts from his Diary ..... 147 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Diary continues — Benjamin Constant at Coppet — Attempt 
 of his relatives to find him a wife — He goes to Lyons to 
 see Madame de Stael off to Italy . . . .160 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Madame de Stael's triumphs in Italy — She " gives perform- 
 ances in the character of woman of letters " — Her 
 relations with Monti — Benjamin Constant in Paris — His 
 relations with Madame Recamier, Madame Talma, and 
 other friends . . . . . .172 
 
 d XV 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Corintie ........ 185 
 
 CHAPTER XVn 
 
 The return from Italy — The hfe at Coppet — The visitors — 
 Their reminiscences — Descriptions of Coppet by Madame 
 Vigee Le Brun — By Baron de Voght — By Rosalie de 
 Constant — Quarrels with Benjamin Constant . . 194 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Theatrical performances at Coppet — Extracts from the 
 Journcdlntrnte — Benjamin Constant renews his acquaint- 
 ance with Charlotte Dutertre — He proposes marriage 
 and is accepted — Madame de Stael pursues him and 
 drags him back to Coppet . . . . . 206 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Stormy scenes at Coppet — Benjamin's confidences to his aunt 
 — His endeavours to escape — He joins Charlotte at 
 Brevans . . . . . . . 223 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Benjamin marries Charlotte secretly — They go to Paris and 
 are happy — Madame de Stael is told — Her wrath — Her 
 sons threaten Benjamin with personal violence — He 
 promises to keep the secret of his marriage a little longer 
 — He returns yet again to Coppet — The financial settle- 
 ment with Madame de Stael .... 233 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Mysticism at Coppet — Madame de Stael writes De PAllemagne 
 and goes to France — Her manuscript is confiscated, and 
 she is expelled — She returns to Coppet and endures 
 petty persecutions ...... 244 
 
 xvi 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Madame de Stael makes the acquaintance of Rocca and 
 secretly marries him — Benjamin and his wife arrive at 
 Lausanne — Rocca challenges Benjamin, but the duel is 
 avoided — The Constants start for Germany — Extracts 
 from Benjamin's Journal and letters . . . 254 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The campaign of persecution at Coppet — Birth of Madame 
 de Stael's youngest child — It is boarded out — Madame 
 de Stael starts by the only road open to her for England 
 — Vienna — Kiev — Moscow — St. Petersburg — Stock- 
 holm — Benjamin Constant at Gottingen — His regrets 
 for Madame de Stael ..... 266 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Madame de Stael arrives in London — Murray the bookseller 
 publishes De VAllemagne — The qualities and defects of 
 the book ....... 279 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Benjamin Constant at Gottingen — His intrigue on behalf of 
 the Crown Prince of Sweden — It comes to nothing, and 
 he goes to Paris — Madame de Stael's letters to him — 
 Rocca is not to be " a hindrance " — Napoleon having 
 abdicated, Madame de Stael goes to Paris . . 290 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Benjamin Constant in love with Madame Recamier — His 
 account of the passion in his Diary — Finding that he 
 loves in vain, he rejoins his wife .... 301 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The Constants in London — The publication of Adolphe — The 
 
 place of .(4^£7^>^e in French literature . . .312 
 
 xvii 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 1 1 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In Paris — Marriage of Albertine to the Due de Broglie — 
 Trouble about the dowry — Madame de Stael applies to 
 Benjamin Constant for money — He refuses it — A quarrel 
 and a renewal of friendship • . . . 324 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 Madame de Stael in Italy with the Broglies — Return to 
 
 Coppet — Distinguished guests — Byron's visit . . 334. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 Madame de Stael's last journey to Paris — Her illness and 
 
 death ....... 342 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 The last years of Benjamin Constant .... 351 
 
 Index ....... 365 
 
 XVlli 
 
MADAME DE STAEL AND 
 HER LOVERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod — Her flirtations with the ministers 
 of religion — Her engagement to Gibbon — Did Gibbon treat 
 her badly ? — His proposal that the correspondence should 
 cease — Madem.oiselle Curchod's flirtation with the Yverdon 
 lawyer — She throws him over to marry Necker. 
 
 The story, since it has no inevitable beginning, 
 may best be dated from the day when Mademoi- 
 selle Suzanne Curchod, the pastor's daughter and 
 the village belle, descended from "the mountains 
 of Burgundy" ^ and captured the heart of the future 
 historian of the Roman Empire. 
 
 She who was presently, as Madame Necker, 
 to set the frivolous Parisians the example which 
 they needed of a prim propriety, was hardly, in 
 those days, considered either prim or proper in 
 serious circles at Lausanne. Her reputation, it 
 would be truer to say, was that of a flirt who 
 flirted with the extreme audacity of provincial 
 innocence. 
 
 1 From Grassier, near Nyon. It is not really in Burgundy, but 
 the phrase is Gibbon's. 
 
 A I 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Her earliest recorded flirtations were with the 
 ministers of the gospel who assisted her father 
 in his parochial duties. She used to invite their 
 signatures to documents, drafted in playful parody 
 of legal contracts, whereby they engaged them- 
 selves "to come and preach at Grassier as often 
 as she required, without waiting to be solicited, 
 pressed, or entreated, seeing that the greatest 
 of their pleasures was to oblige her on every 
 possible occasion." Matrons and elderly spinsters 
 made unkind remarks, but the young clergymen 
 signed gladly. There was a great deal of human 
 nature in the Swiss clergy of those days, and 
 a great many of them were poets as well as 
 preachers. 
 
 At Lausanne the village beauty opened a 
 school. She presents the figure, perhaps unique 
 in history, of a schoolmistress who was also what 
 in the England of the same period would have 
 been styled a "reigning toast." "At the end of 
 the lane which leads to the mineral waters of La 
 Poudrerie, her pupils built her a throne, and it 
 was there that she distributed her praises and h^r 
 prizes, and received the compliments of the wits 
 attracted by her fame." That is how her Academy 
 is described by a contemporary writer ; and Dr. 
 Tissot,^ the fashionable Lausanne physician, adds, 
 not without a gentle touch of irony : " Mademoiselle 
 
 ^ Author of many medical works, notably an Essai sur les 
 maladies des gens du monde. He became a Professor in the 
 Medical School at Padua. 
 
 2 
 
Mademoiselle Curchod's Flirtations 
 
 Curchod is too beautiful and too learned for me 
 to venture to be her friend ; while I am neither 
 young enough nor ignorant enough to present 
 myself as her scholar." 
 
 The younger citizens, however, — and notably 
 the clergy and the theological students, — aspired 
 more highly. Not only did they take part with 
 Mademoiselle Curchod in Debating Society dis- 
 cussions of such themes as " Does an element 
 of mystery really make love more agreeable ? " or 
 ** Can there be friendship between a man and a 
 woman in the same sense as between two women 
 or two men ? " — they also wrote odes and letters 
 to her, and published them in the Journal 
 Helv^tique. For example : — 
 
 " Parfaite, les Destins vous montrent sur la terre, 
 Pour jouir du tribut qu'on doit aux Immortels. 
 
 Nos coeurs seront autant d'autels 
 Faits pour vous presenter un hommage sincere 
 
 De respect et d'amour. 
 C'est le plus doux soin de ma vie 
 Que de m'en acquitter en secret chaque jour. 
 
 Mais aujourd'hui je le publie." 
 
 To which the poet adds in prose : " Yes, 
 charming, or rather divine, Cur . . . . , I cannot 
 refuse to express those sentiments. You, in 
 your single person, furnish the model of the 
 beauties which Zeuxis failed to find in combina- 
 tion. Though I should add to this beauty the 
 wisdom of Minerva, rendered amiable by the 
 sweetness of the Graces and the playful badinage 
 of Hebe, your portrait would still be imperfect." 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 That is one tribute among many that appeared. 
 Three such tributes are reprinted at full length by 
 Professor Eugene Ritter in a pamphlet entitled 
 Notes sur Madame de Stael, It is not sur- 
 prising that Gibbon, then a pupil in the house of 
 Pastor Pavilliard, felt impelled to enter the lists 
 for such a prize. He may even have felt that 
 here was a challenge which the honour of his 
 country required him to take up. So we read in 
 his diary: "Saw Mile Curchod. Omnia vincit 
 amor ; et nos cedamus amori'' And a remin- 
 iscence of Julie von Bondeli ^ tells us that " he used 
 to run about, like a madman, in the fields in the 
 neighbourhood of Lausanne, carrying a sword in 
 his hand, and compelling the husbandmen to con- 
 fess that Mile C. was the most beautiful person 
 in the world." 
 
 Nor was Mademoiselle Curchod, on her part, 
 insensible to the Englishman's attentions. We 
 have a portrait of him from her pen — one of those 
 sketches which it was then the fashion for young 
 people to make of each other, as essays in the art 
 of composition. "He has beautiful hair," she 
 writes, " a pretty hand, and the air of a man of 
 rank. His face is so intellectual and so strange 
 that I know no one like him. It has so much 
 expression that one is always finding something 
 new in it. His gestures are so appropriate that 
 they add much to his speech. In a word, he has 
 
 ^ A lively blue-stocking from Berne, in correspondence with 
 Rousseau, Wieland, and other eminent men of the age. 
 
 4 
 
The Love Story of Gibbon 
 
 one of those extraordinary faces that one never 
 tires of trying to depict. He knows the respect 
 that is due to women. His courtesy is easy 
 without verging on familiarity. He dances 
 moderately well." 
 
 So there began the love story with which, so 
 far at least as its main outlines are concerned, 
 Gibbon's Autobiography has made the world 
 familiar. Gibbon was invited to visit the parson- 
 age at Grassier : "In a calm retirement the gay 
 vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom, 
 and I might presume to hope that I had made 
 some impression on a virtuous heart." But his 
 " dream of felicity " was to remain a dream. His 
 father "would not hear of this strange alliance." 
 Sighing as a lover, but obeying as a son, he took 
 up his pen and wrote : — 
 
 " I do not know how to begin this letter. Yet 
 begin it I must. I take up my pen, I drop it, 
 I resume it. This commencement shows you 
 what it is that I am about to say. Spare me the 
 rest. Yes, Mademoiselle, I must renounce you 
 for ever. The sentence is passed ; my heart 
 laments it ; but in the presence of my duty every 
 other consideration must be silent." With more 
 in the same strain, concluding : " Good-bye. I 
 shall always remember Mile Curchod as the most 
 worthy, the most charming, of women. May she 
 not entirely forget a man who does not deserve 
 the despair to which he is a prey ! " 
 
 Was he treating her badly? Did she really 
 
 5 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 care? M. d'Haussonville, her great-great-grand- 
 son, answers both questions in the affirmative, 
 arguing the matter almost with the animus of a 
 man who sees in the jilting, in the remote past, 
 of his great-great-grandmother an ineffaceable 
 blot upon the family escutcheon. As regards the 
 former question, his case appears to rest upon an 
 error as to the date of a letter. Gibbon, he says, 
 after leaving Lausanne in 1758, kept silence for 
 four years, and then, without warning, broke off 
 the engagement in 1762. But the letter which 
 M. d'Haussonville dates 1762 conveys a saluta- 
 tion to Pastor Curchod, who died in 1760. 
 Evidently, therefore, it was written, not in 1762, 
 but in 1758 or 1759; and the charge of callous- 
 ness at least falls to the ground in consequence. 
 One is glad to be able to clear Gibbon's memory 
 of that; and, for the rest, it is sufficient to 
 remember that he was very young at the time, 
 and absolutely dependent upon his father, and 
 also that Mademoiselle Curchod herself ceased to 
 bear rancour very soon after the final breach. 
 The second question is more difficult ; but even 
 about that two things are clear : the first, that 
 Mademoiselle Curchod threw herself, with very 
 unmaidenly persistence, at Gibbon's head ; the 
 second, that it was not very long before she 
 disposed herself to seek consolation, in more than 
 one quarter, for her loss. 
 
 It was, as has been said, in 1758 that Gibbon 
 left Lausanne. He returned there, in the course 
 
 6 
 
A Proffered Friendship 
 
 of the grand tour, in 1763; and attempts were 
 instantly made to bring him to a sense of his 
 obligations to his former fiancde. Pastor 
 Moultou ^ tried ; and a certain irony attaches to 
 the story of his endeavours from the fact that the 
 Pastor had himself once sighed at the feet of 
 Mademoiselle Curchod, but had ceased to sigh in 
 order to marry another lady with a dowry of 
 105,000 florins. Rousseau, at that time a 
 fugitive from French justice, living at Motiers, in 
 the Val de Travers, was induced to express an 
 opinion which provoked from Gibbon the dignified 
 retort that "that extraordinary man whom I 
 admire and pity should have been less precipitate 
 in condemning the moral character and conduct 
 of a stranger." But the chief advances were 
 made by Mademoiselle Curchod herself 
 
 All that has been preserved of the corre- 
 spondence is printed by M. d'Haussonville in 
 Le Salon de Madame Necker. It discloses a 
 frank attempt on the part of the lady to pick up 
 the broken threads and revive the relations of five 
 years since. If Gibbon will not be her lover, she 
 begs that he will at least be her platonic friend. 
 " Place your attachment for me," she writes, "on 
 the same footing as that of my other friends, and 
 you will find me as confiding, as tender, and at 
 the same time as indifferent as I am to them." 
 
 * Of Geneva. He defended Rousseau when Entile was con- 
 demned to be burnt, and gave shelter in his house to the family 
 of Calas. 
 
 7 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 He accepts the proffered friendship, — " it bestows 
 so much honour upon me that I cannot hesitate," 
 — but he asks that the correspondence may cease. 
 
 " I am sensible," he protests, " of the pleasures 
 which it brings me, but at the same time I am 
 conscious of its danglers. I feel the dang-ers that 
 it has for me ; I fear the dangers that it may 
 have for both of us. Permit me to avoid these 
 dangers by my silence. Forgive my fears. 
 Mademoiselle ; they have their origin in my 
 esteem for you." 
 
 Whereupon there follows a letter of tumultuous 
 reproaches — a letter in which the spretce injuria 
 formes not only speaks out but cries aloud. 
 Mademoiselle Curchod has rejected other offers 
 of marriage for Gibbon's sake — and this is how 
 he treats her. Perhaps someone has told him 
 that she flirted during his absence — it is false. 
 Possibly someone has been coupling her name 
 with that of M. Deyverdun^ — it is a shame and 
 a calumny. And so on to the angry end : — 
 
 *' I am treating you as an honest man of the 
 world, who is incapable of breaking his promise, 
 of seduction, or of treachery, but who has, instead 
 of that, amused himself in racking my heart with 
 tortures, well prepared, and well carried into 
 effect. I will not threaten you, therefore, with 
 the wrath of heaven — the expression that escaped 
 from me in my first emotion. But I assure you, 
 
 ^ Gibbon's most intimate friend, whose house he shared when 
 he ultimately settled at Lausanne. 
 
 8 
 
The Influences of Heredity 
 
 without laying any claim to the gift of prophecy, 
 that you will one day regret the irreparable loss 
 that you have incurred in alienating for ever the 
 too frank and tender heart of S. C." 
 
 That closed the passionate episode ; though 
 the lovers lived, not only to be reconciled, but to 
 become the best friends in the world. In a sense, 
 no doubt, it is irrelevant as an introduction to the 
 story of Madame de Stael. But it was worth 
 relating, partly for the sake of the chance 
 presented of vindicating Gibbon from the asper- 
 sions of M. d'Haussonville, and partly for the 
 purpose of taking the influences of heredity into 
 account. One has heard a good deal of the 
 differences of character betv/een Madame Necker 
 and her daughter, but the resemblances seem 
 worthier of attention. 
 
 In each case equally we meet reverberant 
 passion and emphatic insistence on the right not 
 only to love but to be loved ; though, in the latter 
 case, the emotion is more developed, more intense, 
 more modern, more symptomatic of the maladie 
 du siecle, — less trammelled by middle-class ideas 
 about duty and the sanctity of the marriage tie. 
 Madame de Stael, in short, might be described as 
 a Parisian Madame Necker, and Madame Necker 
 as a provincial Madame de Stael. Or we might 
 put it differently, and say that Madame Necker 
 suggests a Madame de Stael with a Noncon- 
 formist conscience, and Madame de Stael a 
 Madame Necker who has overstepped the 
 
 9 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 barriers of circumspection. The case, at any 
 rate, is not one in which heredity is negligible ; 
 and the mother, wrapped in contemplation of her 
 greater daughter's more signally amorous career, 
 might most properly have exclaimed : "There, but 
 for the grace of God, goes Madame Necker ! " 
 
 Moreover, a further point of likeness between 
 the mother and the daughter may be found in the 
 facility with which they could both transfer an 
 unrequited affection to a worthier object. The 
 list of Madame de Stael's attachments, as we 
 shall see, is long. Her mother did not unduly 
 protract her grief for Gibbon ; and the reports 
 which reached the historian of "the cheerfulness 
 and tranquillity of the lady herself" are well 
 substantiated by the facts. We have only to 
 follow her career a little farther in order to meet 
 the proof. 
 
 Hardly had she uttered her bitter farewell to 
 her first love than she began to consider a 
 proposal of marriage from a prosperous lawyer of 
 Yverdon. We have a letter from him in which 
 he solicits "a favourable answer by return of 
 post " ; and we have two interesting letters 
 setting forth Mademoiselle Curchod's view of the 
 situation. In the one she stipulates that, if she 
 accepts M. Correvon's offer, she shall not be 
 required to live with him for more than four 
 months in each year. In the second she tells 
 Pastor Moultou — the Pastor who had once been 
 her suitor but had withdrawn from the suit for 
 
 lO 
 
Mile Curchod to Marry Necker 
 
 the sake of Mile Cayla and her 105,000 florins — 
 that another admirer has been paying her atten- 
 tions which she rather thinks may be serious, and 
 concludes : " But if this castle in the air collapses, 
 then I will marry Correvon next summer." One 
 cannot wonder that, as the castle in the air did 
 not collapse, Correvon felt himself aggrieved. 
 The news was broken to him that Mademoiselle 
 Curchod was going to marry the great Parisian 
 banker, M. Necker, and he wrote : "I see very 
 clearly that you looked upon me as a miserable 
 makeshift, and that you were looking out for the 
 first opportunity that might occur to settle your- 
 self in Paris or elsewhere." 
 
 The taunt undoubtedly had truth in it ; but 
 there is no evidence that Mademoiselle Curchod 
 was troubled by any qualms. The romantic and 
 the practical met strangely in her nature. She 
 was poor and a dependent. It was very important 
 to her to get married. She had always looked 
 upon marriage, not as an incident in the romantic 
 life, but as its appointed happy termination. She 
 naturally preferred to make a good marriage, and 
 this was a great opportunity. M. Necker was 
 not only very rich — he also had all the virtues. 
 So she was much too happy to be hurt by the 
 reproaches of the man whom she threw over. 
 Her happiness bubbled over in a letter to a Swiss 
 confidante : — 
 
 "What a prodigious change! And how im- 
 penetrable are the ways of Providence ! 
 
 II 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " To-morrow I am to unite my lot to the man 
 whom I like best in all the world. Placed at the 
 head of a household, surrounded by superfluities 
 which make my reason sigh without bewildering 
 it, I see and feel nothing but the happiness of my 
 union with the tenderest and most generous of 
 souls ; but nothing shall make me forget your 
 kindness to me. . . . You saw me at the hour 
 when I needed all your kind sympathy to calm 
 the agitation of my soul ; and had it not been for 
 the wise counsels of your husband, my troubles 
 would perhaps have precipitated me into an abyss 
 of evil. I assure you that I regard that as one of 
 the strongest arguments in favour of a special 
 providential dispensation. I am marrying a man 
 whom I should believe to be an angel if his 
 attachment to me did not prove his weakness. 
 He is called M. Necker, and is the brother of 
 the Professor. His talents and his shrewdness 
 have won him more consideration than his fortune, 
 although he has an income of twenty-five thousand 
 livres." 
 
 Gibbon, we may take it, if remembered, was 
 no longer regretted when Mademoiselle Suzanne 
 Curchod wrote that letter — the last to which she 
 subscribed her maiden name. The sentimental 
 memories of that first romance were, indeed, long 
 years afterwards, to recur to her ; but for the 
 moment a new romance effaced it. 
 
 12 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Necker's genealogical tree — How he got it and what he paid for 
 it — The Neckers at Geneva — The scandalous frivolity of 
 Louis Necker — Jacques Necker in Vemet's and Thelusson's 
 banks— His rise in life — His courtship of Suzanne Curchod 
 — " Each became the other's thurifer." 
 
 The statement has been made — it is repeated in 
 both Dr. Stevens' and Lady Blennerhassett's 
 Lives of Madame de Stael — that the Necker 
 family was of British origin ; but neither of these 
 biographers produces any evidence. The truth 
 is that there is no evidence of any value to be 
 given, and that the legend originated in this 
 way. 
 
 In 1776, M. Necker, having been given the 
 charge of the French finances, felt the need of a 
 coat of arms and a genealogical tree to support 
 his official dignity. Being wealthy, he could 
 afford to pay for such things ; and his brother 
 Louis caused searches to be instituted on his 
 behalf by both English and German experts. 
 The English expert furnished the following in- 
 formation, to be found in a manuscript in the 
 possession of the Geneva Historical Society, 
 copied from a document supplied by Louis 
 Necker himself : — 
 
 *' It appears from the registers that, in the time 
 
 13 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 of William the Conqueror, a certain Roger N., 
 in the public service, of the town of Armagh in 
 Ireland, was nominated by the King as a Com- 
 missioner for the completion of the records of 
 Domesday-book. 
 
 "It may be presumed that this same N. bore 
 arms at an earlier date, as the majority of William 
 the Conqueror's courtiers were also soldiers. He 
 was given the title of ' miles,' and he carried a 
 shield on which was a swan, with its neck 
 separated from its body by a cut dividing the 
 shield into two parts. The upper part of the 
 shield was only one-third the size of the lower 
 part. 
 
 "In the reign of Edward i., about 1293, a 
 Robert N., whose arms were the same, passed 
 over to France, and settled in Guyenne, then 
 belonging to England ; and in the following 
 year the same Robert returned to Ireland with 
 his armorial bearings changed, having placed at 
 the head of his escutcheon a bunch of grapes, 
 very probably added in honour of the country to 
 which he had gone, as it abounded in vineyards. 
 He retained his crest, however (a swan's neck), 
 with the motto : Nobilis vita, nobilior mors'' 
 
 That is all, except that the genealogist pledges 
 himself to "terminate his researches to the com- 
 plete satisfaction of M. Necker for the sum of one 
 thousand pounds. The fee," he adds, "is small, 
 but he is anxious to oblige." 
 
 What he would have brought to light if he had 
 had his fee and continued his investigations, it is, 
 of course, impossible to say. The fee was not 
 
 14 
 
Necker's Genealogical Tree 
 
 paid ; the inquiries were not pursued ; and 
 though M. Necker adopted the crest thus 
 indicated to him, the verdict must be "not 
 proven." The chain between N. of Armagh 
 and Necker of Geneva consists principally of 
 missing links. The authentic history of the 
 family was supplied by the German expert, Dr. 
 J. B. Steinbruck, pastor of the church of Saint 
 Peter and Saint Paul at Stettin, whose charges 
 were lower. "I should think," he wrote, "that 
 after all my labour and researches, I have earned 
 six golden louis " ; and for that fee he demon- 
 strated that all the various branches of the house 
 of Necker were descended from two brothers, 
 Christian Necker, pastor at Wartemberg in 
 Pomerania, and Matthseus Necker, silk merchant 
 at Stettin, both alive at the end of the sixteenth 
 century. It is only the posterity of the pastor 
 that need here concern us. 
 
 Christian's third son, Jean, was a deacon at 
 Garz, on the Oder. Jean Necker had a son 
 named Samuel, who was a lawyer at Kustrin. 
 He married Marguerite-Sophrosine de Labehack, 
 of Stettin, and was the father of Charles Frederick 
 Necker, born at Kustrin, in Brandenburg, on 
 January 13, 1686. Charles Frederick also became 
 a lawyer, taking the oath as a member of his pro- 
 fession on May 26, 171 1. He left Kustrin to 
 act as travelling tutor to various young German 
 noblemen, and was, furthermore, for some time 
 secretary to General Saint Saphorin, British 
 
 15 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Ambassador at Vienna. In 1724 he ofiered his 
 services to Geneva as honorary Professor of Law 
 at the Academy, The Register of the Council 
 of the Two Hundred for the i8th of September 
 of that year contains the following note on the 
 matter : — 
 
 " Discussion on the establishment of a Pro- 
 fessorship of the Public Law of Germany and of 
 Feudal Law, resolved upon in connection with 
 M. Necker's offer to serve gratuitously ; he being 
 known here for a clever and honourable man, 
 acquainted with high German, which circumstance 
 may attract the high German nobility to this 
 town. Concerning which there were read two 
 letters written by him from Vienna in Austria, 
 to M. de Terrasse, and to noble Tronchin, 
 formerly Syndic, expressing in very polite terms 
 his great esteem for the town, and his desire to 
 establish himself here, together with the offer of 
 his services ; all those to whom he is known in 
 the town having also borne very favourable witness 
 to his good qualities and his affection for the 
 State. To which it was added that the establish- 
 ment of this Professorship is honourable to the 
 public, advantageous to the Academy, and useful 
 to private individuals, and that the functions 
 thereto appertaining can only be discharged by 
 a German. 
 
 " Resolved, therefore, to accept the said offers 
 of M. Necker." 
 
 The Professor received the news of his appoint- 
 ment in London, where he was staying with the 
 Count of Bothmar. He was in the service of the 
 
 16 
 
The Neckers at Geneva 
 
 Elector of Hanover, who was also King of 
 England, and had to seek the royal permission 
 to accept the post. George i. not only gave 
 permission, but also granted the Professor a 
 pension to enable him to open at Geneva a 
 boarding-school for English girls whose parents 
 desired them to be educated on the Continent. 
 This school, which succeeded admirably, laid the 
 foundations of the Necker fortunes. I ts institution, 
 rather than any fanciful family tree, is the link 
 which connects the Neckers with Great Britain. 
 
 The inaugural lecture was delivered in 
 September 1725, and in January of the next 
 year the Professor was admitted to the bour- 
 geoisie of Geneva without fee, "in consideration 
 of his personal merit and of the satisfactory 
 manner in which he discharges his duties." In 
 1734 he was made a member of the Council of 
 the Two Hundred, and from 1742 to 1747 he 
 was a member of the Consistory. He married 
 Jeanne- Marie Gautier of Geneva, and had two 
 sons — Louis and Jacques. 
 
 Louis, commonly known as Necker de Germany, 
 from an estate near Geneva which he inherited, 
 became a Professor like his father, but tarnished 
 the respectability of the family by his behaviour. 
 The only reason for recalling the scandal of which 
 he was the hero is that it throws a certain light upon 
 the manners and tone of the Genevan society of 
 the period, but for that reason it may be worth 
 while to quote Julie von Bondeli's account of it. 
 B 17 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 "It is," she writes, "a Madame Vernes, a 
 merchant's wife, who has had an affair of 
 gallantry with Professor Necker. That lady is 
 not Rousseau's Julie ; but Rousseau, in his letter 
 to d'Alembert, said that there had never been a 
 woman of genius except 'Sappho and one other,' 
 and that ' one other ' is said to be Madame 
 Vernes, whom Rousseau saw at Geneva in '53 
 or '54. Madame V. was the daughter of an 
 indigent attorney. Vernes, who is rich, saw her 
 in spite of the opposition of his parents, and, 
 being unable to marry, became the father of a 
 child which she bore him without any public 
 scandal, and without losing her reputation for 
 being as virtuous as she was beautiful and clever. 
 At last Vernes obtains the consent of his parents, 
 and, to the general astonishment, there appears 
 in church with him a child eighteen months old. 
 Papa and mamma were, according to the chaste 
 laws of their country, thrown into prison ; but the 
 parents worshipped the bride, and the public not 
 only forgave but idolised her. Never before had 
 such a thing been seen in this pure and holy city. 
 
 "At the birth of her second child she had an 
 
 abscess inconveniently situated, and the treatment 
 
 of it tortured her for three years. She set an 
 
 example of stoicism. Her chamber was an 
 
 Academy, and her bed the tribunal of grace, 
 
 virtue, and genius. Never did a woman enjoy 
 
 such a beautiful reputation. Tronchin ^ cured her. 
 
 Necker fell in love with her. The husband 
 
 discovered letters, treacherously fired a pistol at 
 
 the lover, and then ran away in despair. The 
 
 matter was hushed up for a fortnight ; but the 
 
 ^ The famous physician of Geneva. 
 18 
 
Jacques Necker 
 
 tribunes of the people made inquiries, and the 
 public prosecutor would not belie his oath. 
 Necker denied that the husband had wounded 
 him, and the lady backed him up ; but the 
 surgeon who was called in found out the truth. 
 The husband surrendered himself to justice as 
 a murderer ; but Necker saved him from the 
 scaffold by denying that he was anything of the 
 kind, and submitted to a sentence of perpetual 
 banishment. . . . The lady withdrew to Savoy. 
 Six months afterwards she returned to Geneva, 
 and so artfully rehabilitated her reputation that 
 people only regarded her as imprudent and 
 unfortunate. That done, she went to join Necker 
 at Cadiz." 
 
 Such is the story, on which it seems superfluous 
 to moralise, though it may have its significance 
 to the student of heredity as the first indication 
 of warm blood pulsing in the veins of a family 
 chiefly famous for dry legal erudition and dry 
 financial genius. Our business now is to follow 
 the fortunes of the younger and more gifted 
 brother. 
 
 He was the very type of the man who, by 
 sheer will, succeeds in a calling for which he has 
 more aptitude than inclination. Having to be 
 a banker, he resolved to be a good banker ; but 
 he would far rather have been somethingf else — 
 a scholar, for instance, or a comic poet. At 
 Geneva he was scholar enough to take a prize 
 over the heads of lads mostly two years his 
 senior. In Paris he was sufficiently a comic poet 
 
 19 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 to write comic poetry, though he refused to 
 publish it. "To have done so," he said, "would 
 have affected my whole career. The reputation 
 of a comic author has never been compatible 
 with the serious dignity required from a Prime 
 Minister." Countrymen of Canning cannot be 
 expected to assent to that opinion. But it is 
 possible — it is even probable — that Necker's light 
 verse was not so good as Canning's, and in that 
 case he was wise in suppressing it. 
 
 It was as a clerk in Vernet's bank that he 
 began his financial career. He was speedily pro- 
 moted to be head clerk ; and Vernet, on retiring 
 from business, showed his appreciation of his 
 services by financing him as a partner of the 
 Thelussons ; and Thelusson's, under his direc- 
 tion, soon became the greatest banking-house 
 in France. In this way he had already reached 
 a great position when he made the acquaintance 
 of Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod. 
 
 Mademoiselle Curchod had just taken a situa- 
 tion as " companion " to Madame Vermenoux, 
 a widow and a lady of fashion, who sometimes 
 made her feel that she was not quite fashionable 
 enough for the post. Steinlen, in his Life of 
 Bonstetten, tells us how Madame Vermenoux 
 sometimes snubbed her. " Go out of the room. 
 Mademoiselle," she said to her, "and return, 
 making another curtsey. I do not wish you to 
 make me ashamed of you at Paris." Necker 
 was, at the time, paying his addresses to Madame 
 
 20 
 
Transferred Affections 
 
 Vermenoux, and, somehow or other, it came 
 about that he transferred his affections from the 
 mistress to the companion. 
 
 Naturally there are two versions of the story. 
 The one is that the companion deliberately set 
 herself to " cut out " her mistress ; the other that 
 the mistress herself contrived the marriage in 
 order to get rid of an unwelcome suitor. The 
 latter view is maliciously stated in the Memoirs 
 of the Baronne d'Oberkirch.^ 
 
 " For my part, I did not like M. Necker. I was 
 struck with his incredible likeness to Cagliostro, 
 though he lacked Cagliostro's sparkling eyes and 
 dazzling expression. He was, as it were, a con- 
 strained Cagliostro, of stiff, unpleasant manners ; 
 there was nothing agreeable about him except 
 his determination to make himself agreeable.") 
 Madame Necker is still worse. In spite of the 
 high positions which she has occupied, she is a 
 schoolmistress and nothing more. The daughter 
 of a village pastor named Curchod, she was given 
 an excellent education, from which she profits in 
 a perverse kind of way. She is beautiful with- 
 out being agreeable, and benevolent without 
 making herself beloved. Her body, her mind, 
 and her heart are all wanting in grace. God, 
 before creating her, must have soaked her, in- 
 side and out, in starch. She will never acquire 
 the art of pleasing. To sum it up in a sentence, 
 she can neither weep nor smile. Her father was 
 
 ^ An Alsatian lady. Her Memoirs are among our best sources 
 of information concerning social conditions in Paris just before 
 the Revolution. 
 
 21 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 poor ; she set up a girls' school at Geneva, and 
 was brought to Paris by Madame Vermenoux, 
 who is well known for her beauty and her addic- 
 tion to gallantry. This Madame de Vermenoux 
 was on intimate terms with Abb6 Raynal, with 
 M. de Marmontel, with other philosophers, and 
 with M. Necker. The last-named bored her, 
 and I am quite sure he would have bored me just 
 as much. It occurred to her to get rid of him by 
 marrying him to Mademoiselle Curchod. 
 
 " ' They will bore each other so much,' she said, 
 'that they will be provided with an occupation.* 
 
 " They did not bore each other, but they bored 
 all the rest of the world, worshipping each other, 
 paying compliments to each other, burning incense 
 to each other without cessation. Each became 
 the other's thurifer. Madame Necker in par- 
 ticular became the thurifer of her husband." 
 
 The spite is here too frankly exhibited for the 
 narrative to inspire much confidence ; but the 
 truth, so far as one can spell it out, seems to be 
 this : that Madame Vermenoux did really want 
 to pass on M. Necker to her companion, but that 
 the companion did not know it, and conscientiously 
 believed herself to be poaching on her mistress's 
 preserves. One infers that, in the first place, 
 from the fact that the marriage was a secret 
 one, and in the second place, from a passage 
 in a letter from Madame Necker to Pastor 
 Moultou : " I wish that she would not attribute 
 our marriage to her own action. I am rather 
 offended with her ; and my husband, who says I 
 
 32 
 
A Happy Marriage 
 
 am the only woman he ever loved, is annoyed at 
 her speeches." 
 
 Whatever the origin of the marriage, however, 
 its result was happiness. To be happy, and yet 
 to be well-conducted, was with Madame Necker 
 almost an instinct. Her goal had always been a 
 home and a high position in society. She had 
 won it ; she was satisfied with it ; she adorned it. 
 She had no craving for new sentimental sensa- 
 tions — no restless need for a grand passion to fill 
 an empty life. Platonic friendships, perhaps, — 
 the appreciation of these appears in the corre- 
 spondence with Thomas, and Gibbon, and others, 
 — but decidedly no grand passions. That was to 
 be the line of cleavage between the mother and 
 the daughter : the mother, who had the Grassier 
 parsonage and the Genevan Puritanism close 
 behind her, and whose life was amply filled by 
 her cares for her husband and her salon ; the 
 daughter, removed by a generation from these 
 pious and simple antecedents, beginning to live 
 at a time when strange convulsions were shaking 
 the foundations of a corrupt society, an ^migrde 
 cut adrift from such moorings as a fixed place in 
 any fatherland might have afforded — thrown back 
 upon sentiment as the one reality which, incarnate 
 in many shapes, could still make life possible and 
 even tolerable. Our business here shall be with 
 the fierce sentimental strivings of that tempestuous 
 career. 
 
 23 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The grandeur of the Neckers — Madame Necker and her poor 
 relations — Birth of a daughter — Her education in a salon — 
 And in a garden — Necker in office — And out of office — A 
 course of foreign travel — The purchase of Coppet — The 
 place of exile. 
 
 The Neckers grew in grandeur. M. Necker's 
 Eloge de Colbert was "crowned" by the 
 Academy; from 1768 he was the accredited 
 diplomatic representative of Geneva at the Court 
 of Versailles; in 1776 he was called to the 
 direction of the French Exchequer. The in- 
 creasing dignity is reflected in many of Madame 
 Necker's letters ^ — especially in those which define 
 her attitude towards her poor relations in the 
 Canton of Vaud. 
 
 She was very good to them, though they were 
 very exacting. She paid children's school bills, 
 and gave annuities to aunts. But when cousins 
 propose to visit her — that is another matter. A 
 certain Cousin Toton, it seems, was anxious to 
 come. " Could I have the audacity," Madame 
 Necker asks, "to make her change her name, 
 and disavow my relationship to her? Even if 
 I were willing to do so, would my husband and 
 my servants keep my secret ? On the other 
 
 ^ Published in Etrennes HelvHiques in 1901. 
 24 
 
Madame Necker's Poor Relations 
 
 hand, how could I introduce her as my relation 
 in a house frequented by persons of all ranks in 
 society, and in which, to be appropriately dressed, 
 she would have to spend at least a thousand 
 French crowns a year ? To say nothing of her 
 manners, her way of speaking, and a thousand 
 other trifles which, without detracting from her 
 real merit, would make the most unfortunate 
 impression in a country in which people judge 
 by appearances?" And Madame Necker begs 
 her correspondent not to show Toton her letter, 
 but to acquaint her with its contents, toning them 
 down and making them as palatable as possibles 
 
 The thing was done ; but Toton had to be 
 admonished, in a further letter, for her unreason- 
 able jealousy. 
 
 " I am sure, from the knowledge I have of 
 her character and her talents, that she would 
 not have endured for six months the role which 
 I am filling. She seems to imagine that, in 
 marrying M. Necker, I have acquired the right 
 — or almost so — of reducing him to a narrow 
 life on a small income, and dispensing his fortune 
 in accordance with my whims. 
 
 ** M. Necker, while leaving me the greatest 
 liberty, most reasonably desires to satisfy his 
 own tastes, to live with dignity, and to receive 
 in his house a society which requires from me 
 the greatest consideration and a kind of tact 
 which I have much difficulty in acquiring. If 
 I asked him to live differently, if I introduced 
 excessive economies into his establishment, if I 
 
 25 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 were cross and ill-tempered about such things, 
 I should soon be an object of indifference to 
 him — I might even say of dislike. A husband 
 to whom, after the Supreme Being, one owes 
 everything — a husband who enjoys considera- 
 tion, who has cultivated tastes and a refined 
 wit, cannot be treated as one would treat 
 M. Puthod. I have told you, Madame, more than 
 was necessary for the enlightenment of a mind 
 so intelligent as yours. I am persuaded that 
 your intelligence and your knowledge of men 
 and things have, more than once, caused you to 
 place yourself in my position ; but my cousin 
 seems to me to be capable of holding only one 
 idea in her head at a time." 
 
 The argument seems reasonable enough, though 
 the tone strikes one as excessively self-righteous. 
 There is something in the letter, in fact, which 
 helps to explain why the writer's Parisian friends 
 were so fond of scoffing at her as "the school- 
 mistress " — why she never really succeeded in 
 becoming a popular exponent of the virtues 
 which she practised and adorned — why Gibbon, 
 on resuming his friendship with her, was obliged 
 to "laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her 
 to become a simple, reasonable Suissesse." Here, 
 however, one can only briefly note its unconscious 
 self-revelations, and must then pass on to record 
 the birth of Madame Necker's only daughter. 
 
 Anne- Louise -Germaine Necker was born in 
 Paris on April 22, 1766, and was brought up in 
 a salon. That summary may almost suffice. To 
 
 26 
 
Education in a Salon 
 
 draw the picture, one has little to do but to recite 
 the names and imagine the illustrious bearers of 
 them presenting themselves on Fridays : Diderot 
 and d'Alembert, the Encyclopaedists, the Abbds 
 Morellet, Raynal, and Galiani, Baron Grimm,^ 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, to be famous presently 
 as the author of Paul et Virginie, Dr. Tronchin, 
 the fashionable physician, M. de Marmontel, 
 Madame Necker's platonic friend Thomas, MM. 
 Saint- Lambert and Suard, Lord Stormont, "the 
 handsome Englishman," and, on certain occasions, 
 Gibbon and David Hume. In the midst of them, 
 the little girl sat bolt upright on a high chair, 
 listening, listening, listening. That early spell 
 of silence, says a wit, lasted her for the rest of 
 her life ; though it is surely an excess of cynicism 
 to demand silence from those who are able to 
 talk well. The time came too when she talked 
 as well as listened; The celebrities drew her out, 
 discussing all imaginable topics with the child, 
 just as with a grown-up person. Marmontel 
 wrote verses to her. Little essays which she 
 wrote were circulated by Grimm, in his corre- 
 spondence, in proof of her remarkable precocity. 
 
 Then came illness — that vague, unclassifiable 
 disturbance of the nerves which so often stands 
 waiting for precocious genius on the threshold of 
 maturity — an incomprehensible malady akin to 
 
 ^ The lover of Madame d'Epinay, and the originator of the 
 Correspondence LitUraire — a circular letter of literary gossip to 
 which German princes subscribed. 
 
 27 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 that which overtook DisraeH after the writing of 
 Vivian Grey, and sent him on his first foreign 
 travels. Dr. Tronchin was called in — the same 
 Dr. Tronchin who had dared to open the windows 
 at the palace of Versailles. He decreed fresh 
 air and idleness. The child had been living an 
 unnatural life in a forcing-house. Her mother 
 had been too zealous for her education. Let her 
 go out into the garden and stay there. 
 
 So Germaine Necker was sent to Saint-Ouen 
 with her friend, Mademoiselle Huber ^ — to the 
 great chagrin of her mother, who could not 
 accompany her because of her social duties, and 
 who was far too much of a pedant to understand 
 that it may be good for a child to be left to grow 
 up without the constant supervision of adults. 
 "A life of poetry," writes her cousin and first 
 biographer, Madame Necker de Saussure, 
 " succeeded to a life of study, and her abundant 
 energies found a more imaginative expression. 
 She ran about in the shrubberies of Saint-Ouen 
 with her friend ; and the two girls, dressed up as 
 nymphs or muses, used to recite verses, or 
 compose poems and dramas of all kinds, and 
 to act them." The poems and stories which 
 she liked best, says the same authority, were 
 those which made her weep. We note the fact 
 as the first fore-warning of the gift of tears, to 
 be bestowed on her abundantly. 
 
 ^ Afterwards Madame Rilliet. She remained on terms of 
 intimacy with Madame de Stael until the end. 
 
 28 
 
Necker's Dismissal 
 
 Anecdotes of her girlhood abound, and may 
 be sought in the works of Dr. Stevens, Lady 
 Blennerhassett, and M. d'Haussonville. They 
 prove that she adored her father — a king of men 
 to her, though to Gibbon only a " sensible, good- 
 natured creature " ; that she respectfully accepted, 
 rather than idolised, her mother ; that, in spite of 
 the interruption of her studies, her precocity con- 
 tinued to excite remark. Madame Necker, in fact, 
 somewhat lost interest in a daughter whom, as she 
 no longer educated her, she could no longer take 
 pride in as "her work"; but M. Necker encouraged 
 her, albeit checking her extravagances with gentle 
 raillery. " To his incredible insight," she often 
 said, " I owe the frankness of my character. . . . 
 He stripped the mask from my affectations." 
 
 The first public event that meant much to her 
 was M. Necker's dismissal in 1781 from the 
 office assigned to him in 1776; his policy of 
 retrenchment being unpopular with influential 
 persons who found their salaries reduced or their 
 sinecures abolished. He justified himself in his 
 famous Compte rendu sur les finances, and replied 
 to Calonne's attack on the Compte rendu in the 
 Press, but the day came when he was bidden to 
 betake himself at least forty leagues from Paris. 
 " An exile appeared to me," writes his daughter, 
 " the most cruel act that could be committed. I 
 exclaimed in despair when I heard of it. I could 
 not conceive of a greater misfortune." 
 
 Afterwards, it may be, looking back on the 
 
 29 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 event, she could see in her father's misfortune the 
 premonition of her own. The condemnation to 
 reside at least forty leagues from Paris was to be, 
 in her case, not only a trouble but a cause of 
 trouble. Through it, she was to live as the 
 sensitive plant uprooted, and to be driven to seek 
 sentimental solace with characteristic desperation. 
 She could not be expected to foresee that then, 
 however ; and exile for the moment meant only 
 retirement to a country estate at Marolles, an 
 excursion to the watering-place of Plombieres for 
 her mother's health, a visit to Buffon, the 
 naturalist, at Montbard, and a course of foreign 
 travel. Lausanne, among other places, was re- 
 visited. " I saw there," writes Bonstetten, who 
 came to see them, " the future Madame de Stael, in 
 all the charm of youth, of intellect, and of coquetry." 
 They met other old friends there — many of them 
 fugitives from the justice of Louis xvi. Gibbon 
 was living there, and his picture of the company 
 in a letter to Lord Sheffield is like a paragraph 
 from a society paper. 
 
 *'A few weeks ago I was walking on our 
 terrace with M. Tissot, our celebrated physician ; 
 M. Mercier, the author of the Tableau de Paris; the 
 Abbe Raynal ; Monsieur, Madame, and Made- 
 moiselle Necker; the Abbe de Bourbon, a natural 
 son of Lewis the Fifteenth ; the Hereditary Prince 
 of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, and a 
 dozen Counts, Barons, and extraordinary persons." 
 
 It was about this time, too, — his daughter being 
 30 
 
The Purchase of Coppet 
 
 then eighteen years of age, — that M. Necker 
 bought the property of Coppet from his old 
 partner, Thelusson, paying for it 500,000 livres in 
 French money, together with about one-third of 
 that sum, in taxes due on the transfer, to the 
 Bernese Government. 
 
 The house and grounds have hardly been 
 altered, if at all, since the day when the banished 
 banker — not feeling the less an exile because he 
 was in his own and his wife's native country — took 
 possession of them. Thousands of trippers have 
 trooped there under guidance ; most of them, per- 
 haps, gaping and wondering why they have been 
 brought there, and what are these stories that 
 their guide is telling them in a strange tongue, so 
 hard to follow when it is spoken fast ; a few of 
 them — a very few in these personally conducted 
 days — silently moved by the many memories 
 which the scene evokes. 
 
 One enters a spacious courtyard through a 
 vaulted gate, passing the old tower containing the 
 "archives" which hold so many secrets, still 
 only partially revealed. One climbs a broad 
 staircase, and notes that the walls are embellished 
 with armorial bearings — for M. Necker, as we 
 have seen, shared the Swiss delight in these 
 decorative links with the past, and was easily 
 persuaded of his personal title to them. One 
 passes through bedchambers severely luxurious 
 in eighteenth-century style. One walks through 
 a French window on to a balcony, and looks down 
 
 31 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 over a garden, and out over the blue lake to the 
 dark forested hills of Savoy. One lingers longest 
 in the large drawing-room, with its portraits and 
 other relics of the past, inviting slow inspection ; 
 and the most interesting moment is when the 
 guide — that decorous and distinguished family 
 retainer — points to one particular miniature, and 
 says, in tones suggesting that the matter really is of 
 no importance : "M. Benjamin Constant — homme 
 de lettres qui visitait le chateau de temps en temps." 
 For then one knows, or may know if one cares to, 
 that he has touched, though lightly, and as if he 
 would hush it up, the fringe of the great love story 
 which gives a visit to Coppet its real interest. 
 
 Still thinking of that love story, one escapes 
 from guidance, and passes out through a gateway 
 to roam at leisure in the park. Here are straight 
 avenues of trees — " her friends who watched over 
 her destiny," as Madame de Stael was to call 
 them. Here is a spacious central meadow, 
 bordered by a stream spanned by rustic bridges. 
 Here are benches to sit down upon ; here flowers 
 grow, and here a fountain bubbles. Sylvan, 
 Arcadian — those are the epithets that come to 
 mind. One expects shepherds and shepherdesses, 
 as in a Watteau picture ; and one knows what real 
 shepherds and shepherdesses have here disported 
 themselves — what eclogues they have chanted — 
 how they have loved, and quarrelled, and been 
 reconciled. We shall meet them, and tell of their 
 loves and quarrels presently. 
 
 32 
 
The Place of Exile 
 
 Truly a gilded exile — a place to make one in 
 love with exile, if that could ever be — but an exile, 
 none the less, and therefore in some sense bitter 
 to those who came to dwell in it. For 
 Necker was to come there to die, expelled first 
 by an ungrateful king, and then by an ungrateful 
 people — the pilot who had failed to weather the 
 storm. And Necker's daughter was to come 
 there to live otherwise than as she wished — to feel 
 herself not a flower duly planted in the garden, 
 but an uprooted flower flung upon the grass — a 
 mere spectator of the drama in which she wished 
 to be an actor — thrown back upon her passions, 
 and striving to make some sort of a life for herself 
 somehow by their treacherous aid. 
 
 33 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Mademoiselle Necker's early writings — Her secrets revealed in 
 her short stories — Her love for General Guibert — The match- 
 makers at work — Marriage to the Baron de Stael-Holstein. 
 
 The real exile, of which the journey to Switzerland 
 was, in some sense, a foretaste, was still, however, 
 to be delayed for a good many years. Necker 
 was back again in Paris presently, and Madame 
 Necker again had her salon there, though its 
 character was somewhat altered, and the 
 philosophers gave way to the politicians. The 
 ex-Minister was a personage, though out of favour 
 with the Court. Moderate reformers rallied round 
 him, and his ultimate recall to office might be 
 foreseen. His daughter had reached a marriage- 
 able age, and a husband had to be found for 
 her. 
 
 Mademoiselle Necker had not inherited her 
 mother's beauty, though even that beauty, if we 
 may trust the judgment of a modern taste upon 
 the collection of portraits at Coppet, was much 
 exaggerated by complimentary report. At the 
 most she possessed only the beautd du Diable, 
 and her chief charm was in her vivacity and 
 intelligence. It would have been premature to 
 say of her as yet, as was said afterwards, that she 
 
 34 
 
Mile Necker's Early Writings 
 
 combined the heart of a woman with the brain of 
 a man, but the tendencies which were presently 
 to call forth that verdict must already have been 
 discernible. She had begun to write, though not 
 to publish. We have seen how her childish 
 essays — mostly "characters" of her friends and 
 acquaintances — were copied and exhibited by 
 Grimm. At the time of her father's disgrace, 
 when she was only fifteen, she delighted him with 
 an anonymous letter of sympathy, the authorship 
 of which he speedily divined. A little later she 
 wrote comedies, tragedies, short stories. It is 
 worth while to glance back at the writings, not 
 critically, but in order to satisfy ourselves upon 
 what plane of ideas this precocious child was 
 moving. 
 
 We need not wonder at finding the note 
 melancholy and even morbid. That is the note 
 of youth, and especially of the youth of the North, 
 when artistically gifted and able to stand aloof 
 from the battle of life. The girl had more 
 German than French blood in her veins, and 
 morbid literary influences were prevalent. The 
 sorrows of Werther had temporarily unbalanced 
 some of the sanest minds — the mind, for instance, 
 of Ramond de Carbonniere, subsequently to be 
 known as the hardy pioneer of the Pyrenees, who 
 made his ddbut as the author of a drama relating 
 the adventures of a youth whose way out of an 
 impasse of the affections was to wander over the 
 world in disguise and finally to blow out his 
 
 35 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 brains amid the ruins of an ancient castle. In 
 sprinkling her pages with death in many a shape, 
 Mademoiselle Necker was only swimming, or 
 drifting, with the literary tide. Her problems 
 and her solutions were equally taken from the 
 common stock ; she added nothing to it. 
 
 More significant, in view of her tender age, are 
 the sentiments which transpire with regard to love 
 and marriage. She is already thinking of love 
 as something apart from marriage — something 
 which has as little to do with marriage as Lord 
 Melbourne considered that religion ought to have 
 to do with private life. In Sophie ou les sentimens 
 secrets, we see love threatening to break up 
 domestic peace. Sophie, the orphan girl, is in 
 love with her guardian, who is the husband of her 
 dearest friend. In Adelaide et Theodore we have 
 a heroine who goes to her marriage as to her 
 doom, not loving her husband, and sure that she 
 will never love him, lamenting the end of all 
 sentimental things. 
 
 '* Adelaide was in despair. Her romantic dream 
 of happiness was destroyed. She resisted longer 
 than might have been expected from a girl of her 
 age ; but, at a ball, consent was at last wrung from 
 her. On the morrow of the fatal day she wrote 
 a letter full of melancholy to her aunt. ' There 
 is no more hope for me,' she said. * They have 
 robbed me of my future. The happiness of loving 
 is for ever forbidden to me. I shall die without 
 knowing what life is. Nothing that can happen 
 
 36 
 
Love Apart from Marriage 
 
 can concern me any more. All things are one to 
 me.' A few days later she wrote : * I must let 
 my senses be dazed. I must let myself be caught 
 in the whirlwind of life. For me there is neither 
 happiness nor unhappiness any longer. I can no 
 more take pleasure in dreaming. I yield to the 
 torrent. I love whatever makes the time pass 
 faster.' " 
 
 And then follows the story of the marriage, 
 with a striking expression of disdain for the 
 unhappy husband. The young bride is the queen 
 of the Parisian salons, and yet — " In the midst of 
 her transports of joy at the fUes and her success 
 in them, Adelaide was always kind to her husband, 
 for she reflected that even fools have their 
 vanity." 
 
 The passages are instructive ; for the emotion 
 and the psychology discovered in them were not 
 wholly derived from books. Dates settle that. 
 The story, though not printed until 1795, was 
 written in 1 786 — in the year, that is to say, of the 
 author's own marriage. It seems wrong to say, 
 therefore, with Madame Necker de Saussure and 
 Dr. Stevens, that "the chief importance of the 
 little volume is in its introduction, which is a 
 critical essay of remarkable ability on Fictitious 
 Literature, written at a later date." Its import- 
 ance is as a bitter cry, uttered either on the eve 
 or on the morrow of a wedding, and a piece of 
 evidence, strangely overlooked, determining for 
 us the frame of mind in which Mademoiselle 
 
 37 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Necker entered upon her union with the Baron 
 de Stael- Holstein. It is useless, after reading it, 
 any longer to profess ignorance of her sentiments. 
 The proof of them is there, and we have no need 
 of any further witness. The bride who, not 
 being a professional writer of fiction, wrote like 
 that, was pouring out her soul upon the paper, 
 and telling her secret to future generations. She 
 was in love, indeed, but not with the Baron de 
 Stael- Holstein. 
 
 The man whom she loved was General Guibert, 
 — a handsome, plausible soldier, with literary as 
 well as military talents, — best known to the world 
 as the suitor who seduced the affections of 
 d'Alembert's mistress. Mademoiselle Lespinasse, 
 and then deserted her and broke her heart. She 
 admitted as much to Miss Burney at Mickle- 
 ham ; and there is corroborative evidence in that 
 Eloge of General Guibert, written by her at the 
 time of his death, in 1790, locked up in her 
 desk for the remainder of her life, and published 
 posthumously by her son. 
 
 He must have been a worthless, albeit in his 
 way a dazzling, man. His treatment of Made- 
 moiselle Lespinasse was heartless, and worse. He 
 refused to return her letters when she asked for 
 them ; he left them lying about for all the world 
 to see ; when he did, under pressure, return some 
 of them, letters from other ladies were carelessly 
 included in the parcel. But Madame de Stael 
 was not to know anything about that. She only 
 
 38 
 
Panegyric on Guibert 
 
 knew that she had felt the fascination ; so that 
 the Eloge, in form a panegyric such as might 
 have been pronounced in a solemn session of the 
 Academy of Letters, was in essence a lamentation 
 to which it might indeed have been embarrassing 
 for the wife of the Swedish Ambassador publicly 
 to subscribe her name. 
 
 •' Ah, who," she cries, " will give me back those 
 long talks, so rich in imagination and ideas ? It 
 was not by weeping with you that he consoled 
 you for your troubles, but no one did more to 
 soften your sorrows, and to help you to bear 
 the weight of your reflections, by teaching you 
 to look at them in all their aspects. He was 
 not a friend for every moment, or for every 
 day. His thoughts, and perhaps his personality, 
 distracted his attention from other people. But, 
 to say nothing of the great services which he 
 would render you — services of which too many 
 profess themselves capable, and for which you 
 could always depend upon M. de Guibert — his 
 whole soul, when he spoke to you, seemed to be 
 yours." 
 
 That is the writing of a woman who has loved 
 the man of whom she writes — whose emotion has 
 thrown even her sentences into confusion ; and 
 there is also evidence of a kind of the warmth 
 of Guibert's own feelings. Madame de Stael, 
 in this same Eloge, speaks of his "profound 
 admiration for my father." He had no such 
 admiration for the father, but affected it for the 
 
 39 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 daughter's sake. His real sentiments about 
 Necker are recorded in his own journal : 
 " Received from Paris the reply to M. Necker's 
 book. I was thoroughly satisfied with it. The 
 author proves to demonstration the contradictions 
 into which M. Necker has fallen, and the entire 
 failure of his arguments to lead to any conclusion." 
 
 There could be no question here of marriage, 
 however, since General Guibert already had a 
 wife — the lady who took such interest, not to 
 say such pride, in his extra-conjugal amours that 
 she actually published the letters which he had 
 refused to return to Mademoiselle Lespinasse. 
 The Neckers, moreover, were Protestants, and 
 a Protestant husband had therefore to be sought, 
 and was not easily to be found in Paris. The 
 story of the attempt to arrange a match with 
 William Pitt is well known, though Pitt's alleged 
 reply that he was "already married to his 
 country" rests upon very dubious authority. 
 The name of the Swedish Count Fersen was 
 also suggested, though the Neckers can hardly 
 have been ignorant of the scandalous report 
 which represented him as the lover of Marie- 
 Antoinette. In fact, all the negotiations for the 
 disposal of the hand of the great heiress were 
 conducted to their conclusion in favour of the 
 Baron de Stael-Holstein with a slow deliberation 
 which can fairly be called cold-blooded. 
 
 The bridegroom frankly wanted the dowry. 
 Practically nothing but the desire for the dowry 
 
 40 
 
Match-Makers at Work 
 
 appears in the correspondence — it contains no 
 single reference to any other of the attractions 
 which the bride possessed. The Baron de Stael- 
 Holstein "played up to" the dowry for seven 
 years — from 1779, when Mademoiselle Necker 
 was only thirteen, and when the Ambassador at 
 that date representing Sweden reported to Stock- 
 holm that he was "in a pitiful condition, at the 
 end of his resources, and without a penny in 
 his pocket." The mutual friend through whom 
 he approached the Neckers was Madame de 
 Boufflers,^ who did not like Mademoiselle Necker, 
 but did like M. de Stael, thought that the heiress 
 would be a *' catch" for him, and was anxious 
 to do him a good turn. Necker, on his part, 
 appears in the transaction as showing equally 
 little regard for the inclinations of his daughter, 
 but lays down hard conditions, like a king 
 arranging the marriage of a princess. - If His 
 Swedish Majesty will assure M. de Stael the 
 Swedish Embassy in perpetuity, and will make 
 him a Count, and will bestow upon him the Order 
 of the Polar Star, etc. etc. etc., then he will give 
 his consent to the union. And if not, not. 
 
 So the thing drags on. The proposal is the 
 subject of interminable letters — most of them of 
 a painfully sordid character. At times M. de 
 Stael is in despair. He does not know how to 
 keep the wolf from the door through all these 
 long delays. " The hopes," he writes to Gustavus, 
 
 ^ Wife of the Governor of Senegal. 
 41 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " which your Majesty permitted me to form have 
 vanished like a cloud of smoke. I am in terrible 
 embarrassment, and I do not know how to save 
 myself from the precipice unless your Majesty 
 deigns," etc. etc.; and Madame de Boufflers 
 writes on his behalf that he has, on the strength 
 of his expectations, incurred debts to the extent 
 of 200,000 francs. Necker, however, remains 
 obdurate, and insists on his conditions, and at 
 last Gustavus is willing to treat him as a rival 
 potentate, and to make terms with him. Every- 
 thing was arranged over Mademoiselle Necker's 
 head. She was quite unquestionably sacrificed 
 on the altar of her father's ambition, though her 
 devotion to him blinded her, at least partially, 
 to the fact. The marriage was celebrated on 
 January 14, 1786. To see how it was regarded 
 by those who had brought it about — or at all 
 events by the bridegroom's friends — we have 
 only to turn to a letter which Madame de 
 Boufflers wrote to the King of Sweden almost 
 immediately after the event. 
 
 "I hope," she says, "that M. de Stael will be 
 happy, but I do not expect it. His wife, it is 
 true, has been brought up in honourable and 
 virtuous principles, but she has no experience 
 of the world and no knowledge of the con- 
 venances^ and is so spoiled and so opinionated 
 that it will be difficult to make her perceive her 
 deficiencies. She is much too imperious and self- 
 willed. I have never, in any position in society, 
 
 42 
 
Madame de Boufflers' Cynicism 
 
 seen such self-assurance in a woman of her age. 
 She argues about everything, and, clever though 
 she is, one could count twenty lapses from good 
 form for one good thing that she says. The 
 Ambassador dares not speak to her about it for 
 fear of alienating her in the early days of his 
 married life. For my own part, I exhort him 
 to begin by being firm with her, for I know 
 that the whole course of a married life is often 
 determined by the beginning that a man makes. 
 For the rest, her father's friends praise her to the 
 skies, his enemies find her ridiculous in a thousand 
 ways, while those who are impartial in the matter 
 render justice to her intelligence, but complain 
 that she talks too much and is more brilliant 
 than sensible or tactful. If she were not so 
 spoiled by the incense burnt in her honour, I 
 should try to give her a little advice." 
 
 This, from the chief contriver of the marriage, 
 is cynicism open and unabashed. From 
 Necker there naturally is no such avowal. He 
 probably confused his daughter's interests with 
 his own, being that sort of self-centred but well- 
 meaning man, and of an age to regard grandeur 
 as a more tangible thing than love. Of the 
 bride's view of the transaction we have had our 
 glimpse in our extract from her short story ; and 
 the same document reads very like a declaration 
 of her plans for dealing with the situation. She 
 would seek distraction ; she would live her own 
 life. But she would remember that fools have 
 their vanity, and would be kind. 
 
 43 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 That, at any rate, whether as the result of 
 deliberate intention or of accident and circum- 
 stance, was pretty much how things fell out. 
 Madame de Stael was kind to her husband, 
 perhaps, even to the point of helping him to 
 write his despatches. But the seeds of estrange- 
 ment were already sown, and were soon to 
 germinate. The marriage failed ; and though 
 there exists nowhere any full record of the 
 failure, we can see how complete it was from 
 an occasional passage alike in Madame de. 
 Stael's letters and in her published writings. 
 ** For you," she writes to Rosalie de Constant, 
 whom we shall meet again, — " for you who have 
 neither a husband to fear nor children to look 
 after there remains a future " ; and in one of 
 her earliest essays, De V Influence des Passions 
 sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations, there 
 is a strikingly sad comment on the marriage tie. 
 
 " It is the tie of all others in which it is least 
 possible to obtain the romantic happiness of the 
 heart. To keep the peace in this relationship 
 it is necessary to exercise a self-control and 
 to make sacrifices which cause this kind of 
 existence to approximate much more nearly to 
 the pleasures of virtue than to the joys of 
 passion." 
 
 This is a confession, if an informal one, meant 
 only for those who could read between the lines ; 
 and it would be an idle enterprise to attempt too 
 
 44 
 
"Robbed of her Future" 
 
 carefully to apportion praise and blame. All 
 that one can profitably say is this : that M. de 
 Stael was a wooden-headed man and a gambler, 
 who had married for money, and for no other 
 reason ; and that, when such a man marries a 
 young woman who is both brilliant and fascinating 
 — even if she be not beautiful — the first steps on 
 the road that leads to disaster have been taken, 
 and the wife must be judged at least as leniently 
 as the husband, when the hour of the catastrophe 
 arrives. 
 
 Let us, then, apply that rule. The proximate 
 causes of the dissension between Monsieur and 
 Madame de Stael will then seem to matter little, 
 while its ultimate causes will be clear. We have 
 only to turn back to the story of Adelaide et 
 Theodore to find them foreshadowed. There we 
 have read the lamentation of the girl who was 
 " robbed of her future " by her marriage. Now, 
 at a later stage, we see the girl trying to 
 win back what she has lost, resolved to dream 
 her romantic dream, whoever says her nay, 
 denying the right of parent or husband or priest 
 to slam the door on sentiment for ever, asserting 
 her claim to live her life and to find happiness 
 where she can — claiming especially to find happi- 
 ness in love, since love always appears to her as 
 the highest manifestation of virtue, even when 
 she must trample on the world's conventions to 
 attain it. 
 
 45 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Necker recalled to office — Dismissed — Recalled again after the 
 fall of the Bastille — Fails — Resigns — Retires to Coppet — 
 Madame de Stael's essay on the works of Rousseau — Infer- 
 ences that can be drawn from it — Madame de Stael's salon — 
 Description of it by Gouverneur Morris — Progress of the 
 Revolution — Madame de Stael saves her friends, and then 
 leaves Paris. 
 
 We shall see how Madame de Stael lived her 
 life during the years of the Revolution, already, at 
 the time of her marriage, almost in sight ; but we 
 must first see how her father lived his. 
 
 We left Necker out of office, and he was to 
 
 remain out of office for some time longer ; but 
 
 his successors were making a sad mess of the 
 
 national finances, and his recall to cope with 
 
 the emergency became more and more obviously 
 
 inevitable. Calonne was a failure, and had to go. 
 
 There followed in succession M. de Fourqueux 
 
 and M. de Villedeuil, giving place in their turn to 
 
 Lom^nie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, 
 
 afterwards Archbishop of Sens. He lasted for 
 
 eighteen months, and then the King sent for 
 
 Necker. The populace cheered him, and burnt 
 
 the Archbishop in effigy ; and the funds rose 
 
 thirty per cent, in a single day. That was in 
 
 August 1788. The assembling of the States- 
 
 46 
 
Necker is Recalled, but Fails 
 
 General followed, and Necker supposed himself 
 to have succeeded as the people's Minister. " As 
 Malebranche saw all things in God," said the wit, 
 ** so M. Necker sees all things in Necker." There 
 was a day when the people shouted for him, and 
 carried him home in triumph. His enemies then 
 intrigued against him, and the King dismissed 
 him, bidding him leave Paris quietly to avoid 
 disturbances. He did so, and the reply of the 
 people was to burn the Bastille. The King 
 accepted the intimation, and recalled him. The 
 couriers despatched in haste overtook him at 
 Basle, and he drove back hailed as the saviour 
 of France. 
 
 That was in August 1789 ; and it was already 
 too late for France to be saved otherwise than by 
 fire and sword. The emigration had begun, and 
 the tide of Sans-culottism, presently to become 
 Terrorism, was flowing. In October came the 
 march of the women to Versailles and the bringing 
 of the King and Queen to Paris. Necker could 
 not control a mob that did things of that sort, nor 
 could he or any man straighten out the finances 
 of a country in which such things happened. 
 For that achievement credit was needed, and 
 revolutionary France had none ; and, as Necker 
 could not work miracles, he found his popularity 
 on the wane. Only a little while since, the 
 question had been when he would be sent for ; 
 now the question was when he would be dismissed. 
 He did not wait to be dismissed, but retired, and 
 
 47 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 had trouble in getting away. At Arcis-sur-Aube 
 his carriage was stopped, and he had to appeal 
 to the National Assembly to give special orders 
 that he should be suffered to depart in peace. 
 So he went into exile at Coppet, where he wrote 
 pamphlets in vindication of his policy, and where 
 he presently felt himself insecure. Fearing a 
 raid and an attempt to kidnap him, he appealed 
 to the Bernese Government for permission to 
 maintain at Coppet a guard of fifty armed men 
 at his own cost. The permission, for whatever 
 reason, was refused, and he went to live at 
 RoUe — probably in the country house of his 
 brother, Louis Necker de Germany, on the 
 outskirts of that town — until times should be 
 quieter. 
 
 Outwardly, during that period, Madame de 
 Stael's life was much wrapped up in her father's 
 — certainly far more in his than in her husband's. 
 She was with Necker when he drove to Ver- 
 sailles to resume office in August 1788, and on 
 the day of the meeting of the States-General in 
 May 1789, when Madame de Montmorin pre- 
 dicted to her " frightful disasters to France and 
 to us."^ She followed him to Brussels, when the 
 King bade him leave France, in July of the same 
 year ; and she came back with him when he was 
 recalled and conducted in triumph to the Hotel 
 
 ^ The prophecy in her case was fulfilled. Her husband perished 
 in the September massacres. She and one of her sons were 
 guillotined. 
 
 48 
 
Literary Career Begins 
 
 de Ville, with beating drums and blaring bands 
 and the waving of flags captured at the storming 
 of the Bastille. She hurried to him at Versailles, 
 by a circuitous route, on the day on which 
 Theroigne de Mericourt led the women of Paris 
 to the Palace. She hastened to visit him at 
 Coppet in September 1790. Of her relations 
 with M. de Stael at the time we know next to 
 nothing, except that she bore him a son four and 
 a half years after her marriage. Perhaps we may 
 infer something from the fact that he is almost 
 the only one of her intimate male acquaintances 
 to whom her correspondence contains no affec- 
 tionate reference. In her most intimate letters he 
 is always " M. de Stael" — there is no departure 
 from that formal style. Evidently they began 
 early to go their separate ways : ^ he losing his 
 money — or rather her money — at the card-table, 
 and she dazzling the salons by her talk. 
 
 It was in these years, however, — the years of 
 the calm that preceded the revolutionary storm, — 
 that her literary career began. An edition of 
 twenty copies of her Lettres sur les Ecrits et le 
 Caractere dej. J. Rousseau was published in 1788. 
 " By this accident," she wrote in a " Second 
 Preface," in 18 14, "I was drawn into the literary 
 career " ; and she proceeded to speak of the 
 consolations which she had derived from the 
 
 ^ M. de Stael had a natural son, and also appears to have been 
 on terms of intimacy with the actress Mile Clairon, but not much 
 is known on this branch of the subject. 
 D 49 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 pursuit of it throughout the course of an unhappy- 
 life. From the first she wrote as one who enjoyed 
 writing — who wrote because her thoughts were 
 secrets that she could not keep. That is why 
 what she wrote is nearly always interesting 
 though not often valuable. This particular essay, 
 indeed, has little literary or critical importance. 
 It takes no broad views, and has much of the 
 stiffness of a scholastic exercise. But the person- 
 ality of the writer flashes out in it now and again. 
 The biographer, reading between the lines of it, 
 can see of what Madame de Stael was thinking 
 as a young married woman of two-and-twenty. 
 
 Especially are her thoughts disclosed in the 
 chapter on " La nouvelle Heloise." She evidently 
 saw in the case of Madame de Wolmar an 
 anticipation of her own. She seems to be telling 
 us by implication how her own marriage has been 
 brought about. Some may think, she says, that 
 Madame de Wolmar, as she did not love her 
 husband, should not have married him ; but — 
 
 " How miserable the girl who imagines that 
 she has the courage to resist her father! His 
 right, his wishes may be forgotten when he is 
 far away — the passion of the moment effaces 
 all recollections. But a father on his knees, 
 pleading his own cause ! His power increased 
 by his voluntary dependence on her will ! His 
 unhappiness in conflict with her own! His 
 entreaties when she expected him to compel ! 
 What a spectacle is that! It suspends love 
 
 50 
 
Significant Passages 
 
 itself. A father who speaks like a friend, who 
 appeals at once to nature and the heart, is the 
 sovereign of our souls, and can obtain whatever 
 he desires from us." 
 
 Here clearly we have something more than 
 the critical reflections of a reviewer ; and there 
 presently follows a passage not less personal and 
 significant on the unhappiness of the lot of women 
 thus obliged to marry without love. 
 
 " They need much strength of mind. Their 
 passions and their destiny are in conflict in a 
 country where fortune often imposes upon women 
 the obligation never to love, and where, more to 
 be pitied than those pious women who consecrate 
 themselves to their God, they have to accord all 
 the rights of passion and deny themselves all 
 the pleasures of sentiment. Must they not 
 have a very strong sense of duty if they are to 
 walk alone in the world, and to die without 
 ever having been first in the thoughts of some 
 other being, and, above all, without ever having 
 fastened their own affections upon an object 
 which they can love without remorse ? " 
 
 There again, we may be sure, the writer is 
 according us a glimpse at the secrets of her 
 soul ; while a third passage, not less significant 
 to the biographer, is that in which Madame de 
 Stael pities Rousseau's heroine because she lives 
 in the quiet country, and not in " this whirlwind 
 of the world which can make one forget one's 
 husband and one's lover both." That outburst, 
 
 51 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 at any rate, hardly arose out of the subject under 
 discussion, and can only be read as a confession 
 wrung" from the writer's heart. Did M. de 
 Stael, one wonders, ever read this first book of 
 his wife's? If he read it, did he understand? 
 If he understood, did he care ? 
 
 It is impossible to say, though one pictures 
 him as too dense a man to understand that sort 
 of thing unless the explanation, with all the dots 
 on all the i's, were actually thrust under his 
 nose. But there can be little question that his 
 wife was thinking a good deal more of herself 
 than of Madame de Wolmar when she wrote 
 the phrase about "the whirlwind of the world." 
 She was caught up in the eddies of that whirl- 
 wind from the first — a whirlwind that was both 
 political and social, and that whirled faster and 
 more furiously as the years went by, and one 
 revolutionary force after another was unloosed. 
 The life of excitement certainly helped her to 
 forget her husband. As for her lover — or lovers 
 — that is a different matter. Guibert, indeed, as 
 it would seem, lost ground in her thoughts ; her 
 early attachment to him declining into a senti- 
 mental memory. But there were others. There 
 exists a letter in which she wrote to M. de 
 Gerando : " The three men whom I loved best 
 after I was nineteen or twenty " — after her 
 marriage, that is to say — "were N., T., and M." ; 
 and the names for which these initials stand are 
 those of M. de Narbonne, M. de Talleyrand, 
 
 52 
 
Position in Society 
 
 and Mathieu de Montmorency. We shall see 
 presently what services she rendered to each of 
 them ; but first we must see what was her 
 position, at this period, in Parisian Society. 
 
 It was a position which she had, at first, to 
 fight for. She was not, as the Germans would 
 say, "born." She had something less than the 
 manners of a grande dame. There were 
 those among the old noblesse who wished to 
 make her feel her deficiencies. One gathers 
 that, and also, at the same time, gathers some 
 indication of the matters at issue between Madame 
 de Stael and her husband, from the account of 
 her presentation at Court given in the Memoirs 
 of Madame d'Oberkirch. 
 
 " She has had little success," we read. " All 
 the men found her ugly, awkward, and, above 
 all, artificial. She did not know how to behave, 
 and felt very much out of her element in the 
 midst of the elegance of Versailles. M. de Stael, 
 on the contrary, is exceedingly handsome, and 
 the best of company. His manners are very 
 distinguished, and he did not appear to be very 
 proud of his wife. . . . The Genevan appeared 
 underneath the woman of talent, and — especially 
 — ^underneath the Ambassadress." 
 
 That was the view of the Opposition, as 
 expressed by its most spiteful representative. 
 Madame de Stael conquered her place in Society 
 in spite of it, partly by her force of character 
 and her brilliant conversation — partly because 
 
 53 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 her salon was on the winning side, and she was 
 in a position to be useful to her friends — partly 
 also because, as the Revolution ran its course, the 
 beginning of the emigration removed her social 
 rivals. From 1788 onwards, therefore, her salon 
 became more and more the centre alike of social 
 life and of political intrigue. 
 
 It was an exciting, but not the less a gay and 
 festive time. The Terror was not yet in sight. 
 The King had not yet been deposed and 
 degraded to the style of Citizen Louis Capet. 
 Members of the old families were still governing 
 the country in his name. The conditions were 
 not to be of long duration, but while they lasted 
 Madame de Stael was able to help her friends. 
 She helped Talleyrand by writing a State paper 
 which he signed. She helped M. de Narbonne 
 by procuring him the office of Minister of War. 
 Then, as always, her notion of friendship was 
 to pull wires for her friends' advantage — not 
 quietly and unobtrusively, but openly and 
 ostentatiously, as if she were pealing the tocsin. 
 We have a choice of memoirs from which to 
 draw ourselves the picture. Perhaps we shall see 
 it best through the impartial eyes of Gouverneur 
 Morris, the American Minister, who had no 
 spite to vent, but only a curiosity to gratify, and 
 who saw what there was to be seen from the 
 detached point of view of a stranger. 
 
 Morris landed in France in January 1789. In 
 March we find him dining with M. Necker, who 
 
 54 
 
The First Salon of Paris 
 
 *' has the look and manner of the counting-house," 
 and there making the acquaintance of Madame 
 de Stael, who "seems to be a woman of sense 
 and somewhat masculine in her character, but 
 has very much the appearance of a chamber- 
 maid." It is not until September — after the 
 fall of the Bastille, and Necker's banishment and 
 dramatic recall — that the acquaintance develops. 
 Madame de Stael draws Morris out ; and he 
 fancies that she is inspecting him "with that 
 look which, without being what Sir John Falstaff 
 calls the 'leer of invitation,' amounts to the same 
 thing." That, however, one imagines, was only 
 his vanity, and he admits that he was given no 
 opportunity of demonstrating "what can be 
 effected by the native of the New World who 
 has left one of his legs behind." Their relations 
 continue to be friendly ; and his accounts of the 
 receptions at her salon are frequent and graphic. 
 For instance : — 
 
 " Quite the first salon of Paris at this time was 
 that over which Madame de Stael presided. Her 
 regular Tuesday evening supper, when not more 
 than a dozen or fifteen covers were laid and her 
 chosen friends were admitted into the little salon, 
 the chaTfibre ardente, was the great feature of the 
 week. Here, the candles extinguished to heighten 
 the effect, the Abb6 Delille declaimed his ' Cata- 
 combs de Rome,' and here Clermont-Tonnerre 
 submitted to the criticism of his friends his dis- 
 course before delivering it in public. Near the 
 
 55 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 chimney Necker stood, entertaining the Bishop 
 of Autun, who smiled but avoided talking. Here 
 was to be found the Duchesse de Lauzun, of all 
 women the most gentle and timid ; and in the 
 midst stood the hostess, in her favourite attitude 
 before the fire, with her hands behind her back, 
 a large, leonine woman, with few beauties and 
 no grace of gesture. She nevertheless animated 
 the salon by her masculine attitude and powerful 
 conversation. De Narbonne is of course with 
 Madame de Stael this evening." 
 
 Generally the conversation is of politics, but 
 sometimes it is of literature. As late as April 
 1 79 1, when the times were really beginning to 
 be revolutionary, Morris hears Madame de Stael 
 read the assemblage her tragedy Montmorenci^ 
 and remarks that "she writes much better than 
 she reads." Over and over again we find her 
 name coupled with that of M. de Narbonne ; over 
 and over again he is described as "her lover 
 en titre''' — once in a despatch to Washington 
 in which we get a glimpse of an interesting 
 jealousy. 
 
 "In the beginning of the Revolution he [M. 
 de Narbonne], great anti-Neckerist though the 
 lover en titre of Madame de Stael, M. Necker's 
 daughter, was not a little opposed to the Revolu- 
 tion, and there was afterwards some coldness 
 between him and the Bishop [Talleyrand], partly 
 on political accounts, and partly because he (in 
 common with the rest of the world) believed the 
 Bishop to be too well with his mistress. By the 
 
 56 
 
Reminiscence of a Dinner Party 
 
 bye, she tells me that it is not true, and of course 
 I, who am a charitable man, believe her." 
 
 The subject, however, v/as not one to be 
 discussed only behind Madame de Stael's back. 
 It could be referred to in conversation both with 
 herself and with her husband. So much we 
 gather from a reminiscence of a dinner party at 
 Necker's house — a reminiscence the more interest- 
 ing because it gives us one of our rare glimpses 
 of M. de Stael's view of a situation not particularly 
 flattering to his amour-propre. First it is : — 
 
 *' I go to-day to dine at M. Necker's, and place 
 myself next to Madame de Stael, and as our 
 conversation grows animated, she desires me 
 to speak English, which her husband does not 
 understand. Afterwards, in looking round the 
 table, I observe in him much emotion. I tell 
 her that he loves her distractedly, which she says 
 she knows, and that it renders her miserable. 
 Condole with her a little on her widowhood, 
 the Chevalier de Narbonne being absent in 
 F ranche- Comtd " 
 
 And then : — 
 
 *' After dinner I seek a conversation with the 
 husband, which relieves him. He inveighs 
 bitterly against the manners of this country, and 
 the cruelty of alienating a wife's affections. He 
 says that women here are more corrupt in their 
 minds and hearts than in any other way. I 
 regret with him on general grounds that pro- 
 stration of morals which unfits them for good 
 
 57 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 government. Hence he concludes, and I believe 
 truly, that I shall not contribute towards making 
 him uncomfortable." 
 
 Whence it would appear that M. de Stael, 
 having married a woman of genius for her money, 
 had already begun to realise the price that he 
 must pay. He made no clamorous public pro- 
 tests — that was hardly the fashion of the time. 
 He did not even meet scandal with scandal to 
 any great extent, but accepted the inevitable, and 
 effaced himself for fear of ridicule. One con- 
 jectures that his vanity was more deeply wounded 
 than his affections, and that he found more con- 
 solation at the card-table than he admitted. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the Revolution was pro- 
 gressing with giant strides. The men whom 
 Madame de Stael had advanced by her influence 
 found their heads in danger ; the most that her 
 influence could now do for them was to save their 
 lives. It was good to be her friend in those days, 
 and not necessary to be her lover in order to 
 have her help. Her courage was heroic and 
 her energy admirable ; and if she was proud of 
 her power over the mob, she was well entitled 
 to her pride. On the eve of the September 
 massacres, she, a young matron of six-and-twenty, 
 forced her way into the Hotel de Ville, and 
 rescued Lally-Tollendal and Jaucourt from the 
 clutches of the executioners. Over M. de Nar- 
 bonne she threw the aegis of ambassadorial sacro- 
 sanctity, hiding him in her house, and defying 
 
 58 
 
The Real Beginning of Exile 
 
 the mob to search for him, until he could be 
 got away to London with a false passport. Not 
 until that was done — not until the September 
 massacres were in progress — did she apply for 
 her own passport and make her own retreat. 
 
 There were still difficulties to be overcome. 
 The mob assailed her carriage, and would have 
 pillaged her luggage, had not Santerre — the 
 same Santerre whose drummers were to drown 
 the dying speech of Louis xvi. — sat on the coach- 
 man's box defending her. Tallien,^ however, 
 escorted her past the Paris barriers ; and she 
 drove post haste, not to her husband who was 
 in Holland, but to join her father and mother 
 at Rolle. " Switzerland is in mourning," writes 
 Madame Necker in a letter dated September 9. 
 ** The Ambassadress arrived the day before 
 yesterday, bringing the terrible news of the 
 2nd, and the story of all her personal sufferings." 
 This was the real beginning of exile. 
 
 ^ He who afterwards helped to overthrow Robespierre. 
 
 59 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 From Coppet to Mickleham — The motive for the journey — The 
 dmigrh at Juniper Hall — Madame de Stael's friendship with 
 Fanny Burney — M. de Narbonne "behaves badly." 
 
 " Peacefully sheltered in the chateau at Coppet," 
 says Dr. Stevens, " Madame de Stael immediately 
 became its chatelaine, the priestess of its abundant 
 hospitalities ; " but this statement somewhat anti- 
 cipates the facts. 
 
 The date of Madame de Stael's second confine- 
 ment was fast approaching, and she was in no con- 
 dition to dispense hospitalities. Nor did she and 
 her family remain at Coppet. The chateau, as we 
 have seen, was not considered a sufficiently safe 
 retreat. M. Necker was afraid of being kid- 
 napped by raiders from over the border. He 
 removed to Rolle, and it was there that Madame 
 de Stael's second son, Albert de Stael, was born. 
 
 The time, moreover, was inappropriate for social 
 relaxations, and the party were in no mood to enjoy 
 them. Madame Necker was ill — she was, in fact, 
 continually ailing for many years before her death. 
 M. Necker was a depressed and practically a broken 
 man. Conscious of his position as the pilot who 
 had failed to weather the storm — made the more 
 acutely conscious of it by the demeanour of the 
 
 60 
 
Necker a Broken Man 
 
 French emigres who refused to cross his threshold 
 or even to speak to him — he locked himself 
 up in his room and wrote pamphlets, vindicating 
 his own policy, and advising the French nation 
 about the policy of his successors. Our most 
 graphic picture of his situation is to be found in 
 one of Gibbon's letters to Lord Sheffield. 
 
 " I passed four days at the castle of Coppet 
 with Necker ; and could have wished to have 
 shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth 
 possessed with the Daemon of ambition. With all 
 the means of private happiness in his power, he 
 is the most miserable of human beings : the past, 
 the present, and the future are all equally odious 
 to him. When I suggested some domestic amuse- 
 ments of books, building, etc., he answered with a 
 deep tone of despair, ' Dans I'etat oii je suis, je ne 
 puis sentir que le coup de vent qui m'a abattu.' 
 How different from the careless cheerfulness with 
 which our poor friend Lord North supports his 
 fall ! Madame Necker maintains more external 
 composure, mais le Viable nyperdrien. It is true 
 that Necker wished to be carried into the Closet, 
 like old Pitt, on the shoulders of the people, and 
 that he has been ruin^^d by the Democracy which 
 he has raised." 
 
 That was in 1791, Gibbon being at the time 
 a resident of Lausanne, reposing in tranquillity 
 after the completion of his history of the Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire. He knew, 
 therefore, what were the "means of private 
 happiness " of which he spoke. They were those 
 
 61 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 from which he himself derived a calm enjoyment 
 — the amenities of life upon the shores of the 
 most beautiful lake in Europe. But there was 
 one difference between his condition and Necker's 
 which he failed to seize. He was transplanted ; 
 Necker was uprooted. In a subsequent letter, dated 
 April 4, 1792, Madame de Stael's name appears. 
 
 " Madame de Stael is expected in a few weeks 
 at Coppet, where they receive her, and where, 
 * to dumb forgetfulness a prey,' she will have 
 leisure to regret the pleasing anxious being, which 
 she enjoyed amidst the storms of Paris. But 
 what can the poor creature do ? her husband is 
 in Sweden, her lover is no longer Secretary of 
 War, and her father's house is the only place 
 where she can reside with the least degree of 
 prudence and decency." 
 
 The arrival expected in April was postponed, 
 as has been already mentioned, until September ; 
 and the stay was of short duration. Already, in 
 December, immediately after the birth of her 
 child, she began to talk about departing. Our 
 first intimation is in a letter from Necker to 
 Henri Meister, then in London. 
 
 " My daughter is going to leave us to pass a 
 few months, not in London but at a country 
 place in England, where several of her friends 
 are living together. It is not from you, sir, to 
 whom I am attached, and who are attached to 
 us, that I shall conceal the grief which this 
 journey causes us. I have made every imagin- 
 
 62 
 
Motive of Journey to England 
 
 able effort to prevent it, but in vain. . . . We 
 must resign ourselves to what we cannot hinder, 
 but it is very unfortunate from every point of view." 
 
 Then follows a letter from Madame Necker 
 to Gibbon, dated the 2nd of January 1793. 
 
 "After having tried in vain every device that 
 wit or reason could suggest to divert my daughter 
 from so mad a project, we thought that a short 
 sojourn at Geneva might make her more amenable 
 by bringing her under the influence of public 
 opinion. She took advantage of the liberty 
 which she thus obtained to start even sooner 
 than we apprehended. Under such sad auspices 
 has she begun her new year and caused us to 
 begin ours. I will say nothing more." 
 
 Finally there is a letter in which Gibbon hands 
 the news on to Lord Sheffield, adding signifi- 
 cantly : ** Her friend the Vicomte de Narbonne 
 is somewhere about Dorkino- ; " and in that 
 sentence the motive of the journey, undertaken 
 at a time when her health was impaired and 
 travelling was dangerous, and the grounds of her 
 parents' objection to it, appear to be disclosed. 
 
 Probably it was the first occasion on which her 
 parents realised that she was prepared, in the 
 matters of the heart, to take — and had indeed 
 already taken — the final compromising step which 
 her mother, warmly as she made love on paper, had 
 never been in any real peril of taking. On paper, 
 it is true, Madame Necker seems, when we turn 
 over those of her letters which M. d'Hausson villa 
 
 63 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 has published, to have gone rather far. We are 
 brought to the same conclusion whether we look 
 at the letters which she wrote or at those which 
 she received. "The moments of your leisure," 
 she wrote to Gibbon, "belong to her who has 
 been your first love and your last. I cannot make 
 up my mind which of these titles is the sweeter 
 and the dearer to my heart." She kept a letter 
 from Marmontel, in which he threatened to swim 
 the Channel in order to follow her to England : 
 "Why should not friendship have her Leander 
 as well as love ? " She kept a letter from Thomas, 
 in which he exclaimed : " Your soul is necessary 
 to mine — without yours mine is wandering ; it is 
 never in its place and is never at rest but when 
 it is beside you." The correspondence is full of 
 "words to that effect," spoken to and by a great 
 number of correspondents. 
 
 It all meant nothing, however — nothing or very 
 little. The most extreme comment which it 
 warrants is that Madame Necker, when she 
 writes to her friends, gives one the impression 
 of a virtuous woman presuming on her virtue. 
 Her affections, in truth, were rather of the head 
 than of the heart. She spoke the language of 
 gallantry because it was the language of the 
 salons — because to use it seemed to be a part of 
 the manners of good society. She may even be 
 said to have used it with a certain appearance of 
 affectation, as one who spoke a foreign tongue, 
 acquired late in life. 
 
 64 
 
Progress of the Revolution 
 
 The daughter's case was very different from 
 the mother's. She was, before everything else, 
 sincere ; and she was plain, and she was 
 passionate ; and she believed in her indefeasible 
 right to happiness, to be attained if not through 
 marriage, then through love ; and she had, in all 
 departments of life alike, the genius, the energy, 
 and the initiative of a man. And she did not 
 love her husband, and had never loved him, and 
 did love M. de Narbonne. It was only to be 
 expected, in her case, that sentiment would be 
 translated into action, and that, if she was not 
 pursued, she would pursue. So she rose from her 
 sick-bed, and raced across the Continent and the 
 Channel to her lover. 
 
 M. de Narbonne was one of a group of imigr^s 
 who had hung on in France till the last. The 
 extreme Royalists had left the country long before. 
 Some eighteen thousand of them — the Army of 
 Coblentz — were trying, not very successfully, to 
 invade it under foreign leadership. The aristo- 
 crats who were also reformers had remained behind, 
 hoping at first, and still trying after they had 
 ceased to hope, to lead and limit the Revolution. 
 But the tide flowed too fast for them. Power 
 slipped from their grasp, and they were as little able 
 as Necker himself had been to stem the current. 
 Terrible things which they could neither approve 
 nor resist began to happen. The Swiss Guard 
 were massacred in the Tuileries ; the epoch of 
 domiciliary visits opened. They were themselves 
 E 65 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 suspect, and had to get away as best they could, 
 often narrowly escaping arrest. One of them only 
 avoided detention, when his house was searched, 
 by pretending that he was not himself, but the 
 doctor called in to attend his sister-in-law, who 
 had fainted in her alarm. Another was smuggled 
 away in a boat, concealed beneath a pile of 
 faggots. How M. de Narbonne was saved by 
 Madame de Stael we have already seen. 
 
 Though repudiated by the Revolutionists, how- 
 ever, this company had no intention of fighting 
 their country on their King's behalf. They only 
 sought to wait, in a cheerful security, for better 
 times. So they came to Mickleham in Surrey, 
 and took Juniper Hall — which, of course, they 
 called Junipere. 
 
 You see the house — you cannot help seeing it 
 — as you follow the highroad from Leatherhead 
 to Dorking. Originally an inn styled the " Royal 
 Oak," it had been bought and enlarged in the 
 middle of the eighteenth century by Sir Cecil 
 Bishop, from whom it had been acquired by a 
 wealthy lottery-office keeper named Jenkinson, 
 who let it to the imigr^s. It is an imposing red 
 mansion, approached through a lodge gate by a 
 drive, with a steep and thickly wooded hill behind, 
 a wooded glade in front, and a clump of dark 
 stately cedars in its immediate precincts — alto- 
 gether a very gracious place of exile ; and the 
 exiles themselves — both those who stayed in the 
 Hall and those who came from time to time to 
 
 6^ 
 
The Emigres at Juniper Hall 
 
 visit it — were all persons of high distinction. 
 Among them were the Marquise de la Chatre, 
 M. de Narbonne, M. de Montmorency, M. Jaucourt,^ 
 M. Malouet,^ the Princesse d'Hennin, Talleyrand, 
 Lally-Tollendal, and General d'Arblay, who had 
 been Lafayette's adjutant and was presently to be 
 Fanny Burney's husband. Though they were 
 poor, they were not quite destitute; though their 
 property had been confiscated, they had money to 
 go on with. They entertained. Fanny Burney, 
 then on a visit to her sister, Mrs. Phillips, was 
 one of their guests, and it is to her Diary and 
 Letters that we have to go for most of our in- 
 formation about their sojourn. 
 
 Miss Burney was delighted with everything and 
 everybody — especially with Madame de Stael and 
 M. de Narbonne. Of the former she writes : 
 " She is a woman of the first abilities, I think, I 
 have ever seen ; she is more in the style of Mrs. 
 Thrale than of any other celebrated character, but 
 she has infinitely more depth, and seems an even 
 more profound politician and metaphysician." Of 
 the latter : "He bears the highest character for 
 goodness, sweetness of manners, and ready wit. 
 You could not keep your heart from him if you saw 
 him only for half an hour." The constant play of 
 wit and the serious interest taken in literary things 
 
 ^ He had been an officer and a Deputy, and he accompanied 
 Talleyrand on his mission to London. Afterwards he was 
 Louis xvili.'s Minister of Marine. 
 
 2 One of the leaders of the Royalist party in the Constituant 
 Assembly. He died as Minister of Marine in 1814. 
 
 67 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 gave her a new and refreshing experience. In the 
 midst of their trials these French exiles could 
 write trasredies — or at all events Madame de Stael 
 could write them — and read them aloud, and listen 
 to the reading of them in the drawing-room. But 
 that picture needs to be supplemented from the 
 pen of Dr. Bollmann. 
 
 " The Stael is a genius — an extraordinary, eccen- 
 tric woman in all that she does. She only sleeps 
 during a very few hours, and is uninterruptedly and 
 fearfully busy all the rest of the time. Whilst her 
 hair is being dressed, whilst she breakfasts, in fact 
 during a third of the day, she writes. She has not 
 sufficient quiet to look over what she has written." 
 
 She gave it, in fact, to M. de Narbonne to look 
 over and to copy, and it seems not unlikely that this 
 was one of the tests under which M. de Narbonne's 
 devotion to her broke down. But that is to 
 anticipate. We have first to note how her rela- 
 tions with M. de Narbonne cut short her intimacy 
 with Miss Burney. 
 
 Madame de Stael had invited Miss Burney to 
 visit her ; but scandals were abroad, and Dr. 
 Burney intervened. He admitted Madame de 
 Stael's "literary and intellectual powers," — 
 
 " But," he added, " as nothing human is allowed 
 to be perfect, she has not escaped censure. Her 
 house was the centre of Revolutionists previous to 
 the loth of August, after her father's departure, 
 and she has been accused of partiality to M. de 
 
 68 
 
Scandals Abroad 
 
 N . But perhaps all may be Jacobinical 
 
 malignity. However, unfavourable stories of her 
 have been brought hither, and the Burkes and 
 Mrs. Ord have repeated them to me. ... If you 
 are not absolutely in the house of Madame de 
 Stael when this arrives, it would perhaps be 
 possible for you to waive the visit to her, by a 
 compromise of having something to do for Susy." 
 
 Fanny Burney's reply was very characteristic 
 of the country which invented Mrs. Grundy. 
 She did not believe the calumny, she said, but she 
 should certainly behave as if she did. " She is 
 very plain," she writes; "he is very handsome; 
 her intellectual endowments must be with him her 
 sole attraction. ... I think you could not spend 
 a day with them and not see that their commerce 
 is that of pure but exalted and most elegant 
 friendship." But she continues : — 
 
 " I would nevertheless give the world to avoid 
 being a guest under their roof, now I have heard 
 even the shadow of such a rumour ; and I will, if 
 it be possible without hurting or offending them. 
 I have waived and waived acceptance almost from 
 the moment of Madame de Stael's arrival, I 
 prevailed with her to let my letter go alone to 
 you, and I have told you, with regard to your 
 answer, that you were sensible of the honour her 
 kindness did me, and could not refuse to her 
 request the week's furlough ; and then followed 
 reasons for the compromise you pointed out, too 
 diffuse for writing. As yet they have succeeded, 
 though she is surprised and disappointed. She 
 
 69 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 wants us to study French and English together, 
 and nothing could to me be more desirable but 
 for this invidious report." 
 
 " Est-ce qu'une femme est en tutelle pour la 
 vie en ce pays ? " was Madame de Stael's com- 
 ment on the situation. It seemed to her that 
 Miss Burney, who was forty, was behaving as if 
 she were fourteen. No doubt she saw through 
 the reasons that were given to the reason that 
 was suppressed. But she tried not to be angry, 
 and sent an amiable message through Mrs. 
 Phillips : " Dites a Mile Burney que je ne lui 
 en veux pas du tout — que je quitte le pays 
 I'aimant bien sincerement, et sans rancune." 
 
 She had, in fact, just then, other things besides 
 the behaviour of Miss Burney to think about. 
 She was parting not only from Miss Burney, but 
 also from M. de Narbonne himself; and her grief 
 was not lessened by the fact that she was to join 
 her husband. Exactly what had passed between 
 her and her lover we do not know. But we have 
 Madame Recamier's word for it that " M. de 
 Narbonne behaved very badly, as successful men 
 too often do " ; and we have Mrs. Phillips' 
 account of the parting : " Madame de Stael could 
 not rally her spirits at all, and seemed like one 
 torn from all that was dear to her." And then 
 again, in the same letter : "I came home with 
 Madame de Stael and M. de Narbonne. The 
 former actually sobbed in saying farewell." 
 
 And so back again to Switzerland. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Madame de Stael returns to Switzerland — Her exertions on behalf 
 of the emigres — Correspondence on this subject with Henri 
 Meister — Death of Madame Necker — Benjamin Constant 
 introduces himself. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's picture of Madame de Stael's life 
 in Switzerland during the Terror is well known. 
 "She passed the time," he says, "in the country 
 of Vaud, with her father and some refugee friends, 
 M. de Montmorency and M. Jaucourt. On these 
 terraces of Coppet her most constant meditations 
 contrasted the dazzling sunlight and the peace of 
 nature with the horrors everywhere let loose by 
 the hand of man. Her talent maintained a re- 
 ligious silence ; from afar were heard, muffled and 
 thick as the beating of the oars upon the Lake, the 
 measured strokes of the guillotine upon the scaffold. 
 The state of oppression and anguish in which she 
 remained during these terrible months only suffered 
 her, in the intervals of her active devotion to 
 others, to desire death for herself, and to look 
 forward to the end of the world and of this lost 
 human race." 
 
 The account has a certain poetical truth, but 
 it is no more literally true than is the statement 
 of Dr. Stevens that Madame de Stael " made the 
 
 71 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Coppet mansion an asylum for Frenchmen who 
 were fleeing from the guillotine." She was hardly 
 at Coppet at all during the period, owing to 
 M. Necker's fear that the house might be raided 
 and its inhabitants kidnapped and carried off to 
 France ; and her talent was not silent. In one 
 pamphlet she pleaded eloquently with the French 
 people for the life of Marie- Antoinette ; in another 
 she pleaded with Pitt that he should make peace 
 with France. She was writing, at the same time, 
 though she did not publish it until later, her 
 treatise De V Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur 
 des Individus et des Nations. 
 
 It is a remarkable work, immature perhaps, as 
 many critics have said, but not the less character- 
 istic. As in almost everything that Madame de 
 Stael wrote, the personal note is somewhat louder 
 than it is meant to be. To read it with care is to 
 see the particular masquerading in the garments 
 of the general, and a confession tricked out as a 
 philosophy. A passage has already been quoted 
 from it which can only be read as a confession of 
 the writer's failure to find happiness in marriage. 
 There are many other passages which can only 
 be read as confessions of her failure to find happi- 
 ness in love, and as veiled — but very thinly veiled 
 — protests that she has been treated badly by her 
 lover. *' It is certain," she declares, "that love is 
 of all passions the most fatal to human happiness." 
 It confers, for a few brief instants, a supreme joy ; 
 but this comes to an end, and then : " One goes 
 
 72 
 
A Woman's Tragedy 
 
 on living without any chance that the future will 
 give one back the past." And this is a woman's 
 tragedy far more than a man's. 
 
 " Love is woman's whole existence. It is only 
 an episode in the lives of men. Reputation, 
 honour, esteem, everything depends upon how a 
 woman conducts herself in this regard ; whereas, 
 according to the rules of an unjust world, the laws 
 of morality itself are suspended in men's relations 
 with women. They may pass as good men 
 though they have caused women the most terrible 
 suffering which it is in the power of one human 
 being to inflict upon another. They may be re- 
 garded as loyal though they have betrayed them. 
 They may have received from a woman marks of 
 a devotion which would so link two friends, two 
 fellow-soldiers, that either would feel dishonoured 
 if he forgot them, and they may consider them- 
 selves free of all obligations by attributing the 
 services to love — as though this additional gift of 
 love detracted from the value of the rest. No 
 doubt there are men whose character furnishes an 
 honourable exception ; but — such is the force of 
 public opinion in the matter — there are few 
 who would dare, not fearing ridicule, to pro- 
 claim, in the affairs of the heart, the delicacy 
 of principle which a woman would deem her- 
 self obliged to assume even if she did not 
 feel it." 
 
 Decidedly these generalisations have a very 
 particular meaning, and the dots stand ready to 
 be put upon the i's. It was passion, and no lighter 
 
 73 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 sentiment, that Madame de Stael had felt for 
 M. de Narbonne. We find the word in italics 
 in one of Miss Berry's letters describing her 
 own relations with Madame de Stael : " She 
 was too much occupied with her passion * de s'en 
 apercevoir de mon existence.'" The services 
 which she had rendered him were the highest, 
 since she had first pushed him into Cabinet office, 
 and then saved his life, at the risk of her own, 
 when he was proscribed. And he had been 
 ungrateful ; he had " behaved badly " ; she had 
 pursued her romance to England, only to see 
 it end. That was the bitter reflection that was 
 uppermost in her mind and dominated her life 
 during this time of exile. She poured out her 
 soul on paper. 
 
 Yet, at the same time, she was active. Activity 
 was, at all times, almost a disease with her ; and 
 now there was a double need for it. Her thoughts 
 required distraction, and there was work for her 
 to do. We trace the course of her life best in the 
 series of her letters to Henri Meister. 
 
 Henri Meister was a man of fifty, and an old 
 friend of the Necker family. His father and 
 Necker's father, the Genevan professor, had pelted 
 each other with pamphlets in a theological dispute. 
 He had himself succeeded Madame Necker as a 
 dependent in the house of Madame Vermenoux. 
 The Neckers had helped to "introduce" him in 
 Paris, where he had become first Grimm's col- 
 laborator and then his successor as editor of the 
 
 74 
 
Exertions on Behalf of the Emigres 
 
 Correspondence Littdraire} Madame de Stael's 
 letters to him were mostly, if not exclusively, 
 on matters of business. On other matters he 
 was not in her confidence ; but he was glad 
 to be useful to her, and she gave him the 
 opportunity. 
 
 It is not until late In 1794 that she dates from 
 Coppet. The earlier letters are mostly from 
 Nyon and Lausanne — one or two of them from 
 Zurich and the Swiss Baden. That definitely 
 settles her whereabouts during these years. Her 
 chief, and almost her sole, preoccupation, we 
 find, is with her friends the dmigrds. She 
 managed to get several of them safely out of 
 France with Swiss or Swedish passports. Her 
 husband, though he was not with her, and kept 
 diplomatically in the background, was her col- 
 laborator in this good work. Some of the 
 refugees — M. de Narbonne, to our astonishment, 
 was among them — found a shelter in her house, 
 not at Coppet, as Dr. Stevens says, but at 
 Nyon. She could not receive them all, how- 
 ever ; and for the rest she sought to find other 
 Swiss domiciles. Notably we find her much 
 exercised about the fortunes of Talleyrand, of 
 whom she writes as if, now that the ardour of 
 M. de Narbonne had cooled, she held him dearer 
 than a friend. But the story will be best told in 
 extracts from the letters. 
 
 ^ A MS. journal of literary gossip, circulated only among sub- 
 scribers. Most of the German princes took it. 
 
 75 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " Nyon, December 23, 1793. 
 
 " Two gentlemen, de Montmorency and de 
 Jaucourt, have been here with me for two months 
 under Swedish names ; M. de Narbonne is coming 
 under a Spanish name. Berne knows it, and allows 
 it, because I am living absolutely alone in the 
 country, and because it is abundantly proved that 
 we only aspire to the most obscure retirement. 
 But the Bishop of Autun, whom I love so dearly, 
 cannot be received here on account of the demo- 
 cratic opinions which he formerly held. Opinion 
 in your canton is more liberal. Be so good as 
 to tell me if I can, with some expectation of 
 security, hire there for the spring a country house 
 to which I can invite M. de Talleyrand. Tell 
 me if Zurich is willing to give expression to the 
 moderation of its opinions by according an asylum 
 to men who, on account of a similar moderation, 
 are being persecuted. Tell me, finally, if I may 
 be indebted to you for the happiness of spending 
 the summer with you and with my friends. If 
 that be impossible, I will ask you to procure me 
 some information about Schaffhausen. That 
 would be much less convenient ; but, in any case, 
 what I want is a house which may serve as a 
 shelter from the insults that are in the air and as 
 a retreat from the passions of men." 
 
 "■February 19, 1794. 
 
 " I have read in the Schaffhausen Gazette that 
 the Bishop of Autun has been expelled from 
 England. I should not believe this story if it 
 were not that I have had no English news for a 
 fortnight. The report has so upset me that I can 
 
 76 
 
Correspondence with Henri Meister 
 
 hardly hold my pen in my hands. If he came 
 here, I should be only too happy. But it seems 
 that he is going to America; but . . . If it is 
 God's will that the rumour of this fresh misfortune 
 is untrue, I will write and ask you to insert a 
 denial in the paper. 
 
 "What do you know about M. Ott's country 
 house at Zurich ? " 
 
 ** Nyon, March 12, 1794. 
 
 ** M. Ott's house seems to be the very thing 
 to suit me ; but if I go there I prefer to board 
 myself, as that is the easier and more economical 
 plan. I think, however, that, as I am not quite 
 sure that I am not going to London, and am still 
 less sure that I shall please the Zurich people so 
 well that they will allow me to have two or three 
 of my friends in the house with me, I had better 
 begin by staying a week with M. Ott in the town. 
 During that time I will, with your help and the 
 grace of God, bring all my little coquetries into 
 play ; and, if they succeed, I will, with your 
 assistance, choose my own house, and a pension 
 for Madame de Chatre, who is not comfortable in 
 the Canton of Berne. I will settle at Winterthur 
 or Rapperswyl, as M. de Montesquiou ^ has done at 
 Bremgarten, if that suits them better. . . . But say 
 nothing and do nothing until I arrive. I sometimes 
 get what I want in a personal interview. . . . 
 
 ** I begin to detest Europe, and my last attempt 
 for my friends shall be Zurich. For my own part, 
 I shall drag on for a while longer. But how, at 
 
 ^ He had commanded the army of the South and conquered 
 Savoy, but was accused of treason in November 1792, and took 
 refuge in Switzerland. 
 
 77 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 seven-and-twenty, is one to cut oneself adrift from 
 the past ? How to love as one used to love ? " 
 
 "Lausanne, March 28, 1794. 
 " My mother's condition is so sad that I shall 
 perhaps have to give up the idea of settling at 
 Zurich. I hope my friends may be received there, 
 but I shall not live there myself If it is my fatal 
 name that frightens people, my opinion is that, my 
 name being more formidable than my person, I had 
 better go and show myself there, since my presence 
 has nearly always been found supportable." 
 
 So the letters proceed ; and Madame de Stael's 
 life during the period which they cover can easily 
 be reconstructed from them. It is a life of 
 feverish activity on behalf of others, and at the 
 same time of dull despair on her own account, 
 with literary work for the inevitable anodyne. 
 The old order has broken up, and everything 
 that she has been used to live for has come to an 
 end. Her father is in exile and disgrace ; her 
 mother is dying. Many of her friends have 
 perished on the scaffold. The rest are scattered 
 and impoverished. She has no love, save her 
 father's, to lean upon ; for she has never loved 
 her husband, and M. de Narbonne is cold, and 
 the Bishop of Autun has gone to Philadelphia. 
 One hardly knows whether or not to be surprised, 
 in such conditions, to find her turning longing 
 eyes to France, and threatening to return thither 
 long before the events of Thermidor have checked 
 the falling of the knife. 
 
 7^ 
 
Death of Madame Necker 
 
 She tells Henri Meister of this project in 
 a letter written from Baden on her way back 
 from her visit to Zurich. Her reasons are not 
 given, but something in the letter suggests that 
 she hoped, by her presence at Paris, to save 
 a portion of her fortune from the wreck, and that 
 Henri Meister approved of the attempt, and that 
 it was a part of her plan that her father and 
 mother should follow her. 
 
 " We cannot all start at once. The season is 
 too bad for my mother to travel. Besides, the cost 
 would be too much for me. I shall go at very 
 small expense, in excellent and very useful com- 
 pany. I shall send them the necessary money to join 
 me, and they will find the business getting on nicely. 
 I think I ought not to hesitate a moment." 
 
 She did not start, however. Probably the 
 desire to be up and doing counted for more in 
 the scheme than any serious expectation of rescu- 
 ing her own or her father's property from the 
 debacle ; but however that may have been, she had 
 to abandon her intention when she came home to 
 find herself in a house of mourning — her mother 
 dead, and her father needing all the consolation 
 that her presence could afford. 
 
 Perhaps she had not loved her mother over 
 much. Madame Necker had been too much the 
 schoolmistress and Madame de Stael too little 
 the docile scholar for perfect sympathy to subsist 
 between them. The standing quarrel between 
 
 79 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the older and the younger generations had had 
 some aggravating circumstances in their case. 
 Right, and duty, and happiness were three ideas 
 which they defined differently. If the daughter 
 had some of the mother's pedantry, the mother 
 had always been shocked by the daughter's 
 passion — shocked equally by her dependence 
 upon love and her independence of marriage ; 
 and their life together had been more or less of 
 an armed truce, with Necker, who loved them 
 both, for mediator. But the blow was none the 
 less a blow, falling, as it did, at a time of universal 
 tragedy. If only for her father's sake, she was 
 overwhelmed with grief. 
 
 Her first thought was that she must take him 
 away somewhere. She inquired from Henri 
 Meister about houses at Zurich. " Could you 
 find us a furnished house in the suburbs ? 
 Should we find M. Ott's house fit to live in 
 if we arrived unexpectedly ? And will you open 
 negotiations for a place at Weiningen, arranging 
 to provide the furniture ? I think I will take my 
 father there." But then a difficulty arises : " My 
 mother has left such extraordinary instructions as 
 to the embalming and preservation of her body — 
 how it is to be laid out under glass in spirits of 
 wine — that if, as she imagined, the appearance of 
 her features had been preserved, my poor father 
 would have passed his whole life in gazing on 
 her. ... It follows that, until the monument is 
 finished, — until August, that is to say, — he will not 
 
 80 
 
Eftorts on Behalf of de Saussure 
 
 leave this part of the country. After that, I think, 
 he will have no objection to going to Zurich ; 
 he said so in so many words. But we must stay 
 here for the summer. He wanted to go back to 
 Coppet to wait till the monument was finished ; but 
 I besought him to keep the bier at Beaulieu, as 
 Coppet frightens me for various reasons." 
 
 So they lingered on in the neighbourhood of 
 Lausanne, and the correspondence harks back to 
 the provision of domiciles for the dmigr^s, and 
 suggests that strings may be pulled for the 
 advantage of M. de Saussure — the philosopher 
 who had climbed Mont Blanc, a connection by 
 marriage of the Neckers, who had lost the greater 
 part of his fortune : " He has been thinking about 
 Russia. Would the Empress perhaps allow him 
 to give public lectures, or interest him in the 
 education of the sons of the Grand Duke ? Or 
 would some nobleman, dazzled by the name of 
 such a tutor, entrust his son to him ? Would not 
 Grimm honour himself by putting forward so 
 illustrious a man — taking care not to mention his 
 relationship to us ? " Then there is mention of 
 something that Madame de Stael has been 
 writing — an Epitre ait Malheur. The only 
 things of which there is no mention are certain 
 episodes in the writer's social life, and certain 
 acquaintances which she was then making. 
 
 It was at that period that she came to know of 
 Count Joseph de Maistre, Catholic dmigrd and 
 reactionary ; but he hardly counts. They did not 
 F 8i 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 like each other, though they respected each 
 other's gifts. The only trace left by their few 
 interviews is an epigram — one of the many 
 epigrams by which men avenged themselves for 
 Madame de Stael's success in outshining them in 
 society. She was too much used, he thought, to 
 adulation : " S'il lui avait plu d'accoucher en 
 public dans la chapelle de Versailles on aurait 
 battu des mains." The other acquaintance was 
 of deep and lasting importance to her life. 
 
 The time was September 1794. Madame de 
 Stael was living in Lausanne, and a young man 
 who was passing through Lausanne set out to call 
 on her. They had many mutual friends. He 
 had cousins who knew her rather well, and were 
 dazzled by her — one cousin in particular who had 
 written of her as "a very extraordinary woman of 
 distinctly superior genius." Nothing was more 
 natural than that he should desire to know her, 
 and should seize the opportunity presented by his 
 visit to the town. As he walked towards her 
 house, he met her driving out ; but he had the 
 courage of his curiosity. He signalled to the 
 driver to stop, and approached the carriage and 
 introduced himself. He was Monsieur Benjamin 
 Constant. Madame de Stael invited him to enter 
 the carriage and drive home with her to supper. 
 He took his seat by her side, and so the curtain 
 drew up on the new drama. 
 
 82 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Benjamin Constant de Rebecque — His ancestors — His precocious 
 childhood — His dissolute youth — He meets Madame de 
 Charriere at Paris and visits her at Colombier — Writes the 
 History of Religion on the backs of playing-cards — Departure 
 for Brunswick — Affectionate correspondence — Colombier re- 
 visited — The end of the liaison. 
 
 Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was French 
 by descent, but Swiss by birth and nationality. 
 His father's family came from Aire, in Artois. 
 His ancestor, Augustin de Constant, in the ser- 
 vice of the Emperor Charles v., sent on a mission 
 to France, embraced the Reformed religion, ac- 
 cepted an appointment from Jeanne d'Albret, 
 and, at the battle of Coutras, saved the life of 
 Henri iv., who rewarded him with the governorship 
 of Marans, had ultimately to leave the country in 
 consequence of the religious persecutions, and 
 died at Lausanne. His mother, nh de Chandieu, 
 wais descended from Antoine, Seigneur of Roche- 
 Chandieu, in Dauphine, who became a pastor of 
 the Reformed faith, fled to Geneva at the time of 
 the Saint Bartholomew massacre, was recalled by 
 Henri iv., as whose chaplain he acted at the 
 battle of Coutras, but subsequently returned to 
 Geneva, where he died. 
 
 One of Augustin de Constant's great-grandsons 
 
 83 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 was Samuel de Constant, governor of the fortress 
 of Bois-le-Duc, and known as a friend of Voltaire. 
 This Baron de Constant had two daughters — the 
 Marquise de Langallerie, in whose house at 
 Lausanne Voltaire organised his theatre, and 
 Madame de Charriere de Bavois — and four sons, 
 David Constant d'Hermenches, Philippe, Juste- 
 Louis-Arnold, and Samuel. 
 
 The Constant d'Hermenches were among 
 Voltaire's best amateur actors, but hardly concern 
 this story. Philippe died young. Juste-Louis- 
 Arnold married Henriette de Chandieu, and 
 became the father of Benjamin ; he was an officer 
 in the Dutch service. Samuel married Mademoi- 
 selle Charlotte Pictet, of an old and notable 
 Genevan family, and settled down on an estate 
 near Lausanne, where four children were born to 
 him — Benjamin's four cousins, Rosalie, Lisette, 
 Juste, and Charles. Rosalie, ugly and deformed, 
 but keenly witty and brilliantly intelligent, was 
 much in her cousin's confidence, and was the 
 observant and by no means silent spectator of the 
 vicissitudes of the long liaison about to be related. 
 Much of our intimate knowledge of it is picked 
 up from her letters. Her brother Charles helped 
 the future biographer by bequeathing the family 
 papers to the Public Library of Geneva. 
 
 Benjamin was an only child, and his mother 
 died in giving birth to him, in 1767. He was at 
 first brought up by his maternal grandmother, 
 Madame de Chandieu, and his aunt, Madame de 
 
 84 
 
Benjamin Constant 
 
 Nassau, n^e de Chandieu, and married to a 
 German Count from whom she was separated. 
 At the age of seven, however, his father took 
 him to Holland and put him in the hands of a 
 tutor. A number of his letters from this date 
 onwards have been preserved, and they display a 
 precocity, not merely of scholarship but of ideas, 
 which is uncanny and almost terrifying. At the 
 age of eight he is able to write to his grand- 
 mother : " I think I am paying very dearly for 
 knowledge since it takes me away from you." 
 At the age of nine he is speaking to her with 
 enthusiasm of his studies : *' I am reading Roman 
 history and Homer. It gives me great pleasure, 
 especially Homer, because he is a poet and I like 
 poetry, and, while amusing me, he gives me great 
 ideas. He is the father of the religion of the 
 ancients." 
 
 By the time he is ten, however, he has dis- 
 covered something of the vanity of study. 
 
 "My dear grandmother," he writes, "let us 
 make an agreement. Do you let me give you a 
 little of my health, and give me in exchange ten of 
 your years. I should be the gainer ; for I should 
 have more sense, and, having learnt Latin and 
 Greek, and all the things that I must know, I 
 should learn from you the things that are more 
 essential. For what do the thoughts of these 
 ancients matter? I have not to live with them, 
 and I think I shall drop them altogether as soon 
 as I am of an age to live in the society of living 
 men and women." 
 
 85 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 And then follows a still more striking proof of the 
 direction in which his young thoughts are straying. 
 
 " I sometimes see here a young English girl of 
 my own age whom I prefer to Cicero, Seneca, 
 and the rest of them. She is teaching me Ovid. 
 She has never read him or heard of him, but I 
 find the whole of Ovid written in her eyes. I am 
 writing a little romance for her, and am sending 
 you the first pages of it. You shall have the rest 
 of it if you like." 
 
 In other letters we have the picture of the 
 boy's daily life. He is studying other things 
 besides the classical authors — dancing and the 
 harpsichord to wit. He goes to the theatre ; he 
 plays piquet; it is his good fortune to "call 
 sometimes on a beautiful young lady from 
 England." He is composing an opera, "verses 
 and music and all." It is going to be very 
 beautiful, and he is " not afraid of being hissed." 
 In a letter to his father we find a further trace of 
 the "little romance " already referred to. This is 
 the document — apparently a dedication — written 
 at the age of twelve : — 
 
 " Les Chevaliers : Heroic Romance by H 
 
 B C de R at Brussels, 1779. 
 
 " Letter to M. Juste Constant : — 
 
 " Dear Author of my days, — I have been told 
 that fathers find the works of their sons excellent, 
 even though these are only a mass of remin- 
 iscences thrown together without art. In order 
 
 S6 
 
A Cynic in the Nursery 
 
 to demonstrate the falsity of this report, I have 
 the honour of presenting this work to you, in 
 the full confidence that, although it is I who have 
 composed it, you will not find it good, and will 
 not even have the patience to read it." 
 
 Decidedly this is a precocity which differs not 
 in degree but in kind from all the stock examples 
 — from the case, for instance, of John Stuart Mill 
 learning Greek a$ the age of three, or Macaulay 
 in his high chair expounding to the parlourmaid 
 from a volume as big as himself. Whereas the 
 others were only clever children, Benjamin 
 Constant strikes one as having been born grown 
 up — a little man of the world in short frocks — 
 desabuse in the nursery — disillusionised by intuitive 
 anticipation. We shall see, as we proceed, how 
 the child was father to the man ; how the child 
 became a cynic, while the cynic remained a child, 
 never strong enough to find satisfaction in 
 cynicism, always going back to the deceptions 
 which did not deceive, always hankering after the 
 emotions of which he found himself incapable. 
 
 At the absurd age of thirteen his University 
 career began, and he was successively at Oxford, 
 at Erlangen, and at Edinburgh. At the last- 
 named seat of learning he made the acquaintance 
 of Sir James Mackintosh ; but nothing of lively 
 interest is known about this portion of his life. 
 It was an uprooted life in which no new ties, even 
 of a sentimental sort, seem to have been formed. 
 He was serving his apprenticeship to cosmo- 
 
 87 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 politanism — earning the appellation of "the first 
 of the cosmopolitans " — becoming a cosmopolitan 
 of a much more distinctive type than was fore- 
 shadowed by the careers of such predecessors as 
 Horace Walpole and Baron Grimm — a man 
 without a country and without a home. 
 
 In 1787 we find him in Paris. "How 
 foolishly," he afterwards wrote, " I wasted there 
 my time, my money, and my health ! " He 
 gambled, of course, — it was the vice of the age, — 
 and indulged in the other vices natural to un- 
 disciplined youth. His father heard of his 
 proceedings, and for once asserted his authority, 
 and summoned him to Bois-le-Duc, where he was 
 in garrison ; but Benjamin rebelled and would not 
 come. One can read his character at the age of 
 twenty in the letter in which he told the story 
 of this impetuous revolt. 
 
 " I pictured myself," he wrote, "as a poor devil 
 who had failed in all his projects. I was bored, 
 wretched, more sick than ever of my melancholy 
 life ; and I pictured this poor father of mine 
 disappointed of all his hopes. A fixed idea 
 settled in my head. I said to myself : * Let me 
 be off ; let me live alone ; let me no longer cause 
 unhappiness to my father, or trouble to anyone.' 
 
 " My head was excited. In haste I pick up 
 three shirts and a few pairs of stockings. A 
 saddler in the house opposite to me hires me a 
 post-chaise. I send for horses to drive me to 
 Amiens. I get into my carriage, with my three 
 shirts, a pair of slippers, and thirty-one louis in 
 
 88 
 
Madame de Charri^re 
 
 my pocket. I drive in hot haste. In twenty 
 hours I cover sixty-nine leagues. I reach Calais. 
 I embark, I arrive at Dover, and awake as if 
 from a dream." 
 
 A walking tour was thus the first remedy 
 which he tried against the maladie du Steele. 
 It was also the remedy tried at the same date 
 against the same disorder by Ramond de 
 Carbonniere, who, upset by The Sorrows of 
 Werther^ restored himself to mental health by 
 making first ascents in the Pyrenees. His 
 wanderings in the Scottish Highlands, however, 
 did not cure him. He needed not Nature's but 
 Woman's sympathy, and for a time he found 
 what he sought in the house of a lady whom he 
 had met in Paris — Madame de Charriere, the 
 novelist, author of Caliste and the Lettres 
 Neuchdteloises. 
 
 Madame de Charriere was of an old and noble 
 Dutch family. Isabelle Agnes Elizabeth van 
 Tuyll van Serooskerken van Zuylen was her 
 maiden name, and she was witty rather than 
 beautiful. After rejecting many suitors, she saw 
 the time arrive when she could no longer hope to 
 pick and choose, and in these circumstances 
 she accepted the hand of M. de Charriere, a 
 Swiss gentleman who had been a tutor in her 
 father's house. He took her to live at Colombier, 
 near Neuchatel. 
 
 Save for a new building or two — notably a 
 handsome schoolhouse — the village (or perhaps 
 
 89 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 one should call it a little town) has hardly altered 
 since the eighteenth century. An old castle, now 
 used as a barrack, frowns from the brow of a low 
 hill upon ill-kept avenues which stretch away 
 towards the reedy marshes and the Lake shore. 
 The narrow streets are silent and empty, and the 
 grass grows in them. Your impression, as you 
 walk through them, is of a stagnant place, 
 detached from life ; you think of Tennyson's lines 
 about " a place where no one comes, Or hath come 
 since the making of the world." 
 
 You can find Madame de Charriere's house if 
 you inquire for it, though no mural tablet marks 
 it out, and no photographer has put it on a picture 
 postcard. It stands a little away from the main 
 street, at the foot of the hill, and seems half 
 schloss half farm, with rough sheds for stable and 
 coach-house, built round a court containing the 
 inevitable pump. The entrance is at the foot of 
 a circular tower, which you ascend (if you are 
 bidden) by a winding stone staircase of venerable 
 age ; and you may be shown (by the favour of the 
 present tenants) a kitchen which is obviously a 
 survival of a remote past, a dining-room which is 
 dark even at noon, and a long salon, naturally 
 cold, and difficult to warm, built above one of the 
 sheds, and looking out over vegetable gardens 
 and vineyards. 
 
 Here Madame de Charriere sat, and wrote, 
 and was bored. She had nothing in common 
 with her husband — nothing in common with more 
 
 90 
 
A Visit to Colombier 
 
 than two or three of her neighbours. " One's 
 imagination," she wrote, '* dries up here. In the 
 matter of Hterature, beyond M. Du Peyrou, with 
 whom I sometimes talk about Rousseau, who 
 dictates a note for me to his servant nearly every 
 day, and to whom I also write nearly every day, 
 there is no one here to whom I can talk for a 
 quarter of an hour on the subjects of greatest 
 interest to me." She wrote, therefore, to distract 
 herself; and though what she wrote was fiction, 
 and distinctly good fiction, the citizens of 
 Neuchatel neither sympathised nor understood. 
 Her lively pictures of their sluggish manners gave 
 offence. She was accused of caricaturing and 
 calumniating individuals. *' It was bound to be," 
 she said, "though I had not thought of it before. 
 When one draws a fanciful but true picture of a 
 flock of sheep, each sheep discovers its own like- 
 ness in the picture." 
 
 To this dull house Benjamin Constant came 
 upon a visit, on his way to take up an appoint- 
 ment which his father had procured for him at 
 the Court of Brunswick. He was twenty, and 
 Madame de Charriere was forty-seven. Their 
 relations were bound, in the long run, to be 
 governed by these facts. She must have known 
 it from the first, and he was certain to discover 
 it before any great lapse of time. For the 
 moment, however, they had need of each other, 
 and could live in the present, looking neither 
 before nor after. The young man figured as the 
 
 91 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 lady's "poor wounded dove," She could be 
 with half her nature his mistress, and with the 
 other half his monitress and guardian angel. 
 
 The visit was spun out. Two months elapsed 
 before Benjamin could tear himself away ; though 
 the link between them was doubtless more in- 
 tellectual than passionate. They could talk ; and 
 it was so long since Madame de Charriere had 
 had anyone to talk to who understood, or was 
 interested in what she had to say. So the 
 long October and November evenings were all 
 too short for them, while they sat together by 
 the subdued lamplight in the salon. Benjamin 
 was engaged upon a History of Religion, which 
 he was to rewrite many times before publish- 
 ing it ; he wrote it on the backs of playing- 
 cards which he threaded together on a string. 
 Madame de Charriere sat opposite to him, writing 
 a novel, and occasionally reading passages aloud 
 for his criticism. Where M. de Charriere spent 
 his evenings we do not know — perhaps in the 
 tavern with his Swiss friends, perhaps in the 
 kitchen with his pipe and bowl. It must have 
 been very clear to him that he was not wanted 
 in the drawing-room. 
 
 It was as much as the friends could do to 
 separate when midnight struck. The hour always 
 found them in the midst of some interminable dis- 
 cussion, now philosophic, and now sentimental ; 
 and they sat down in their respective bedrooms 
 and wrote notes to send to each other by the 
 
 92 
 
Aflectionate Correspondence 
 
 servant as soon as they were called. Still harder 
 was the parting when Benjamin had at last to 
 set out for Brunswick. The letters which he 
 despatched to her as often as he stopped to change 
 horses on the journey were passionate avowals. 
 
 " The roads are frightful, the wind is cold, and 
 I am sad — sadder to-day than I was yesterday, 
 just as I was sadder yesterday than the day before, 
 and shall be sadder to-morrow than to-day. To 
 quit you for a single day is hard and painful, and 
 every day is a fresh pain added to those which 
 have gone before." 
 
 ** As long as you live, and as long as I live, 
 I shall always say to myself, in whatever situation 
 I may be : * There is a Colombier in the world.' 
 Before I knew you I used to say to myself: 'If 
 they torture me too much, I shall kill myself.' 
 Now I say : * If they make life too hard for me, 
 I have a retreat at Colombier.'" 
 
 " This evening, while playing loto, I thought 
 of you, as you will easily believe. The idea of 
 you mingled, so to say, with the room in which 
 we were ; and as I was undressing, a moment 
 since, I asked myself: 'Who was it, then, that I 
 found so charming to-night at the Duchess' 
 reception ? ' And, in an instant, I realised that 
 it was you. It is thus that, at a distance of 250 
 leagues from me, you contribute to my happiness 
 without suspecting it. Adieu, you who are ten 
 thousand times good, ten thousand times dear, 
 ten thousand times beloved." 
 
 It could not last, of course. Nothing is more 
 93 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 certain than that. The woman of seven -and-forty 
 must grow old while the lad of twenty was only 
 growing up. Not for many years could the last 
 love of the one run concurrently with the first love 
 of the other. Autumn must decline into winter 
 while May blossomed into June. The boy must 
 live his own life, and she must let him live it. 
 The most that she could hope for was to keep 
 some vague lien on his heart by not insisting. 
 There was a Colombier in the world ; and if she 
 left him free to range, he would sometimes, when 
 life went hardly with him, remember it and return 
 to it. 
 
 And so it happened. At first Benjamin wrote 
 to Madame de Charriere from Brunswick to tell 
 her of his boredom and his melancholy. " How," 
 he asks, "am I to succeed? How am I to 
 please ? How am I to live ? " But presently 
 he writes that he is going to be married to 
 Wilhelmina, Baroness von Cram, maid of honour 
 to the Grand Duchess. She was ugly, pock- 
 marked, red-eyed, and thin. So, at least, says 
 Rosalie de Constant, who was astonished at her 
 cousin's choice. She adds, however, that "her 
 husband adores her as if she were beautiful " ; 
 and to Madame de Charriere the husband writes : 
 " My wife makes me very happy. I cannot even 
 wish to draw nearer to you, since that would 
 alienate me from her ; but I shall never cease to 
 say : ' The pity of it ! ' " 
 
 Ai;id Madame de Charriere forgave. What 
 
 94 
 
The Cooling of Love's Ardour 
 
 else could she do, being in love and being forty- 
 nine ? She forgave and waited ; and presently 
 came the news that she perhaps was waiting for. 
 Benjamin writes that he is unhappy with his wife 
 — that he is about to divorce her — for sufficient 
 reasons : " The day after to-morrow I am to 
 appear, with Madame de Constant, before a Con- 
 sistory which wishes to amuse itself by making 
 efforts, that will be futile, to reconcile us." He 
 adds that life at Brunswick has become intolerable 
 to him, that he expects to obtain leave of absence, 
 and that he hopes to come and stay with her at 
 Colombier. But by this time she was fifty-three, 
 while he was only twenty-six. 
 
 His letters at this stage were numerous, but 
 they were no longer in the same tone as the earlier 
 letters. It is not merely that the bitterness of 
 disillusion rings in them ; not merely that we find 
 excuses — replies, no doubt, to reproaches — for not 
 writing oftener and not coming sooner. We find 
 much stronger proof in them of the cooling of 
 the lover's ardour. Now it is this cynical out- 
 burst, apropos of some chronique scandaleuse 
 that he is relating : " I like to see the sum of 
 pleasure in our little world increase, and, as I 
 have vowed myself not only to celibacy but to 
 continence, I am quite willing that others should 
 have my share of these short-lived enjoyments." 
 Now it is a confession of some love affair 
 which his correspondent can hardly have been 
 best pleased to read about. One Charlotte — 
 
 95 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Charlottechen — whom we shall meet again in the 
 course of this history, has been pestering him 
 with attentions, proposing to sacrifice honour and 
 fly with him. A certain petite comedienne has 
 called, desiring to know whether he is willing to 
 renew relations that have been interrupted. She 
 is, in some way not described, "protected" by 
 Charlottechen. *'You will admit," writes 
 Benjamin, "that this is a quaint situation." 
 
 And still Madame de Charriere forgave. For, 
 at any rate, he did correspond with her, and did 
 come to see her. He even spent a winter with 
 her at Colombier ; and when he parted from 
 her to return to Brunswick, in order that it might 
 not be said that he had been turned out of a 
 post which he was intending to resign, he wrote : 
 " Adieu. I embrace you. You know how much 
 I love you, and how happy it makes me to love." 
 It was a part of what she wanted, though not 
 the whole. She clung to the small place in his 
 heart which was still reserved for her. She con- 
 tinued to cling to it even after he had come under 
 the new spell of Madame de Stael ; but when that 
 happened she knew that the end was near. 
 
 " I find him much changed," she wrote. " We 
 laughed together at nothing, unless it were at 
 ourselves, or rather at each other. Besides, the 
 Neckers and the Staels were so many arch- 
 saints, on no account to be profaned. The 
 rupture is a pity for me. As for him, who is 
 younger, and doubtless needs excitement and 
 
 96 
 
The End of a Liaison 
 
 variety, he can find many substitutes, and 
 Madame de Stael, with her wit and her plots 
 and plans, her alliances and quarrels with the 
 entire world of men, is much more to him than 
 I can be." 
 
 That was the approach of the end. It actually 
 came when Benjamin wrote to her : — 
 
 ■ " She is the second woman whom I have met 
 who could have taken the place of all the rest of 
 the world to me. You know who was the first. 
 In fact, she is a being apart, a superior being, 
 such as one meets only once in a century." 
 
 After that, all was indeed over. It was only 
 a question of formally speaking the last words 
 over the grave of a dead love. Benjamin 
 Constant seems to have spoken them in a letter 
 dated March 26, 1796: "Farewell you who 
 have embellished eight years of my life . . . you 
 whom I can appreciate better than you will 
 ever be appreciated by anyone else. Farewell. 
 Farewell." 
 
 He was twenty-nine when he wrote this, and 
 she was fifty-six. She had nine more years to 
 live — nine lonely years of slow descent into the 
 Valley of the Shadow, by the side of a husband, 
 now stone deaf, to whom she was indifferent, in 
 the midst of a dull provincial society which 
 did not understand her. He was at the be- 
 ginning of a long entanglement, marked by 
 strange vicissitudes, for which the previous romance 
 had merely been the preparation. 
 G 97 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Benjamin Constant's intimacy with Madame de Stael — What 
 RosaUe de Constant thought — The Paris salon reopened — 
 Services rendered to Talleyrand — And to Benjamin Constant 
 — Revolt and reconquest — The birth of Albertine. 
 
 Madame de Stael and Madame de Charriere 
 had a slight acquaintance with each other. The 
 younger lady had even gushed over the elder in 
 her impulsive style. ** It is in Holland, it seems," 
 she had written, "that one learns the French 
 language best ; " and, in the midst of the Reign 
 of Terror, she deplored having already read 
 Caliste ten times, and being therefore unable to 
 fly to it as a fresh consolation for her troubles. 
 The elder lady was less enthusiastic. As an 
 eighteenth-century purist, she disapproved of 
 Madame de Stael's prose style. It was a 
 " rhapsodical rigmarole," and she wondered what 
 Bossuet and F^nelon would have thought of it. 
 Benjamin Constant was inclined to the same 
 view until he came under the personal spell. In 
 September 1793 he writes: "I have not seen 
 Madame de Stael, and have no curiosity to do 
 so." Two months later, he pens a sarcastic 
 criticism of the Apologie de la Reine. It seems 
 to him affected and insincere. 
 
 98 
 
Acquaintance Ripens into Intimacy 
 
 "What," he asks, "is the sense of this plati- 
 tude : * Brilliant and frivolous, like happiness 
 and beauty ' ? The idea is false. Happiness is 
 neither brilliant nor frivolous. And then those 
 antitheses, and those balanced phrases when one 
 has before one's eyes the picture of such long and 
 fearful tortures ! One could spit on the thing." 
 
 So the introduction was delayed until Ben- 
 jamin's return from Brunswick, after winding 
 up his affairs, closing his connection with the 
 Court, and arranging for the removal of his 
 library to Switzerland. In what circumstances 
 it was effected we have seen ; and we have next 
 to see in what circumstances acquaintance ripened 
 into intimacy. The story is told in Benjamin 
 Constant's Diary.^ 
 
 "It is truly curious to observe," he writes, 
 " how women take notice of the maddest actions 
 of men who are interested in them, when these 
 concern themselves. It had been agreed between 
 Madame de Stael and myself that, in order to 
 avoid compromising her, I should never remain 
 with her after midnight. Whatever the charm 
 which I found in our conversations, and however 
 passionate my desire not to let the matter stop 
 at conversation, I had to submit to this firm 
 resolution. But this evening, the time having 
 seemed to fly faster than usual, I pulled out my 
 watch, to demonstrate that the hour for my 
 departure had not yet arrived. But the in- 
 exorable minute hand having deceived me, I was 
 proceeding, with a movement of passion worthy 
 
 ^ Not \S\& Journal Intitne, but the Carnet, quoted by Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 99 
 
 iL i 
 
 m' a 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 of a child, to smash on the floor the instrument 
 of my discomfiture, when Madame de Stael 
 exclaimed: 'What madness! How absurd you 
 are ! ' But what an inward smile I perceived shining 
 through her reproaches ! Decidedly this broken 
 watch of mine is going to do me a great service." 
 
 And the next day's entry is : — 
 
 " I have not bought another watch. I have no 
 longer any need of one." 
 
 There is a crow of triumph in the sentence. 
 Benjamin Constant believed himself to have won 
 a victory, whereas the truth was that he had let 
 himself be caught in a net. Presently he was to 
 discover that ; but his cousin Rosalie saw it at 
 once. "She is stronger than he is," she wrote; 
 and her letters are full of her dislike of "the 
 Ambassadress." For instance : — 
 
 " She would die if she had not a crowd round 
 her. In the absence of cats she would make 
 herself a court of rats, and even a court of insects 
 would be better than nothing at all." 
 
 ** She is very unhappy with advantages which 
 would suffice to make ten other people happy ; 
 but she is passionately fond of Benjamin. God 
 knows where their passion will lead them." 
 
 " I have seen my cousin de Stael, and my 
 cousin the shorn sheep, two or three times. 
 The day before yesterday, I called on them. I 
 found her surrounded by the fox,^ the little cat,^ 
 and the other.^ She was resting one of her 
 
 * M. de Tracy. ^ Adrien de Meun. ' Benjamin Constant. 
 
 lOO 
 
What Rosalie de Constant Thought 
 
 elbows against the chest of the first, and toying 
 with the head of the second, while the third 
 stroked her neck and called her his 'dear little 
 kitten.' The picture disgusted me, as did also their 
 pleasantries at the expense of the Ambassador," 
 
 " I have seen M. de Stael for the first time, 
 and my first impression of him is that he is more 
 agreeable than all his wife's lovers. He seems 
 crushed, timid, and overwhelmed. Her manner 
 is haughty and contemptuous. She speaks in 
 his presence of her coquetterie and her adoration 
 of Benjamin, to whom she vows that she will 
 devote her life." 
 
 And finally : — 
 
 " Our cousin de Stael has been in a great state 
 of mind because our uncle was unwilling to see 
 either her or her son. She cannot understand 
 that a father should be anything but delighted to 
 see his son loved by her. She speaks of him 
 quite openly as 'the man whom I love best in 
 the world, the man to whom I cling with all the 
 vitality that is left to me,' and never suspects the 
 scandal she is causing." 
 
 Madame de Stael, in truth, very seldom had 
 the fear of scandal before her eyes or shrank 
 from the public advertisement of her attachments. 
 It was part of her conception of love that she 
 should openly use her influence to advance the 
 interests of her lovers, who, on their part, were 
 seldom backward in availingf themselves of her 
 services. We have seen how, at the beginning of 
 the Revolution, she pushed M. de Narbonne into 
 
 lOI 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the office of Minister of War, and how he repaid 
 her with ingratitude. The time was coming when 
 she could be helpful in similar ways to other friends. 
 In March 1795, M. de Stael resumed his 
 position as Swedish Ambassador in Paris. In 
 May of the same year Madame de Stael joined 
 him there, and reopened her salon, establishing 
 relations not only with her old Royalist friends, 
 but with such prominent politicians as Boissy- 
 d'Anglas, Tallien, and Barras. Her position, 
 however, was delicate and difficult; and her 
 manoeuvres were hardly compatible with her 
 diplomatic status. Her husband was insolently 
 slapped on the back by a hot Republican and 
 called a " foreign spy " ; and she herself would 
 probably have been expelled if she had not 
 retreated. A letter from her father to Henri 
 Meister, dated January 2, 1796, announces her 
 arrival at Coppet, adding that " M. Constant was 
 her travelling companion." She remained there, 
 or in the neighbourhood, throughout that year 
 and a portion of the next. Benjamin Constant 
 was with her most of the time, and her husband, 
 his Embassy having been again suspended, 
 joined her late in September 1796. Rosalie de 
 Constant's letters, quoted above, were written 
 during this period. In the spring of 1797, 
 however, we find her once more in Paris, after 
 stopping on the way at Herivaux, in Seine-et- 
 Oise (where Benjamin Constant also stayed), and 
 renewing her activities on her friends' behalf. 
 
 102 
 
Zeal for Talleyrand's Advancement 
 
 Barras, in his Memoirs, draws a graphic picture 
 of her exertions on behalf of Talleyrand, the 
 perfumed unbelieving Bishop, whose mistress he 
 declares her to have been in the days before the 
 emigration. "II faut faire marcher les femmes " 
 was, according to Barras, the Bishop's motto ; 
 and he describes how Madame de Stael assailed 
 him again and again in his Cabinet with the 
 demand that he should do something for her 
 friend. She entered, he says, with her hair and 
 her dress in disorder, threw herself into an arm- 
 chair, seized him by both hands, and dragged him 
 to a seat beside her, speaking breathlessly. 
 
 " * Barras,' she exclaimed, ' Barras, my friend, 
 you are the only person in the world whom I 
 can rely upon. Without you we are lost — lost 
 altogether. Do you know? But no, you do 
 not know, or you would not leave me so cruelly 
 embarrassed. Do you know,' she continued in 
 a voice interrupted with sobs, ' what he has said, 
 what he just now repeated to me ? ' 
 
 " ' What who said ? What is the matter, 
 madame ? ' 
 
 *' ' Barras, my friend,' she repeated, pressing 
 my hands more tightly than ever, and rolling her 
 eyes like an epileptic. ' My God, it is of our 
 poor Talleyrand that I am speaking to you. Do 
 you know what has just happened to him ? ' 
 
 " 'What, madame?' 
 
 *' ' I have just parted from him. Perhaps he is 
 no longer alive. He told me that he would 
 throw himself into the Seine if you did not make 
 
 103 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 him Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has only 
 ten louis between him and starvation.' 
 
 " ' But has he no other resources ? His friends ? ' 
 
 "'His friends? I am one of them myself. 
 
 / I have supported him up till now, and have been 
 
 / glad to do it. But now he has no home, whether 
 
 with me or elsewhere ; and when one has no 
 
 ready money and no lucrative profession, and 
 
 nothing in the world but debts, the situation is 
 
 truly cruel. We must get him out of it. My 
 
 dear Barras, we are lost. Talleyrand is going to 
 
 drown himself. He is a dead man if you do not 
 
 make him Minister. If you have absolutely 
 
 disposed of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, give 
 
 him another. He will be equally suitable for it. 
 
 He is versatile ; he is capable of everything.' " 
 
 And so on for many pages, Barras believed, 
 or says that he believed, that if he had attached 
 "personal and sentimental conditions" to the 
 advancement of Talleyrand, Madame de Stael 
 would have acceded to them on the spot ; though 
 in the end, as we know, the Bishop got his 
 preferment on his merits. 
 
 Benjamin Constant was also introduced by 
 Madame de Stael to the Director. " I will not 
 say," he writes, " which of the two brought the 
 other ; for, whatever calumny may have said 
 to the contrary, I protest here, to the honour 
 of Madame de Stael, that I never really knew 
 to which sex she belonged." She led Benjamin 
 Constant by the hand, presented him as "a young 
 man of prodigious ability who is on our side," 
 
 104 
 
A Rising Politician 
 
 and the author of a pamphlet entitled De la 
 Force du Gouvernement actuel de la France, et de 
 la Ndcessitd de sy rallier. B arras perceived his 
 talents, and he was, in this way, launched in politics, 
 with a prospect of a career — albeit a career which, 
 for various reasons, never came to very much. 
 
 The curious thing is, however, that at the 
 very time when Madame de Stael was so zealously 
 serving his interests Benjamin Constant began 
 to feel his fetters gall. Outwardly his life was 
 that of a rising politician and a young man 
 of fashion. He held his own among the mus- 
 cadins and incroyables of the Directorate — those 
 elegant dandies who lorded it in the streets and 
 salons, now that the reign of sans-culottism was 
 over. But these externals did not faithfully 
 reflect his inner life, of which we get two striking 
 glimpses in two interesting letters written to his 
 aunt, Madame de Nassau. The first letter is 
 written from H^rivaux on May i8, 1797, and 
 the essential passages are as follows : — 
 
 " I write to you, my dear aunt, from the pro- 
 foundest solitude, in the midst of my forests, and 
 with the feeling that nothing but a greater 
 stability in my situation is required to make me 
 tolerably happy. I write to ask you if you can 
 help me to supply that need. A tie to which 
 I cling from a sense of duty, or, if you will have 
 it so, from weakness — but to which I feel sure 
 that I shall continue to hold fast until a more 
 real duty emancipates me from it, since I cannot 
 break it without confessing that I am tired of 
 
 105 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 it, which I am too polite to do — a tie which 
 plunges me into a world which I have ceased to 
 care for, drags me away from the country which 
 I love, makes me profoundly unhappy, and can 
 only be broken by a shock which I feel myself 
 incapable of giving it : such a tie, I say, has held 
 me enchained for the last two years. 
 
 " I am isolated without being independent, 
 subjugated without being united. I see the last 
 years of my life slipping away without either the 
 repose of solitude or the amenities of legitimate 
 affection. It is in vain that I have tried to break 
 my bonds. My character is such that I cannot 
 resist the complainings of another by the opposi- 
 tion of my will, especially when it is possible for 
 me to postpone my emancipation from hour to 
 hour without distressing inconvenience. In this 
 way I wear myself out in a position unfavourable 
 to my tastes, to the occupations which I prefer, 
 and to the tranquillity of my life. Besides, 
 supposing the tie broken, I shall only find myself 
 in a solitude which will intensify the picture of 
 the pain, real or imaginary, which I shall be told 
 that I have caused. To console myself for this 
 I must at least make someone happy. 
 
 " Do you guess, my dear aunt, to what I am 
 working up ? To a project which I have had 
 in my mind for the last year — about which I have 
 written you twenty letters (though I have torn 
 them all up). In a word, I am going to ask you 
 to find me a wife. I want one in order to be 
 happy. And, in order that I may feel for her 
 beforehand every sentiment of friendship, I want 
 her to come to me from you. ... I should like 
 her to have a little fortune ; and as for herself, 
 
 io6 
 
Revolt and Reconquest 
 
 I would rather that she were Genevese than Swiss, 
 because it would suit me, newly naturalised as 
 a Frenchman, to marry a Frenchwoman. Let 
 her be not more than sixteen, tolerably pretty, 
 without any conspicuous defect, of simple and 
 orderly habits, capable of supporting life in 
 solitary retirement, reasonable enough to be 
 willing to live eight leagues from Paris and go 
 there but seldom. As for her character — I leave 
 that to you. As for wit — I am sick and tired of it." 
 
 This is the first sign of revolt ; and it seems 
 to have been the fate of Madame de Stael first 
 to conquer men with her wit, and then to weary 
 them with it. Again and again we shall see 
 how Benjamin Constant found her vivacity over- 
 whelming, and how it made him long for the 
 quiet domesticities for which, at bottom, he was 
 not less unfit than for the life of high-strung 
 nervous tension. This time, however, the revolt 
 was quickly followed by reconquest ; and in a letter 
 dated July i, 1797, we see him retracting. 
 
 "You wish, then, most amiable of aunts, that 
 your nephew should remain a celibate. Your will 
 be done! I resign myself thereto because my 
 legitimate sovereign has returned, and my project 
 of insurrection is abandoned. To speak seriously, 
 I have received fresh and so great proofs of the 
 devotion of the person in question — to whom I 
 thought it better, for the moment, both for her 
 sake and for my own, to appear less attached — 
 that I could not without displaying the most 
 lively ingratitude, or without laying up for myself 
 
 107 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 a store of bitter regrets in the future, think of 
 doing anything whatever that would be painful 
 to her. I beg and entreat you, therefore, my 
 dear aunt, to forget the portion of my letter 
 bearing on that subject, and, above all, to show 
 it to no one, and to remember only those passages 
 of it which relate to my sentiments towards 
 yourself." 
 
 What, then, we have to inquire, had happened 
 between these two letters, accounting for the 
 quick revulsion of sentiment? Nothing less, we 
 find, than that Madame de Stael, rushing through 
 life like a whirlwind, and insisting upon her share 
 of all emotions and all experiences, had found 
 time to bear yet another child — Albertine de 
 Stael, afterwards to be known as Duchesse de 
 Broglie, and one of the great Protestant ladies 
 of France. Nothing is more clear than that 
 Benjamin Constant believed that he, and not 
 M. de Stael — who had so long been absent from 
 his wife and was so soon to divorce her — was 
 the child's father. The proof in these letters 
 would almost suffice by itself, and it does not 
 stand alone. Other proofs, not less eloquent, 
 will greet us, when the time comes to turn over 
 the pages of that Journal Intime in which 
 Benjamin Constant wrote his secret thoughts 
 in cipher, and in which the lonely man's cry 
 for the "dear Albertine" whom he loves, and 
 whom he would like to have with him always, 
 recurs and recurs like a refrain. 
 
 1 08 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 M. and Madame de Stael separate — The alleged "duel" with 
 Napoleon — Publication of De la Litterature — Death of M. de 
 Stael — Why Madame de Stael did not then marry Benjamin. 
 
 It was in the summer of 1798 that M. de Stael 
 dejfinitely separated from his wife. The few 
 years that remained to him were chiefly given to 
 gambling, prodigality, and the heaping up - of 
 debts. Madame de Stael, during the same 
 period, was perpetually passing to and fro 
 between Paris and Coppet, with Benjamin 
 Constant often, but not always, in her company. 
 She had written (before Byron) that love was 
 woman's whole existence ; but her aphorism was 
 only true of herself at the hours of agitation when 
 love had just departed or was threatening to 
 depart. When love was secure, it was an 
 episode to be " classed," and indulged con- 
 currently with others. It seemed secure at this 
 stage ; and the magnet which obviously drew her 
 was her ambition to shine in literature, in society, 
 and in politics. 
 
 The politics of the period we must largely take 
 for granted. They are very complicated ; and 
 Madame de Stael's connection with them was 
 rather that of an impetuous partisan than an 
 
 109 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 effective force. Her salon might be a centre of 
 intrigue and a source of apprehension, but her 
 practical influence has been exaggerated. She 
 could do a great deal to advance individuals, but 
 very little to direct events. Her protegds did 
 not remain in leading strings. Talleyrand in 
 particular did not, but easily accommodated him- 
 self to the new conditions which she resisted. 
 Even Benjamin Constant was comparatively in 
 favour with the powers which she displeased. 
 She always had the air of being dangerous ; but 
 circumstances were too strong for her, and she 
 never actually became so. 
 
 On one occasion she achieved a great personal 
 triumph — when the French, in 1798, invaded the 
 Canton of Vaud, to liberate its citizens from the 
 yoke of the Bernese, who had subjugated the 
 country in 1536, and treated it as a dependency 
 ever since. Coppet was on the line of march, 
 and Necker, in great alarm, destroyed letters 
 and other papers which he feared would be com- 
 promising. Thanks to his daughter's influence, 
 however, he was assured of the protection of the 
 French Republic, and his name was erased from 
 the list of proscribed Emigres. Twenty officers 
 were entertained by Madame de Stael at Coppet. 
 They behaved with absolute correctitude, and 
 everything passed off well. 
 
 With the rise of Napoleon, however, 
 Madame de Stael's influence began to decline. 
 Her admirers are fond of speaking of her "long 
 
 no 
 
The " Long Duel " with Napoleon 
 
 duel " with the Emperor ; but here again one 
 scents exaggeration. The idea of a long duel 
 suggests some sort of equality between the 
 combatants, and some similarity in the weapons 
 used. Those conditions were wanting — and 
 were bound to be wanting — in this case. 
 Madame de Stael was only one among many 
 obstacles that the strong man swept out of his 
 path in order that he might get on with the work 
 which he had appointed himself to do. He 
 could not have salons intriguing against him 
 when he was restoring order after a long period 
 of confusion. She must support him or take the 
 consequences. The alternative was offered to 
 her almost in so many words, and she was found 
 defiant. The consequence was an injunction to 
 remove to a distance of forty leagues from Paris. 
 She continued her defiance, making the welkin 
 ring with her protestations, tried to make herself 
 a figure not less conspicuous than her enemy in 
 the eyes of Europe, and so brought down further 
 persecution on her head. But she was rather 
 a victim who could not be silenced than an 
 antagonist to be reckoned with. Napoleon no 
 doubt treated her very badly, esteeming her a 
 troublesome termagant. But he rather bullied 
 than fought her, and to speak of their "duel" is 
 a misuse of language. 
 
 This, however, is to travel somewhat beyond 
 the scope of the present volume. The ten years 
 of exile in which the centre of Madame de Stael's 
 
 III 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 interest in life was to be emotional rather than 
 political had not yet begun, and the course of 
 certain intervening events must be traced before 
 we come to them. 
 
 Of her intimate relations with Benjamin 
 Constant there is hardly any mention in her 
 letters, and very little in his. We note, however, 
 that the maintenance of the liaison is estranging 
 him from his excellent aunt, Madame de Nassau. 
 In letter after letter he protests against her cold- 
 ness to him, which he attributes to this cause. 
 At the same time, in his letters to his cousin 
 Rosalie, we find indications that his thoughts are 
 beginning to stray occasionally from her whom he 
 has called his legitimate sovereign. An interest 
 revives in the Charlottechen whom we have already 
 met, and whom we are to encounter yet again. 
 
 "I should like to know," he asks, "what has 
 become of a Madame de Marenholz or de 
 Hardenberg, who must be thirty-one years of 
 age, and if Victor has seen her. Do not tell me 
 where, but only tell me whether he has seen her, 
 and whether she spoke to him of me." Having 
 received the news he seeks, he writes : " I was 
 very much interested by what you told me 
 concerning a lady who interested me exceedingly 
 in days gone by. I should indeed be frivolous 
 and unfeeling if seven short years sufficed to make 
 me forget in that way one who is only five-and- 
 twenty leagues away from me." Trifling words, 
 but perhaps symptomatic of a good deal. 
 
 112 
 
Publication of De la Littirature 
 
 Charlotte always figures in Benjamin Constant's 
 life as the woman to whom his heart turns 
 instinctively when he is weary of emotions and 
 agitations. Evidently he is feeling that weariness 
 now ; for he proceeds, with a reference to 
 Madame de Stael : " The fair lady who lately 
 arrived from Geneva lives in a whirlwind of balls, 
 fites^ and evening parties. Sometimes she drags 
 me with her to them, but more often I make my 
 escape." 
 
 Madame de Stael's life, indeed, at this juncture 
 was a rush with which no man enamoured of 
 tranquillity could well keep pace. To all appear- 
 ance her social duties filled her days and nights. 
 No social gathering was complete without her, 
 and she had a finger in every political pie. But 
 she was, at the same time, not less busy with 
 literary work. She was collecting material for 
 her first novel, Delphine — writing to Henri 
 Meister for information which she required for it ; 
 and in 1800 appeared her essay, De la Littdrature 
 consid^rh dans ses Rapports avec les InstihUions 
 sociales. 
 
 It is not a work which we need pause to 
 criticise with any care. The dust which has 
 accumulated upon it in the bookcase is in itself 
 no inconsiderable criticism. It is taken down 
 from the shelf not by those who are interested in 
 the subject, but by those who are interested in 
 the author. Literature is the peg on which the 
 writer hangs her opinions about things in general ; 
 H 113 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 a discourse on literature is the medium through 
 which she expresses an ebullient personality. 
 She declares for the perfectibility of human 
 nature — a belief which, wherever we find it, is 
 always an emotion rather than a reasoned 
 conviction, common to those who feel good, but 
 frame their own moral laws as they go along. 
 She alternates flat-footed platitudes with brilliant 
 intuitions, not recognising the difference between 
 the two things, but being inspired by fits and 
 starts. She foresees Csesarism as the deplorable 
 end of the Republic, and so, of course, increases 
 the sum of her offences against the Caesar that is 
 to be. Napoleon sent his brother to warn her, 
 but the warning fell upon deaf ears ; for she had 
 all her father's pride, and more than her father's 
 obstinacy, and was accustomed to pull wires and 
 get her way. 
 
 The book had been out about two years — had 
 made an immense stir and got into a second 
 edition — had been the centre of a controversy in 
 which Chateaubriand among others took a hand 
 — when the death of M. de Stael gave his wife 
 her freedom. He had been ill, and she had 
 returned to him in circumstances about which 
 very little can be said because very little is 
 known. Certainly there is nothing to indicate 
 that the return implied repentance for acts of 
 infidelity. It was impossible for Madame de 
 Stael to repent of anything, because it was im- 
 possible to her to believe that anything that she 
 
 114 
 
Death of M. de Stael 
 
 did was wrong. She anticipated George Sand in 
 confusing the call of desire with the voice of con- 
 science, and, as has been said above, in "feeling 
 good " because of her loyalty to the moral 
 standards which her inclination improvised. She 
 had, at the same time, however, irresistible im- 
 pulses of pity, and an imperturbable conviction 
 of the consoling value of her presence to the dis- 
 tressed. We do not know whether M. de Stael 
 desired her to be with him in his illness or not. 
 Perhaps he did ; for he seems to have been a 
 weak man and not proud. Perhaps — but the 
 speculation is idle. His wife was at any rate 
 quite sure that she was wanted. Capable of all 
 the emotions in turn, she felt them all intensely 
 at their several hours. Connubial emotion was to 
 have its turn with the rest. One can almost see 
 her possessed by it, and hear her exclaiming, 
 " My place is by his side." 
 
 She joined him, and was taking him to Coppet, 
 whence he was to travel to Aix-les-Bains, to take 
 the waters, when he died at Poligny of an 
 apoplectic stroke. " All those," says the Publiciste, 
 "who knew M. de Stael, know how well he 
 merited, by the gentleness of his manners and the 
 natural goodness of his disposition, the affection, 
 esteem, and regrets of his family and his friends." 
 " You have heard of my trouble," writes his wife to 
 Meister, and then passes on to other subjects. 
 Benjamin Constant, on the date of his death, the 
 news of which had not yet reached him, wrote to 
 
 IIS 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 his friend Fauriel : ^ " Perhaps happiness is impos- 
 sible to me, as I cannot enjoy it with the best 
 and cleverest of women." 
 
 In due course, however, the news reached him. 
 He joined the best and cleverest of women at 
 Coppet, and the question came up for discussion 
 whether they should avail themselves of their 
 freedom to get married. That the question was 
 answered in the negative we know, though why 
 or by which of them it was so answered is not so 
 clear. The general belief is that Benjamin 
 Constant made an offer of marriage which Madame 
 de Stael declined ; and the theory is borne out by 
 a sentence which we find written, seven years 
 later, in his Diary : '* I am between two women, 
 one of whom did me a wrong by refusing to 
 marry me, while the other is about to inflict an 
 injury on me by doing so." The statement has 
 also been made that Madame de Stael agreed to 
 the offer, but imposed an unacceptable condition — 
 that she should retain her own name, which she 
 had made illustrious. She did not want, she said, 
 '* to put Europe off the track — desorienter 
 I' Eur ope y 
 
 Very likely she did not. The entanglement 
 was such that there may well be several explana- 
 tions of the solution found for it, each with its 
 element of truth. Probably, however, we come 
 
 ^ A politician, principally famous for the rapidity with which he 
 resigned the various offices which he held, and subsequently of 
 some eminence as an historian. 
 
 Ii6 
 
A "Distressing" Situation 
 
 nearest to absolute truth in the letters of Rosalie 
 de Constant^ who expected the marrriage, and was 
 sincerely disappointed that it did not take place. 
 
 Rosalie had considered the question as far back 
 as 1796, when there was talk of a divorce, but had 
 doubted, rightly, as it proved, whether Madame 
 de Stael would have the nerve to seek that 
 scandalous solution of the problem. "It is much 
 simpler for her," she wrote, "to continue to live 
 as she is living now." She deplored, however, 
 Benjamin's undignified position as '* cavalier per- 
 petually in attendance." He was too clever, and 
 too important, she thought, for that ; and she 
 describes the situation as *' distressing " to his 
 friends. She believes, however, that it is a situa- 
 tion which M. de Stael's death must necessarily 
 terminate. "Benjamin," she writes, "is coming 
 to Coppet. Everybody is putting forward reasons 
 against their marriage. It seems to me that it 
 cannot fail to take place." 
 
 That was in May 1802. In July Rosalie is not 
 so confident. Benjamin has, in the meantime, been 
 on a visit to her, and she reports : "His character 
 is like that of a wayward child, who always acts 
 on the impulse of the moment and can never be 
 depended upon. He seemed to me to be very 
 much frightened by the idea of the marriage which 
 I thought so certain." At the beginning of 
 September she visits Coppet, and finds that 
 matters have made no progress, though Benjamin 
 is "doing the honours" of the establishment. 
 
 117 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " His position here is very curious. He pays his 
 court to no one, has everything at his command, 
 and grumbles from time to time like a spoilt child." 
 Not until August 1804 does she show that she 
 has received confidences which enable her to 
 understand the situation ; but then she writes : — 
 
 **It seemed to me such a natural thing for her 
 to marry Benjamin when she was free that no 
 doubt of her doing so occurred to me. It appears 
 that they were both so afraid of the step that they 
 came to an arrangement. She had other lovers, 
 and he had a constant desire to run after other 
 women ; but their intellects unite them. No other 
 man offers her such intellectual resources as his. 
 She is absolutely determined to maintain her hold 
 over him, and keeps him by her side, now by 
 habit, now by tyranny, and now by requiring 
 services from him. He remains, but murmurs." 
 
 This was her statement to her brother Charles. 
 Another interesting letter, written to Madame de 
 Stael herself, of which only a tattered fragment 
 remains, contains this notable passage : — 
 
 *' Ah ! how much I should have loved you if 
 you had married Benjamin and made him happy. 
 What would I not then have done to deserve a 
 little friendship from you ! The identity of your 
 feelings in the matter imposes silence upon my 
 thoughts and words, but I look back with regret 
 upon the wishes which I used to form." 
 
 Reading these scraps, and reading also Madame 
 de Stael's statement, made several years after- 
 wards, that Benjamjn did propose marriage to her, 
 
 118 
 
Letting Things Drift 
 
 but with the manner of a man discharging a duty 
 and hoping to be refused, we cannot be in much 
 doubt as to what happened. Everything happened 
 that could happen. The subject was discussed 
 in all its bearings, and approached in different 
 moods on different days. Everything was said, 
 in one mood or another, that could imaginably be 
 said ; and every loophole was left for every 
 possible reproach. /The bed-rock fact was that 
 the lovers could not be happy either together or 
 apart. ^' They had discovered this already, and 
 were to rediscover it many times before the end. 
 Meanwhile they compromised, and continued to 
 compromise, and let things drift. 
 
 Benjamin Constant's relatives thought that, if 
 he was not to marry Madame de Stael, he had 
 better marry someone else — no matter whom, pro- 
 vided that the match were " suitable." In spite of 
 experience, they doubtless clung to the notion 
 that, if he married, he would "settle down." 
 Living, for a time, in close retirement and great 
 solitude, in his small country seat in France, he 
 toyed with the idea. Rosalie had pointed out to 
 him that a certain young lady at Geneva was very 
 eligible. " I think of her," he replies, " with 
 tenderness, and among the vague ideas which 
 charm my retreat I give her recollection the first 
 place." But the idea remains vague, and must 
 remain so, for good reasons. 
 
 " Consideration for a person who, though she has 
 119 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 more drawbacks than this lady, has also much more 
 real and much higher merit, controls me to-day as 
 it has always controlled me. Nothing would be 
 more unendurable to me than that this person 
 should be unhappy or should suffer, and I should 
 think no sacrifice too great to avoid being the 
 cause of her unhappiness. Give me a few letters 
 about her too. Your letters shall be scrupulously 
 burnt, and you shall not be compromised in any 
 way." 
 
 That is the |real and invincible reason. He 
 mentions others — that he has vowed himself to a 
 solitary life with which the lady whose heart and 
 hand are proposed to him would be bored ; that 
 her desire is to be married anyhow, and not to be 
 married to him in particular ; and that this desire, 
 " though perfectly legitimate, is not very flattering 
 to the bridegroom." But having given these 
 reasons, he soon harks back to the thought that is 
 uppermost in his mind. Estranged from Madame 
 de Stael, he pleads for news of her. 
 
 " I know, my dear Rosalie, how you dislike 
 speaking to me of a person interesting to both of 
 us, whose qualities and defects are sometimes the 
 charm and sometimes the torment of my life. I 
 am going nevertheless to ask you to conquer this 
 repugnance. I claim that from your friendship 
 for me. It is perhaps the most important service 
 that you could render me at the most important 
 crisis of my fate. 
 
 " You can depend upon it that, two minutes 
 after your letters have been read, they shall be 
 
 120 
 
A Strange Letter 
 
 burnt, and your name shall not be so much as 
 mentioned. Besides, it is not that I want to have 
 an explanation with her or to justify myself in 
 anybody's eyes. It is for my own satisfaction 
 alone that I should like to be informed — because 
 I am unhappy about the unhappiness of which 
 I am told that I am the cause, and because, if I 
 could be assured that this unhappiness has ceased, 
 and above all that another object of interest dis- 
 tracts her at the moment when her distress is 
 depicted to me in the most painful colours — my 
 calm would return to me, the remorse which 
 I feel, and which tortures me, would cease, and I 
 should be able to continue in my freedom without 
 having my plans and my life upset any more by 
 the supernatural influence of her voice and her 
 letters, and her assurance that she cannot live 
 without me, and that I make her suffer." 
 
 It is the letter of a man who has lost his way 
 in life, and it reads the more strangely when we 
 know that Benjamin Constant was in regular cor- 
 respondence with Madame de Stael at the time 
 when it was written, and find him insisting that 
 his letters to Rosalie must on no account be 
 shown to her. " I always write to her," he says, 
 "with great consideration for her feelings, only 
 laying before her such of my sentiments as can 
 cause her pleasure. I tell her nothing that is 
 untrue, but I do not tell her all the truth. Con- 
 sequently, whereas she complains at present of 
 the indifference of my letters, she would be indig- 
 nant at their perfidy if she saw this one, and a 
 
 121 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 thing would happen to me which has happened a 
 hundred times before, and will, I think, always 
 happen : I. should be condemned for the good 
 which I desired to do, and the pain which I was 
 anxious to avoid giving." He cannot, however, 
 he continues, remain any longer the amant en 
 tilre of a woman whom he is not going to marry ; 
 and he concludes : — 
 
 " You alone have done me a little good. You 
 alone have given me the strength to resist a 
 torrent to which I had been painfully yielding for 
 years. If I were not confident that you would 
 approve of my conduct, I should suffer much more 
 than I do." 
 
 But if Benjamin Constant believed that he 
 could resist the torrent for more than a few weeks, 
 he had misjudged his strength, as we are now 
 about to see. 
 
 122 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Publication of Delphine — A roman - a - clef — Necker writes a 
 novel — Social life at Coppet — And at Geneva — Correspond- 
 ence with Camille Jordan — He refuses to travel with Madame 
 de Stael in Italy — She goes to Germany with Benjamin Con- 
 stant instead. 
 
 Delphine was published about six months after 
 M. de Stael's death, in November 1803. It is 
 long — very long — a great deal too long for modern 
 tastes. The story is told in letters, and there are 
 218 of them, covering 698 pages of small print. 
 The readers who do not read the book are nowa- 
 days in the majority, even in France. Times 
 change, and our tastes change with them. It made 
 a great stir at its hour, however ; partly because it 
 was by Madame de Stael, who could not do so much 
 as cross the room without making a stir ; partly 
 because of the allegation that it attacked morality. 
 Into the moral side of the question we need not 
 enter. In polemics morality is seldom clearly dis- 
 tinguished from the conventional hypocrisies of a 
 period. The distinction was certainly too subtle 
 for Madame de Genlis, who was Madame de 
 Stael's principal assailant ; and the interest which 
 it is still possible to take in the novel in no way 
 depends upon the views which it expresses by 
 implication upon such matters as divorce and 
 
 123 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 suicide. We must read it, in the first instance, as 
 a roman-a-clef, and in the second place as a 
 mirror of the writer's mind. 
 
 Several of the characters are drawn from well- 
 known people. The domesticated Madame de 
 Cerlebe is no other than the author's cousin, 
 Madame Necker de Saussure. The original of 
 M. de Lebensei — " the most remarkably brilliant 
 man whom one could conceivably encounter " — is 
 as obviously Benjamin Constant. Talleyrand 
 was another of her models, and he knew it. "I 
 hear," he said to her, "that you have put both 
 me and yourself into your romance — and that we 
 are both disguised as women." He indeed ad- 
 mittedly figured in it as Madame de Vernon, so 
 seductively amiable in her manners, yet at heart 
 so unscrupulously selfish. It was the novelist's 
 revenge upon the Bishop, whose motto had been 
 "II faut faire marcher les femmes," — who had 
 made use of her when he was friendless, but had 
 dropped her when her intimacy seemed likely to 
 compromise him in Napoleon's eyes. And she is, 
 of course, herself Delphine. If she is not dis- 
 guised as a woman, she does at least appear in 
 the disguise of youth and beauty. 
 
 The novel is not, however, like Benjamin 
 Constant's Adolphe, a veiled autobiography. 
 Nothing had happened in the author's own life 
 corresponding to the sensational incidents related. 
 The correspondence is only on the plane of 
 thought and feeling; and it was solely this 
 
 124 
 
Personal Sentiments in Delphine 
 
 correspondence that Madame Necker de Saussure 
 had in her mind when she wrote that " Corinne 
 is the ideal Madame de Stael ; Delphine is the 
 real woman as she was in the days of her youth." 
 The antithesis is perhaps a little forced ; but it is 
 at any rate true that Madame de Stael put a great 
 deal of herself into Delphine, and that we can 
 trace through it not only the sentiments on which 
 she lived, but also the marks of the sentimental 
 experiences which she had undergone. 
 
 She is crying for happiness throughout the book, 
 almost as a child cries for the moon. Happiness 
 in marriage is the ideal — but it is so hard, so rare, 
 and '* fate has decided against a woman from the 
 day on which she marries a man whom she does 
 not love." There is nothing for her but "to ex- 
 tinguish her sentiments and let her heart dry up." 
 But that too is hard, even for a woman whom 
 beauty has not favoured : '* Many men have en- 
 nobled a natural ugliness by the laurels which 
 they have gained, but love is women's whole 
 existence ; the story of their lives begins and ends 
 with love." It is a sentiment which we have met 
 before in the Essay on the Influence of the Passions ; 
 and it seems to lead us at least half-way to Madame 
 de Stael's second ideal — h^rpisaller — happiness in 
 love, without reference to marriage. Corinne, pub- 
 lished four years later, is its formal manifesto ; but 
 already, in Delphine, it appears to be foreshadowed, 
 and already, as we know, Madame de Stael had, 
 in practice, inclined to the pursuit of it. We 
 
 125 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 seem to read the record of experience in this 
 reflection : — 
 
 "In general, I think, a man whose character is 
 cold easily wins the love of a woman whose heart 
 is passionate. He captivates and holds your 
 interest by making you believe in a secret which 
 he does not express ; while his lack of self- 
 abandonment arouses, for the moment at least, 
 a woman's anxious and impressionable tempera- 
 ment. Liaisons so formed are not perhaps the 
 happiest and the most durable, but they have 
 the more power to agitate the soul that is weak 
 enough to yield to them." 
 
 Such sentiments are only written down by 
 women who have discovered them to be true ; 
 and we know who had taught them to Madame 
 de Stael. Probably General Guibert in the first 
 instance ; certainly M. de. Narbonne in the second; 
 possibly Talleyrand in the third ; unquestionably 
 Benjamin Constant in the fourth. Not one of 
 them belonged to the category of men who gush. 
 Each of them in turn, in his relations with Madame 
 de Stael, had seemed to wear a mask of indiffer- 
 ence, to remove it, and to resume it. Sometimes it 
 had been her fate to tear off the mask violently 
 and find that indifference itself was underneath. 
 Hence the extreme bitterness of her bitter cry. 
 
 The time round about the publication of 
 Delphine was mostly spent in Switzerland. 
 Madame de Stael had received a hint from the 
 highest quarters that she had better stay there, 
 
 126 
 
Social Life at Coppet 
 
 and she took it. She had her children to educate, 
 and her father to look after. The old man was 
 so excited by the success of his daughter's novel 
 that he too sat down to write a work of fiction. He 
 had maintained in conversation that the domestic 
 affections might, no less than passionate love, lead 
 up to tragedy, and his story was an exercise upon 
 the theme. Suites Funestes dune seule Faute, 
 *' The Disastrous Consequences of a Single Error," 
 is its somewhat tract-like title. Let those read it 
 who can. It has the merit, at any rate, of brevity. 
 Certain social distractions also mitigated the 
 exile. Madame de Stael had her own society 
 at Coppet, and the society of Geneva was open 
 to her. In the lists of those whom she received 
 at her home we meet the names of Sismondi,^ 
 Bonstetten,^ Madame de Krudener,^ and Madame 
 Recamier ; but our picture of the Coppet Salon 
 will be better deferred until we come to its later, 
 palmier period. Of the occasional visits to Geneva 
 there is a picturesque account in the Bibliotheque 
 Universelle from the pen of Mallet d'Hauteville. 
 The parties which she attended, he says, "had 
 something of the stiffness and etiquette of a 
 Court ; " and he continues : — 
 
 " There were times when this little foreign Court 
 invaded the drawing-rooms of the town. The 
 
 ^ The economist and historian. 
 
 ^ At one time Bernese Governor of Nyon. An amateur of 
 letters, and a friend of Gray. 
 
 3 Author of Valerie. Afterwards she found religion, and became 
 a missionary. 
 
 127 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 folding-doors used to be thrown wide open, and 
 the authoress entered at the head of her retinue. 
 She was attired as a Sibyl, just as she is repre- 
 sented in her portraits, with her black hair framed 
 in her turban, and her fingers waved a little spray 
 of leaves, which moved faster and faster to keep 
 pace with her thoughts. Outside the circle of 
 those who took an active part in the conversation 
 was grouped a ring of silent listeners ; while young 
 ingenues, observing the celebrated lady from a 
 distance, wondered how it was that she inspired 
 such lively sentiments of regard." 
 
 This homage, however, did not content her ; 
 and she found still less satisfaction in the beauty 
 of the scenery. She could look at Mont Blanc, 
 and sigh for the gutter of the Rue du Bac. She 
 was taken for a trip to Chamonix, and returned. 
 Mallet d'Hauteville tells us, "breathless and in- 
 dignant, wanting to know what crime she had had 
 to expiate by a visit to this terrible country." 
 Paris was her Rome, her Mecca, her Jerusalem, on 
 which her eyes were always fixed. "Actualities," 
 she wrote to Gerando,^ " are what exiles such as 
 we are live on. My father and I are not so fond 
 of rustic life as you, and we are eager for anecdotes 
 even in the presence of Mont Blanc." 
 
 She seems, at this period, to have been corre- 
 sponding with everybody about everything. She 
 wrote about the philosophy of Kant to Villers, 
 
 * Marie-Joseph de Gdrando (1772-1842) was a voluminous writer, 
 chiefly on educational subjects ; an authority, notably, on the 
 education of deaf mutes. 
 
 128 
 
Camille Jordan 
 
 who had lately introduced the transcendental 
 teaching to French readers, and who was much 
 too polite to tell her that she did not understand it. 
 She inquired from Gerando about her early love, 
 M. de Narbonne. Did he still think of her ? Had 
 he read Delphine,2ind, if so, what did he say about it? 
 She laments, again and again, that she is, and has 
 reason to be, unhappy. " I have come to the 
 conclusion," she tells Gerando, "that suffering 
 is the natural condition of human kind, and I live 
 with a pain in my heart which is like a physical 
 ailment." 
 
 In the midst of all this, however, we find her 
 unfaithful, at least in thought, to Benjamin 
 Constant, and temporarily admitting a rival to 
 her affections, in the person of Camille Jordan. 
 
 He was a journalist and minor politician of the 
 period. During the Terror he had become an 
 ^migrd as the consequence of his conduct at the 
 revolt of Lyons, and he had been driven into exile a 
 second time through his opposition to the Govern- 
 ment of the day. Now he was back again, and 
 was on terms of intimacy with Gdrando, who was 
 living at Madame de Stael's country seat at Saint- 
 Ouen. That was how her friendship with him 
 began; and already in 1801 we find her writing 
 to Gerando about him. 
 
 " I have," she confesses, "the most tender feel- 
 ing for him ; and it is a painful thought to me 
 that you will find him a wife, and that he will thus 
 have affections which will thrust me away from 
 I 129 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 him. I shall write my first letter to him to warn 
 him against matrimony." 
 
 She did more than this, as we know from the 
 collection of her letters which Sainte - Beuve 
 published in the Revue des deux Mondes. This 
 is the first passage which seems to indicate 
 something more than sisterly regard : — 
 
 " I had a lock of my hair which used to belong 
 to poor M. de Stael. I was meaning to send it 
 to you, but you appeared so engrossed in admira- 
 tion of Madame de Krudener's fair tresses that I 
 feel shy of offering my own black locks, and they 
 shall stay where they are until we meet again." 
 
 But that should not be loner if Madame de Stael 
 could help it. There follows an invitation — " not 
 to be mentioned even to Mathieu or to our good 
 friend (Gerando) " — to travel in Italy. 
 
 ** I have money enough to arrange for you to 
 make an agreeable journey practically without 
 expense to yourself. Benjamin will be in Paris 
 for the winter. ... If you do not agree to this 
 plan which I have at heart, do not speak of it to 
 anyone, for I must not allow this idea to cool the 
 affection of my other friends. To forget all that has 
 been troubling me during the last six months — to 
 forget it with you whom I love so well under the blue 
 Italian sky — that is what will make me happy." 
 
 Camille Jordan, however, excused himself; and 
 in the next letter we read : — 
 
 " I knew very well, my dear Camille, that what 
 no 
 
Love Merges into Friendship 
 
 is commonly called reason was not on the side of 
 my proposal ; but I felt a passionate desire for 
 something better than reason when this idea came 
 to me. Let us say no more about it. . . . My 
 revenge now limits itself to the wish that when 
 you read Delphine you may be sorry that our plan 
 has vanished into thin air." 
 
 That was the end of the episode, though by no 
 means the end of the friendship ; for, in Madame 
 de Stael's case, friendship and love always merged 
 into one another by infinitely fine gradations. 
 When she could not be a man's mistress, she was 
 always willing to be a sister to him. That had been 
 the end of her relations with M. de Narbonne ; that 
 was the end of her relations with Camille Jordan. 
 Presently, in spite of her warning, he got married ; 
 and her letter of congratulation ran as follows : — 
 
 " I admit that I am not very fond of seeing 
 my friends get married, but when they do so, I 
 should be a very indifferent friend if I did not try 
 to enter into their feelings. If I meet Madame 
 Camille, I shall be as nice with her as I have been 
 with you. Is not that as it should be ? " 
 
 And she kept her word. She complained, in a 
 subsequent letter, that Camille was "stiff" with 
 her. But she also sent her compliments to 
 Madame Camille, — "provided she is willing to 
 receive them." 
 
 For the moment, however, all her activities 
 were directed to obtaining permission to reside in 
 Paris. She set her friends to work. Her father 
 
 131 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 petitioned the Emperor on her behalf — fragments 
 of the rough drafts of his petition are treasured 
 among the Coppet archives — but all in vain. It 
 was evident that she must come to Paris without 
 leave or not at all. The breach of the Peace of 
 Amiens, and the massing of the Army of England 
 at Boulogne, seemed likely to monopolise 
 Napoleon's attention, and there was a chance — 
 especially as his brother Joseph was her friend — 
 that he would forget to turn her out. At least, 
 it should be safe for her to settle somewhere near 
 Paris ; so she packed and started. 
 
 First she visited Madame R^camier at Saint- 
 Brice, and nothing happened. Then she settled 
 at Mafliers, about ten miles from the capital, and 
 things began to happen. "It is determined by 
 the Government," Fouch^ had written, "that this 
 foreigner shall not rem.ain in France." Madame 
 de Genlis, her virtuous rival in literature, had 
 whispered to the First Consul, not only that she 
 was in France, but also that the road to her house 
 was enlivened by the conversation of her visitors. 
 She received a hint to move, and the hint was 
 followed by a visit from an officer oi gendarmerie, 
 conveying the order that she should set off within 
 four-and-twenty hours. She protested ; and he 
 used his discretion to the extent of allowing her 
 to go first to Paris, where she thought her 
 friends, Junot and Joseph Bonaparte, might be 
 able to get her sentence rescinded. 
 
 They did their best, Joseph went so far as to 
 132 
 
Departure from France 
 
 offer her a temporary refuge at his country seat at 
 Morfontaine. She stayed three days there, but 
 felt her position painfully. Treated with every 
 courtesy, she was nevertheless surrounded by 
 officials, and could not display her emotions or speak 
 her mind. Where to go ? was her problem. 
 
 " My father," she writes in Dix anndes d'exil, 
 " would have received with unspeakable kindness 
 his poor storm-beaten bird ; but I feared my own 
 emotions of disgust at finding myself sent back 
 to a country which I was accused of finding a little 
 tedious. I also felt the desire to recover, through 
 the good reception which I was promised in 
 Germany, from the outrage which the First Consul 
 was inflicting upon me. I wanted to oppose the 
 kindly welcome of ancient dynasties to the im- 
 pertinence of the dynasty which was preparing 
 to subjugate France. This sentiment of amour- 
 propre carried the day." 
 
 So it was settled that she would go to Germany. 
 Joseph Bonaparte hurried to Saint Cloud to 
 procure the necessary permission, for which she 
 had to sit and wait in a suburban inn, and also 
 gave her letters of introduction at Berlin. 
 Benjamin Constant, in spite of the Camille Jordan 
 episode, — of which perhaps he did not know, since 
 the young man had been solicited to hold his 
 tongue about it, — was willing to accompany her. 
 They set off sorrowfully ; but by the time they 
 reached Chalons, he had, she relates, restored her 
 to cheerfulness by his "astonishing conversation." 
 
 133 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Travel in Germany — The German view of Madame de Stael — Life 
 at Weimar — And at Berlin — Benjamin Constant's studies and 
 amusements — Extracts from his Diary — Death of Necker. 
 
 In a sense, and up to a point, the German journey 
 was a triumphal progress. 
 
 The Germans, of course, had their own point 
 of view, and made their reservations. They were 
 quite sure that Madame de Stael did not under- 
 stand their metaphysics, and they were right. " I 
 do not like the Forms and the Categories," is a 
 sentence from one of her letters about the philo- 
 sophy of Kant ; and in another letter she 
 expressed the opinion that Kant's views as to the 
 origin of our ideas were quite reconcilable with 
 those of Locke. When she set out to interpret 
 the Kantian doctrine to her countrymen, she para- 
 phrased it into cloudy sentimental gush. To the 
 horror of Crabb Robinson, who had tried to teach 
 her what the categorical imperative really was, she 
 began her restatement of the doctrine with the 
 emotional qualification : "Pour les coeurs sensibles." 
 The Germans, at any rate, knew better than that ; 
 and Goethe even went so far as to say that she 
 did not appear to have any conception of the 
 nature of "the thing commonly called duty ' — a 
 
 134 
 
German View of Madame de Stael 
 
 thing which she was, indeed, at that stage, a Httle 
 apt to confuse with her personal inclinations. 
 
 German poetry too was, to all intents and 
 purposes, a closed book to her. She had, it is 
 true, outgrown the stage at which she could write 
 to Henri Meister : " I flatter myself that I already 
 know everything that has been said in the German 
 language and everything that is likely to be said 
 in it in the course of the next half-century." 
 She had begun to learn the language, and could 
 read it a little though she could not talk it ; and 
 she admitted in theory that the German nation 
 had a message to mankind. But whatever may 
 have been the case when she had, for several 
 years, had Schlegel to prompt her, she certainly 
 did not understand the nature of that message 
 then. Crabb Robinson said to her, point blank : 
 "Madame, you have never understood Goethe, 
 and you will never understand him ; " and she 
 could think of no better retort than : ** Sir, I 
 understand everything that is worthy of being 
 understood. Whatever I do not understand is of 
 no importance." Most of the Germans were of 
 Crabb Robinson's opinion. 
 
 Most of the Germans, again, found Madame de 
 Stael too voluble for their taste. Some of them 
 resented the necessity of conversing with her in 
 French. " I should think it my duty," said Voss, 
 "to learn French before oroinp; to France :" and 
 he considered that the French ought to learn 
 German before going to Germany. To others it 
 
 135 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 seemed shocking that she skimmed lightly over 
 the surface of subjects, instead of probing them to 
 the bottom in quest of truth. " Madame de 
 Stael," wrote Reichardt, "was much fonder of 
 comparing th6^ results of her inquiries with her 
 personal opinions than of identifying herself with 
 the object of her studies." The general com- 
 plaint, however, was of the ceaselessness and 
 volume of her talk. Goethe, sitting buried in 
 reflection at the ducal supper-table, was hurt by 
 her remark that he was never really brilliant until 
 after he had got through a bottle of champagne. 
 Schiller confessed to having had "a rough time" 
 in dialogue with her, and declared that her de- 
 parture left him feeling like a man who had just 
 recovered from a serious illness. 
 
 And yet the progress was a triumph in the 
 main. Germany had already interested itself in 
 Madame de Stael. " I have to answer so many 
 letters (mostly from Germans)," she had written, 
 in 1801, "that half my life is thus taken up." 
 Some of her writings had been translated and 
 discussed. Her arrival was awaited, therefore, 
 with a hush of expectation ; and, wherever she 
 went, glamour attended her. She v/as something 
 more than the comet of a season ; and even those 
 who disapproved were dazzled. 
 
 Metz (though Metz was not then in Germany) 
 was the first stage. It was there that she wrote 
 that she did not know what she would have done 
 without Benjamin. But the Prefect Was "per- 
 
 136 
 
Arrival at Weimar 
 
 feet" for her; and she had her opportunity of 
 meetinpf M. de Villers/ with whom she had corre- 
 sponded about Kant, though, as it happened, she 
 did not find him quite the kindred soul that she 
 expected. He had with him, she wrote, "a fat 
 German woman whose precise attractions I have 
 not been able to discover." What she did discover 
 was that those attractions were no negligible 
 quantity, but barred the path to intimacy with 
 M. de Villers. She made an appointment to meet 
 him alone in the Cathedral, and he kept it. But, 
 says the editor of the Letters to Gerando, "he 
 gave Madame de Stael to understand that he was 
 linked by an invincible gratitude to Madame de 
 Rodde and her family, though he would always 
 behave to his new acquaintance as a devoted 
 friend." She wrote him some letters complaining 
 that his devotion was too limited in character, and 
 then passed upon her way. 
 
 At Frankfort there was a delay, owing to the 
 illness of Albertine de Stael, who caught scarlet 
 fever ; and it was not until the middle of December 
 that the party arrived at Weimar. 
 
 No one needs to be reminded that Weimar was 
 in those days the Teuton Athens. Goethe, 
 Schiller, Wieland, and Herder were the great 
 fixed stars of its literary firmament. The life 
 was homely, but the ideas were not straitlaced. 
 Uncongenial couples divorced each other without 
 
 1 M. de Villers first introduced Kant's philosophy to the French. 
 He became Professor of Literature at Gottingen. 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 malice, and lived happily ever afterwards. Duke 
 Charles Augustus was the father and brother of 
 his people. Duchess Louise was their hostess. 
 Madame de Stael was at once made the most 
 welcome of their guests. For a long time she 
 supped every night at the Palace ; and with the 
 Duchess she formed a memorable friendship, the 
 recollection of which is kept alive by an interesting 
 correspondence, extending over a period of many 
 years. 
 
 From Weimar Madame de Stael went on to 
 Berlin, where she arrived in March 1804; and 
 there the Weimar triumph was repeated. Joseph 
 Bonaparte's introduction to Laforest, the French 
 Ambassador, had made things easy for her. 
 Among the personages whom she met were the 
 Prince of Orange, the Prince and Princess of 
 Brunswick, the Duchess of Courland, Princess 
 Radziwill, Brinckmann, the Ambassador from 
 Sweden, Fichte, Kotzebue, and A. W. Schlegel, 
 whom she engaged to be her son's tutor (and 
 incidentally her own) at a salary of 12,000 francs 
 a year. A few sentences from a letter to Duchess 
 Louise of Weimar will best give the picture of her 
 reception at the Prussian Court. 
 
 " I went to see the reigrning- Oueen : and the 
 Court, on that day, was veritably imposing. At 
 the instant of the Queen's entrance all the instru- 
 ments of music began to play, and I experienced 
 a truly lively emotion. 
 
 "The Queen, in all the distinction of her 
 138 
 
Gaiety at Berlin 
 
 beauty, appeared. She approached me, and, with 
 many other complimentary phrases, addressed to 
 me these words, which I really cannot forget : 
 * I hope, Madame, that you regard us as persons 
 of sufficiently good taste to be extremely flattered 
 by your arrival at Berlin. I was very impatient 
 to make your acquaintance.' 
 
 " All the Princesses whom I saw at Weimar, 
 and who love me, because your Highness has 
 spoken of me, came up to kiss me. The King 
 spoke to me very kindly, and I was surrounded 
 by a kindness which touched my heart. . . . 
 
 " The Prince of Orange and Prince Radziwill 
 called upon me on the morning of my arrival, and 
 gave me permission to bring Auguste to the 
 famous masquerade. All our society, for the 
 last twenty days, has been thinking of nothing 
 but the masquerade ; rehearsals, dresses, ballets 
 filled all their heads ; and though I was a little 
 late in my arrival at Berlin I really missed 
 nothing on this occasion save a more intimate 
 acquaintance with the dancing steps executed 
 yesterday. We remained until three o'clock in the 
 morning to see the Queen dance in a pantomime 
 representing the return of Alexander to Babylon. 
 There were two thousand spectators. . . , 
 
 "Several quadrilles succeeded that dance, and 
 then Kotzebue arrived as a priest of Mercury — or 
 perhaps it was as Mercury himself — with a wand in 
 his hand and a crown of poppies on his head. ..." 
 
 The letter was written in bed, the writer's 
 head being "still full of the noise of drums 
 and trumpets." In a letter to Gerando, of 
 
 139 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 approximately the same date, she tries to describe 
 the effect of all this gaiety upon her spirits : " By 
 dint of reflection I manage to endure life in spite 
 of my exile ; but my heart strings are still wrung .'' 
 Her chief satisfaction was probably in her fame — 
 that fame which she was presently to describe as 
 "a splendid mourning for happiness." Losing 
 her sense of proportion, she could easily think 
 that she was hardly less famous than Napoleon 
 Bonaparte himself. That thought was doubtless 
 more comforting than the consolations of German 
 philosophy ; and for the time being it seems to 
 have outweighed even her sentimental interests. 
 But then, on April 18, came the news that her 
 father was lying dangerously ill at Coppet ; and 
 she posted in all haste back to Weimar, where 
 Benjamin Constant was waiting for her. 
 
 In the whirl of excitement Benjamin Constant 
 had slipped into the background of Madame de 
 Stael's thoughts. It is not even clear how far 
 he was willingly in attendance on her. We have 
 already seen him, in the months immediately 
 preceding his departure, discussing the question 
 of marriage, and considering the suitability of 
 various possible brides. His cousin Rosalie even 
 supposed, for an instant, that he had decided on 
 the step ; and his denial breathed no special 
 devotion to his mistress. " After so many years," 
 he wrote, "of a tie much closer than marriage, 
 I need to breathe the air of freedom." And then 
 came the tidings of Madame de Stael's exile, 
 
 140 
 
Benjamin Constant's Diary Begun 
 
 and her appeal, at a time when his political 
 activities were temporarily suspended, and all his 
 resolutions were scattered. *' I suppose it seemed 
 natural to you," he wrote to Rosalie, " that, in spite 
 of my resolves of this summer, I did not hesitate 
 to render to a person to whom I cannot cease 
 to be attached in very sincere friendship all the 
 services that I could in the most painful circum- 
 stance of her life. It is impossible to complain of 
 one's friends at a time when they are unhappy." 
 
 He accompanied Madame de Stael, therefore, 
 to Metz, to Frankfort, and to Weimar. At 
 Frankfort he helped her, with great devotion, to 
 nurse Albertine. At Weimar he took Albertine 
 to the theatre — we shall find many indications, 
 in the course of the narrative, of his passionate 
 fondness for the child ; but his attentions to the 
 mother were not, at the time, conspicuous, and 
 Crabb Robinson was even disposed to be sceptical 
 of the gossip as to his relations with her. 
 
 His time was largely given to study. He was 
 writing a History of Religions — the same History 
 of Religions which he had begun to write on the 
 backs of playing-cards in the boudoir of Madame 
 de Charriere. He was not to finish it for many 
 years to come ; for his views on religion were 
 always changing, and the necessity of recasting 
 his work was always with him. Moreover — what 
 is more important for our purpose — he began, in 
 January 1804, the composition of that marvellous 
 diary known as the Journal httime. He wrote 
 
 141 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 it in Greek characters, as an indication that it 
 was private and confidential ; but it was, of 
 course, easy enough for the inheritors of his 
 papers to decipher it, and it was first printed 
 in the Revue Internationale in 1887, and has since 
 been reprinted, though there exists no Enghsh 
 translation of it. It is a faithful record of events, 
 and also of the diarist's inner life — a unique 
 example of keen and candid introspection. Read- 
 ing it, we feel that we know the lover of Madame 
 de Stael far better than either she or any of his con- 
 temporaries knew him. In telling the remainder 
 of the story we will follow it wherever possible. 
 
 The earlier entries are chiefly about his work 
 and his German acquaintances. Goethe is full 
 of wit and new ideas — "mais c'est le moins bon- 
 homme que je connaisse." Wieland's is a French 
 intelligence — "cold as a philosopher and light- 
 headed as a poet." Herder resembles "a soft 
 warm bed in which one dreams agreeably." A 
 dinner with the Bethmanns suggests the remark 
 that "the commercial spirit is a tiresome thing," 
 nothing more important having transpired in the 
 conversation than that somebody had killed five 
 snipe that morning. And so forth ; even approba- 
 tion being expressed in epigrams, but due thanks 
 being always rendered for any helpful idea on the 
 History of Religion. The Germans, it appears to 
 Benjamin Constant, differ from the French in that, 
 even when they are dull, as often happens, they 
 are nearly always sane and well-informed. 
 
 142 
 
Extracts from the Diary 
 
 By degrees, however, the Diary becomes more 
 intimate. " A charming child ! " is the entry when 
 Albertine is taken to the theatre ; but we read 
 some way before we find any mention of Madame de 
 Stael. " A letter from Madame Talma " is the first 
 allusion to a relation to which we shall find further 
 references ; but the general impression is that 
 the writer is weary of women. At one moment, 
 indeed, when he has gone to Leipzig and is alone, 
 he exclaims: "There is nothing in the world so 
 good, so loving, and so devoted as a woman ; " 
 but this utterance seems more characteristic : — 
 
 " Dined with a number of women — brilliant 
 women. Their brilliance consists of bustle with- 
 out purpose — entirely a creation of Society, and 
 in consequence artificial. So long as they are 
 a little pretty that is all very well. Our physical 
 interest in them makes us pardon the useless and 
 ineffectual agitation of moral nature. But at a 
 certain age women are no longer fit for society. 
 There remains for them the ro/e of friends — but 
 of friends kept in retirement, receiving confidences 
 and giving advice to men in whose interest they 
 fill only the second or third place." 
 
 And what Benjamin Constant says of women 
 in general, he also says of certain women in 
 particular. There is a Madame Schac .... 
 whom we need not try to Identify, from whom he 
 receives a di//e^ tendi^e. "Poor woman!" is his 
 comment. He is sure she would be better off in 
 Oriental retirement ; and he writes mournfully : — 
 
 143 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " I write to Madame de Schac .... to take a 
 sad, respectful, and tender farewell of her. Here 
 is another inclination towards me which I do 
 not desire. And the time will come when even 
 that sort of thing will not be offered to me. 
 Why are youth and beauty so proud ? Do we 
 never find humility and gentleness save when 
 youth and beauty have departed ? " 
 
 "A desirable woman! Cest HEnferl" is the 
 comment on another lady, with whose husband 
 Benjamin wants to go out to supper, in order 
 that he may escape from her attentions ; and 
 then comes another general outburst, which is 
 evidently directed at Madame de Stael, though 
 there is no mention of her name. 
 
 ** The attachment of some women, and the sway 
 which they maintain over a man, to the great 
 astonishment of the world at large, may be 
 compared to the fatal sleep which overtakes 
 travellers on the Great Saint Bernard. These 
 travellers are not satisfied with their position, 
 but they give way to the sensation of the moment, 
 which every passing instant makes more difficult 
 to resist. And death comes to them while they 
 are making up their minds to get up and go." 
 
 That was written on the road from Weimar 
 to Switzerland, where Benjamin had business 
 to transact. As he bowled along in his post- 
 chaise, he read Greek, — like a man of taste he 
 much preferred Sophocles to Euripides, — reviewed 
 his situation, and tried to fix his plans. He 
 
 144 
 
Satisfaction in Literary Pursuits 
 
 wrote to Madame de Stael, recommending one 
 Screiben as a tutor, but reflected : " The main 
 thing is to know that he is the sort of man who 
 will teach the children in addition to interesting 
 the mother." But he tried to picture his own 
 future without reference to her. 
 
 " Whence come the sad and sombre ideas which 
 overwhelm me to-day ? Have I then lost all 
 power over myself? Is not my destiny in my 
 own hands ? Have I not recovered a power of 
 work beyond what I had hoped for? In order 
 to be happy I only need the will to be so. I 
 should be so if I could make up my mind to three 
 things : to live a purely literary life ; to keep 
 aloof from public affairs which I have quitted 
 through a perfectly irreproachable line of conduct ; 
 to settle in a country in which I find light, 
 security, and independence. That is all that I 
 require. I wish all my efforts to tend to those 
 ends. I must find a means of fixing my whole 
 life in literary pursuits. Literature will satisfy 
 all my aspirations. The things I know and the 
 things I learn give me sufficient joy. If I lived 
 for a hundred years, the study of the Greeks 
 alone would be enough for me. I am reading 
 the Antigone. What an admirable man was 
 Sophocles ! " 
 
 Then he analyses. Why is it that, whatever 
 he does, people are always able to make out 
 that he is in the wrong? It must be because 
 he is sensitive, and because he is not a fool. 
 "When one is a fool, one has all the fools on 
 K 145 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 one's side." And so to Lausanne, where his 
 cousins and his aunts renew their advice to him 
 to marry and settle down. He cannot stand the 
 place. It is too dull and stupid. No one there 
 takes any interest in his literary pursuits. " No 
 one can understand what I say about anything." 
 He will go back to Germany and settle there. 
 His work shall be the one interest, the one con- 
 solation, of his life. But then comes sad and 
 startling news, upsetting all his schemes. 
 
 " M. Necker is dead. What will become of his 
 daughter ? What despair for her in the present ! 
 What loneliness in the future! I want to see 
 her, to console her, or at least to help her to 
 bear up. Poor unhappy woman ! When I recall 
 her suffering, her anxiety, two months ago, and 
 her lively joy, which was to be of such short 
 duration. Better death than this pain. And the 
 good M. Necker, how I regret him ! So noble, 
 so affectionate, so disinterested ! Who now will 
 be the guide of his daughter's existence ? " 
 
 Again he looks into his own heart. He finds 
 in himself a double personality — "one always 
 watching the other." He is sad, and yet knows 
 that the sadness will pass away ; but he will not 
 let it — " because I know that Madame de Stael 
 needs me not only to console her, but to suffer 
 with her." For the moment, therefore, his course 
 is clear: "I have decided to. set out again for 
 Germany, to meet Madame de Stael, who is on 
 her way back." 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Madame de Stael returns to Coppet — The reason why she was not 
 allowed to go to Paris — She decides to visit Italy — Benjamin 
 Constant drags at his chain — Further extracts from his Diary. 
 
 Of the death of Necker, as of the death of 
 Napoleon, it may be said that, whereas at one 
 time it would have been an event, it was, when 
 it occurred, only an item of news. He had risen 
 from obscurity to fame ; he had failed ; he had 
 been found out ; he had been forgotten. That 
 is his biography in a sentence. Napoleon's 
 contempt for him was profound. "The old boy 
 was maundering," was his comment when Necker 
 submitted plans for a French Constitution ; and 
 after his death he summed him up as the very 
 type of mediocrity — "with his pompousness, his 
 fussiness, and his string of figures." 
 
 In the domestic circle, however, incense had 
 always been lavishly burnt to him. He himself 
 printed the eulogy in which his wife declared 
 that " if men were originally angels, then I think 
 that M. Necker must have been charged in that 
 character with the task of clearing up chaos 
 before the Creator deigned to descend and make 
 the world." His daughter worshipped him 
 no less, and loved him with a more ardent 
 
 147 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 passion. She even uttered the singular regret 
 that she had not known her father as a young 
 man — "for then our lots might have been linked 
 for ever ; " and now her cry was that " the waves of 
 life have swept everything away from me except 
 this great shadow on the summit of the mountain 
 pointing to the life to come." It was indeed im- 
 perative that Benjamin Constant should go to her. 
 Sismondi accompanied him. " He has been 
 told so often," Benjamin comments, "that he is 
 rendering a great service that he is almost 
 frightened by the grandeur of his own conduct." 
 But he himself was making the journey more as 
 a comforter than as a lover. He knows indeed 
 that he will find "the person whom I love best 
 in the world abandoned to the most terrible 
 despair " ; but his next comment is : — 
 
 " Destiny seems pleased to condemn me to 
 wear out my health, which is good, and my 
 talents, which are sufficiently distinguished, with- 
 out attaining either pleasure or glory. The 
 moment is approaching, however, when I must 
 set my life in order, and make use of the years 
 and faculties that remain intact to leave some 
 memory behind me. My most urgent task is 
 to help my unhappy friend. But, however her 
 lot may be arranged, my own can only be literary 
 and independent. I could not forgive myself if 
 I had not made my mark at fifty. At Geneva 
 and in Switzerland, one finds neither resources 
 nor the stimulus of rivalry. But if I am to 
 succeed in France, I must produce a remarkable 
 
 148 
 
Return to Coppet 
 
 work ; and my present manner of life makes 
 that impossible. Then Weimar is the place — 
 Weimar, a library, as much pleasure as is 
 necessary to prevent me from feeling that I am 
 deprived of pleasure, order in my fortune, and 
 for once in my life, repose." 
 
 In that mood he arrived at Weimar, where 
 "the first moments were convulsive." It was 
 his pride that he shared Madame de Stael's 
 grief, instead of offering platitudinous consola- 
 tions ; and presently he and she and the children 
 and Schlegel and Sismondi drove back together 
 to Coppet, Madame Necker de Saussure bringing 
 Albert de Stael to meet them at Zurich. "Her 
 condition," he writes, " is fearful. A strange com- 
 bination : this deep, agonising, and genuine grief 
 which overwhelms her, joined with her suscepti- 
 bility to distractions, her incorrigible character, 
 which leaves her all her natural weaknesses, all 
 her amour-propre, and all her need for activity." 
 
 Her need for activity found satisfaction at first 
 in the writing of her father's life — a sketch which 
 her friends considered the best of all her works ; 
 but that, after a little while, did not suffice. She 
 filled her house with people, and talked, and talked, 
 and talked. She souorht to obtain leave to return 
 to Paris, while planning a journey to Italy as an 
 alternative. 
 
 Joseph Bonaparte, as before, was doing his 
 best for her. He was at that time a general on 
 duty at the Boulogne camp, whence he wrote 
 
 149 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 urging her to patience, since no one would 
 succeed if he did not. She postponed the Italian 
 excursion, and stayed on at Coppet, hoping 
 against hope. "The rumour," she wrote to 
 Joseph, '* has been spread that the Emperor 
 means to recall all the exiles on the day of his 
 coronation. He would, by this step, give the 
 occasion a solemnity superior to that which it 
 will derive from all the pomps and ceremonies. 
 I mean to stay here until the 15 th of November 
 on the strength of this feeble hope." She waited, 
 but the hope was not fulfilled — for a reason which 
 she never knew. The facts were these. 
 
 The First Consul had lately become Emperor, 
 and appointments in the Imperial household were 
 being made. The report had reached Madame 
 de Stael that one of them was likely to be accepted 
 by her previous lover and present friend, M. de 
 Narbonne. She wrote to him to say that she 
 hoped the report was untrue ; that she thought it 
 most unbecoming that members of the aristocracy 
 of France should stoop to be "the men-servants 
 and chambermaids of the bottrgeois and bourgeoises 
 of Corsica." Fearing lest her letter should be 
 opened in the post, she entrusted it to a certain 
 
 M. S , who promised to deliver it by hand. 
 
 But, as it happened, M. S was a French spy. 
 
 He delivered the letter at the Department of 
 Police, and Fouche showed it to Napoleon. It 
 was with difficulty that the Emperor was dis- 
 suaded from throwing the writer into prison for 
 
 150 
 
Benjamin Constant Drags at his Chain 
 
 her insolent words ; and he was absolutely 
 resolved that she should not return to France, 
 where the Pope was coming to crown him. At 
 last, therefore, Madame de Stael got tired of 
 waiting, and set out for Italy. " I don't know," 
 wrote Rosalie de Constant to her brother Charles, 
 " what she is going to do there, unless she expects 
 to take the Pope's place during his absence." 
 
 That was towards the end of 1804, about six 
 months after the sorrowful return from Germany. 
 During all that period Benjamin Constant had 
 been near her — sometimes staying in her house, 
 and at other times visiting Geneva and Lausanne 
 — a prisoner dragging at his chain. We must 
 turn again to his Diary for the record of the 
 happenings that mattered most to both of them ; 
 but we must first try to realise his singular 
 position at the time when he made the strange 
 confessions which are to follow. 
 
 He was thirty-seven. He had behind him a 
 past that had been alternately brilliant and dis- 
 solute. He had been a great personage in 
 politics, and now he was an exile in effect if 
 not in name. Paris was indeed open to him if 
 he chose to go there, as he sometimes did ; but 
 he belonged to an extinguished Opposition, and 
 his political part was, for the time being, over. 
 On the other hand, in spite of his strong desire 
 for the literary life, he could not settle down to 
 it with Gibbon's calm contentment. His past 
 forbade. He had accustomed himself to be in 
 
 151 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 love. Women had meant so much to him from 
 of old that they were still necessary to him even 
 when he thought that he was tired of them. The 
 idea of marriage haunted him ; it was only the 
 idea of marriage with any given woman that 
 was intolerable. So he was doomed to live in 
 indecision, drawn this way and that, finding it 
 much easier to form new liaisons than to break 
 with old ones, reluctant to give pain, yet always 
 giving it, distressed at his failure to give his life 
 any sort of sentimental continuity, wearing a 
 mask of gay cynicism, yet always, at bottom, a 
 "self- tortured sophist." Such was the man. 
 His story will be best told in his own words. 
 The Journal unhappily is not dated ; but the 
 extracts which follow all belong to the six months 
 succeeding the return to Coppet. We hear in 
 them the rumblings of the coming storm. 
 
 "I go to Rolle to see my aunt, Madame de 
 Nassau. She is a woman of much intelligence, 
 and greatly attached to me ; but the surrounding 
 atmosphere has weighed upon her. She has 
 adopted all its prejudices, so that there is a kind 
 of constraint between us which I only get over 
 by means of pleasantries. I think, however, I 
 shall succeed in acquiring a reputation for good- 
 ness of heart which will enable me to arrange 
 my life without having all the world on my back. 
 What a task life is when one has begun it badly, 
 and what a bore when one does not conduct it 
 regularly ! " 
 
 152 
 
Solitude an Immense Advantage 
 
 " I have not yet got my ideas clearly together 
 again. It is impossible. I am interrupted every 
 minute. Solitude! Solitude! It is even more 
 necessary to my talent than to my happiness." 
 
 " I have been to Rolle, to see Madame de 
 Nassau, who is ill. There is too much funda- 
 mental opposition in our opinions for us ever to 
 feel at our ease together. ... I sleep at Lausanne. 
 I cannot depict my joy at being alone. I am 
 very fond of everything at Coppet ; but this 
 continual society, this perpetual distraction, tires 
 and enervates me. I lose all my power for 
 action in it, and say to myself bitterly : ' When 
 will it come to an end ? ' 
 
 *' I have worked very well. Solitude is an 
 immense advantage. But what a society is that 
 of Lausanne ! I should die in it. My cousin 
 Rosalie is a good creature, but sour-tempered, 
 and skilled in the art of saying the sort of thing 
 that displeases one coldly, and as if she did not 
 perceive what she was doing. A sad gift ! But 
 she is a hunchback, and still an old maid at 
 forty-five ! Can one expect her to be gentle ? " 
 
 •' Dinner at 's with Auguste. ... I must 
 
 arrange my life in the course of 1804 with 
 regularity and independence. It is too bad to 
 have neither the pleasure to which one sacrifices 
 one's dignity, nor the dignity to which one 
 sacrifices one's pleasure." 
 
 " Dinner at Severy's. Unpretending and 
 graceful mediocrity. I am tired of my solitude 
 here, but I do not want to get married here. 
 
 153 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 My heart is too old for fresh liaisons. I speak 
 to no one except with the tips of my Hps." 
 
 " Having received no letters from Coppet, and 
 no invitation to return there, I have conceived a 
 prodigious desire to do so. The fact is that, 
 from the point of view of heart, mind, and self- 
 abandonment, I am not well off anywhere but 
 there. The other people whom I meet are as 
 much strangers to me as the trees and the rocks." 
 
 " The evening ended with a discussion between 
 Schlegel and Madame de Stael on the genius 
 of conversation. It seems a singular way of 
 educating a tutor. It is very tiresome for the 
 spectators to see them planted in front of each 
 other, Schlegel expressing his contempt for 
 society, and she belauding herself for her conversa- 
 tional gifts. A reciprocal panegyric, both of them 
 praising themselves at the expense of the other." 
 
 "Went to Geneva, and called on the Mes- 
 demoiselles de Sellon. Saw Amelie Fabri again. 
 She is as muddy-complexioned, as lively, as 
 wide-awake as ever. How I should have hated 
 her if they had succeeded in getting me to marry 
 her ! Yet, in reality, she is very amiable. It is 
 my bad luck always to find something impossible 
 in every woman whom I think of marrying, 
 Charlotte de Hardenberg was tiresome and 
 romantic ; Madame Lindsay ^ was forty and had 
 
 ^ She is mentioned in Chateaubriand's Mhnoires d^Outre- 
 tombe : " Mrs. Lindsay, a lady of Irish descent, with a material 
 mind and a somewhat snappish humour, an elegant figure and 
 attractive features, was gifted with nobility of soul and elevation of 
 character : the Emigrants of quality spent their evenings by the 
 fireside of the last of the Ninons." 
 
 154 
 
How to Master Life 
 
 two Illegitimate children ; Madame de Stael, who 
 understands me better than any of them, will not 
 be satisfied with friendship when I can no longer 
 offer her love. This poor Amdlie who wants me, 
 at thirty-two, has no fortune, and certain ridiculous 
 idiosyncrasies which age has confirmed in her ; 
 Antoinette, who is twenty, has a fortune, and is 
 not absurd, is common in appearance and has 
 nothing French about her." 
 
 "In the evening a sad and bitter conversation 
 with Pussy.^ She is profoundly unhappy, and 
 thinks it is the business of others to relieve her 
 sorrow, as if the first condition of not being 
 overwhelmed by life were not to master it, and 
 make use of all one's own inward resources. 
 What can others do against your agitation and 
 your contradictory desires ? Against your desire 
 for a brilliant place in the world, of which you 
 are enamoured because you only see the externals 
 of it ; against your coquetry, which is afraid of 
 old age ; against your vanity, which makes you 
 seek to be conspicuous, while your character is 
 incapable of facing the annoyances which one 
 always provokes when one seeks to shine? 
 What ! You do not want to suffer, and yet you 
 spread your wings, and brave the gales, and dash 
 yourself against the trees, and break yourself 
 against the rocks. I can do nothing to help you 
 here. Until you furl your sails, until you recog- 
 nise that any settled situation is better than this 
 perpetual disturbance, there is no hope for you." 
 
 " Madame de Stael shows me a curious col- 
 
 ^ Madame de Stael. 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 lection of letters written to Madame Necker. . . . 
 Those from Gibbon are affected and ridiculous 
 through the contrast between his love for Madame 
 Necker and his ponderous, cold, and precious 
 style. Thus, after having written to her that the 
 happiness of his life would be to possess her, he 
 concludes by saying that he is, with a particular 
 consideration, her most obedient humble servant." 
 
 " This evening Schlegel was hurt because 
 Madame de Stael teased him ; and, as she never 
 gets tired of talking, she wanted to recommence 
 an explanation at one o'clock in the morning, 
 reserving until after this explanation a discussion 
 of matters which have already been discussed a 
 hundred times. I was dying to go to sleep, and 
 I had a pain in my eyes, but I had to obey her. 
 I have never seen a better woman, more gracious 
 or more devoted, but I have never known one who, 
 without being aware of it, is more continually 
 exigent, who more completely absorbs the life of 
 everyone near her, or who, with all her qualities, has 
 a more positive personality. All one's life — one's 
 minutes, one's hours, one's years — must be at her 
 disposition ; and when she does let herself go, then 
 it is a noise like all the thunderstorms and all the 
 earthquakes. She is a spoilt child — that sums 
 her up." 
 
 " A gay supper with the Prince de Belmonte. 
 Remained alone with Madame de Stael, and the 
 storm gradually rose. There was a frightful 
 scene, lasting till three o'clock in the morning, 
 about my lack of sensibility, my unworthiness of 
 her confidence, and the failure of my sentiments 
 
 156 
 
Literary Glory Preferred to Happiness 
 
 to correspond with my actions. Alas ! I should 
 be very glad if I could avoid wearisome lamenta- 
 tions relating not to genuine misfortunes, but to 
 the universal laws of nature and the advent of 
 old age. I should be very glad if I, a man, had 
 not to endure the vexations of a woman whose 
 youth is leaving her. I wish she would not ask 
 me for love after ten years of intimacy, when we 
 are both nearly forty years of age, and when I 
 have told her, at least two hundred times, that, 
 as for love, I have no more of it to give her — a 
 declaration which I have never withdrawn except 
 for the purpose of calming fits of pain and rage 
 which frightened me. If my sentiments do not 
 correspond with my actions, I wish she would 
 cease to ask me for actions to which she attaches 
 so little importance. I must, however, separate 
 my life from hers, remaining her friend, or else 
 disappearing from the earth." 
 
 " I have read over my reflections on marriage. 
 I adhere to them, and I will get married this 
 winter." 
 
 " When I consider my fatigued constitution, 
 my taste for the country, for solitude, and for 
 work, marriage seems to be necessary for me. 
 Nevertheless, in spite of this conviction, I prefer 
 literary glory to happiness, though without 
 cherishing many illusions as to the value of such 
 glory. But if I were happy in the vulgar fashion, 
 I should despise myself." 
 
 "At this season seventeen years ago I was 
 rambling alone through the English provinces. It 
 was in that journey that I first discovered the 
 
 15; 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 immense happiness of solitude. I am far enough 
 away from it now," 
 
 " A letter to-day from Madame Talma, who is 
 coming to Soleure. I will go and see her. 
 What happiness ! " 
 
 " My situation is insoluble ; there is no planning 
 out my life. I must live from day to day and 
 work as much as possible. That is all that is 
 left to me." 
 
 '* I have seen the young Laure d'Arlens. If I 
 had to get married, I would marry a girl of 
 sixteen. There would be a clear gain of the 
 three or four years during which a woman of 
 that age cannot live an independent life. Very 
 likely it comes to the same thing in the end, but 
 at least one enjoys this moment of respite. A 
 clear gain there ! Then there is the chance that 
 one may influence the character that is in course 
 of being moulded and turn it in the direction that 
 one desires. I do not say that the chance is a 
 good one, but when one marries a woman whose 
 character is already formed, there is no longer 
 any room for doubt on the matter. The char- 
 acter already exists, and you do not even know 
 what it is. In the case of a girl of sixteen one 
 watches the character while in course of formation, 
 and, seeing the enemy immediately on his arrival, 
 you can take your precautions better." 
 
 " Ten years ago to-day I was in Germany, 
 alone, taking proceedings against my wife, treated 
 with injustice by the majority of my friends. . . . 
 And yet, in the midst of all that, I was perfectly 
 
 158 
 
The Pretence of Friendship 
 
 happy. My means of happiness were perfectly 
 simple. I was alone, and I was at work. Every 
 day as it dawned promised me a sequence of quiet 
 hours which nothing could disturb. It is the 
 period of my life which I now find the greatest 
 pleasure in recalling. Since then I have some- 
 times enjoyed success and sometimes suffered 
 reverse, but calm, solitude, and independence I 
 have never had. 
 
 " Under the influence of the people about me 
 I was weak enough to marry an ugly woman 
 without fortune, older than myself, and, to com- 
 plete the list of her attractions, of violent and 
 capricious temper. The wrongs she did me 
 were of the kind that cannot be forgiven ; but, 
 instead of seeking to punish her or to avenge 
 myself, I only asked for my freedom. Whence 
 an outburst of all manner of wrath against me. 
 I was unwilling to allow my wife's enemies to 
 dishonour her at their fancy under pretence of 
 proving their friendship for me. I have come 
 to the conclusion that the motto of friends who 
 serve you is always : ' If you do not allow us 
 to defend you at the expense of others, and to 
 make up for the good which we do to you by the 
 greater evil which we do to our enemies, then we 
 shall not defend you.' 
 
 " Through my failure to realise this condition 
 which friendship attaches to its services, I have 
 done myself much wrong." 
 
 159 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Diary continues — Benjamin Constant at Coppet — Attempt of 
 his relatives to find him a wife — He goes to Lyons to see 
 Madame de Stael off to Italy. 
 
 The Diary continues. Owing to the state in 
 which the manuscript was found, it is impossible 
 to be quite positive that every entry has been 
 printed in its proper place ; but the story which it 
 unfolds is not one in which dates matter very 
 much. It is important to know that certain things 
 happened — not to know whether they happened 
 on a Monday or a Saturday. The progress to 
 the crisis was not, in any case, dramatically 
 continuous. The crisis was to come suddenly — 
 through a woman — but not yet. In the meantime 
 Benjamin Constant drifted to and fro, suffering, 
 as we can see, a far keener mental agony than the 
 woman who complained of the waning of his love 
 for her. She, having paid her tribute to her 
 father's memory, was preparing a fresh triumph — 
 preparing to conquer Rome and Naples and 
 Milan, as she had conquered Weimar and Berlin. 
 He, unable to live either with her or without her, 
 was deploring his own weakness, toying with 
 other amours, toying with the idea of marriage, 
 longing for solitude, yet unable to endure it, the 
 
 1 60 
 
Visit to Madame Talma 
 
 miserable victim of a divided mind. Let his Diary 
 speak again. 
 
 "To-day Madame de Stael is at Geneva. 
 Bonstetten, Schlegel, Sismondi, and I dined like 
 schoolboys whose head master is away. Strange 
 woman that she is ! Her domination is inexplic- 
 able yet very real over everyone near her. If 
 only she could govern herself, she would be able 
 to govern the world." 
 
 " I start to see Madame Talma ^ at Soleure." 
 
 '* The pleasure of seeing Madame Talma at 
 Soleure was spoiled by the serious condition of 
 her son. I fancy she is trying to deceive herself, 
 as so many do. . . . She needs excitement, and to 
 deaden her feelings. Happy is he who can fall 
 back upon himself, and does not ask for happiness, 
 whose life is in his own thoughts, and who waits 
 for death without exhausting himself in vain 
 endeavours to soften or embellish his life." 
 
 ** I never cease thinking of my situation. I am 
 agitated and distracted by a miserable weakness 
 of will. There never was anything so absurd as 
 my indecision. Now I incline to marriage, now 
 to solitude ; now I want to live in Germany, now 
 in France ; and I always hesitate because, in 
 reality, there is nothing that I can do without. If 
 I have not got rid of all these embarrassments in 
 the cpurse of the next six months — embarrassments 
 which only exist in my own imagination — I am 
 no better than an imbecile, and will no longer take 
 the trouble to listen to my own maunderings." 
 
 ^ The divorced wife of the actor. 
 L l6l 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 ** A letter from Madame Dutertre/ Here is 
 another who, having a lively love of freedom, 
 having succeeded in reconquering it at the age of 
 twenty-five, and possessing in addition a consider- 
 able fortune, is in a hurry to spoil her life over 
 again by contracting a fresh tie which to-day 
 oppresses her as much as, and more than, the first. 
 One only meets people who do not know how to 
 make proper use of their advantages. The reason 
 is that the enemy of man is within him." 
 
 " Received a letter from Madame Talma. She 
 is the person whom I love, not indeed the most 
 passionately, but with the least admixture of other 
 feelings, and the least regret. Her son is better. 
 When he was so ill at Soleure, Madame Talma 
 was a singular example of the fanatical attachment 
 with which people cling to the opinions of their 
 youth. Brought up as an unbeliever, this mother 
 was ardently anxious that her son should not 
 believe in the immortality of the soul, and I fancy 
 she would have argued with him when he was 
 dying if he had demanded consolations of that 
 kind. And yet Madame Talma is a good woman, 
 and all her affections are concentrated upon this 
 child. Inexplicable human nature ! " 
 
 "Called upon Mile Bontemps. I fear I 
 have made but a poor response to her affectionate 
 interest in me. If only I knew what I wanted, 
 I should know better what I am doing." 
 
 " Twenty years ago to-day (October 9th) I was 
 in Scotland, fairly happy, alternately living with 
 
 ^ Nee von Hardenberg, and married, e7i preinilres noces, to 
 M. von Marenholz. \ 
 
 i6z 
 
Madame de Charri^re's Last Years 
 
 some friends and boarding with an excellent 
 family in the country, three leagues from Edin- 
 burgh. Several of these friends are dead ; the 
 dearest of them is mad. A new generation has 
 grown up in the family, and the new generation 
 does not know me. Such is life ! " 
 
 " Madame de Stael is in a good mood, gentle 
 and amiable. Nevertheless, there is a corner in 
 her character which I do not like. I mean an 
 absolute want of pride, and a need of always 
 standing well with the authorities — a need which 
 contrasts strangely with the very little authority 
 which she exercises over herself, and causes 
 continual inconsistency in her conduct, with the 
 result that every party in turn suspects her of 
 intrigue and bad faith. She is in consequence 
 guilty of a kind of duplicity which is harmful not 
 only to her own dignity and success, but also to 
 that of her friends." 
 
 '* Pussy Cat is in a bad temper because I will 
 not sit up late at night. It seems clear that I 
 shall have to get married in order to be able to 
 go to bed in decent time. 
 
 " I received a visit to-day from Henrietta 
 Monachon, who drew me a graphic picture of her 
 last years with Madame de Charriere. 
 
 ** Seven years have passed since I last saw her ; 
 ten since all relation between us ended. How 
 easily then I broke all ties that tired me ! How 
 sure I was that I could form others when I chose ! 
 What a sense I had that my life was my property, 
 and what a difference ten years have made to my 
 feelings ! Everything seems precarious and about 
 
 iO"3 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 to escape from me. That which I have does not 
 make me happy. I have passed the age at which 
 gaps can be filled, and I tremble to renounce 
 anything w^hatever, not feeling that I have the 
 power to put anything else in its place." 
 
 " Madame Du Deffand used to say to M. de 
 Pont-de-Veyle, * We have been friends for forty 
 years. Is not that because we do not love each 
 other very much ? ' That is my own history." 
 
 " Sismondi, with whom I take a walk, re- 
 proaches me for taking too little interest in him 
 and in the world in general. The wretched man 
 knows nothing about my position, and how it 
 prevents me from disposing freely of my life, with 
 the result that I am a shadow running with other 
 shadows, and have no power of making plans for 
 the future." 
 
 "At dinner there were several guests. I was 
 very melancholy, and yet I jested a good deal. 
 This contrast is usual with me. At supper too 
 there were a good many people. What a melan- 
 choly thing is conversation ! Even conversation 
 which turns upon interesting subjects leads to so 
 little." 
 
 " Out in the evening and meet some amiable 
 women, but fate is obstinately unkind to me. In 
 the person whom I could marry, and should like 
 to marry, there is always something that does not 
 suit me. Meanwhile my life advances. I admit 
 that it will be all the same when it is over." 
 
 " A walk with Sismondi, who reproaches me 
 for never speaking seriously. It is true that, in 
 
 164 
 
• Schlegel's Amour-Propre 
 
 my present mood, I take too little interest in 
 persons and things to be convincing. I am 
 satisfied, therefore, to be silent or to jest. That 
 amuses me and deadens my feelings. The best 
 gift with which Heaven has endowed me is that 
 of being amused at myself. I read Sismondi my 
 Introduction.^ He was much impressed by it. He 
 is not at all a brilliant man, but he has very just 
 principles and very pure intentions. Only he 
 works very little, and goes out into society, where 
 he feels flattered to be received. He does not 
 dream that it is only his talent that has opened 
 the doors of society to him, and that he is 
 sacrificing to the enjoyment of a firstj success the 
 means of making others." 
 
 " Here is a pleasing story of Schlegel's amottr- 
 propre. One day he read a letter which he had 
 addressed to one of his friends. A little while 
 afterwards I learnt that this friend was dead. I 
 told Schlegel this, and he replied : * Yes, he is 
 dead, but he had time to receive my letter before 
 he died.' As if this friend had been brought into 
 the world to read Schlegel's letter, and having 
 read it, might depart in peace ! " 
 
 " I have happily escaped from a party given by 
 the Duchess of Courland to the Prefect, with 
 music on the Lake. 
 
 " I have again seen Am^lie Fabri. It is a 
 great pity that she is old, muddy-coloured, and 
 thin. If she were ten years younger I should 
 prefer her to any other woman. I could have 
 made a charming person of her, on condition that 
 
 ^ To the History of Religion. 
 165 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 I were already what I have now grown to be. Her 
 faults are due simply and solely to the isolation 
 in which she has lived. Everyone is amused by 
 her lively wit, and, seeing people laugh at what 
 she says, she concludes that whatever makes 
 people laugh is good to say. 
 
 "It was a year ago to-day that Madame de Stael 
 arrived in Paris against my wish and against the 
 advice of all her friends whom she had not so 
 dominated as to oblige them to speak against 
 their consciences. The consequences were sad." 
 
 " An argument with Schlegel on French tragedy 
 — bizarre and monotonous. His notions are often 
 as grotesque as a madman's." 
 
 " Dinner with Madame Necker.^ She perceives 
 in others only the greater or less attention that 
 they pay to her. A person whom it is diverting 
 to forget by reason of the amazement and anger 
 which the forgetfulness causes her. She does not 
 think that it is possible to think of anything but 
 her. Still that does not make her ridiculous, for 
 she has a noble though egotistic character, a 
 delicate though artificial wit, and a distinguished 
 though withered appearance." 
 
 ** Schlegel's brother has arrived. He Is a 
 globular little man, extraordinarily fat, with a 
 pointed nose issuing from two shining cheeks, 
 and underneath this pointed nose a mouth that 
 smiles with honeyed sweetness ; fine eyes, a sub- 
 dued air, especially when he is not speaking, and 
 an icy air when he is listening. His principles 
 are as absurd as those of his brother." 
 
 ^ Madame de Stael's cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure. 
 l66 
 
Confused Recollections 
 
 " Madame de Stael gave me to read a frag- 
 ment of her work on her father. I could not 
 restrain my tears. There is a sensibility in it 
 the more real because it is free from all affecta- 
 tion. Will they laugh at it in Paris .-* I record 
 my impresson of it here that it may not change." 
 
 *' Dined with the Duchess of Courland. To 
 see her I should say that it only depended upon 
 myself to make her think me very agreeable. I 
 bore myself so much in Society that it is difficult 
 for me to believe that I can please. I am ill. 
 Everyone notices how changed I am. I shall 
 not be sorry when it is all over. What have I 
 to expect from life ? " 
 
 "This is the day of my birth — thirty-seven 
 years ago. The best part of my life is over. 
 Even if nature is kind, there can only remain, 
 free from infirmities, about half the period that I 
 have already lived. My life has only left me 
 very confused recollections. I am hardly any 
 more interested in myself than in other people. 
 I know that, up to the age of fourteen, the object 
 of great affection on the part of my father, on the 
 one hand treated with great severity, but en- 
 couraged, on the other, in the wildest vanity, 
 I filled all those about me with admiration 
 for my precocious talents, and distrust of my 
 violent, quarrelsome'disposition. I had no mother. 
 They mistook for naughtiness what was only 
 amour-propre. From fourteen to sixteen I was 
 in a German University, left a great deal too 
 much to my own devices, winning successes 
 which turned my head, and committing prodigious 
 follies. From sixteen to eighteen I studied at 
 
 167 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Edinburgh, and there, for the first time, acquired 
 that real taste for study which they had till then 
 vainly tried to instil into me. But, after living 
 for a year a well-regulated and tolerably happy 
 life, I abandoned myself to the passion of gambling, 
 and lived in a very agitated, and, I will add, a 
 very miserable manner. I next went to Paris, 
 with only my own sense to guide me — which it 
 did pretty badly. From eighteen to twenty I was 
 always in love, sometimes loved in return, often 
 tactless and giving myself over to acts of theatrical 
 violence which must have been very amusing to 
 those who were pleased to criticise me. I then 
 went a second time to Paris, where I made the 
 acquaintance of all the follies that youth can think 
 of, with the temptations that Paris provides. At 
 the same time, however, I was living in the society 
 of men of letters, in which to some extent I dis- 
 tinguished myself. Next, I set out for England. 
 It was then that I tasted for the first time the 
 inexpressible delights of solitude. From twenty 
 to twenty-six I lived in Germany, leading a life 
 that was tiresome without actual unhappiness, 
 wasting my time and my talents ; and had it 
 not been for a revolution that occurred in my life, 
 I should have declined gently into stupidity. At 
 twenty-seven I was divorced from a first marriage 
 contracted in Germany — I have already spoken 
 of it. At twenty-seven I commenced an attach- 
 ment that was to last for ten years ; then came 
 political passions. Now I think I have reached 
 a ffurther stage, for all that I desire is repose. 
 Shall I obtain it? It always looks as if it would 
 be easy to obtain something that one does not 
 want ; but when one begins to want the thing 
 
 1 68 
 
SchlegePs New Religion 
 
 that seemed so easy to get, then the difficulties 
 present themselves." 
 
 " I am every day more convinced that one must 
 exercise cunning in one's relations both with life 
 and with men, whether one wishes to escape from 
 one's fellow-creatures or to make use of them. 
 Ambition is not nearly so mad a thing as people 
 suppose ; for one has to take nearly as much 
 trouble to be allowed to live in peace and quiet- 
 ness as to govern the world. Nevertheless, so 
 far as I am concerned, the die is cast. I want 
 to find a country in which one can sleep in tran- 
 quillity. Germany is the place for me." 
 
 " My aunt hints that if I marry she will show 
 herself grateful. That is, in effect, to promise 
 me a fortune four times as large as my own. 
 Very likely I shall repent of not having said * yes.' 
 But * yes ' would be too much trouble. I give up 
 the idea." 
 
 "Schlegel wants to be the leader of a new 
 religion. Nothing is more ridiculous than the 
 plans of this kind which men form because they 
 see that something of the sort succeeds about 
 once every ten centuries. I cannot deny that I 
 have formed my own. Schlegel says that in all 
 religions there are mysteries. Therefore he makes 
 a pretence of concealing a portion of his doctrine. 
 That is to say, he shows the whole of it, and 
 conceals the rest." 
 
 ** I do not know why, but I have a presentiment, 
 a kind of hope, that Madame de Stael's affairs ^ 
 
 ^ Benjamin Constant was trying to obtain permission for Madame 
 de Stael to reside in Paris. 
 
 169 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 will succeed. But I am forgetting that it is only 
 bad presentiments that come true." 
 
 " I am continually thinking of Weimar, which 
 would be a pleasant retreat for me, if I can 
 convince the people there that I have not come 
 for them, but for their Library." 
 
 " A charming letter from Madame Talma, and 
 other Paris friends. I shall be delighted to see 
 them again — but on condition that I stay with 
 them as short a time as possible. 
 
 " I feel such a physical necessity for peace and 
 quietness, that if my present situation were to be 
 prolonged, I should die of it, and might just as 
 well hang myself at once. I feel that I must 
 muster up the courage to conquer my winter for 
 myself. And yet, in forming this project, I feel 
 that I am hard-hearted and unjust. Why should 
 I ruffle the affections of a woman who loves me so 
 well, and deprive her of her last remaining friend 
 at the moment when she has just lost her father ? " 
 
 "Visited Genthoud. There is no better proof 
 of the heavy burden of life than the spectacle of 
 elderly persons trying to pass the time gaily. 
 There is something so melancholy in this gaiety, 
 and so painful in this resignation. And to think 
 that the end of the boredom is death ! " 
 
 " Dined with Madame Necker. Brilliant people 
 are almost as tedious in their conversation as fools." 
 
 " Passed the evening with my poor Am^lie, 
 and played piquet with her. Really she is not 
 so silly as they say, but I do not think she is as 
 amiable as she tries to make me think. Still she 
 
 170 
 
A Vain Struggle against Fate 
 
 has a sort of gaiety and grace which, in spite of 
 her ugliness, which is on the increase, rekindles my 
 weak sentiment for her, as often as I look at her." 
 
 "It is announced that the plague is spreading 
 all over Italy. Madame de Stael cannot go there, 
 and so I am obliged to remain here. One would 
 say that exile, death, and the plague are in a 
 conspiracy to keep me in chains. How could I 
 desert Madame de Stael two years ago when she 
 was banished ? Or seven months ago when she 
 lost her father.-* How can I desert her now that 
 she has given up her journey ? What am I to do 
 against fate ? " 
 
 **The reports of the plague in Italy were much 
 exaggerated. Madame de Stael is carrying out 
 her plans, and I, on my side, am going away too. 
 How much time is lost in these continual prepara- 
 tions for departure ! 
 
 "Who would have believed that the good 
 Adele de Sellon would have put on such im- 
 pertinent airs since the marriage of her sister, 
 whom she believes to be in high favour? Assuredly 
 that is the last fault that I should have suspected in 
 Adele. But I believe that all faults are latent 
 in all women, waiting only for opportunity to 
 develop them." 
 
 ''En route for Poligny." 
 
 " Arrive at Brevens, where I find my father, a 
 little aged, but in good health." 
 
 " I set out again from D6le. A regular road to 
 walk on — that is what my life requires." 
 
 " I arrive at Lyons, where I rejoin Madame de 
 Stael." 
 
 171 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Madame de Stael's triumphs in Italy — She "gives performances 
 in the character of woman of letters" — Her relations with 
 Monti — Benjamin Constant in Paris — His relations with 
 Madame Recamier, Madame Talma, and other friends. 
 
 Benjamin Constant had left Coppet a few days 
 before Madame de Stael, in order to visit his 
 father, who had married his housekeeper and got 
 his affairs embroiled. His son did his best to 
 deliver him from the imbroglio, but the old man 
 was barely grateful. He had become attached 
 to his grievances through habit, and missed the 
 sense of importance which he derived from them. 
 Benjamin could only reflect that, at least, he had 
 tried to do his duty. 
 
 His meeting with Madame de Stael at Lyons 
 was only for the purpose of saying good-bye. 
 He stayed there a day or two, and spent 
 an evening with the family of his rival, Camille 
 Jordan. " Ridiculous provincials," was his verdict 
 on them ; and he adds : " The party was amus- 
 ing, thanks to the folly of the persons present." 
 He meant to go on to Weimar. " Either I am 
 a madman or else I shall be in Weimar in three 
 weeks," he wrote ; but he went instead to his own 
 estate at Herivaux, in Seine-et-Oise, whence he 
 
 172 
 
Triumphal Progress in Itaiy 
 
 visited Paris from time to time. " I have re- 
 ceived," he notes, " a letter from Madame de Stael, 
 who finds my letters melancholy, and inquires what 
 I want to make me happy. Alas ! What I want 
 is my freedom, and that is exactly what I am not 
 allowed to have. I am reminded of the case of the 
 hussar who took such an interest in the prisoner 
 whom he had to put to death that he said to him : 
 ' Ask me any favour you like except your life.' " 
 
 Madame de Stael, meanwhile, had crossed the 
 Alps, and was conquering Italy in her fashion, 
 as Napoleon had previously conquered it in his ; 
 the Emperor doing nothing, on this occasion, to 
 interfere with her triumph. Provided that she 
 kept away from Paris, he was willing that, at a 
 distance from Paris, she should be treated with 
 consideration. He even said that, if she should 
 be arrested in the kingdom of Naples, he would 
 claim her as his subject, and march twenty thousand 
 men to her rescue ; while she, on her part, was 
 disposed to avoid giving unnecessary offence. 
 The French Government was in Necker's debt 
 for money advanced ; ^ and though the claim could 
 be disputed on the ground that Necker's name 
 had been on the list of emigres, whose property 
 had passed to the State, there was a chance that 
 Napoleon would settle it. As a matter of fact, 
 the debt was not discharged until after the 
 Bourbon Restoration ; but the hope of payment 
 
 ^ It was advanced in the reign of Louis XVI. — not to the King 
 personally, but to the public Exchequer. 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 had, for the time being, a quieting effect upon 
 Madame de Stael's demeanour. 
 
 Her companions upon her journey were her 
 children, Schlegel, and Sismondi. The last-named 
 quitted her to visit Florence and the Comtesse 
 d' Albany — Alfieri's widow, formerly the mis- 
 tress of the Young Pretender, with whom he 
 afterwards carried on a long and interesting 
 correspondence. Schlegel remained with her 
 throughout. We have met him already in the 
 character of her children's preceptor ; but it is 
 said that he also had higher pretensions, which 
 Madame de Stael did not encourage, giving him 
 only her friendship, whereas he aspired to her love. 
 She distributed ^friendship as freely as charitable 
 organisations distribute coals and blankets, so 
 that there is nothing inherently improbable in 
 the supposition — to which, indeed, Benjamin 
 Constant's dislike of Schlegel may be deemed 
 to give further support. His manners were rather 
 bad than good. The stock story told against 
 him is that he insisted on addressing Madame de 
 Stael in public as chere amiCy in order to make it 
 clear to the company that he was no ordinary 
 pedagogue. Be that as it may, however, he was 
 an exceptionally competent guide to the art 
 treasures and ruins of Rome. 
 
 How far Madame de Stael was susceptible to 
 Italian influences — to what extent Italy conquered 
 her — we shall have to consider presently when 
 we speak of Corinne. The view of her friends 
 
 174 
 
" A Woman of Letters " 
 
 at the time was that she needed them badly, but 
 was not likely to prove amenable. In matters 
 of art, as in matters of metaphysics, she was more 
 prone to gush than to understand ; and she her- 
 self wrote that sculpture left her comparatively 
 cold — that a beautiful thought meant more to her 
 than the most beautiful piece of statuary. To 
 those, moreover, who followed her course, it may 
 well have seemed that there was too little recep- 
 tivity in her attitude. She went through Italy 
 as an actress struts upon the boards, losing no 
 opportunity of taking the centre of the stage. 
 " She is giving performances in the character of 
 a woman of letters," is the way an Italian con- 
 temporary, Chigi, puts it; and there must have 
 been an appearance of reason for his belief that, 
 whatever she seemed to see in Italy, the spectacle 
 actually present to her mental vision was always 
 Madame de Stael surrounded by other things. 
 
 The great performance was before the Roman 
 Arcadian Academy, where ten young men in 
 succession discharged sonnets at her, "like the 
 thunderbolts of the Vatican," and she herself 
 recited a poem of her own composition. " All 
 Rome," she writes, " with its Princes, Cardinals, 
 etc., was present. I spare you a dozen sonnets 
 in which I am made a new star." But Benjamin 
 Constant, when the news of the triumph reached 
 him, commented, in his Diary, thus : — 
 
 "A letter from Madame de Stael. She is 
 
 175 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 altogether enchanted with her success at Rome. 
 Much good may it do her! She has written a 
 sonnet on the death of Jesus Christ, and has read 
 it at the Arcadian Academy. Of a truth there is 
 somethinpf of the mountebank in this behaviour. 
 If this sonnet reaches France, people will have 
 a fresh reason for laughing at her. They will 
 say she has been using religion as a means to 
 gain her ends. How unfortunate is this ambition 
 to win small successes which has already cost her 
 so much trouble ! " 
 
 The conquest of Italy included the conquest 
 of the Italian poet, Vincenzo Monti. " Mamma," 
 wrote the little Albertine de Stael, " cared for 
 nothing in Italy except Monti and the sea ; " and it 
 is true that she coupled Monti in eulogy with Mount 
 Vesuvius, and addressed him as "- caro Monti" 
 several times in the same letter, saying, "You 
 were certainly a friend waiting for me, not a new 
 acquaintance ; " and she invited him, of course, 
 to visit her at Coppet. He was hardly worthy 
 of the enthusiasm which she lavished on him, for 
 he was a time-serving poet, always ready to sing 
 for any master, whether Italian, French, br 
 Austrian, who would give him a public appoint- 
 ment ; and, in spite of reports that were circu- 
 lated, there is no substantial reason for supposing 
 that any relations other than enthusiastic were 
 established. At all events, there is no hint to 
 any such effect in Benjamin Constant's attitude ; 
 and that fact seems conclusive. 
 
 176 
 
The Diary a Faithful Mirror 
 
 It was in the summer of 1805 that Madame de 
 Stael returned to Coppet ; and the entries in 
 Benjamin Constant's Diary during the interval 
 show that, though she thrust herself from time 
 to time into his thoughts, she did not by any 
 means monopolise them. He was writing ; he 
 was going into society ; he was interesting himself 
 in other women — the Mrs. Lindsay whom he could 
 not marry because, as he has told us, she had 
 two illegitimate children, and the divorced wife of 
 the actor Talma, also a lady of somewhat light 
 reputation, seeing that she too had borne two 
 natural children before her marriage, and had 
 given birth to twins, whom she named Castor and 
 Pollux, within a fortnight of the ceremony. But 
 let the Journal speak. It continues to be the 
 faithful mirror of a complex and distracted 
 mind. 
 
 " I was meaning to dine to-day with Allard. 
 The desire for solitude overtook me, and I dined 
 at home. And, indeed, what should I have done 
 at this dinner ? I should have seen candles which 
 would have pained my eyes, and people whom I 
 do not care about ; and I should have said things 
 which I should afterwards have been sorry for. 
 I dined alone, I said nothing, and I screened the 
 candles. It was much the better way." 
 
 " A very nice letter from Madame de Stael. 
 
 She is always in too great a hurry to put herself 
 
 forward. Agitation and ambition ! She does 
 
 not give the wings of fortune time to grow, but 
 
 M 177 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 plucks them out feather by feather to make 
 plumes for her hat." 
 
 " How fatal is the society of women, owing to 
 the difficulty of resisting them ! How egoistical 
 they are without knowing it ! How they sacrifice 
 everything to the fancy of the moment ! And to 
 think that I cannot make any firm resolution be- 
 cause of my profound sense of the brevity of life ! " 
 
 ** An absurd dinner at Madame D[utertre]'s. 
 A husband beginning to be jealous, people who 
 talked nothing but the gossip of their provincial 
 towns, and myself timid in the midst of it all, as if 
 it were evidence of inferiority to find oneself 
 in the presence of the mediocre." 
 
 "Called on Madame Dutertre. What a folly 
 she committed, and what a hornet's nest she fell 
 into, when she married a man of the emigration ! 
 Indeed, what a company of convicts is this society 
 of provincial tmigres, who left their country after 
 fifteen or twenty years of a bad education in the 
 houses of the squireens, their fathers, to complete 
 that education on the banks of the Rhine, driven 
 from village to village, acquiring nothing of the 
 military life but its coarseness and licence, keep- 
 ing themselves to themselves — keeping, that is to 
 say, the worst company in the world. Now that 
 they are back in France, they are more ignorant, 
 more mad, more detestable than ever." 
 
 " I try to rescue a fallen woman, but it is no 
 good. There is a habit of degradation which 
 nothing can efface. How things of that sort 
 teach one to appreciate a pure marriage, in which 
 
 i;8 
 
Necker's Posthumous Works 
 
 pleasure is not followed by disgust, duty and enjoy- 
 ment go hand in hand, and she whose embrace 
 one quits becomes one's friend, the companion 
 of one's life, and the partner of one's thoughts 
 and interests." 
 
 ** The Journal de Paris has attacked the 
 posthumous works [of Necker] just published by 
 Madame de Stael. The article is by Carrion 
 Nisas, an infamous buffoon. I set to work to 
 reply to him in a few words. Thus : * It is not 
 given to all the world to accomplish with impunity 
 the most sacred and natural of all duties. In all 
 ages a certain class of the populace has bawled 
 to disturb funeral processions. 
 
 " ' The daughter of M. Necker might have 
 expected it. She remains to-day the sole repre- 
 sentative of a family that was long illustrious. 
 This family must pay the price of its glory to the 
 depredators of all glory, the enemies of all virtue. 
 Besides, the opportunity is a good one. The 
 father is dead; the daughter is far away. Put 
 forth all your strength, then ; the enterprise is 
 worthy of your courage. It becomes you to 
 attack a tomb defended by a woman.' " 
 
 " Called upon Madame Pourrat. She spoke 
 to me of Madame de Stael's book on M. Necker, 
 which is doing better than I expected. ' How,' 
 Madame Pourrat said to me, ' could M. Necker 
 be afraid of death ? He should have said to 
 himself: " Either the soul is immortal or it is not. 
 If it is, I have nothing to fear ; if it is not, then 
 too I have nothing to fear." ' As if the imagina- 
 tion ever presented these dilemmas! It is as if I 
 
 i;9 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 were to say to a lover : ' Either your mistress is 
 faithful to you or she is not. If she is, she is 
 worthy of you, and you need not distrust her ; if 
 she is not, she is unworthy of you, and you need 
 not regret her.' " 
 
 "A tiresome dinner with Madame Pourrat." 
 
 " Dine with Madame Recamier, and meet 
 General Sebastiani, A silly man, cold-blooded, 
 full of those generalisations which the Machiavel- 
 lists of our day adopt as profound truths." 
 
 " This morning I sorted my papers — a task 
 which always makes me profoundly melancholy. 
 What a number of ties I have broken ! 
 
 " What a strange passion for independence and 
 isolation has dominated my life, and through 
 what weakness, stranger still, I find myself at the 
 present time the most dependent man I know ! I 
 must follow to the end this life which I have led 
 so madly. I have at least had the wit to keep 
 it serious and intact in the eyes of others. No 
 one suspects the madness which invades and 
 devastates it. A letter from Madame de Stael. 
 I shall not answer. I am sick to death of 
 her eternal reproaches and my eternal justifica- 
 tions. It is all very well for women to talk. 
 When once there has been love in one's relations 
 with them, they will not be satisfied with anything 
 else. " 
 
 " Madame Talma gets worse and worse. The 
 doctors are divided in opinion. Their skill is 
 inadequate, and nature is inexorable. . . . All my 
 friends are dying, and I do not remember to have 
 
 1 80 
 
Madame Talma Dying 
 
 seen the death of a single enemy. A year ago, 
 In this same Journal, I was congratulating myself 
 upon saving Huber at Ulm. He is dead. I 
 wrote that there had been nothing but pleasure in 
 my relations with Madame Talma ; she is dying. 
 I have often praised the gentleness, the social 
 qualities of Blacon ; he has committed suicide. 
 My path is over graves. ... I remain — ddbris 
 in the midst of fallen ruins — my soul withered and 
 worn out. I regret to note that all that is good 
 perishes, and that all that is vile and savage 
 endures." 
 
 " Madame Talma is dying ; nothing more can 
 be done for her. Her pretended friends are 
 around her, making a fuss, looking out for what 
 they can get. Their melancholy calculations are 
 disguised as a confident hope of her recovery. H er 
 character is almost entirely changed by her illness. 
 She is restless, exacting, greedy — she who used to 
 be so generotis ! Poor human nature ! " 
 
 " Dinner at Madame Lindsay's with a few 
 friends. The evening was agreeable and the 
 conversation pleasant ; but my life is not there. 
 In truth my life is not anywhere but within, I 
 let it be taken hold of. Anyone is free to take 
 possession of my outward life who can. It is 
 wrong ; for that deprives me of my time and 
 strength. But the inner life is defended by a 
 barrier which other people do not cross. They 
 cause pain to enter there sometimes, but never do 
 they establish themselves there as masters," 
 
 *' Pass the evening at Madame R^camier's, I 
 i8i 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 must have made myself amiable, for I was compli- 
 mented on doing so." 
 
 " Dinner with Madame Talma. She is much 
 better, and seems to have reconquered life by the 
 power of her mind. That would prove the truth 
 of the saying that it is only through stupidity that 
 one dies." 
 
 " Supper with Madame Rdcamier. It was 
 very tiresome. The young people of this 
 generation are too much given to sneering, and 
 are veritably stupid." 
 
 " Dined with Hochet and Piscatory. What 
 with the dinner and the conversation, I became 
 excited and said things about people which I have 
 hitherto been careful not to say. Happily my 
 companions will forget half of what I said and 
 only repeat a portion of the rest. 
 
 " I propose to interrupt all my literary work in 
 order to set my life in order. Many people have 
 needed less than a month to seize power in the 
 State. Ouorht I to need more in order to decide 
 matters which concern myself alone ? I will put 
 all my strength into the task. But, above all, 
 there must be no more Coppet, and no more 
 Geneva. All that I find there is a glittering 
 lake which has made me blind, and relatives who 
 never cease finding fault with me. 
 
 " Madame Lindsay writes to me to say that, at 
 bottom, we are very much like each other. That 
 perhaps is a reason why we should not suit each 
 other. It is because men are so much alike that 
 Providence has created women who do not 
 resemble them." 
 
 182 
 
The Soul an Inexplicable Enigma 
 
 " Dined with Madame Talma, who is dying, but 
 is more amiable than ever." 
 
 " Passed the day and the night near Madame 
 Talma, whose end is approaching. I look on and 
 study death. She has recovered all her faculties — 
 her wit, her grace, her gaiety, her memory, the 
 old vivacity of her opinions. Can it be that all 
 that will perish } One clearly sees that what she 
 has preserved of her soul is only troubled by the 
 weakness of her body, but not intrinsically 
 diminished. It is certain that, if one could take 
 that which makes her think and speak — her mind, 
 in a word — and all the faculties which make up 
 that which I have loved so well, and transport 
 it to another body, it would all live again. 
 Nothing is impaired. . . . The spectacle of death 
 on this occasion brings me ideas to which I was 
 not prone." 
 
 " She is dead. It is over, for ever ! Kind and 
 gentle friend ! I saw you die. Long time I held 
 you in my arms. And now you are no more. 
 My grief had been kept in suspense by the hope 
 of saving you yet again. I saw your death 
 without terror, for I saw nothing violent enough 
 to destroy this intelligence of which I guard so 
 lively a recollection. Immortality of the soul I 
 Inexplicable enigma! . . . 
 
 " To read what I have written in the past 
 about this distinguished woman, no one would 
 believe in the bitter regret and the unceasing pain 
 which her loss has made me feel. Yes, I judge 
 my friends severely, but I love them better than 
 anything else in the world. I serve them, and I 
 
 . 183 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 render them more true affection than do all those 
 people who boast of their sensibility, but who, I 
 am sure, are not such good companions in grief 
 and adversity as I am. I have lost the most 
 disinterested and the best of friends." 
 
 " I was present at the burial of Madame Talma, 
 with a small number of friends who were deeply 
 affected. For a moment I feared that I should 
 not be able to bear up through this mournful 
 ceremony, which seemed doubly sad when I 
 recalled the grace, the gaiety, and the kindness of 
 heart of her who was locked up in the narrow 
 coffin. The ceremony alone was an empty show, 
 wherein each played his part, the priests singing 
 their psalms for money, and everything proceeding 
 mechanically. A queer state of things, when 
 even those who claim to represent religion, those 
 who call themselves its ministers, do not take the 
 trouble to appear convinced of its truth. Only 
 one portion of the ceremony seemed to me to 
 have anything touching in it — the salutation of 
 the priests as they pass before the body, and the 
 blessing, as it were, of the coffin by each one of 
 those present. The repetition of this salutation is 
 a sign of memory and farewell which left me with 
 an agreeable emotion. I felt grateful to the men 
 who thus continued to show their respect to her 
 who was no more." 
 
 184 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Corinne 
 
 Madame de Stael returned to Coppet and wrote 
 Corinne, which was published in the spring 
 of 1807. 
 
 It is the most famous of her books. Six 
 editions of it were printed in her lifetime, and 
 others have been printed since. Those of her 
 contemporaries who found fault with it did so 
 chiefly because she glorified an Englishman at 
 the expense of a Frenchman, and spoke dis- 
 dainfully of the Italians. Most of them were 
 enthusiastic ; and it would be possible, if it were 
 worth while, to fill many pages with the ex- 
 pressions of their praise. Byron, Benjamin 
 Constant, Suard, Henri Meister, Sir James 
 Mackintosh, Frederick Schlegel, Gouverneur 
 Morris were numbered among her panegyrists. 
 It is only because the verdict was so nearly 
 unanimous that it is unnecessary to call the 
 witnesses. The world in general bestowed the 
 name of the heroine upon the author. Thence- 
 forward, when people said "Corinne," they meant 
 Madame de Stael. The modern critic, even if he 
 does not endorse the judgment, must at least 
 begin by recording it. 
 
 185 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Such a critic's first impression is that here, at 
 last, is something definite and mature. When 
 Madame de Stael began to write, she could not 
 even punctuate ; the stops are all over her pages, 
 as if sprinkled at random from a pepper-pot. In 
 Corinne they are used, as they should be, to give 
 form to the sentences. And, as the sentences are 
 complete, so too is the book. There is no longer 
 any question of brilliant promise or noble failure 
 to achieve. We may like the book, or we may 
 dislike it ; but we can make no mistake about 
 it, and can have no doubts as to the writer's 
 intentions. For good or for bad, it is exactly 
 what it was meant to be. It is, in fact, and was 
 meant to be, two things — a dissertation on Italy, 
 and a romance into which Madame de Stael, as 
 usual, put a great deal of herself. 
 
 "If it were not out of respect for my fellow- 
 creatures," Madame de Stael said to Mol^, " I 
 would not take the trouble to open my window to 
 get my first view of the Bay of Naples, whereas I 
 would willingly travel five hundred leagues to 
 converse with a man of talent unknown to me." 
 We have already quoted her assertion that she pre- 
 ferred beautiful thoughts to beautiful statuary. The 
 two statements put together complete Madame 
 de Stael's confession of her incompetence to 
 interpret a country which appeals far more to the 
 senses than to the intellect. Just as the real 
 intellectual problems, as presented, for instance, 
 in the Critique of Pure Reason, were too high for 
 
 1 86 
 
Italy Through Schlegel's Eyes 
 
 her, so the art of Italy was outside her range. 
 She was clever, but not profound ; prone to 
 emotion, but not susceptible to the charms of 
 form and'^ colour ; incapable, above all things, of 
 becoming as a little child in the presence of things 
 which she did not understand. " I understand 
 everything that is comprehensible, and whatever 
 I do not understand is of no importance," would 
 seem to have been her motto in Italy as in 
 Germany. We find her writing, therefore, like 
 an art lecturer who has never been an art student 
 — but with one significant qualification : she had 
 Schlegel at her elbow. 
 
 What Madame de Stael saw with her own 
 eyes in Italy was the levity of the Italians, who 
 made love without abandoning themselves to 
 passion, and had no talent for politics. About 
 that she wrote despairing letters to Monti. The 
 rest was seen, in the first instance, if not in the 
 last resort, through Schlegel's eyes. As we read 
 the book, we picture Schlegel peeping over the 
 writer's shoulder and proposing instructive inter- 
 polations. More than half of the first volume, at 
 any rate, consists of such interpolations, though 
 they do not appear exactly in the shape which 
 Schlegel would have given them. Occasionally 
 there is a flash of inspiration that obviously was 
 not Schlegel's. The description of the Roman 
 Campagna as " a tired soil which seems too proud 
 to be fertile " is a case in point — a characteristic 
 use of the pathetic fallacy. More often the 
 
 187 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 generalisations acquire a vagueness of which 
 Schlegel would not have been proud ; and there 
 is a vast deal too much enthusiasm for the beaux 
 arts in general, paraded on page after page as 
 the badg-e of the d^ne sensible. It is self-con- 
 scious and patronising, and the true ring is not in it. 
 Italy contributes the local colour, but not the spirit 
 or the atmosphere of the story. Indeed, the 
 English local colour is better and more convincing 
 than the Italian ; Madame de Stael having known 
 England in earlier and more impressionable years. 
 The story, as all the world knows, is of the 
 vain endeavour of a woman of genius to find 
 happiness in love. Its interest and value is as 
 Madame de Stael's own rendering of what she 
 conceived to be her own experience of life. 
 Here again, as in Delphine, there is little that is 
 strictly speaking autobiographical. The story, 
 indeed, so far from being autobiographical, is 
 hardly even original. The plot is taken from 
 Madame de Charriere — the same Madame de 
 Charriere from whom Madame de Stael had 
 already taken Benjamin Constant. In Caliste, 
 which Madame de Stael had read, as she says, 
 "■ ten times," there is the same English nobleman 
 who, for sufficient reasons, cannot marry the 
 foreign woman whom he loves. What is new is 
 not the plot but the motive — a woman's genius 
 despised and rejected, domesticated mediocrity 
 triumphant, the man sorry for his refusal of the 
 pearl that was beyond all price. 
 
The Super-Man and Super- Woman 
 
 It would not seem that the lover is drawn from 
 Benjamin Constant, or from M. de Narbonne, 
 or from Camille Jordan, or from any man whom 
 Madame de Stael had known. He is a woman's 
 ideal man, somewhat suggesting — or should one not 
 say anticipating? — by his mysterious melancholy 
 and his amazing prowess, those lovelorn Life 
 Guardsmen of " Ouida's " fiction who suffer un- 
 told agonies in perfumed boudoirs, sit up all night 
 drinking brandy punch with boon companions, 
 and win the Grand National or stroke the Oxford 
 Eight to victory upon the morrow. The way in 
 which Lord Nelvil takes the helm and encourages 
 the timid sailors during the storm in the Channel, 
 and the way in which he runs about with a squirt, 
 extinguishing the conflagration at Ancona — to 
 say nothing of the way in which he plunges into 
 the Bay of Naples to rescue a drowning man — 
 are equally characteristic of the Super-man as con- 
 ceived by woman in the days when she did not 
 yet esteem hers the stronger sex. But Corinne is 
 not only the Super-woman. She is also Madame 
 de Stael. 
 
 We are told, it is true, that Corinne was 
 beautiful, and we know that Madame de Stael 
 was not ; but that discrepancy proves nothing, 
 and is not intended to deceive. Or, at any rate, 
 it proves, not that Madame de Stael fancied that 
 she was beautiful, but only that she would have 
 liked to fancy it. In other respects the likeness 
 is a speaking one. The crowning of Corinne 
 
 189 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 with laurel on the Capitol was, as we have seen, 
 an incident in Madame de Stael 's own Italian 
 journey. She had been clothed for the occasion 
 exactly as she clothes Corinne ; she had ex- 
 changed sonnets with her admirers in exactly 
 the same way. She gives Corinne those shapely 
 arms which were the chief of her own physical 
 attractions. Corinne's talents were her own 
 talents ; Corinne's unhappiness was her own un- 
 happiness. In her portrait of Corinne she depicted 
 feminine genius as she understood it. The limita- 
 tions of the conception are the more pathetic 
 because they are so absolutely and obviously 
 unconscious. 
 
 Genius is indefinable. One hesitates, there- 
 fore, before saying that Madame de Stael neither 
 had the divine gift nor succeeded in depicting it 
 in her heroine. Yet one can find in the figure of 
 Corinne a good deal that seems to warrant Thiers' 
 pronouncement that her creator was the very type 
 of mediocrity. Thiers was a man who knew 
 mediocrity well from personal experience, and his 
 remarks on that branch of the subject necessarily 
 command respect. It was, no doubt, highly 
 gifted mediocrity that he recognised in Madame 
 de Stael ; and it might plausibly be argued that, 
 when mediocrity is highly gifted, it ceases to be 
 mediocre. By tirelessness, by restlessness — by 
 great, though scattered, energy — Madame de 
 Stael rose far above the common level of women, 
 imposed her personality, and left her mark. 
 
 190 
 
The Salonidre of the Bine Arts 
 
 And yet, admitting all this, one can see what 
 Thiers meant by his criticism — and can see, 
 too, that there was something in it. One sees 
 it best by first seeing, as one can from the 
 persual of Corinne, what Madame de Stael under- 
 stood by genius, and how she expected it to be 
 manifested. 
 
 What one misses in the alleged genius of Corinne 
 is "inwardness"; what one notes is obviousness. 
 The end at which this genius always aims is 
 effect ; the test by which it is pronounced supreme 
 is always that of effect — in the actor's sense of the 
 word. One does not think of Corinne producing 
 beautiful things by stealth because the love of 
 beauty constrains her. Like Madame de Stael 
 herself, she gives performances ; and her claim 
 on our admiration is not the quality of the work, 
 but the success of the performance. She is as it 
 were the saloniere of th^ fine arts. She talks 
 interminably, and the men sit at her feet and 
 hang upon her words. She " improvises," and 
 the men clap their hands and place the crown 
 upon her head. We are left with the impression 
 that this sort of thing is not only the proof but 
 the purpose of genius, and that genius, whether 
 in the person of Corinne or of Madame de Stael, 
 is wronged when happiness in love does not result 
 from such exhibitions of what vulgar people have 
 been known to call "parlour tricks." 
 
 Yet the real reason why happiness in love is 
 not so brought about is quite clear, though quite 
 
 191 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 other than Madame de Stael supposed. It is not 
 the splendour of the genius, but the obviousness 
 of it, that is the obstacle. The history of Madame 
 de Stael's own love affairs is generally this : that 
 she won men's affections because she talked so 
 well, and then lost them because she talked 
 so much. The level-headed observer would have 
 expected pretty much the same thing to happen 
 with Corinne. The first effect would have been 
 dazzling because — once more to quote the vulgar 
 — Corinne " kept all her goods in the shop 
 window." But, if there is to be happiness in 
 love, the first effect must be only the piquant 
 prelude to the second, and the second to the 
 third. The lover must be permitted to feel that 
 he is also a discoverer — that the pearl of great 
 price which he has found has a secret value 
 of which he only is aware. He may, indeed, 
 scramble and compete for the pearl of which the 
 marvellous value is made publicly known to the 
 world ; but in that case it is vanity, not love, 
 that lures him on. And happiness in vanity is a 
 very vain sort of happiness, and differs toto ccelo 
 from happiness in love. 
 
 In considerations of this sort, and not, as 
 Madame de Stael supposed, in the dislike of 
 mediocrity for anything better than itself, lies the 
 secret of Corinne's failure. Much satire is ex- 
 pended, in the course of the story, upon the 
 narrow vision and gross prejudices of the 
 commonplace. It is effective satire, and it is 
 
 193 
 
"Corinne's" Genius Superficial 
 
 well merited ; but it is largely beside the mark. 
 Real genius triumphs over such things by 
 ignoring them. Corinne's was the superficial 
 genius of the popular entertainer. Her volubility 
 dissipated the mysteries through which it is the 
 delight of love slowly to find its way. When she 
 had recited her poems and lectured on the arts, she 
 had revealed all the secrets of her charm. She 
 was tout en dehors — as obvious as the photograph 
 of a professional beauty or the pictorial advertise- 
 ment of a tooth-paste. The pathetic thing is that 
 Madame de Stael should have drawn such a figure 
 as a glorified portrait of herself, not perceiving the 
 limitations which its externality implied, but in 
 the confident belief that this sort of thing is 
 genius in its loftiest manifestation, and that those 
 who do not love it when they see it, and desire 
 its daily companionship, are citizens of Philistia, 
 the enemies of light and " sensibility." The reason 
 of her own loud, long, and unavailing cry for 
 happiness is there. 
 
 N 193 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The return from Italy — The life at Coppet — The visitors — Their 
 reminiscences — Descriptions of Coppet by Madame Vigee Le 
 Brun — By Baron de Voght — By Rosalie de Constant — 
 Quarrels with Benjamin Constant. 
 
 Madame de Stael was no sooner back from 
 Italy than she wished to go to France ; but 
 Fouchd refused her a passport. She therefore 
 divided her time for some months between 
 Coppet and Geneva, arranging a notable series of 
 theatrical representations in both places. Even 
 after she had obtained her passport, she delayed 
 her departure until the spring of 1806, when she 
 took up her residence at Auxerre. Schlegel was 
 with her. Mathieu de Montmorency, Camille 
 Jordan, and other friends visited her there ; but 
 she was, none the less, unhappy. Benjamin's 
 conduct, as we shall see presently, was once more 
 such as to cause her distress ; and we gather from 
 one of her letters to Frederika Brun^ that she 
 could not sleep without the use of opiates. 
 
 From Auxerre she visited Blois, and she also 
 planned a visit to Spa for the benefit of her 
 health. Her next sojourn was at Rouen, where, 
 early in 1807, she received permission to reside, 
 
 ^ The poetess of Copenhagen. Her correspondence with Bon- 
 stetten has been published. 
 
Once again at Coppet 
 
 until the following ist of April, at the Chateau 
 d'Acosta, in Auberge-en-Ville, Seine-et-Oise. 
 She went there ; she even succeeded, while 
 there, in paying surreptitious visits to Paris, but 
 the circumstance came to Napoleon's ears, and 
 she was ordered to withdraw at once to a greater 
 distance from the capital. In May, therefore, she 
 returned once more to Coppet, where she enter- 
 tained her friends, and made her preparations for 
 yet another journey to Germany. On Decem- 
 ber 3, 1807, she announced her departure to the 
 Prefect, alleging her desire that her younger son, 
 Albert, should be instructed in the German 
 language. Attended by Schlegel, she arrived, 
 on the 14th, at Munich, where she made the 
 acquaintance of Schelling, who had married 
 Schlegel's divorced wife. After a short stay, she 
 moved on to Vienna, where the Imperial family 
 received her with civility, and where, in April, 
 Albert de Stael became a pupil at the Military 
 Academy. In June 1808 she travelled to Weimar 
 and Frankfort, and in July of the same year we 
 find her once again at Coppet. 
 
 Such is, in brief outline, the chronicle of the 
 exterior events of Madame de Stael's life during 
 the period in which the inner life of the heart 
 approached, and reached, and passed its crisis. 
 Napoleon's persecution of her did not amount, as 
 yet, to much more than a policy of pin-pricks ; 
 and he explained his attitude clearly enough to 
 her son, Auguste, in an interview accorded to him 
 
 195 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 at Chambdry. **Your mother," he said, ** would 
 not be six months at Paris before I should be 
 obliged to lock her up at Bicetre or the Temple, 
 and that is a thing I should be sorry to do, as it 
 would make a stir, and damage me in public 
 opinion." If he had imprisoned her, he added, 
 he would relent, and release her, but he would not 
 recall her from exile. She might go to Rome, to 
 Naples, to Vienna, to Berlin, to Milan, to Lyons. 
 If she wanted to write libels about him, she had 
 better go to London. All the rest of Europe was 
 open to her ; but to Paris she would not be 
 allowed to come. There, and in that neighbour- 
 hood, no one might live who disliked the Emperor 
 and made jokes at his expense. 
 
 Hence the unceremonious expulsion from 
 Seine-et-Oise ; hence also the fact that the 
 indignity there endured interfered in no respect 
 with the dignity and outward splendour of the 
 salon at Coppet. One could fill a page with the 
 names of distinguished personages who, at one 
 time or another, were guests there. Benjamin 
 Constant, Schlegel, and Sismondi were habitues. 
 Other names upon our list would be those of 
 Madame R^camier, Prospere de Barante,^ Werner, 
 the German poet, Karl Ritter, the German geo- 
 grapher, Baron de Voght,^ the Duchess of 
 Courland, Monti, Pictet, editor of the Biblio- 
 
 1 Son of the Prefect of Geneva, afterwards in the diplomatic service. 
 
 2 Philanthropist, economist, and vi^riter on agricultural subjects. 
 The Emperor of Austria gave him his title. 
 
 196 
 
An Impressionist Picture 
 
 theque, Madame Vigee Le Brun, Oelenschlager, 
 the Danish poet, Cuvier, Bonstetten, Frederika 
 Brun, and Benjamin Constant's cousin, RosaHe. 
 An impressionist picture has been bequeathed to 
 us from the pen of almost every one of them, and 
 there would be little to be gained by troubling to 
 arrange the pictures in their order, or selecting them 
 otherwise than at random. The picture drawn by 
 Madame Vigee Le Brun may serve to begin with. 
 
 " I paint her in antique costume. She is not 
 beautiful, but the animation of her countenance 
 takes the place of beauty. To aid the expression 
 I wished to give her, I entreated her to recite tragic 
 verses while I painted. She declaimed passages 
 from Corneille and Racine. ... I find many 
 persons established at Coppet : the beautiful 
 Madame Recamier, the Comte de Sabran,^ a 
 young Englishman, Benjamin Constant, etc. Its 
 society is continually renewed. They come to 
 visit the illustrious exile who is pursued by the 
 rancour of the Emperor. Her two sons are now 
 with her, under the instruction of the German 
 scholar Schlegel ; her daughter is very beautiful, 
 and has a passionate love of study. Madame de 
 Stael receives with grace and without affectation ; 
 she leaves her company free all the morning, but 
 they unite in the evening. It is only after dinner 
 that they can converse with her. She then walks in 
 her salon, holding in her hand a little green branch ; 
 and her words have an ardour quite peculiar to her. 
 It is impossible to interrupt her. At these times 
 she produces on one the effect of an improvisatrice." 
 ^ Elzear de Sabran, stepson of Madame de Boufflers. 
 197 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Next we may quote the report of the Genevan 
 writer, Petit-Senn, who apparently was not quite 
 sure whether he ought to be shocked or not. 
 The circle, according to him — 
 
 " Presented the aspect of a synod of quite 
 novel character. The different systems of religion 
 were strongly contrasted there. Catholicism 
 was represented by Mathieu de Montmorency, 
 Quietism by M. de Langallerie, Illuminism by 
 M. de Divonne, Rationalism by Baron Voght, 
 Calvinism by the Pastor Maulinie. Even 
 Benjamin Constant, then occupied with his 
 work on Religions, brought his tribute to the theo- 
 logical conferences — conferences which borrowed 
 no austerity from the accidents of the time or the 
 place. The conversations at dinner and in the 
 evening were chiefly on religious subjects of the 
 most mystic nature, and were seldom changed 
 even for the news of the day or for brief musical 
 entertainments." 
 
 Our third picture may be that drawn by Baron 
 de Voght, above referred to, in a letter to 
 Madame Recamier. 
 
 "It is to you that I owe my most amiable 
 reception at Coppet. It is no doubt to the 
 favourable expectations aroused by your friend- 
 ship that I owe my intimate acquaintance with 
 this remarkable woman. I might have met her 
 without your assistance, — some casual acquaintance 
 would no doubt have introduced me, — but I should 
 never have penetrated to the intimacy of this 
 sublime and beautiful soul, and should never 
 have known how much better she is than her 
 
 198 
 
Another Picture 
 
 reputation. She is an angel sent from heaven to 
 reveal the divine goodness upon earth. To make 
 her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light 
 embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable 
 from every point of view. 
 
 " At once profound and light, whether she is 
 discovering a mysterious secret of the soul or 
 grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment, her 
 genius shines without dazzling, and when the 
 orb of light has disappeared, it leaves a pleasant 
 twilight to follow it. ... No doubt a few faults, 
 a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial 
 apparition ; even the initiated must sometimes be 
 troubled by these eclipses which the Genevan 
 astronomers in vain endeavour to predict. 
 
 ** My travels so far have been limited to 
 Lausanne and Coppet, where I often stay three 
 or four days. The life there suits me perfectly ; 
 the company is even more to my taste. I like 
 Constant's wit, Schlegel's learning, Sabran's 
 amiability, Sismondi's talent and character, the 
 simple truthful disposition and just intellectual 
 perceptions of Auguste, the wit and sweetness 
 of Albertine — I was forgetting Bonstetten — an 
 excellent fellow, full of knowledge of all sorts, 
 ready in wit, adaptable in character — in every 
 way inspiring one's respect and confidence. 
 
 " Your sublime friend looks on and gives life 
 to everything. She imparts intelligence to those 
 around her. In every corner of the house some- 
 one is engaged in composing a great work. . . . 
 Corinne is writing her delightful letters about 
 Germany, which will no doubt prove to be the 
 best thing she has ever done. 
 
 " The Shunammitish Widow, an Oriental 
 199 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 melodrama which she has just finished, will be 
 played in October. Coppet will be flooded with 
 tears. Constant and Auguste are both composing 
 tragedies ; Sabran is writing a comic opera, and 
 Sismondi a history ; Schlegel is translating some- 
 thing, Bonstetten is busy with philosophy, and 
 I am busy with my letter to Juliette." 
 
 A month later, Baron de Voght resumes : — 
 
 " Since my last letter, Madame de Stael has 
 read us several chapters of her work. Every- 
 where it bears the marks of her talent. I wish 
 I could persuade her to cut out everything in it 
 connected with politics, and all the metaphors 
 which interfere with its clarity, simplicity, and 
 accuracy. What she needs to demonstrate is not 
 her Republicanism but her wisdom. . . . Mile 
 de Jenner played in one of Werner's tragedies 
 which was given last Friday before an audience 
 of twenty. She, Werner, and Schlegel played 
 perfectly. . . . 
 
 " The arrival in Switzerland of M. Cuvier has 
 been a happy distraction for Madame de Stael ; 
 they spent two days together at Geneva, and were 
 well pleased with each other. On her return to 
 Coppet she found Middleton there, and in receiv- 
 ing his confidences forgot her troubles. Yesterday 
 she resumed her work. 
 
 "The poet^ whose mystical and sombre genius 
 has caused us such profound emotions, starts, in a 
 few days' time, for Italy, 
 
 " I accompanied Corinne to Massot's. To 
 alleviate the tedium of the sitting, a musical 
 
 1 Monti. 
 200 
 
Further Reminiscences 
 
 performance had been arranged, a Mile Romilly 
 playing pleasantly on the harp, and the studio 
 was a veritable temple of the Muses. . . . 
 
 " Bonstetten gave us two readings of a Memoir 
 on the Northern Alps. It began very well, but 
 afterwards it bored us. . . . Madame de Stael 
 resumed her reading, and there was no longer 
 any question of being bored. It is marvellous 
 how much she must have read and thought over 
 to be able to find the opportunity of saying so 
 many good things. One may disagree with her, 
 but one cannot help delighting in her talent. . . . 
 
 "And now we are here at Geneva, trying to 
 reproduce Coppet at the Hotel des Balances. 
 I am delightfully situated, with a wide view over 
 the valley of Savoy, between the Alps and the 
 Jura. . . . Yesterday evening the illusion of 
 Coppet was complete. I had been with Madame 
 de Stael, to call on Madame Rilliet,^ who is so 
 charming at her own fireside. On my return 
 I played chess with Sismondi. Madame de 
 Stael, Mile Randall,^ and Mile Jenner sat on the 
 sofa chatting with Bonstetten and young Barante. 
 We were as we had always been — as we were 
 in the days that I shall never cease regretting." 
 
 In conclusion we may survey the scene through 
 the eyes of Cousin Rosalie — eyes that, as we 
 know, were sharply observant, though prejudiced, 
 and prone to see faults. Our first letter is 
 written not long after Necker's death. 
 
 ^ Nee Huber, the companion of Madame de Stael in her girlhood. 
 2 An English lady, a protegee of Madame de Stael, and, after 
 her death, of the Duchesse de Broglie. 
 
 20I 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " The other day I saw Bonstetten, who told 
 me about Madame de Stael and her sorrow. 
 She displays it at Geneva, and utilises it to 
 give entertainments to the Duchess of Courland. 
 Coppet, all the summer, has been the rendezvous 
 of the savants of Germany and Geneva. There 
 have been prodigious outbursts of wit and learning. 
 Never, said M. de Bonstetten, has there been 
 such an outpouring of ideas. He assured me 
 that it might have tired anyone to death, and that 
 it was a pleasure thereafter to meet people whose 
 conversation was commonplace." 
 
 About the same time M. Constant d'Arlens 
 visited Coppet, and Rosalie reports the gossip 
 that he brought home with him. 
 
 " Schlegel used to address the lady of the 
 house with irony or severity ; Benjamin was ill, 
 and grumbled all day long, like a spoiled child. 
 Moreover, he shows himself shockingly fond of 
 little Albertine. He and her mother combine to 
 overwhelm her with caresses and misguided 
 attentions." 
 
 Finally we may give Rosalie's account of a 
 performance of Merope at which she was herself 
 present. 
 
 " I had a kind and friendly reception. The 
 performance fulfilled all my expectations. I had 
 never seen this beautiful tragedy played. The 
 simplicity of the subject and of the action, the 
 unaccentuated elevation of the sentiments, the 
 sustained beauty of the lines, the verisimilitude of 
 the events represented — all these things contribute 
 
 202 
 
The Coppet Salon 
 
 to one's interest and illusion. I was at Messena, 
 and Madame de Stael was indeed the august and 
 unhappy queen. She had recovered the dignity 
 and grace which she ordinarily lacks. The tone 
 of her voice and the expression of her face suited 
 her part. She never for an instant ceased to 
 realise her role. M. Cramer also gave me great 
 pleasure as Narbas. The other actors were, in 
 my opinion, mediocre or bad ; but the general 
 effect was such that one forgave them. The 
 spectacle as a whole was agreeable and well 
 arranged, and the spectators were well placed 
 for seeing and hearing. One feels obliged .to the 
 celebrated lady for having taken up this noble 
 kind of entertainment. Conversation gains from 
 it. People are, to some extent, fishing for invita- 
 tions. It is a pity that she does not maintain in 
 her house the tone which would make women 
 anxious to go there. They have a long repertory, 
 and are going to play Mahomet. Benjamin 
 thinks he is going to play very well, but for 
 my part I shall feel very anxious about his 
 debut." 
 
 Such is our setting. The Coppet Salon which 
 our quotations conjure up must have been, as has 
 been said, "something like Holland House but 
 more Bohemian, something like Harley Street 
 but more select, something like Gad's Hill — 
 which it resembled in the fact that the members 
 of the house parties were expected to spend their 
 mornings at their desks — but on a higher social 
 plane ; a centre at once of high thinking and 
 frivolous behaviour, of hard work and desperate 
 
 203 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 love-making, which sometimes paved the way for 
 trouble." 
 
 One visualises the scene easily as one stands in 
 the large Coppet drawing-room, in which so many 
 ornaments, so many pictures, so many articles of 
 furniture are relics of the celebrated epoch. One 
 thinks at first only of the outward glitter and the 
 intellectual distinction ; and one is tempted to say 
 that here life was lived as it should be lived — as 
 all persons of intelligence and leisure and reason- 
 able contempt for the conventions would like to 
 live. Not until one's thoughts penetrate beneath 
 the surface do the doubts arise ; but then they 
 come in great force, and slowly strengthen into 
 certainties. 
 
 For this society was in the main a society of 
 exiles — of uprooted men and women, whose lives, 
 by no fault of their own, lacked aim and continu- 
 ity. Only a few of them were really happy and 
 contented — those who were placid and passionless 
 like Madame Recamier, and those who, like 
 Sismondi, were absorbed in their intellectual 
 occupations. The rest were only making believe 
 furiously, and trying to persuade themselves that 
 movement was the same thing as life. Madame 
 de Stael, whose movements were the most agitated, 
 was probably the farthest from true happiness. 
 She wrote of Coppet as " the place where I bored 
 myself so terribly for so many years." 
 
 Only boredom was far from being her only, or 
 even her worst distress. One cannot fail to be 
 
 204 
 
Stormy Scenes 
 
 reminded of that at the moment when the liveried 
 attendant of the visitors exhibits the miniature of 
 Benjamin Constant — "homme de lettres qui visitait 
 le chateau de temps en temps." One remembers 
 then that the period of Madame de Stael's 
 triumphant theatrical representations — the period 
 of the house parties that were famous throughout 
 Europe — was also the period of the stormy 
 passages which culminated in her final severance 
 from her lover. 
 
 The visitors whom she entertained knew little 
 or nothing about that. Sainte-Beuve, indeed, 
 relates how one of them, concealed behind some 
 bushes in the garden, inadvertently overheard a 
 quarrel in which tears were mingled with 
 reproaches and recriminations. He seems, how- 
 ever, to have kept his own counsel at the time ; 
 and before strangers appearances must have 
 been in the main preserved. At all events, it is 
 not to the memoirs of contemporaries that we 
 have to go for the details of the story. For these 
 we must go back to the Constant correspondence 
 and the Journal Intime. 
 
 205 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Theatrical performances at Coppet — Extracts from the Journal 
 Intime — Benjamin Constant renews his acquaintance with 
 Charlotte Dutertre — He proposes marriage and is accepted — 
 Madame de Stael pursues him and drags him back to Coppet. 
 
 In 1805, Madame de Stael told persons in her 
 confidence that she meant to marry Benjamin 
 Constant later, when she had started her sons in 
 their professions ; but his letters to his family at 
 this period show no disposition to fall in with her 
 proposals. The deaths of Madame Talma and of 
 Madame de Charriere appear, for the time being, 
 to have expelled all thoughts of other women from 
 his mind. In the former, he writes, he has lost 
 " the person whom I trusted the most, and who 
 had the most disinterested affection for me — a 
 woman, in short, who often gave me pleasure, 
 and never caused me pain." He had intended 
 to visit the latter on her deathbed ; " but her 
 extreme weakness rendered all emotion danger- 
 ous, and I feared to make her worse, and so 
 precipitate the hour which I was told was in- 
 evitable." There follow melancholy reflections on 
 death and the links which it severs : " None of 
 these losses are replaced. The time for forming 
 new ties is over ; the world is depopulated ; and 
 
 206 
 
The Plot Thickens 
 
 though I am not yet old, I have more friends in 
 the grave than on the earth." For the rest, the 
 letters deal with politics and money matters. 
 The bankruptcy of Madame Rdcamier's husband 
 is mentioned. The request is made that the 
 writer's letters may not be addressed to the "care 
 of" Madame de Stael, since he is not her guest, 
 though he is occupying a separate apartment in 
 the house in which she is staying at Geneva ; but 
 that is the only occurrence of her name. 
 
 Of the Diary for 1 805 only a few fragments have 
 been preserved. The principal fact that transpires 
 is that Benjamin's friends are still trying to find 
 a wife for him. ** It is evident," he writes, " that 
 it is open to me to marry either Antoinette or 
 Adrienne, and that, if I do not do so, I am renounc- 
 ing with a light heart an income of thirty thousand 
 francs." But he does renounce that income. " It 
 would be the best plan, so far as my work is con- 
 cerned, but Madame de Stael has resumed 
 possession of me." It is not until 1806 that the 
 plot, as related in the Diary, thickens. 
 
 The entries have evidently been printed in 
 the wrong order, and it is impossible to be sure 
 of reprinting them in the right order ; but it 
 seems probable that the passages relating to the 
 theatrical performances ought to come first. At 
 any rate, we may give them separately. 
 
 " There is a rehearsal of Merope, and I allow 
 myself to be induced to play ' Zopyre ' in 
 Mahomet y in order that I may have the pleasure 
 
 207 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 of insulting the impostor. Nevertheless, I am 
 ill. The kind of life which I am leading is 
 opposed to physical and moral health. My 
 ideas are shattered by this agitation of society — 
 a monotonous agitation, for wit no less than folly 
 may become monotonous." 
 
 " A performance of Merope, admirably played, 
 A complete success, quoique point de bienveillance. 
 I hear of the death of Madame de Charriere de 
 Tuyll. Another devoted friend is lost to me. 
 The world is depopulated for my heart." 
 
 " I learn the part of ' Zopyre,' in which I shall 
 display a superb combination of strength with 
 paternal affection. But I am dissatisfied with the 
 first rehearsal ; my gestures are bad." 
 
 " A rehearsal of La fatisse Agnes, which goes 
 very badly. Mahomet will go much better. I 
 have got over my nervousness." 
 
 "The public performance of Mahomet took 
 place yesterday. I played very well. The 
 success was complete. We also played Les 
 Plaideurs. Schlegel, who was comic in tragedy, 
 is not at all gay in comedy." 
 
 " Performance of Phedre. Madame de Stael 
 plays admirably. I have acute pains in my side. 
 Nature is treating me very cavalierly this winter." 
 
 It was natural that Madame de Stael should 
 play admirably, for she had been taught elocution 
 by the great Clairon ; but Benjamin Constant's 
 estimate of his own performance was not that 
 of the spectators. Geneva passed upon it a 
 
 208 
 
The Developing Drama of the Heart 
 
 criticism which, as it was based upon a pun, 
 can only be given in French: "Je ne sais pas 
 si c'^tait le roi d'Epire, mais je sais bien que 
 cetait le pire des rois." None the less, his 
 interest in the drama became so keen that he 
 prepared a French version of Wallenstein for 
 the Coppet stage. 
 
 All this, however, is by the way. One relates 
 it merely to note the make-believe of gaiety that 
 coincided with the developing drama of the heart. 
 Benjamin Constant was very anxious, during this 
 period, to serve Madame de Stael's interests as 
 a friend. He tried hard, though without success, 
 to obtain her the permission which she sought 
 to visit Paris. But the storm of which Sainte- 
 Beuve's story gave us the indication is already 
 raging beneath the surface, though the cause 
 which was to bring it to a climax does not yet 
 transpire. We will follow it stage by stage. 
 
 " Lausanne is dull. Still, if a quiet life were 
 all I wanted, I should find it here. Passed the 
 evening at La Chaumiere. Antoinette makes 
 herself agreeable." 
 
 "Got up at five o'clock in the morning. I 
 ought always to do so, as I should get on better 
 with my work, and should avoid a series of 
 melancholy reflections which invariably assail 
 me when I awake. 
 
 " Called on Madame la Generale. Antoinette's 
 hand is offered to me. I refuse it. I shall regret 
 it, but the form of Madame de Stael rises as a 
 reproach between me and all my projects. 
 o 209 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 ** Dined with d'Arlens. Spent the evening 
 at Dorigny. I think Antoinette likes me. She is 
 
 good and sweet Ifl could but How restful 
 
 it would be ! Why not profit peaceably by the 
 friendship that is here offered to me ? Is not real 
 happiness to be found only in the common lot ? " 
 
 "A letter from Madame de Stael. It is the 
 collapse of the universe, and the movement of 
 chaos. And yet, with all her faults, I prefer her 
 to everything else. I decide to rejoin her at 
 Auxerre. I am in a state of uncertainty about 
 everything, like a vessel driven by two opposing 
 tempests." 
 
 " My father being ill, I go to Dole, and am 
 detained there several days. My father is gentle 
 and affectionate with me, and that does me good. 
 But a letter from Madame de Stael overtakes me. 
 All the volcanoes in the world make less of a 
 blaze than she does. What am I to do ? The 
 struggle wears me out. I must lie down in my 
 bark and go to sleep in the midst of the tempest." 
 
 " My father is better, and I start for Auxerre. 
 The chief cause of the agitation of my life is the 
 need of loving. I must satisfy it at all costs." 
 
 "I go to Coppet, where Madame de Stael is 
 back again. The poet Monti arrives there. He 
 has a superb face, gentle and proud. His de- 
 clamations in verse are very remarkable. He 
 is a true poet, passionate, impetuous, weak, 
 nervous, mobile, the Italian analogue of Chenier, 
 though of more value than Chenier. 
 
 ** In the evening I have a terrible scene with 
 
 2IO 
 
Rupture Imminent 
 
 Madame de Stael. I announce that I will 
 definitely break with her, and then there is a 
 second scene. Fury ; reconciliation impossible ; 
 departure difficult. I must get married." 
 
 " I hear of the bankruptcy of M. Recamier. 
 Here is trouble for another of my friends ! Does 
 misfortune only befall the good ? Madame de 
 Stael has reconquered me'' 
 
 ** Back at Geneva, where I establish myself 
 to get on more steadily with my work. I re-read 
 several passages of my book on philosophy. 
 I am satisfied with it, but I have still much 
 ground to cover, and town life does not allow 
 me to get on with it. One cannot desert all 
 one's friends and sulk with the whole world. 
 Still, I am sick to death of society gossip. 
 To-day it has given me a fever. I pass the 
 evening with Amelie Fabri." 
 
 "Dinner with Madame de Germany, and 
 supper with Argand ; the whole business very 
 tiresome. 
 
 "It is still my inclination to break with 
 Madame de Stael; but every time that I feel 
 that inclination I am destined to receive the 
 contrary impression on the following day. 
 Nevertheless, her impetuosity and her imprudences 
 are a torment and a perpetual danger to me. 
 Let us break it off, then, if we can. It is my one 
 chance of a quiet life." 
 
 " Schlegel is very ill ; his fears are ridiculous. 
 He demands doctors right and left. There 
 comes a German physician, who proves to be 
 
 211 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 a man of learning and intelligence. Decidedly 
 there is more profundity in that nation than in ours. 
 " A letter from Madame Lindsay, who always 
 writes as if I were persecuting her to let me 
 see her. A singular device, for I do not even 
 dream of doing so. One finds the queerest ideas 
 with this half of the human race, as witness the 
 wrath of Mme C. because I permitted myself to 
 say that her son was like her." 
 
 "I enter to-day, October 25, 1806, upon my 
 fortieth year. All my life has been agitated, 
 but never have I suffered such anguish and 
 uncertainty as at present." 
 
 "Off again to Paris, to work on behalf of 
 Madame de Stael." 
 
 " A journey to my farm near Etampes. What 
 an oyster's life is that of a farmer ! But perhaps 
 it is the better sort of life." 
 
 So the Diary for the year concludes. The 
 passages quoted, though stormy, are only the 
 premonitory symptoms of the storm to come. 
 If they show the writer tiring of his mistress, at 
 least they do not show him attracted by any 
 other woman. That new fact does not appear 
 in the correspondence until 1807, when Charlotte 
 comes into the story. 
 
 We have met her before in this narrative. 
 She was Mile von Hardenberg, afterwards 
 Madame von Marenholz, and now Madame 
 Dutertre, the wife of a French dmigre for whom 
 we have seen the Diarist expressing his contempt. 
 
 212 
 
Madame Dutertre 
 
 He had first met her at Brunswick in the days 
 of the liaison with Madame de Charriere. There 
 are references to her, not in the best taste, in the 
 letters to Madame de Charriere. It would seem 
 that she threw herself at Benjamin Constant's 
 head, and that, while flirting with her, he laughed 
 at her, and then repented and felt ashamed. 
 He therefore begs Madame de Charriere to burn 
 the letters relating to her, since, "if they fell 
 into the hands of strangers, they would give the 
 final blow to my moribund reputation ; " and the 
 presumption is that Madame de Charriere com- 
 plied with the request. 
 
 Strangely enough, however, Charlotte was not 
 forgotten, and we have noted the mention of her 
 name in the letters to Cousin Rosalie. The 
 writer sent no message, but merely made in- 
 quiries. Or rather, he wanted to know whether 
 Charlotte, on her part, remembered and inquired. 
 To that extent — though to that extent only — his 
 heart had travelled back to her. She had been 
 a very restful woman, not in the least exacting ; 
 she had not, like Madame de Stael, made scenes 
 with him. There was a certain tranquillity even 
 in the consecration of memories and sighs to her. 
 And now he met her again. 
 
 He was at Paris at the time, "working for 
 Madame de Stael " ; and he writes on this 
 subject, and on others. 
 
 " I have seen Fouchd several times. I will 
 not weary of serving Madame de Stael, but I 
 
 213 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 meet with a great deal of opposition. I am 
 going to write a novel which will be the history 
 of my life. All serious work has become impos- 
 sible to me in the midst of my tormented life. . . . 
 "... I have finished my novel in a fortnight. 
 I have read it to Hochet, who is very pleased 
 with it." 
 
 The novel thus dashed off in a fortnight was 
 Adolphe — the one vital and enduring book that 
 Benjamin Constant wrote. He is sometimes 
 called Adolphe after his hero, just as Madame de 
 Stael is called Corinne after her heroine. He 
 did not publish it, however, until several years 
 later, and discussion of it may for the present be 
 deferred. Our business now is with the impres- 
 sion which Charlotte made upon her reappearance. 
 Allusions to her alternate with allusions to 
 Madame de Stael — her business and her anger — 
 to the writer's work, and to his health. 
 
 ** I am now at my country seat, and more quiet. 
 I have resumed my great work on Religion, and I 
 am getting on very well with it. It has made 
 great progress, but now I am off again to join 
 Madame de Stael at Acosta. She wants me for 
 her business, which seems to be taking a turn 
 for the better. More travelling ! More packing ! " 
 
 "A letter from my father, who demands my 
 presence. He wants me to go to Besan9on and 
 get myself in a further mess with his new family.^ 
 I will not do it. Dinner with M. de Wimont. 
 One man bores me as much as another. I have 
 ^ Benjamin's father had married his housekeeper. 
 214 
 
Proposition made to M. Dutertre 
 
 seen Garat about Madame de Stael's permit. 
 I hope she will have time to finish the publication 
 of Corinne. The articles which I have just pub- 
 lished on this work have had a great succsss." 
 
 " I often visit Madame Dutertre. She has a 
 great charm for me. There is something piquant 
 in her intelligence, and she has that sweetness 
 and goodness which always have the effect of 
 making me happy. I feel that a union with h^r 
 would be the repose of my life. If M. Dutertre 
 is willing to break ties to which he seems to 
 attach little importance, my future is there, and 
 Charlotte accepts the proposal." 
 
 Benjamin means, that is to say, to marry 
 Madame Dutertre if M. Dutertre can be per- 
 suaded to divorce her. He was ultimately 
 persuaded by means of a considerable cash pay- 
 ment. In the meantime, however, Madame de 
 Stael had obtained at least an inkling of what 
 was happening. 
 
 "A letter from Madame de Stael. What a 
 Fury! Heaven save us from each other! 
 
 " Passed the evening at Madame R^camier's 
 with Fauriel. I read them my novel, which affected 
 them strangely. The character of the hero revolts 
 them. Decidedly people cannot understand me." 
 
 " My eyes are getting worse. I have consulted 
 
 V . It is a weakening of the optic nerve, and 
 
 what I Want is rest. They applied a seton. The 
 physical pain is nothing. A letter from Madame 
 de Stael arrives at this moment, and her insults 
 find me covered with blood and fainting." 
 
 215 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Madame de Stael, however, had reason for 
 her jealousy, and her lover was not so ill that he 
 could not press his suit with Madame Dutertre. 
 
 " Called upon Madame Dutertre, whose appear- 
 ance has much improved. I make proposals to 
 her which she does not reject. This evening I 
 shall be master of the citadel. The resistance 
 has lasted long enough." 
 
 " I go to the country with Charlotte. She is 
 an angel of sweetness and charm. I love her 
 more and more every day. She is gentle and 
 lovable. How mad a fool I was to repel her 
 twelve years ago ! What a mad passion for 
 independence it was that dominated me, and 
 ended by placing me under the domination of the 
 most imperious creature in the world ! " 
 
 " We return to Paris. Mad days ; delights of 
 love. What the devil does it all mean? It is 
 twelve years since I felt anything of the sort — 
 how mad ! This woman whose love I have 
 refused a hundred times, who has always loved 
 me, whom I have repeatedly repulsed, whom I 
 quitted without regret eighteen months ago, to 
 whom I have written a hundred indifferent letters, 
 from whom I took away my own letters only last 
 Monday — this same woman is turning my head 
 to-day. Evidently the comparison with Madame 
 de Stael is the cause of it all. The contrast 
 between her impetuosity, her egoism, her constant 
 occupation with herself, and Charlotte's calm, 
 humility, and modesty, and sweetness, makes the 
 latter a thousand times more dear to me. I am 
 tired of the 'man-woman,' whose iron hand has 
 
 216 
 
A Momentary Reaction 
 
 held me enchained for ten years, when I have 
 with me a woman who is really a woman to 
 intoxicate and enchant me. If I can marry her, 
 I hesitate no longer. Everything depends upon 
 the line taken by M. Dutertre." 
 
 For a moment there ensues reaction, and an 
 alarming premonition. 
 
 ** Passed the evening with Charlotte. Can it 
 be that the fever is passing and the boredom 
 beginning ? I am devilishly afraid it is. She is 
 full of charm, it is true, but there is little variety 
 about her, and she is of a very restless tempera- 
 ment." 
 
 It seems, however, that he has wronged her, 
 or misread his heart, for now we read : — 
 
 "A touching letter from Charlotte. I am 
 unjust to her. She is an angel. A stiff and 
 bitter letter from Madame de Stael. My God, 
 how she bores me ! " 
 
 " People are talking about me, not in the 
 kindest manner. They are already talking of 
 the effect of the double divorce, arranged for a 
 purpose settled in advance. No matter. Char- 
 lotte is an angel, and an insipid society need 
 not think that its opinion will prevent me from 
 marrying her. And yet, what obstacles there 
 are ! I shudder at the thought of a wife who 
 will not be received anywhere. Perhaps I shall 
 bury myself at Lausanne. Otherwise I am sure 
 I shall commit suicide within six months." 
 
 " Lunch with Gerando. . . . Pack up my 
 217 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 manuscripts. I have twelve thousand francs at 
 my disposal. Will that help me to bring about 
 a rupture and a marriage in which I shall find 
 peace ? " 
 
 Hardly has he written that, however, than the 
 old influence reasserts itself. Benjamin is back 
 with Madame de Stael, "under pretence of help- 
 ing her with her affairs." He speaks of " scenes," 
 and the consciousness on both sides that rupture 
 is imminent. M. Dutertre, meanwhile, is feign- 
 ing jealousy and raising his price, and Benjamin 
 wavers in spite of the contrast between Charlotte's 
 sweet reasonableness and " this fury who pursues 
 me, foaming at the mouth, with a dagger in her 
 hand." At last, however, his agreement is con- 
 cluded. The husband's application for divorce is 
 despatched to Germany. But then : — 
 
 " Madame de Stael is on my track again. She 
 will no longer hear of the breach of our relations. 
 My simplest course is not to see her again, but to 
 wait at Lausanne for the orders of Charlotte — 
 that angel whom I bless for saving me. Schlegel 
 writes that Madame de Stael says she will kill 
 herself if I leave her. I don't believe a word of 
 it, but it is an untimely rumour for my ears. I 
 feel that I shall be regarded as a monster if I do 
 abandon her ; if I do not abandon her, I shall die. 
 I regret her, and I hate her." 
 
 Then he is lured to Coppet in a melting mood, 
 but, after a scene of reconciliation, makes his 
 escape to Lausanne. In vain. 
 
 218 
 
Fruitless Endeavours to Escape 
 
 *• Alas ! What was the use of flight ? Madame 
 de Stael is here, and all my plans are overturned. 
 There is a frightful scene, lasting till five o'clock 
 in the morning. I am violent, and put myself in 
 the wrong. Instead of finding support here 
 [from his relatives], I only meet with anathemas 
 against a woman capable of a double divorce. 
 Poor dear Charlotte, I will not desert you." 
 
 None the less, he is dragged off again to Coppet, 
 and compelled to take part in the theatrical per- 
 formances. Charlotte does not write, and he is 
 afraid that the agony of his mind may cause 
 him to forget his lines. He observes that the 
 Chevalier de Langallerie — the head of a sect 
 of mystics at Lausanne — is fascinated by Madame 
 de Stael. He wishes she would yield herself to 
 him, "as that would give her something to do." 
 He adds : " I have lunched with the Chevalier, 
 and done what I can to induce Madame de Stael 
 to accept the consolations which he offers her." 
 But it is useless: "she is not ready to become 
 religious." He is only comforted when a long 
 letter from Charlotte at last arrives. "How 
 sensible she is ! " he exclaims. "How reasonable, 
 and how affectionate ! " It is a further comfort 
 to discover that his aunt, Madame de Nassau, 
 is not so scandalised as he had supposed. " She 
 says shewill receive Charlotte with every kindness," 
 and it is to be presumed that the rest of the family 
 will follow her lead. He will act at once, there- 
 fore ; he will be off on the morrow. But then : — 
 
 219 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 ** What did I say ? Everything is upside down 
 again, and this effort is impossible to me. My 
 letter is torn up. Some magic power overrules 
 me. I am going to Coppet. Good God ! What 
 am I going to do there ? " 
 
 " She came ; she threw herself at my feet ; she 
 uttered fearful cries of pain and desolation. A 
 heart of iron could not have resisted. I am back 
 at Coppet with her, and I have promised to 
 remain for six weeks, and Charlotte is expecting 
 me at the end of the month. Good God ! What 
 am I to do ? I am trampling my future and my 
 happiness under foot." 
 
 One of the things which he aoes is to adapt 
 Wallenstei7t for Madame de Stael's theatre. He 
 works desperately hard at it, composing no less 
 than 328 lines of verse in a single day. He is 
 rather pleased with the result ; he reads the first 
 act to the company, and is applauded, though his 
 acting is a sorry performance. But he still drags 
 at his chains, though occasionally tempted to let 
 them be riveted on him afresh. 
 
 *' A letter from Charlotte, more loving and more 
 sure of me than ever. Would she forgive me if 
 she knew where I am and what I am doing ? 
 How slowly the time passes ! Into what abysm 
 have I thrown myself? A terrible scene in the 
 evening. Shall I get out of it alive ? I have to 
 pass my time in lying and deception to avoid the 
 frenzy which frightens me. If it were not for 
 the hope afforded by Madame de Stael's approach- 
 ing departure for Vienna, this existence would be 
 
 220 
 
A Curious Position 
 
 intolerable to me. To console myself I pass my 
 time in imagining how things will go if they go 
 well. This is my castle in the air. Charlotte 
 finishes her arrangements and makes her prepara- 
 tions in secret. Madame de Stael starts for 
 Vienna, suspecting nothing. I marry Charlotte, 
 and we spend the winter pleasantly at Lausanne. 
 If that can be contrived, I shall know how to 
 profit by my happiness." 
 
 " My tragedy makes great progress ; it is a 
 pleasant occupation for me. The time passes, 
 but the dangers remain. Madame de Stael is 
 very useful to me for my tragedy, and she is 
 so good and so gentle to me, that if it were not 
 for the recollection of past violences, the attach- 
 ment would revive. Nevertheless, my social 
 position is curious. Here am I between two 
 women — one of whom has wronged me by 
 refusing to marry me, while the other, by marry- 
 ing me, will do me an injury." 
 
 " Madame de Stael resumes her terrible 
 character. I work furiously to deaden my feel- 
 ings. I read two acts to Chateauvieux, who is 
 delighted with them. What a torture it is to 
 live with a person who is always feeling the 
 pulse of her own sensibility, and gets angry 
 when one does not take sufficient interest in 
 this self-analysis ! 
 
 "A letter from Charlotte. She knows every- 
 thing. She is sad and discouraged, but remains 
 faithful to me. I will not desert her. My God ! 
 If only the other would take her departure ! " 
 
 " Went to Lausanne. Everybody disapproves 
 
 221 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 of my return to Coppet. Phedre is produced 
 again. Madame de Stael plays admirably. My 
 tragedy is becoming a pretext to prolong my 
 stay." 
 
 "Charlotte's character is admirably loyal and 
 reasonable, but her vacillating conduct might 
 push her to extremes, especially when she arrives 
 at BesanQon and finds that I am not there. My 
 father writes that he wants to come to me here — 
 there remained but that! Madame de Stael is 
 certainly very good, and of great intelligence. 
 My piece will be superb. I have only i8o lines 
 to write to finish it." 
 
 " Charlotte is at Besan^on in despair, and my 
 future is in peril. I can hesitate no longer. My 
 father will serve me as a pretext, and I am off." 
 
 " Besancon. — I find Charlotte very ill. She is 
 in delirium, and shudders at the sound of my 
 voice, crying out : * That is the man who is 
 killing me.' I throw myself at the feet of 
 Providence, to ask pardon for my criminal 
 follies, and pray for strength to get out of this 
 terrible position." 
 
 " After some days of suffering and anguish, 
 Charlotte begins to recover. Her courage and 
 her confidence in me have returned to her, and 
 my happiness is assured. 
 
 " Nevertheless, I have again written three times 
 to Madame de Stael — letters which will perhaps 
 cause her pain. But it must be so. The final 
 moment is approaching." 
 
 222 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Stormy scenes at Coppet — Benjamin's confidences to his aunt — 
 His endeavours to escape — He joins Charlotte at Brevans. 
 
 The Journal Intime breaks off abruptly in 
 1807, not to be resumed until 181 1 ; so that^ for 
 the rest of our story, we have to seek other 
 sources of information. The material, however, 
 is abundant. We know what Benjamin told his 
 aunt and his cousin ; we know what Rosalie told 
 her brother Charles. 
 
 Rosalie, at this stage, was only partly in her 
 cousin's confidence. His letters to her do not 
 mention Charlotte, though they are full of his 
 desire for a definitive separation from Madame 
 de Stael. ** My love for her," he writes, " is only 
 friendship, and I know that this friendship will be 
 flouted as soon as it ceases to be the determining 
 factor of my life ; " and he adds that his wish to 
 act with consideration is reducing him to despair. 
 '* The end of a liaison that has lasted so long with 
 a person whose qualities are so admirable, the 
 idea that I cannot induce her to accept my friend- 
 ship as a substitute for a tie which is no longer a 
 source of happiness to either of us, the strange 
 feeling that nothing that I may do to-day will in 
 the least diminish her dissatisfaction with what 
 
 223 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 I am going to do presently — all this darkens my 
 thoughts and makes my life heavy and melancholy." 
 He protests that he is being treated badly : 
 " Returning here [to Paris at the end of June 
 1807], I found letters awaiting me, too cruel to 
 be addressed to a highway robber, and she has 
 written others to mutual friends in which she says 
 the most awful things about my character. It 
 is hard to have to submit to that after having 
 accompanied her, for the last year, from inn to 
 inn, accommodating myself to a life absolutely 
 opposed to my tastes and exceedingly bad for my 
 health, resigning myself to be misunderstood and 
 misjudged by the world — all because she was in 
 exile and was unhappy." The "perpetual move- 
 ment," he exclaims, is a weariness to him ; but he 
 none the less lets himself be lured back to Coppet, 
 where furious scenes are once more enacted. He 
 complains of "a combination of violence and 
 affection which shakes my soul to its foundations." 
 Argument is in vain. Madame de Stael threatens 
 to kills herself if she is abandoned. "Her children, 
 her servants, her friends, her acquaintances are all 
 in her confidence with regard to this threat, and 
 they all regard me as a monster because I do not 
 appease her sufferings." But what is to be done ? 
 " I pass my days in disputing with her, and my 
 nights in weeping over her." 
 
 Benjamin, as we have already seen, fled from 
 his tumultuous surroundings and sought refuge at 
 Lausanne, where Madame de Stael speedily came 
 
 224 
 
Rosalie de Constant Intervenes 
 
 to fetch him. His own narrative of the incident, 
 however, is tame and cold compared with that of 
 his cousin Rosalie, who, at least at that hour, held 
 Madame de Stael in abhorrence. "When," she 
 writes, **he was alarmed for his failing eyesight, 
 instead of consoling him, she wrote him insulting 
 letters. When, in his convalescence, he came to 
 his father's house for rest, she had him taken away 
 by her valet Eugene and her pedant Schlegel, 
 threatening to follow and kill herself before their 
 eyes if he did not come. You can imagine my 
 uncle's annoyance and indignation." It seemed 
 an occasion, therefore, for Rosalie to call at Coppet 
 and speak her mind. "I spoke to her," she tells 
 her brother, "with the greatest frankness. I told 
 her that, when she was free, my wish was that she 
 should marry Benjamin, as an act of reparation, 
 and because of their similarity of mind, character, 
 etc. I added that, in not marrying, they had shown 
 their contempt for each other, and that, subse- 
 quently, the preferences which she had displayed 
 for other men had put Benjamin in the most 
 awkward position, that he did not deserve such 
 treatment, and that she could not reproach me 
 with anything except my desire for his happiness 
 and good name. She replied that, sooner than 
 lose him, she would marry him whenever I liked, 
 and that I had better occupy myself with hastening 
 the event. I did not allow myself to be sup- 
 pressed, but the conversation ended more amiably 
 than it began, and on such a note that we may 
 p 225 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 see each other again." And then follows the 
 account of the most impetuous of all the scenes 
 in which Madame de Stael sought happiness in 
 love. It is a long letter, but it is so graphically- 
 expressed that it must be given in full. 
 
 " My friendship had not the strength to contend 
 against the furious passions of this terrible woman. 
 I have already told you about my conversation 
 with the too celebrated one, my promise to hold 
 my tongue about it until their departure, and their 
 plans for playing a tragedy. The tragedy was a 
 great success. Never has Hermione been played 
 with so much fire and conviction. After the 
 performance, which was indeed very agreeable 
 and very brilliant, they went away. Benjamin 
 stayed behind, vaguely promising to join them 
 in a few days' time, but fully resolved upon 
 breakinof off his relations with her, while re- 
 maining upon friendly terms. He was very 
 agitated, and most uncertain how to set about 
 it, but quite sure that no method would be satis- 
 factory. He was taken in hand by the Chevalier ^ 
 and Lisette, who, seeing him unhappy, tried to 
 help him after their fashion. He tried their 
 moral opium ; but his reason and intelligence 
 did not like the taste of it. In the midst of all 
 that, the lady, observing that he did not come to 
 her, sent her horses, her carriage, her servants — 
 the whole caravan, in short — to fetch him. 
 
 '' Early one morning he enters the room, and 
 announces : ' I am going to Coppet ; ' and then he 
 falls into a fit of despair that would have touched 
 your heart. I cried bitterly for him. My aunt 
 
 1 M. de Langallerie. 
 226 
 
An Extraordinary Scene 
 
 and Madame de Nassau met, and he accepted 
 their advice — that he should put an end to the 
 situation by offering the lady the alternative of 
 an early marriage or an amicable rupture. He sets 
 out, believing himself firm in this resolve. 
 
 " On the following day, before nine o'clock, v/e 
 see him arrive on horseback, ready to drop from 
 fatigue. He tells us that, in answer to the re- 
 proaches with which she greeted him, he had 
 made the proposal agreed upon. Her reply was 
 to assemble her children and their tutor and say : 
 'There is the man who obliges me to choose 
 between despair and the necessity of com- 
 promising your existence and your fortune.' 
 Benjamin answers this unworthy accusation with 
 a formal protest that he will never marry her. 
 Then she gets up, throws herself, screaming, on 
 the ground, passes her handkerchief round her 
 neck to throttle herself, and in fact makes one of 
 those fearful scenes which she can always make 
 when she chooses, and which poor Benjamin 
 cannot resist. He was weak enough to end by 
 speaking words of tenderness. On the following 
 morning, however, he woke early, and once more 
 perceived the horror of his position. He comes 
 downstairs, finds his horse in the yard, mounts, 
 and rides here without stopping. We did what we 
 could, and Madame de Nassau, who is very fond 
 of him, though she blames his weakness, joined us 
 in consoling him and fortifying his resolutions. 
 
 ** When we had agreed upon a reasonable plan, 
 she left us, and Benjamin was beginning to calm 
 himself when we heard screams below. He re- 
 cognised her voice. My first impulse was to leave 
 the room and lock him in. Going out, I find her 
 
 227 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 on her back on the staircase, with her bosom bare, 
 and her dishevelled locks sweeping the steps. 
 ' Where is he ? ' she screams. ' I must find him 
 again.' My idea is to say that he is not here. 
 She has been looking for him all over the town. 
 My aunt lifts her to her feet, and leads her into 
 your room. Meanwhile Benjamin is knocking 
 at the door of the drawing-room, and I have 
 to open it. She hears him, runs to him, throws 
 herself into his arms, and then falls on the floor 
 again, uttering the most bitter reproaches. 
 'What right have you,' I ask her, 'to make him 
 miserable, and torment his life ? ' Whereupon 
 she overwhelms me with the most cruel insults 
 that you can imagine. In my indignation at this 
 dreadful scene, at the gentleness of my aunt, 
 whom she has been cunning enough to flatter, and 
 at the fact that Benjamin does not take my part 
 as he ouofht, I gfo out to tell Madame de' Nassau 
 all about it, and remain at her house while she 
 comes here. She did not show any anger, how- 
 ever, but only spoke to Benjamin. The upshot of 
 it all was that she carried him off to Coppet for sIk 
 weeks. He writes us letters thence, full of friend- 
 ship, but fairly calm, acquiescing in a strength 
 greater than his own, and, as it were, touched by 
 this last terrible proof of her love. What do you 
 think of this conclusion ? " 
 
 The conclusion, however, was not yet. We 
 have only reached the stage at which, as we have 
 seen from the Diary, Benjamin found himself held 
 by the double promise to stay six weeks with 
 Madame de Stael, and to meet Charlotte at the 
 
 228 
 
Madame de Nassau's Attitude 
 
 end of the month. Madame de Nassau knew 
 about Charlotte though Rosalie did not, and our 
 best definition of Benjamin's attitude towards the 
 two women is to be found in the letters which he 
 wrote, not to his cousin, but to his aunt. 
 
 One feels that this aunt must have been a very 
 charming and also a very sensible old lady. 
 She evidently realised — what so many ladies fail 
 to realise — that fault-finding is not the same thing 
 as helpful counsel, and that sympathy with the love 
 troubles of a man of forty generally means making 
 the best of a bad situation. The entanglement 
 with Madame de Stael did not please her, but 
 she did not waste her time in deploring it. 
 Charlotte, the twice-divorced, was not the wife 
 she would herself have selected for her nephew ; 
 but she respected her nephew's choice, and 
 promised to be not only polite but cordial. He 
 rewarded her with such confidences as aunts do 
 not often receive. 
 
 The degree and character of the confidence 
 subsisting between them may perhaps be best 
 measured by an extract from a letter which has 
 no direct bearing on the writer's personal affairs, 
 Benjamin was reporting the death of Madame 
 Cottin, the novelist. "She was very ugly," he 
 writes, " but she had inspired grand passions. A 
 young man committed suicide on her doorstep 
 because of her cruelty, and her kindnesses caused 
 the death of an old man of seventy. The story 
 is the antithesis of that of the lance of Achilles. 
 
 229 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 She died in a very religious frame of mind at 
 the age of thirty-four. Religion — I say it in all 
 sincerity — religion is an admirable thing, because 
 no antecedents stand in its way. It can be grafted 
 on ambition, on love, on any passion whatsoever, 
 and the graft is successful at all periods of life." 
 
 An aunt to whom a nephew could write, with- 
 out rebuke, like that was an aunt whom he could 
 trust with his secrets without fear of censorious 
 criticism ; and Benjamin's letters to Madame de 
 Nassau are indeed of an open-hearted and con- 
 vincing candour. His love for Charlotte veritably 
 bubbles over. She is ** so pure, so natural, and 
 so sweet," that he cannot be an hour in her com- 
 pany without feeling that his whole life has been 
 lifted on to a new plane of happiness and tran- 
 quillity. He insists that this is no transitory 
 impression, but that Charlotte has always affected 
 him thus every time that he has met her during 
 the last four years. At the same time he is most 
 sensible of his obligations towards Madame de 
 Stael, and most anxious not to cause her any 
 avoidable pain ; and it seems to him a fresh 
 charm in Charlotte's character that she shares his 
 feelings in this respect, and makes no objection to 
 his paying yet another visit to Coppet. He is 
 aware that he is guilty of deception, and that the 
 world would judge him severely if it knew the 
 facts ; but he protests that, throughout the whole 
 of his tortuous transactions, his motives have 
 always been good. The happiness of Madame de 
 
 230 
 
The Betrothal still a Secret 
 
 Stael, no less than of Charlotte, is, in some sense, 
 a deposit in his charge. He must therefore 
 postpone his union with the latter until the former 
 is provided with " the distractions of which she 
 stands in need." And so forth, through a long 
 series of letters, in the tone of a man who suffers 
 at once from hypertrophy of the conscience and 
 atrophy of the will. 
 
 This was in 1808. The Coppet gaieties were 
 renewed in the summer of that year. Tieck, the 
 sculptor, came there to make a bust of the hostess, 
 who was repeating her triumphs on the amateur 
 stage, alike as authoress and actress. The house 
 was full of people. Benjamin was revising, and 
 preparing to print, his tragedy ; and meanwhile, 
 masked by the outward show of levity and 
 merriment, the drama of real life progressed. 
 Charlotte, accompanied by her aunt, the Princess 
 von Hardenberg, came to Lausanne ; and the 
 Princess dined at Coppet, though she left 
 Charlotte at home. Charlotte was affectionately 
 received by Madame de Nassau, and the secret of 
 her betrothal to Benjamin was kept ; but further 
 developments were prevented by the intervention 
 of Benjamin's father. It was his wish, it appeared, 
 that this marriage, so often delayed, should now 
 take place ; and his wish would seem to have 
 given Benjamin resolution to act. It was 
 arranged that Charlotte should go on a three 
 months' visit to M. Juste de Constant at Brevans, 
 and that Benjamin should join her there. He 
 
 231 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 did not tell Madame de Stael — he did not dare to 
 tell her — but he started. 
 
 " I hope," he writes on December 6, "that, on 
 Saturday evening or Sunday morning, I shall be 
 at Brevans. I am within sight of port ; but my 
 course is from shoal to shoal, and there are still 
 two or three reefs of rock to be passed. The 
 quiet, if quiet there is, will be a new sensation 
 for me." 
 
 The next letter, dated from Brevans on 
 December 15, shows him at least in some re- 
 spects a man of energy. 
 
 " Here I am, my dear aunt, after travelling 
 through such quantities of snow as I never saw 
 before. My sledge upset. I spent four days on 
 the journey, with eight horses, and a whole army 
 of men to clear the track. At last I have arrived, 
 with my purse much lightened, but very glad to 
 have got clear of those awful roads. I found my 
 prisoner fairly well in health, very loving, very 
 sweet, and disposed to do whatever she can to 
 please me. My father said nothing to me about 
 my intentions, but I shall execute them without 
 encountering any opposition from him. 
 
 " So I reach the goal at which I have aimed so 
 long, with so much constancy, and with such 
 strenuous efforts. There is in Madame Dutertre 
 a gentleness, an abandon, a simplicity of heart 
 which fills my soul with calm. Yet it often 
 happens that my memories assail me. My heart 
 feels that habits have grown upon it ; and the 
 roots that have to be torn up are deep, and bleed 
 in secret." 
 
 232 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Benjamin marries Charlotte secretly — They go to Paris and are 
 happy — Madame de Stael is told— Her wrath— Her sons 
 threaten Benjamin with personal violence — He promises to 
 keep the secret of his marriage a little longer — He returns yet 
 again to Coppet— The financial settlement with Madame de 
 Stael. 
 
 The Constant marriage received the benediction 
 of a Protestant pastor at Brevans in December 
 1808 ; that milestone on the journey, at any rate, 
 was now safely passed. Yet the words quoted at 
 the end of the last chapter expressed a just pre- 
 monition. The marriage, like the engagement, 
 was a secret from everyone except Madame de 
 Nassau. Madame de Stael, knowing nothing 
 about it, was still seeking happiness in love. 
 
 For the moment Benjamin and his wife were 
 out of her reach at Paris, whither they had 
 started early in 1809. His preoccupation with 
 his heart did not quite exclude all other interests. 
 He writes of the publication of Wallenstein and 
 of the attention which it has attracted. He 
 mentions that he has received a presentation 
 copy of M. de Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs, and 
 that the sustained pomposity of the work dis- 
 pleases him. But he is, at the same time, 
 analysing his feelings and asking himself how 
 
 233 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 far he is really happy. He has, he tells Rosalie, 
 a profound wound in his heart : " Though the 
 surface may heal, the pain will probably remain 
 for ever." And he adds : — 
 
 "It seems to me impossible to be happy ; the 
 world has misunderstood me. Yet I must not 
 complain, for I have misunderstood myself. If 
 only I had met someone, when I was young 
 enough, who would have wished to make me 
 happy, instead of regarding me simply as created 
 to contribute to her happiness ! But everything 
 in life happens too late. When the heart is 
 capable of happiness, the happiness is not there ; 
 when the happiness comes, the heart to feel it is 
 lacking." 
 
 To his aunt, at the same period, he addresses 
 appeal after appeal on no account to disclose his 
 secret. The maintenance of the mystery, he 
 writes at the end of March, " is more necessary 
 than ever:" Charlotte, he protests, is not urging 
 him to dissipate it prematurely ; and he can find 
 no words adequate to praise her "goodness,-*' her 
 "generosity," her "heroic devotion." Her 
 character is devoid of egotism, of vanity, of self- 
 interest to a " superhuman " degree ; and she is 
 acting in concert with him for the best. 
 
 " I will tell you the details," he says, " when I 
 have reached the port towards which I am 
 steering. It is straight sailing at present, but 
 there is still a shoal to be crossed. We are 
 adopting the gentlest, the most generous, the 
 
 234 
 
A Singular Concession 
 
 most delicate course. I cannot guarantee that 
 the result will not, for the moment, be painful ; 
 but with two easy consciences and two loving 
 hearts one finds a way out of many difficulties. 
 Perhaps I am urging you too emphatically to 
 keep the secret of which you have so long been 
 the guardian ; but it is more important than ever 
 that you should do so, for it is indispensable that 
 the delicacy of our conduct should not figure as 
 irony of the bitterest kind." 
 
 None the less, the time was now at hand when 
 Madame de Stael must be told, and the husband 
 and wife came to Switzerland to tell her. It 
 appears that Charlotte told her in Benjamin's 
 presence, in the early days of May, with a shame- 
 faced and apologetic air. She could not help it, 
 she said ; Benjamin was "so good." The scene 
 which ensued is said by some of the biographers 
 to have been violent. Probably it was. Madame 
 de Stael was apt to be violent, and she was not 
 likely to be reconciled to her defeat by finding 
 Charlotte "insipid." The letter to Madame de 
 Nassau, however, says nothing of any dispute, 
 but relates chiefly to the singular concession 
 which Madame de Stael was able to obtain. 
 
 "I have ensured," Benjamin writes, "the 
 maintenance of our friendship, to which, as you 
 know, I attach great value, by promising to keep 
 my marriage secret a little longer, and leaving 
 her the means of preparing the public mind to 
 believe that the dissolution of our relationship is 
 due to her own will and initiative. . . . Madame 
 
 235 
 
\ 
 
 Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 de Hardenberg has seconded my endeavours with 
 all the devotion of profound affection, and all the 
 delicacy of true sensibility, offering and consent- 
 ing to submit to a difficult situation in order to 
 avoid causing pain. I am indebted to her for 
 all the happiness which I hope to enjoy with her, 
 and all the peace of mind which I have long been 
 desiring." 
 
 That is one version ; but Rosalie's letter to 
 Charles represents Charlotte as an intimidated 
 rather than a consenting party to the strange 
 transaction. 
 
 " She [Madame de Stael] was so violent," is 
 the cousin's account, "and she held out such 
 threats of suicide and worse, that she extorted 
 from them both a promise on their word of 
 honour that they would not make their marriage 
 known yet awhile, and that he would remain at 
 Coppet. All this puts him in the most annoying 
 and ridiculous position, and I don't know how it 
 will end. After the frightful scene which I 
 described to you, I wanted no more of their 
 confidences." 
 
 Scene or no scene, Charlotte's goodness of 
 heart was certainly leading her into extraordinary 
 courses ; and it is no wonder that Madame de 
 Nassau wrote saying that the situation reminded 
 her of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Yet there was a 
 point beyond which even Charlotte would not go. 
 The suggestion that, while Benjamin stayed at 
 Coppet, she should go to Germany, annoyed her. 
 " For the first time since I have known her," 
 
 236 
 
Charlotte's "Angelic Character" 
 
 writes her husband, ** I find it difficult to persuade 
 her to follow my advice." It was proposed, as a 
 compromise, that she should go to Berne, but 
 that course also had to be abandoned in de- 
 ference to her objections. The final decision was 
 that she should go on a visit to Benjamin's father. 
 " 1 swear to you," Benjamin writes, at this point, 
 to his aunt, "that, if I were offered the treasures 
 of Peru, the youth of Hebe, and the beauty of 
 the Venus de Medicis, I should still prefer 
 Charlotte." Preferring Charlotte, however, he 
 remained with Madame de Stael, and with her 
 came presently to Lyons to see Talma play. 
 
 *' I have followed her," writes Sismondi to the 
 Comtesse d'Albany, on June i6, "not so much 
 for the purpose of seeing the king of the French 
 stage, as in order not to leave her in her present 
 condition of ill-health and melancholy. Pier head 
 to-day is hardly free to enjoy the spectacle which 
 she was so ardently anxious to witness." 
 
 Her depression was due to the fact that 
 Benjamin left her at Lyons, and went to Dole. 
 He was evidently getting very tired of the false 
 and embarrassing position which he occupied. 
 His letters show him reproaching himself for 
 behaving like a truant schoolboy. He has the 
 more reason to reproach himself, because he has 
 received the most cordial letters from Charlotte's 
 relatives in Germany, and because every day 
 brings him some fresh proof of Charlotte's 
 "angelic character." "Our separation," he says, 
 
 237 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " has been very painful. However, her reason 
 was convinced, and her confidence in me has not 
 failed, and her affection, after two years' trial, has 
 not diminished. I ask Heaven no other favour 
 than to grant her soon all the happiness which 
 she deserves." 
 
 At Dole, meanwhile, he found that he had not 
 yet escaped from Madame de Stael. She did 
 not follow him, indeed, but she sent her son 
 Auguste to fetch him ; and Auguste evidently 
 discharged his errand in the spirit of a fire-eater, 
 for we read : — 
 
 " What I am going to tell you, my dear aunt, 
 is strictly confidential. I am convinced — and I 
 have evidence — that if I took my departure in 
 a hurry, Madame de Stael's eldest son, who is 
 nineteen, and who worships his mother, seeing 
 her once more in the condition into which she 
 was thrown by my last departure to Dole, would 
 go to the point of challenging me. I have had 
 my opportunities of proving that this sort of thing 
 does not frighten me. Consequently I can say 
 without blushing that it would be a terrible thing 
 for me to have to draw my sword against a boy 
 whom I have known almost ever since he was 
 born. I swear to you that, when he came to 
 fetch me at Dole, he was beside himself with 
 rage, and if he refrained from offensive ex- 
 pressions, that was only because he had promised 
 his mother to do so." 
 
 Nor was it only Auguste de Stael who 
 breathed threatenings. His younger brother 
 
 238 
 
Between Threats and Tears 
 
 Albert was roused to an equal indignation. 
 There was a real danger of "bloody scenes" be- 
 tween Benjamin and these young men. ** Though 
 she is incapable of wishing such a thing, she 
 abandons herself to such expressions of violence 
 that they might very well believe that they were 
 serving her interests by proceeding to the last 
 extremity." Meanwhile he hopes, by persuasive 
 gentleness, to bring Madame de Stael to reason. 
 He and she cannot afford to declare open war 
 against each other ; their relations have been too 
 confidential, and they share too many secrets. 
 Therefore he is back at Coppet, seeing what can 
 be done. Surely it is not excessive to devote a 
 fortnight to the winding up of a liaison which has 
 lasted fifteen years. When he does go, he will 
 go far — not to Lausanne or Dole, whither he 
 would surely be pursued, but to Paris, where 
 Madame de Stael cannot come ; and he expects 
 to be off, at the latest, between the 15th and 
 20th of August. 
 
 Of course the limit of the fortnight was ex- 
 ceeded. Perhaps Benjamin lingered on, hoping 
 to facilitate his departure by wearing out his 
 welcome. More probably he was kept a prisoner 
 by the tears of his mistress and the drawn swords 
 of her sons. At all events, the elastic fortnight 
 was extended to three months, and might have 
 been extended to an even greater length, if it had 
 not been for a very outspoken letter in which 
 Cousin Rosalie repeated the gossip that was 
 
 239 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 circulating in Lausanne. People were whisper- 
 ing, said Rosalie, that Madame de Stael had said 
 that he was remaining at Coppet from interested 
 pecuniary motives. 
 
 He did, indubitably, owe her money. It is 
 easy to suggest — it has, in fact, been suggested — 
 that she deliberately lent him money for the 
 purpose of strengthening her hold upon him ; 
 and the measure is certainly one which has some- 
 times been adopted by desperate women seeking 
 happiness in love. The correspondence, how- 
 ever, indicates a more honourable explanation. 
 Benjamin had been directing Madame de Stael's 
 investments. A balance was due to her ; but 
 there could not be a final settlement until the 
 lawyers had unravelled the accounts. They were 
 at work on the business ; but it was difficult and 
 tedious, and very likely Madame de Stael did not 
 help to expedite it. But as for the slander, 
 Benjamin not only repudiated it with vehemence, 
 but absolutely declined to believe that it had 
 been circulated by Madame de Stael. In this 
 respect, at all events, he had a chivalrous faith 
 in her which we may share. 
 
 The mischievous rumours, however, reflected 
 not only on Benjamin but on his wife. This 
 must not be ; and the only way of putting a stop 
 to the gossip was to pack and go. He packed 
 and went, and actually succeeded in getting away 
 without a quarrel, and in the belief that he was 
 entitled to say of his relations with Madame de 
 
 240 
 
Two Sides of the Picture 
 
 Stael — what Gibbon had said of his relations 
 with her mother — that " love subsided in friend- 
 ship and esteem." " I have done," he writes to 
 Madame de Nassau, on October 19, "all that 
 was in my power to create the friendship that 
 was so necessary to me after a liaison of fifteen 
 years' standing, and I shall not be perfectly happy 
 unless 1 succeed." 
 
 Even now, however, the waters which Benjamin 
 navigated were not quite calm. Painful letters 
 followed him from Coppet — "magic pictures "of 
 the misery of a deserted mistress — and disturbed 
 his peace of mind. Madame de Stael had bought 
 his father with money, and the old man was 
 publicly declaring at Lausanne that his sympathies 
 were with her rather than with Charlotte. Doubts, 
 which Madame de Nassau shared, were being 
 thrown upon the validity of his marriage ; and 
 he had to admit that certain formalities had been 
 neglected — that Charlotte, for instance, had come 
 to the ceremony without a baptismal certificate — 
 though he protested that the omission did not 
 invalidate the union, but only rendered her liable 
 to a fine. 
 
 That was the dark side of the picture. The 
 bright side of it was that he was in Paris — 
 whither Madame de Stael could not pursue him 
 — and that Charlotte was with him, and that her 
 relatives and his friends smiled kindly on the 
 situation. Even the double divorce, it appeared, 
 was not unfavourably regarded. Divorce, said 
 Q 241 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the Catholics, was forbidden to them by the regu- 
 lations of their Church, but they saw no reason 
 why Protestants should not avail themselves of 
 the religious privileges of their rriore liberal creed. 
 And Rosalie was of the same opinion. " Three 
 husbands," she wrote to Charles, "is a large 
 number, but there was someone in the Gospel 
 who had seven husbands and yet seems to have 
 been an honest woman." 
 
 At Paris, therefore, Benjamin fulfilled the 
 necessary formalities, and made the fact of his 
 marriage public. There is a delightful humour 
 in the letter in which he tells his aunt that he 
 has done so. 
 
 *' Good-bye, my dear aunt," he writes. " There 
 have been marriages that have been concluded 
 with greater simplicity and announced with greater 
 expedition than mine. But there has never 
 been a husband whose wife has made him more 
 happy, and every day that passes increases my 
 attachment to her who has restored me the felicity 
 that I had lost." 
 
 So far, so good. It only remained for 
 Benjamin to wind up his pecuniary as well as 
 his sentimental relations with Madame de Stael. 
 His next visit to Coppet, in March 1810, had 
 this and no other object, and he found Madame 
 de Stael still sulking and still reluctant to facilitate 
 business. " It is a matter of importance to me," 
 he writes, " to compel Madame de Stael to accept 
 the money which I owe her, and I can only do 
 
 242 
 
A Financial Settlement 
 
 this by going into every account in minutest 
 detail. Whenever I have asked her to tell me 
 the amount of my indebtedness to her, she has 
 always replied that she knew nothing about it ; 
 and whether her motive be friendship or revenge 
 or a combination of the two sentiments, nothing 
 would please her better than that I should go 
 away leaving her my creditor." 
 
 Somehow or other, however, a settlement was 
 arrived at. " It is a proof," says Benjamin, "that 
 Heaven rewards good intentions. For it is only 
 my intentions that have always been good ; most 
 of my actions have been awkward and clumsy." 
 It was a true saying in a general way, but hardly 
 true in this particular instance, if we may judge 
 from Rosalie's account of his conduct. "He 
 took her eldest son," she writes, "a man of 
 twenty, and of a very reasonable disposition, as 
 arbitrator and judge. Some papers were missing 
 and had to be sent for from Paris. During the 
 interval he came to see us ; and though his 
 behaviour had made us all very uneasy, and I 
 had told him so without mincing my words, we 
 were good friends again, and glad to see each 
 other." "Her children," says a later letter by 
 Charles de Constant, "speak very highly of 
 Benjamin's conduct." 
 
 243 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Mysticism at Coppet — Madame de Stael writes De UAllemagne 
 and goes to France — Her manuscript is confiscated, and she 
 is expelled — She returns to Coppet, and endures petty per- 
 secutions. 
 
 The troubles of the heart did not, in the case 
 of Madame de Stael, interfere with the march 
 of intellect ; they even coincided with a kind of 
 religious awakening. 
 
 All through the months in which her tears 
 and the threats of her sons kept Benjamin 
 Constant separated from his wife, Coppet was 
 full of people among whom a spirit of Revivalism 
 was alive. The pedant Schlegel was inclining 
 to the mystic Quietism of Madame Guyon. His 
 last words to Benjamin, when the lover did at 
 last manage to emancipate himself from the 
 thraldom of his mistress, were an exhortation to 
 him to advance the cause of religion in France 
 — a task which Benjamin only declined because 
 he felt that the case of France was hopeless. 
 Bonstetten, whose tendencies were purely 
 Voltairean, noted the change that had come 
 over the atmosphere in one of his letters to 
 Frederika Brun. " Nothing," he informed that 
 lady, "is more altered than Coppet. You will 
 see that everybody is becoming Catholic, Martin- 
 
 244 
 
Mysticism at Coppet 
 
 istic/ mystic, all through Schlegel, and everything 
 is now German. . . . Madame Krudner has also 
 paid a flying visit, and spoke of nothing but 
 Heaven and Hell." 
 
 Who was in earnest in these matters, and how 
 far the earnestness went, is a little difficult to say. 
 We have already, however, seen Benjamin 
 Constant complaining in his Diary that the 
 fervour of the Chevalier de Langallerie had 
 failed to persuade Madame de Stael to accept 
 the consolations of religion as a substitute for a 
 liaison with him ; and it is not at all unlikely 
 that her mysticism was largely due to her known 
 habit of dosing herself with opium, and that the 
 true picture of her mental attitude is that given 
 in the letter which Henri Meister's nephew, Hess, 
 wrote to his uncle on the subject. 
 
 "Ah, how I wish," he wrote, "that you could 
 induce a person who is dear to you, Madame de 
 Stael, to share the view you have expressed ' On 
 Serenity in Old Age.' She needs this badly. 
 Never have I see anyone look forward with such 
 dread as she does to the hour when she must 
 give up the idea of making sensations and shining 
 in the world ; and as she always goes to extremes 
 in whatever she does, she will only abandon this 
 infatuation for the illusory triumphs of life by 
 plunging into mysticism. She has already made 
 a beginning, and M. Schlegel is working as hard 
 as he can to complete the process. During the 
 
 ^ The Martinists were a theurgic sect founded by Martinez Pas- 
 qualis (1715-1779). Little is known as to their doctrines. 
 
 245 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 winter she saw a great deal of a number of 
 people whose religious ideas are of a very 
 extravagant complexion. Madame de Stael 
 fluctuates between these extravagant ideas and 
 a need for society, distraction, and frivolous 
 pleasures. She cannot conceive of the existence 
 of a mean between the two extremes." 
 
 The Philistine youth writes unkindly, though 
 not, perhaps, unjustly ; but it should be added 
 that the distractions of religion and society did 
 not, any more than the pains of unrequited love, 
 impede the progress of literary work. In the 
 intervals of mystic exaltation and ecstasy, Madame 
 de Stael wrote what is generally esteemed her best 
 book, De V Alleinagne. Almost every evening 
 she gathered her fellow-mystics around her — 
 they were nearly all mystics who had been more 
 than once divorced — and read them what she had 
 written during the day. Adam Oelenschlager ^ and 
 Zacharlas Werner, the German poets, Mathieu de 
 Montmorency, M. de Sabran, as well as Schlegel, 
 Sismondi, and the unfaithful Benjamin Constant, 
 were included in the audience at her feet. 
 
 The work being finished, and the relations 
 with Benjamin being simultaneously placed on 
 their new footing, Madame de Stael was again 
 bitten by that desire to travel, which, like the 
 gadfly, was always driving her from one habita- 
 tion to another, and never suffering her to find 
 
 ^ He enriched German literature with subjects derived from the 
 heroic Scandinavian period. 
 
 246 
 
The Coppet Life Reproduced 
 
 rest in any. She had some idea of visiting 
 America, where much of her money was invested, 
 with the idea of making a further voyage thence 
 to England; and she even procured passports 
 for that purpose. Paris, however, was, for the 
 time being, the more powerful magnet. She 
 wanted at least to approach the capital in order 
 to superintend the publication of her book ; and 
 she went to the Chateau of Chaumont-sur- Loire, 
 whence she moved, on the return of the proprietor, 
 to the Chateau de Fosse. Mathieu de Mont- 
 morency, the two Barantes, Schlegel, and 
 Madame Rdcamier were with her there. Other 
 visitors were from time to time received. The 
 Coppet life — work in the morning and entertain- 
 ments in the evening — was, so far as might be, 
 reproduced. The scene is depicted in Dix 
 Annees d'Exil. 
 
 ** Hardly had we arrived when an Italian 
 musician, who was with me as my daughter's 
 teacher, began to play the guitar. My daughter 
 accompanied on the harp the sweet voice of my 
 beautiful friend, Madame Recamier, and the 
 peasants gathered under our windows, astonished 
 to see this colony of troubadours which had come 
 to give life to the solitude of their master. . . . 
 We often used to sing a charming air composed 
 by the Queen of Holland, with the refrain : 
 * Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra.' After 
 dinner the idea occurred to us to sit round a 
 green table, and play a paper game instead of 
 talking. We could not bear the thought 
 
 247 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 of breaking- through our practice even when 
 strangers arrived ; and our petit poste, as we 
 called our pastime, was always continued. Our 
 life passed in this fashion, and if I may judge 
 by my own case, the time hung heavily on no one. 
 " The opera of Cinderella was then making 
 a good deal of stir in Paris, and I wanted to go 
 and see it performed in a bad provincial theatre 
 at Blois. As I left the theatre on foot, the 
 inhabitants of the town followed me in their 
 curiosity, desiring to become acquainted with 
 me as an exile rather than in any other char- 
 acter. This kind of success, which I owed to 
 my misfortunes rather than my talents, annoyed 
 the Minister of Police, who wrote, some time 
 afterwards, to the Prefect of Loir-et-Cher, that 
 I had a Court about me." 
 
 A great blow, however, was impending. The 
 last proofs of De V Allemagne were corrected on 
 September 23, 18 10. The work had been sub- 
 mitted to the Censor, and alterations had been 
 introduced in deference to his views ; but Madame 
 de Stael, in believing her difficulties to be over- 
 come, had reckoned without the police. The 
 news was conveyed to her that the Minister of 
 Police had caused the whole edition to be seized 
 and destroyed, and that she would be required to 
 surrender the manuscript and quit her residence 
 within four-and-twenty hours. Fortunately, she 
 had a copy of the manuscript, and gave up that, 
 retaining the original, with the connivance of the 
 Prefect charged with the execution of the order, 
 
 248 
 
The Confiscation of De rAllemagne 
 
 who was a personal friend. She then wrote to 
 Rovigo, asking leave to delay her departure for a 
 few days. He accorded her a week, but no 
 longer, to make her arrangements. 
 
 The objection to the book is said to have been 
 that the author wrote of Germany without praising 
 either the French Emperor or France. *' Is it to 
 be supposed," Rovigo is reported to have said in 
 conversation, ** that we have made war in Germany 
 for eighteen years in order that a person with a 
 well-known name like hers might write a book 
 about Germany without mentioning us? The 
 author ought to have been sent to Vincennes." 
 In his letter, however, he expressly denied that 
 the omission of the Emperor's praises was the 
 determining cause of his action. " Your banish- 
 ment," he wrote, " is a natural consequence of the 
 course of conduct which you have consistently 
 pursued for several years. . . . We are not yet 
 reduced to looking for examples of behaviour 
 among the peoples which you admire. Your last 
 work is not French in its character ; it was I who 
 suppressed it. I regret the loss that your 
 publisher will suffer, but it was impossible for me 
 to allow the publication." And he concluded : — 
 
 " I have reasons, Madame, for indicating the 
 ports of Lorient, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and 
 Rochefort as the only ones at which you will be 
 permitted to embark. I beg you to inform me 
 which of them you have selected." 
 
 The point of this postscript was that it forbade 
 249 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 departure from any of the Channel ports. It was 
 suspected that Madame de Stael wanted to go to 
 England, and this obstacle was thrown in her way. 
 Her sons sought an interview with Napoleon on 
 the subject at Fontainebleau, but were met with 
 the threat of arrest. She decided, therefore, with 
 reluctance to retire to Coppet, where she arrived 
 early in October, reflecting upon the degradation 
 of a country in which advancement and even re- 
 spite from persecution were only to be purchased by 
 serving *' the interests of the man who presumes to 
 make his own personality the one object to the ad- 
 vantagre of which all human endeavour must tend." 
 Nor did persecution cease when she reached 
 her home. The Prefect of Geneva received 
 orders to inform her sons that they would not be 
 allowed to return to France without a fresh per- 
 mit from the police ; and he was also instructed 
 to demand that the proof sheets of De 
 r Allemagne should be handed over to him. 
 When, on Madame de Stael's refusal to comply 
 with his orders, he did not insist, he was removed 
 from his office, and a M. Capelle was appointed in 
 his place. The new-comer called upon her, and 
 suggested that the eulogy of the Emperor would 
 be a fitting subject for a pen "worthy of the 
 sort of enthusiasm I had displayed in Corinne.'' 
 In particular he thought she would be well-advised 
 to write an Ode on the birth of the King of Rome. 
 " I told him with a laugh," Madame de Stael says, 
 "that I had no ideas on the subject, and that all 
 
 250 
 
Petty Persecutions 
 
 that I could say was that I hoped he would have 
 a good foster-nurse." When she went to Aix-les- 
 Bains, where Albert de Stael had been ordered to 
 take the waters, he sent gendarmes after her to 
 order her to return, and gave instructions that 
 horses were to be refused to her if she tried to 
 travel in any other direction. Schlegel was 
 ordered to leave her ; and even the social gaieties 
 of Coppet were interrupted. 
 
 *' Madame de Stael," said the Prefect, "is lead- 
 ing an agreeable life at home. Her friends, and 
 foreigners, come to see her at Coppet. The 
 Emperor will not allow that." She gave some 
 further theatrical performances, producing two 
 comedies of her own composition, entitled Le 
 Mannequin and Le Capitaine Kernadec ; but 
 most of her old acquaintances were afraid to 
 frequent her, and she could write of herself to 
 Henri Meister as "living here in a kind of prison, 
 at least on the side of France, which makes life 
 very painful." Her friends the G^randos passed 
 through the neighbourhood without venturing to 
 visit her ; and we get an intimate glimpse of the 
 condition of thing-s in letters exchangred between 
 Rosalie de Constant and her brother Charles, who 
 had now come to live at Geneva, and whom 
 Madame de Stael invited to dinner. 
 
 "The Stael dinner," writes Charles, "was very 
 fine, but I shall not go there again. It was very 
 tiring, and the display was enough to make one 
 sick." To which Rosalie replied : "All personal 
 
 251 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 considerations apart, I am glad you are not main- 
 taining your relations with the famous lady ; such 
 relations are very dangerous. I am sure she was 
 the cause of the dismissal of the Prefect, and I am 
 sure a note is taken of all those who frequent her. 
 it is her pride to compromise her friends. . . . 
 Every event connected with her makes a noise, 
 and, from all I hear, the system of espionage is 
 complete." 
 
 That was what the world saw and noted, and 
 that is what Madame de Stael relates. A letter, 
 however, written to Henri Meister by Madame 
 Rilliet-Huber of Geneva, on November 13, 
 1 8 10, indicates that her troubles with the police 
 did not constitute the whole of life for her, and 
 fittingly introduces a fresh phase of the subject. 
 She is, we there read, "as lively and brilliant as 
 ever " ; and the writer continues : — 
 
 " Madame de Stael has taken an apartment at 
 Geneva, where she will take up her residence on 
 the 26th. She will shorten her winter by a stay 
 of several weeks at Lausanne, where she is to 
 meet Benjamin and his wife. This expression 
 a7id Ms wife proves to you that Madame de 
 Stael's trouble is no longer in that direction, for 
 which we must be grateful to Heaven. 
 
 '' It appears (this strictly in confidence) that 
 Benjamin repents of his marriage, the fruit of 
 annoyance and a transitory passion, and that, if 
 he could return to the condition of things of three 
 or four years ago — much as he complained of it 
 then — he would do so with unspeakable delight. 
 
 252 
 
A New Lover 
 
 Madame de Stael is too good, and no longer loves 
 him enough for his regrets to avenge her. Still, 
 she is not heart-broken about it. 
 
 ** She has no settled plans for the future, but she 
 is bored here." 
 
 There was soon, however, to be relief from 
 boredom ; and, in the act of the drama that is to 
 follow, we shall find Madame de Stael playing the 
 double part that, in the previous act, had been 
 played by Benjamin Constant. A new lover had 
 come into her life. A second marriage — a 
 secret marriage — was, or was soon to be, in 
 contemplation. 
 
 253 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Madame de Stael makes the acquaintaince of Rocca and secretly 
 marries him — Benjamin and his wife arrive at Lausanne — 
 Rocca challenges Benjamin, but the duel is avoided — The 
 Constants start for Germany — Extracts from Benjamin's 
 Journal and letters. 
 
 " I ALWAYS loved my lovers more than they loved 
 me in return," is one of Madame de Stael's re- 
 ported sayings ; and it remains a fairly true saying 
 when certain necessary qualifications have been 
 made. 
 
 She is hardly worthy to be called, in the full 
 sense of the words, grande mnoureuse. Her dual 
 nature restrained her from esteeming the world 
 well lost for love for many consecutive hours. 
 So far as we have followed her career, we have 
 seen her looking upon love far more as a drawing- 
 room accomplishment than as an affection of the 
 heart. Unless men sighed at her feet, she felt 
 not so much unhappy as uneasy ; and when they 
 did sigh, her first impulse was to advertise the 
 conquest. Nothing could have been more public 
 and notorious than the attachment to Benjamin 
 Constant, unless it were the attachment to M. de 
 Narbonne. Consequently, in engaging her heart 
 she also compromised her vanity, and, rather for 
 her vanity's than for her heart's sake, clung to 
 
 254 
 
Albert de Rocca 
 
 retreating lovers with desperate and undignified 
 tenacity, yet never mourned for them after she 
 had lost them. For love was more to her than 
 any particular lover ; and the post of lover was 
 merely the most important of the offices in her 
 gift, and one which it was her practice to fill as 
 soon as ever it became vacant. We have seen 
 how M. de Narbonne's coldness was Benjamin 
 Constant's opportunity. Benjamin Constant's 
 coldness was now, in turn, to prove the oppor- 
 tunity of Albert- Michel- Jean de Rocca. 
 
 Rocca was a soldier who had served both in 
 Spain and against the British expedition to the 
 Isle of Walcheren. At a later date he wrote 
 short books on both campaigns. They have 
 considerable merit ; and one of them has been 
 reprinted in a popular Library of Adventures. 
 He had been wounded and left for dead upon 
 the field of battle, but saved by a Spanish maiden, 
 who declared that he was too handsome to be 
 allowed to die. Returning to Geneva to re- 
 cuperate, he made love to Madame de Stael in 
 his dashing military manner. It is even said 
 that he galloped his horse down a long flight 
 of stone steps in the Old Town in his haste to 
 ride beneath her window, though the people who 
 believe that story are not the people who have 
 seen the steps in question. It was pointed out 
 to him that his mistress was old enough to be 
 his mother, — she was, in fact, forty-five, and he 
 was only twenty-three, — but he replied that the 
 
 255 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 mention of the word ** mother " only gave him an 
 additional motive for loving her. " I will love 
 her," he said, "so dearly that she will end by 
 marrying me;" while the report of Baron de 
 Voght was : "He is fascinated by his relations 
 with Madame de Stael, and the tears of his father 
 cannot induce him to abandon them." 
 
 Bonstetten, it is true, thought him merely a 
 rowdy, and Benjamin Constant thought him 
 merely a fire-eater ; but no doubt he boasted his 
 two soul sides like the rest of us. At any rate, 
 he loved passionately, and did not love in vain, 
 though he had to submit to an ignominious 
 condition. The marriage, Madame de Stael 
 stipulated, must be kept a secret from the world ; 
 she must not be required to change her name ; 
 her husband must be presented as her paramour, 
 even when she bore him children. Rocca was 
 sufficiently in love to accept the situation ; and 
 the results of her deception were in every way 
 satisfactory to Madame de Stael. The world 
 had never expected her to be moral, and could 
 not say that she was making herself ridiculous. 
 The very society which refused to accept Charlotte 
 because of her double divorce admitted the sup- 
 posed mistress of Albert de Rocca to its most 
 exclusive circles. 
 
 The marriage, however, had not yet been con- 
 cluded — and one cannot even say for certain how 
 far the intimacy had gone — when, in the winter 
 of i8:o-i8i I, Benjamin Constant and Charlotte 
 
 256 
 
Benjamin and Charlotte at Lausanne 
 
 passed through Switzerland on their way to 
 Germany, where they were to visit the family of 
 the latter. All that we know for certain is that, 
 though Benjamin's letters at this period are still 
 full of expressions of affection for Charlotte, he 
 had by no means forgotten Madame de Stael, 
 and that he found Rocca in high favour with 
 her, and very ill-disposed towards him. His 
 own account of the matter is contained in the so- 
 called " Carnet de Benjamin Constant," quoted 
 by Sainte-Beuve in his Causeries du Lundi. 
 "My head," he writes, "is in a whirl between 
 Charlotte and Madame de Stael. I gamble and 
 lose twenty thousand francs in a day." And he 
 proceeds in short disjointed sentences : — 
 
 "Arrival at Geneva. — My father seizes the 
 first pretext for quarrelling with me. — I go to 
 Lausanne. — Lausanne's curiosity about Charlotte. 
 A combination of ill-will for me, which causes us 
 to be badly received, with jealousy of Madame 
 de Stael, whom they wish to annoy by receiving 
 us well. — Correspondence with my father. — He 
 invents a thousand grievances against me, re- 
 pudiates his own signature, and goes so far as 
 to accuse me of forgery. — Excursions to Geneva 
 without Charlotte (February 1811), — Madame de 
 Stael takes me back as far as Coppet — the last 
 time in my life that I saw Coppet. — Rows with 
 my father, with Charlotte, and with Madame de 
 Stael. — A miserable life. — Charlotte is not at all 
 a success at Lausanne. — Dinner without Charlotte 
 with Madame de Stael, at d'Arlens'. — Scenes. — 
 R 257 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Last journey to Geneva about my business with 
 my father ; we settle everything. — He starts for 
 Dole, and, en route, writes me threatening letters, 
 in which he withdraws all the results of the 
 intervention of M. de Louys. — Agitations with 
 Madame de Stael.— She proposes an appoint- 
 ment at Rolle. — I dare not accept it for fear of 
 Charlotte. — Madame de Stael comes to Lausanne : 
 last interview before my departure. — Correspond- 
 ence after her return to Coppet. — Rocca repeats his 
 proposal to fight a duel.— -My reply. — Departure 
 for Germany (May 15, 181 1). — Quite a different 
 atmosphere. — No more rows. — Charlotte pleased ; 
 no more hostile public opinion. — I resume my 
 work. I gamble and lose my money at roulette." 
 
 This is sketchy in manner, and was written too 
 long after the event to be depended upon for 
 accuracy in detail. The details which can be 
 added from the correspondence have no special 
 bearing upon this narrative, as they chiefly relate 
 to his quarrel with his father about money matters. 
 Happily there is no reason to believe that Ben- 
 jamin behaved otherwise than well. He had to do 
 with a stupid man of choleric disposition, much 
 under the influence of a second wife of humble 
 birth and mischief-making tendencies ; but he 
 made the best of a difficult situation. As regards 
 Rocca's challenge, we find a few further particulars 
 in a letter from Benjamin's pen printed (in German) 
 in Karl Fulda's Chamisson and his Times. 
 
 On April 18, 181 1, it appears, Benjamin was 
 258 
 
Rocca challenges Benjamin 
 
 in Geneva on business with a lawyer. Having 
 finished his business, he called on Madame de 
 Stael, and remained to dinner. As he was leaving 
 the house, M. Rocca met him, bluntly stated that 
 he was displeased at the attentions which he 
 observed him to be paying to Madame de Stael, 
 and proposed that they should fight. The tone 
 of the proposal seemed to Benjamin to leave no 
 room for explanations. He could not even point 
 out, he says, that his alleged "attentions" had 
 consisted in calling upon Madame de Stael twice 
 in the course of three months, or that his affection 
 for his wife and the plans that he was making for 
 a long and distant journey were sufiBcient evidence 
 that he had no desire to poach upon Rocca's pre- 
 serves ; and it was arranged that the hostile meet- 
 ing should take place on the Bridge over the 
 Arve at nine o'clock on the following morning. 
 Writing, therefore, in uncertainty as to the issue 
 of an encounter which promises to be desperate, 
 he distributes final messages : — 
 
 " I beg my wife's forgiveness for all the trouble 
 which I have caused her, and for this last cata- 
 strophe, which will be a cause of still greater 
 bitterness to her. I beg her on no account to 
 believe that I did anything to provoke it. My 
 true, deep, and unchangeable love for her was an 
 obstacle which prevented any act of gallantry on 
 my part towards any other woman. I love no one 
 as I love her. She has been an angel to me, and my 
 last sentiments are those of Dante for his beloved. 
 
 259 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " I forgive Madame de Stael for the fatality of 
 which she will have been the cause, and I do not 
 hold her responsible for the savagery of a young 
 barbarian. I beg her similarly to pardon me if I 
 have, on certain occasions, caused her grief. I 
 do not inquire whether I was right or wrong ; 
 that I did grieve her is a sufficient cause for my 
 repentance. 
 
 " I bequeath all my property without exception 
 to my wife. ..." 
 
 The details which follow are of no particular 
 importance ; and the chief interest of the letter 
 is as a revelation of Benjamin Constant's Mat 
 d'dme. He not only wanted to love Charlotte ; 
 he loved her. Her love (he still thought) was a 
 haven of quiet, safely reached at last after a 
 journey across stormy seas. The ties which now 
 united him to Madame de Stael were (he believed) 
 only of gratitude and obligation. He had yet to 
 learn that even of calm there may come satiety, 
 and that some memories are apt to reassert 
 themselves, even when a man thinks that he has 
 lived them down. His love for the one woman, 
 and his indifference towards the other, made it 
 easier than he had at first thought to avoid the 
 unnecessary duel. He had given his proofs, and 
 could go further than some men without having 
 to fear the charge of cowardice. Consequently 
 he could refuse to fight Rocca for much the same 
 reasons for which he had refused to fight Auguste 
 de Stael. At all events, he did refuse, and, as we 
 
 260 
 
The Constants start for Germany 
 
 have seen, took his departure from Switzerland 
 for Germany on May 15, 181 1, meaning first to 
 visit his wife's relatives, and then to settle at 
 Gottingen, where the resources of a large library 
 would be available for his great work on the 
 History of Religions. 
 
 His letters home during the period are those of 
 a healthily happy man. His father is libelling 
 him and threatening him with lawsuits, but he 
 acknowledges no other trouble. Wherever he 
 arrives, he is well received ; and he chats lightly 
 to Rosalie of the minor incidents of travel. At 
 Berne he writes : — 
 
 " My wife was delighted with the beauty of 
 the neighbourhood, and I think, if I had wished 
 it, she would have been willing to settle there 
 with me. She has the excellent quality of always 
 feeling with incredible intensity the advantages of 
 the present hour — which is a great source of 
 happiness for oneself and others." 
 
 At Soleure : — 
 
 " They took us to the Hermitage, which is a 
 charming English garden. Formerly there was a 
 Hermit there in the full sense of the word. 
 Nowadays, the Hermit is a tailor who has been 
 dressed up in a monkish garment, and taught to 
 fold his arms across his breast and bend his head, 
 and who, for the rest, makes clothes, sells beer, 
 and receives four pounds of bread, three pounds 
 of meat, and ten batzs a week for carrying on the 
 trade. I think this gives a fairly accurate im- 
 pression of religion at the present time." 
 
 261 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 At Basle :— 
 
 " On arriving here we met the comedians whom 
 we had seen at Berne, and sat down to table 
 d'hote with them. I began a conversation with 
 one of them ; but I was so unfortunate as to 
 state that he had played a secondary part in the 
 piece in which I had seen him, whereas he had 
 played the principal part, and I have never since 
 succeeded in re-starting the conversation." 
 
 At Cassel : — 
 
 " In a general way, my position here is rather 
 curious. To give you some idea of it, I content 
 myself, without entering into details, with telling 
 you that my wife's family is entirely composed of 
 ministers, superior officers, and favourites of the 
 Court of Westphalia, and that it is in the midst of 
 them that I pass my life. I am the only one of 
 the company who has not a coat with embroidery 
 on every seam, three or four straps on the 
 shoulders, and three or four orders on the breast." 
 
 Save for the business details, all the letters are 
 more or less in that tone of light and cheerful 
 persiflage. The name of Madame de Stael is not 
 so much as mentioned ; and it is not until we 
 turn to the Journal Intime that we discover the 
 continuity of the inner life. But then we do see 
 that a liaison of fifteen years' duration was not to 
 be cancelled by strokes of the pen or farewell 
 speeches, but was bound to live in its consequences 
 and in its memories. Those memories were 
 always waiting for Benjamin — lurking to spring 
 
 262 
 
At the Gaming-Table 
 
 upon him in his weak moments, and he sought 
 escape from them at the gaming-table no less 
 than at the desk. Eliminating the inessential, we 
 may let the Diary speak. 
 
 "We stay at Baden. Lured on by a gain of 
 three louis, I play and lose like a fool." 
 
 "We start for Heidelberg, where I spend the 
 day with the young de Loys. Arriving at 
 Frankfort, we are overtaken by storms and floods. 
 I find a heap of letters, and no bad news in any 
 of them — an amazing thing." 
 
 "We stay at Frankfort. They plague me to 
 death with the accursed title of Baron. I do not 
 cease to gamble, and I do not cease to lose. Let 
 us be off." 
 
 "Arrive at Schwalbach, which I find more 
 agreeable than Wiesbaden. But it is also a 
 worse place for me. I pass ten days without 
 doing any work, gambling like a lunatic. Sad 
 life! At last we are back at Frankfort, and 
 thence we go to Cassel. There we find 
 Charlotte's son and her brother. Dinner with 
 Furstenstein ; an excellent reception everywhere. 
 Dinner with Hardenberg. It is a curious 
 position for me — the third husband." 
 
 "Staying at the Hardenberg Castle. Pleasant 
 family life. I settle down to work pretty well ; 
 but the desire for independence attacks me again, 
 and I meditate establishing myself at Gottingen, 
 where I take an apartment. ... A letter from 
 Madame de Stael. Her position does not get 
 any better, and that distresses me. How cruel 
 
 263 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 they are to her ! And that thought attaches me 
 to her again. 
 
 " I read my own work in the evening. . . . 
 Without this interest in my work, what would 
 become of me ? Charlotte is a little cross." 
 
 "To-day, October 25, 181 1, I am forty-four. 
 Have I really made a good use of this two-thirds 
 of my life ? I must try and do better with the 
 end of it. I have a sister-in-law who is dry and 
 sharp-tempered — but that is my brother-in-law's 
 business. I have been getting on with my work. 
 My book makes progress. Charlotte is sweet 
 and good. We are packing up to go to Gottingen. 
 These horrible removals! I wonder how many 
 boxes I have packed in the course of my life ! " 
 
 " Ball till three in the morning. No annoying 
 letters to-day ; that is so much time gained. A 
 gay supper at our house. Charlotte made herself 
 very amiable. A visit from her son. I have been 
 reading the Fathers of the Church — a fresh field 
 to be gone over." 
 
 " I re-read my novel. How one's impressions 
 fade when the circumstances are altered i I could 
 not write it again now. I have revised the end, 
 which I consider superb. I am persecuted with 
 interruptions. Connected work is impossible 
 here. 
 
 " Received a silly letter from Madame de Stael. 
 She is worth less consideration than I thought." 
 
 " We decide to pass a month at Brunswick. 
 What a number of souvenirs I find there, and 
 what a number of old friends ! Nevertheless, my 
 sadness is profound. I think of my first wife, of 
 
 264 
 
Frequent Quarrels with Charlotte 
 
 France, of Coppet — the scattered debris of a past 
 that is over and done with. And what is my 
 present state ? What my future ? My work is 
 my only interest in life. I frequently quarrel 
 with Charlotte. I should not like to wager that 
 we shall end our days together. 
 
 " Dinner and evening party at Giesdorf's. An 
 excellent letter from Madame de Stael. Alas ! 
 Who knows ? Sharp dispute with Charlotte 
 about politics. 
 
 " Supper at Munckhausen's. I have seen my 
 first wife again." 
 
 265 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The campaign of persecution at Coppet — Birth of Madame de 
 Stael's youngest child — It is boarded out — Madame de Stael 
 starts by the only road open to her for England — Vienna — 
 Kiev — Moscow — St. Petersburg — Stockholm — Benjamin Con- 
 stant at Gottingen — His regrets for Madame de Stael. 
 
 As time passed on, the life at Coppet became 
 more and more unbearable, and flight therefrom 
 the only, though a very difficult, alternative. The 
 few faithful friends who still visited Madame de 
 Stael there did so at the risk of punishment. 
 Notably Mathieu de Montmorency was banished 
 to the interior of France, and Madame Recamier 
 was ordered to live at Chalons for showing her 
 this proof of affection. Count Elzdar de Sabran, 
 drawing on his imagination, wrote warning her 
 that worse things were probably in store for her. 
 "If you stay," he predicted, "the Emperor will 
 treat you like Mary Stuart : nineteen years of 
 unhappiness, and tragic catastrophe at the end 
 of them." One is not surprised to read the ad- 
 mission that relief was sought, not only in literary 
 composition, but also in opium. 
 
 The drug, however, was not taken to the point 
 of undermining energy ; and the idea of flight 
 gained ground, though the act was delayed for 
 several months. Various reasons for the delay 
 
 266 
 
The Flight from Coppet 
 
 are oriven in Dix Annies d'Exil — among others a 
 fear lest Napoleon ''should cause to be inserted 
 in the newspapers one of those articles which he 
 knows how to dictate when he wishes to commit 
 moral assassination;" but the true reason is 
 probably to be found in her reluctance to face the 
 risks of a perilous journey either immediately 
 before or immediately after the birth of the child 
 which she bore to Rocca. She arranged at last, 
 however, to leave the child with a doctor at 
 Longirod, in the Jura, and secretly made her 
 preparations to depart. 
 
 An application for a passport for America had 
 been refused ; so had a request for permission to 
 reside at Rome, though preferred by the author 
 of Corinne, and supported by a promise not to 
 publish even so much as a line of verse. Germany 
 was practically a French dependency, and there- 
 fore closed to her. There remained England. 
 It was for fear lest she should go to England 
 that Madame de Stael had been refused a pass- 
 port for the United States ; but she might get to 
 England by way of Sweden, getting to Sweden 
 by way of Russia, and to Russia by way of Austria. 
 The Emperor of Austria had been polite to her 
 in the past, and would hardly suffer her to be 
 molested now. He did not love Napoleon, though 
 Napoleon was his son-in-law. These were hypo- 
 theses upon which it seemed reasonable to act. 
 
 An exile when compelled to live at Coppet, 
 Madame de Stael felt doubly an exile when 
 
 267 f 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 compelled to leave it. So she said her silent 
 farewells to whatever reminded her of past days of 
 happiness. " I revisited," she says, "my father's 
 study, where his chair, his table, and his papers 
 remain just as he left them ; I kissed every 
 treasured souvenir of his presence ; I carried away 
 his cloak, which hitherto I had caused to be left 
 lying on his chair, and took it with me that I 
 might wrap it round me if the harbinger of death 
 drew near." And she tells how she wrote her 
 good-byes to her friends, and continues : — 
 
 **On the following day, Saturday, May 23, 
 1812, at two o'clock in the afternoon, I got into 
 my carriage, saying that I should be back for 
 dinner. I took no luo-g-aofe whatsoever with me. 
 I carried my fan, and my daughter carried hers, 
 and only my son and M. Rocca took the necessaries 
 for a few days' travel in their pockets. As we 
 drove down the Coppet avenue, leaving the 
 chateau which had become, as it were, an old 
 friend to me, I nearly fainted." 
 
 And so to a farm near Berne, where it had been 
 arranged that Schlegel should meet the party, and 
 where, Madame de Stael says, her courage nearly 
 abandoned her, and she felt tempted to return 
 before the Government realised that she had fled. 
 Her children, however, persuaded her to continue, 
 and she did so ; her son Auguste returning, after 
 procuring her a passport from the Austrian 
 Minister, to Coppet, to see that her pecuniary 
 interests did not suffer. Albert de Stael, it had 
 
 268 
 
The Journey continued 
 
 been arranged, was to follow with the servants 
 and the baggage, and it was not until he did so 
 that the Prefect realised that his prisoner had 
 escaped. 
 
 Then the people of Geneva also heard the 
 news and talked. For them the interesting fact 
 was not that a distinguished authoress had run 
 away from Napoleon, but that a distinguished 
 neighbour had run away with Rocca. "This 
 last proof of the spitefulness of her enemies," 
 writes Sismondi to the Comtesse d'Albany, ** has 
 annoyed her deeply ; " while she herself writes to 
 Madame Recamier : '* More than anyone have I 
 experienced slander." But she went on, none the 
 less, with her journey, with a mind besieged by 
 many other thoughts, and especially by sentiments 
 of bitterness towards the Emperor. " What is 
 his fatherland?" she asked. "It is the land 
 that submits to him. Who are his fellow-citizens ? 
 The slaves who obey his orders." And so on, 
 without any remarkable adventure, through 
 Switzerland, Bavaria, and Tyrol, to Vienna ; 
 Rocca, who had quitted her at Berne, having 
 rejoined her at Salzburg. 
 
 At Vienna it was necessary to wait for Russian 
 passports. The Emperor was at the time at 
 Dresden, where Napoleon was entertaining the 
 European monarchs before commencing his 
 invasion of Russia ; and Madame de Stael's 
 reception in his capital was less courteous than 
 she had expected. Her disgrace in France being 
 
 269 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 largely due to her laudation of Germany, it was 
 difficult to tell her that she ^2S persona ingrata ; 
 but spies were, nevertheless, stationed at her 
 door, and instructed to follow her whenever she 
 walked or drove abroad. There was some 
 difficulty, too, about Rocca's status. The marriage 
 having been a secret one, Madame de Stael could 
 not introduce him as her husband ; and he was 
 technically a deserter from the French army, 
 whose surrender might be demanded. His 
 reception in official circles was, in the circum- 
 stances, impossible — a state of things which his 
 wife must have found humiliating ; and she was 
 naturally relieved when permission was accorded 
 to her to start for St. Petersburg by way of Galicia. 
 In the Austrian provinces, however, her troubles 
 increased. Wherever she arrived, some Jack-in- 
 office was there to worry her ; whenever she 
 wanted to rest, she was hustled on. In every 
 posting-house were placarded the Government's 
 instructions to the police to keep an eye on her — 
 a publication of its intentions which reminded her 
 of M. de Sartines' proposal that spies should be 
 dressed in uniform. There was a time when 
 hysteria overcame her, and it was necessary to 
 take her out of her carriage, lay her down on the 
 roadside, and dash water in her face. There 
 was even a time when a commissary of police 
 told her son that, if he carried out his instructions 
 to the letter, he would have to insist on sleeping 
 in her bedroom ; to which the fiery Albert re- 
 
 270 
 
In Russian Territory 
 
 plied that, if the commissary did insist, he would 
 find himself pitched out of window. And so on 
 until the Russian frontier was safely crossed on 
 July 14, 1 81 2 — the twenty-third anniversary of the 
 fall of the Bastille. The first man to receive her in 
 Russian territory, she says, was an exiled French- 
 man who had once been a clerk in Necker's bank. 
 The Grand Army was already invading ; and 
 the direct route to St. Petersburg being already 
 barred, it was necessary to make a detour by way 
 of Moscow, and to be quick, lest that route should 
 be barred also. In Volhynia — the first Russian 
 province which she entered — she was warned 
 that the French were only a week's march behind 
 her. There was quite a chance that she might 
 find herself driven to travel to her destination 
 by way of Odessa and Constantinople. " I con- 
 soled myself," she writes, " by thinking of a poem 
 on Richard Coeur-de-Lion which I intend to write 
 if my health and my life permit me." In the 
 meantime, she pressed on to Kiev, where she was 
 "overwhelmed with amiable cares," and invited 
 to a ball which she had no time to attend, by 
 General Miloradovitsch, and thence took the 
 road to Moscow. Her trouble there was to 
 procure horses. Most of those available had 
 been requisitioned for the war ; and once again 
 it seemed likely that the Grand Army would over- 
 take the fugitive, and make her look ridiculous. 
 Horses were found, however, and the welcome 
 at Tula was such as to restore self-respect : 
 
 271 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " Several gentlemen of the vicinity came to my 
 inn to compliment me on my writings, and the 
 wife of the Governor received me with sherbet 
 and roses, in the Asiatic fashion." And so on 
 to the capital. 
 
 The monotony of the intervening scenery 
 haunted Madame de Stael *'like certain meta- 
 physical conceptions of which the mind cannot 
 divest itself when once it has laid hold of them." 
 To relieve her imagination, she askej^ the peasant 
 women to dance for her, and remarked the 
 ** modest voluptuousness " of their movements. 
 In due course, however, the gilded cupolas 
 appeared in sight. The party had gained on 
 the Grand Army and was a month ahead of it. 
 There was time to see the Kremlin and to be 
 entertained by the notables of the city before 
 departing by way of Novgorod to St. Petersburg, 
 where, we read, " I saw the English flag, the 
 emblem of liberty, flying on the Neva, and felt 
 that, by embarking on the ocean, I might place 
 myself under the immediate protection of Divine 
 Providence." 
 
 Again, at St. Petersburg, Madame de Stael 
 was well received and nobly entertained. " The 
 principles of morality," she discovered, "were not 
 yet firmly fixed in the heads of the Russians." 
 As a consequence, her intimacy with Rocca raised 
 no awkward questions ; and the honours shown 
 to her are a proof of the importance attached to 
 Napoleon's victim outside the range of Napoleon's 
 
 272 
 
Honoured at St. Petersburg 
 
 jurisdiction. Orloff invited her to dinner in his 
 island on the Neva, and Narishkin, the Chamber- 
 lain, entertained her at his country seat. She 
 read aloud selected chapters of the suppressed 
 work on Germany, and Stein sought and obtained 
 permission to make copies of them to send to 
 his wife. Suvaroff received her on the eve of his 
 departure for the war which Barclay de Tolly — 
 the Muscovite Cunctator — had already won for 
 him ; and, uynless her narrative is making an 
 undue use of metaphor, she kissed him before 
 she let him go. When she went over a girls' 
 school conducted under Imperial patronage, one 
 of the pupils was put forward to recite passages 
 from her father's Cours de morale religieuse. 
 She was presented to the Empress ; and the 
 Emperor Alexander presented himself, and 
 apologised for his autocratic status. A good 
 despot, he admitted, he might be ; but, even so, 
 he was "only a happy accident." 
 
 There was a temptation to remain, but time 
 was flying, and, as the September days elapsed, 
 the usual signs heralded the coming of the winter. 
 On the day of her visit to Tsarskoe Selo, Madame 
 de Stael noticed that the flowers of the South 
 were blown upon by the winds of the North ; 
 and she made up her mind to depart by way 
 of Finland. Practically the whole diplomatic 
 corps, she tells us, came to see her off, and she 
 took ship at Abo, and, in spite of her fear of the 
 sea, arrived safely at Stockholm, where she passed 
 s 273 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 eight months, mainly occupied in the composition 
 of that Dix Annies d'Exil from which this 
 narrative of her adventures has been extracted. 
 It was during those eight months that the Grand 
 Army was destroyed, and that the European 
 coaHtion by which Napoleon's power was ultimately 
 broken was formed. 
 
 Benjamin Constant, in the meantime, was 
 sitting at Gottingen, bored to death, and in his 
 boredom thinking of Madame de Stael, and 
 regretting her. 
 
 First it was his business relations with her 
 that were complicated, as he tells his aunt, by 
 the risks of a lawsuit brought against him by 
 his father. He owed her money — an uncertain 
 amount, impossible to calculate exactly — and she 
 had refused to take it from him. In the end, 
 after much debate, a sum had been agreed upon 
 which was to be paid to her out of his estate on 
 his death. The unexpected lawsuit raised a doubt 
 whether he would be able to carry out this 
 undertaking; but his father's sudden death 
 removed the difficulty, and enabled sentimental 
 considerations once more to assume the upper 
 hand. 
 
 "The lovers, though they were both married 
 and not rightly to be classed as lovers any longer, 
 continued to correspond. Most of the corre- 
 spondence is lost ; but we have one of Madame de 
 Stael's letters — a letter which she presumably did 
 not show to Rocca — from which we gather that 
 
 274 
 
Spiritual Loneliness 
 
 Rocca's love had not sufficed to teach her to 
 forget. Two years have elapsed, she reminds 
 Benjamin, since she has seen him, and two 
 months since she has had news of him. What 
 is to become of her in her spiritual loneliness? 
 With whom is she to talk, and how to exist on 
 her own resources? She has kept his letters. 
 She looks at them whenever she opens her desk, 
 though the handwriting makes her tremble. And 
 she concludes : — 
 
 " My father and you and Mathieu share a 
 part of my heart that is eternally closed. There 
 I continually suffer, and always in a new way. I 
 live in the past, and were I about to be 
 swallowed up by the waves, my voice would 
 utter these three names — one of which only was 
 harmful to me. Is it possible that you brought 
 such ruin ? that such despair as mine could 
 not restrain you? No, you are guilty, and only 
 your admirable intellect can cause me any further 
 illusions. Farewell, farewell ! You cannot under- 
 stand what I suffer." 
 
 Yet perhaps he did understand, for he was 
 suffering also. He observes that "Charlotte's 
 character is changing." He hears that Madame 
 de Stael is ill, and talks of going alone to Switzer- 
 land. "Why," he asks, "did I marry again? It 
 is a silly situation, and a silly chain. Formerly 
 I was swept along by a torrent. Nowadays, I 
 succumb beneath the weight of a burden." 
 Then there comes news, incomplete and in- 
 
 275 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 accurate, apparently, of Madame de Stael's 
 departure from Coppet, and the entry in the 
 Diary is as follows : — 
 
 " Madame de Stael is travelling with Rocca, 
 but she no longer writes to me. The recollection 
 of her and of Albertine tears my heart to pieces. 
 My heart tires of everything that it possesses, 
 and regrets everything that it has lost. Perhaps, 
 in the end, the sweetness and gentleness of 
 Charlotte will overcome this impression. How 
 sad is life, and what a fool I am ! I make my 
 plans for a journey to Vienna, and am reminded 
 of the efforts Madame de Stael made to drag me 
 there with her. As a consequence I am thinking 
 of making with Charlotte the expedition which I 
 refused to make with the most intelligent of 
 women for my companion. God's justice ! It 
 is a singular series of follies which has caused 
 me, in order to avoid leaving Paris, to con- 
 tract a marriage which has stranded me at 
 Gottingen." 
 
 There follow quarrels with Charlotte, alternated 
 by reconciliations, and recognitions of her great 
 though placid merit. 
 
 " I have the nuisance of moving again. What 
 an inconvenience a wife is ! A lively scene with 
 Charlotte. She was really in the wrong, but I 
 am always so in form. I recognise that there 
 is good in Charlotte. . . . She has a mania for 
 sitting up late, which causes me to pass abomin- 
 ably bad nights. And, remember, I got married 
 in order that I might go to bed early. This sort 
 
 of thing cannot last." 
 
 276 
 
" An Unarrangeable Life " 
 
 Then the names of Madame de Stael and 
 Charlotte figure side by side in the same day's 
 entry. 
 
 "Charlotte is sweet and good. I conjure up 
 chimseras, and blame others for the follies of 
 my own mind. Fundamentally Charlotte is just 
 like all women. I have accused individuals 
 when I should have blamed the sex. But for 
 my work, and for the good advice that I need, 
 I miss Madame de Stael more than ever. 
 
 " Profound sadness ; discontent with myself and 
 others. The two things always go together." 
 
 " A letter from Madame de Stael which proves 
 to me that all is indeed over between us. So 
 be it ! It is my own doing. And now let me 
 steer my course through life alone, and not let 
 myself be any more eriibarrassed by ties which 
 offer less charm than did the old ones." 
 
 " I work little and badly. How I lose my time ! 
 What an unarrangeable life ! 
 
 *' Fresh scenes with Charlotte, but I feel that 
 they are of my own making. Instead of being 
 weak and hard, I ought to be firm and gentle. 
 I feel that I bear the burden of my wife's bore- 
 dom and of my own as well ; it is very heavy. I 
 have lost Madame de Stael, and I shall never 
 recover from the blow." 
 
 " Charlotte is back from a visit to Cassel. A 
 long conversation on the inconvenience of divers 
 things. But there is nothing to make such a 
 talk about. The one actual inconvenience of my 
 life is that I am married. Georges Dandin ! 
 
 277 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " On such a day as this, at eleven o'clock in the 
 morning, on the staircase of the Hotel de la 
 Couronne, at Lausanne, I parted from Madame 
 de Stael, who said that she thought we should 
 never see each other again. It looks like it. 
 Alas ! Dear Albertine ! 
 
 "All the evening my mind was full of recol- 
 lections and regrets. I think as much of Madame 
 de Stael as I did ten years ago. And yet 
 Charlotte overwhelms me with kindness." 
 
 " I work, and, from the moral point of view, 
 am not so bad as I was. Still, I must cease 
 eating my heart out, must accept my position, 
 and make the best of it. I did a silly thing to 
 break, at a time when it might have served me, 
 a tie which I had preserved and endured while 
 it injured me. I regret it ; I was a fool. And 
 what now ? I must profit by what I have done 
 instead of suffering. Nothing is quite lost. 
 Much remains to me — more than I deserve. 
 Charlotte will do what I wish. Let me then 
 employ my talents, and behave reasonably 
 instead of like a lunatic. Let me make Charlotte 
 happy. I have done harm enough in my life." 
 
 278 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Madame de Stael arrives in London — Murray the bookseller 
 publishes De VAllemagne — The qualities and defects of the 
 book. 
 
 Towards the end of June 1813, Madame de 
 Stael arrived in London. Her first engagement 
 was to attend one of Lady Jersey's receptions. 
 A day or two later, " Murray the bookseller," as 
 Crabb Robinson calls him, waited upon her with 
 proposals for the publication of De V Allemagne. 
 His offer of fifteen hundred guineas was accepted ; 
 and Crabb Robinson, who was present at the 
 interview, assisted in drawing up the agreement. 
 Sent at once to the printers, the work appeared 
 in the following October, and was instantly and 
 immensely successful, alike with the public and 
 with the critics. The first edition was exhausted 
 in a few days ; and the Edinburgh Review pro- 
 claimed its author the greatest literary genius of 
 her time — a piece of nonsense thoroughly worthy 
 of the critical organ which declared that Words- 
 worth's poetry would " never do." 
 
 The idea, indeed, seems to have prevailed for 
 a period that Madame de Stael had discovered 
 Germany, and was the only critic, whether 
 EnHish or French, who had studied German 
 
 279 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 literature and understood German philosophy. 
 And that too was nonsense. The Sorrows of 
 Wertker had not only been read, but had even 
 been imitated by the sentimental youth of France 
 before the Revolution — not only by Ramond de 
 Carbonniere, in his Dernieres Aventures dujeune 
 Olbon, but also by Madame de Stael herself in her 
 very earliest essays in fiction. German philosophy 
 had been introduced to French readers not by her, 
 but by her friend and compatriot Villers, the trans- 
 lator of the works of Kant. In England there was 
 Scott who had translated Burger's ballads, and 
 Coleridge who was steeped in the German erudition 
 with which Madame de Stael was merely sprinkled ; 
 and the superiority of the latter authority probably 
 transpired when the two authors met. That, at 
 any rate, seems the most reasonable interpretation 
 of Madame de Stael's well-known remark, that 
 Coleridge was admirable at monologue but had 
 no idea of duologue. He felt doubtless, when 
 German subjects came to the front, that he had 
 nothing to learn but much to teach, and spoke, 
 therefore, as the master addressing the disciple. 
 It was a breach of manners, but the temptation 
 to commit it must have been strong. 
 
 Another article of faith with the critics of the 
 period was that Madame de Stael's intellect was 
 of the distinctively masculine type. She certainly 
 exercised her mind on topics of which men, at 
 that date, usually monopolised the discussion. 
 Perhaps she even tried to discuss them after the 
 
 280 
 
The Feminine Point of View 
 
 manner of a man ; but in this she did not succeed. 
 To say that the feminine point of view "keeps 
 breaking in " would be to understate the case. 
 Whether she is dealing with politics or with philo- 
 sophy, the feminine point of view obtrudes itself on 
 almost every page. Only a woman's blind affection 
 could have made the career of Necker the pivot of 
 the history of revolutionary France ; only a woman 
 could have qualified one of Kant's great generalisa- 
 tions with the words, " Pour les ames sensibles." 
 
 The truth is that, in so far as Madame de 
 Stael wrote like a man, she wrote badly, not 
 thinking for herself, but reproducing what men 
 had told her. We have seen how she padded 
 Corinne with art criticisms which Schlegel 
 practically dictated. De V Allemagne- is full of 
 moral and metaphysical philosophy derived from 
 the same source. As a disquisition it has about 
 as much importance as an undergraduate's notes 
 of a lecture to which he has just listened. A 
 good deal of the lecture is no doubt accurately 
 transcribed ; much of the exposition of Kantianism, 
 for instance, may pass as a popular version of 
 the system. But the criticisms passed upon the 
 system, being sentimental and not philosophic, 
 show that its principles have not really been 
 grasped. The feminine point of view, in short, 
 breaks in and reminds the reader of the question 
 which Crabb Robinson addressed to Madame de 
 Stael at Weimar : " Madame, je me demande si 
 vous avez compris le veritable sens des mots." 
 
 281 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 In looking for the merits of the book, therefore, 
 we must give up the philosophy. 
 
 To a large extent, too, we must give up the 
 politics. Madame de Stael had a keen eye for 
 the obvious and the actual, but very little power 
 of perceiving a latent tendency. The provincialism 
 — one might almost say the parochialism — of 
 Germany leapt to her eyes. It was a country 
 without a capital — consequently without any single 
 literary or artistic centre dictating laws of taste. 
 Patriotism, in the French and English sense of 
 the word, was lacking, and so were men of action. 
 It was only in speculation that the German genius 
 was remarkable. 
 
 That was the superficial view of Germany 
 which almost any observer would have felt 
 warranted in taking at the time when Madame 
 de Stael visited Weimar and Berlin ; but much 
 had happened since then, and, to the discerning, 
 certain potentialities had been revealed. The 
 stricken field of Jena had awakened a good many 
 Germans from their dogmatic slumbers ; the 
 lesson of defeat had been learnt. Stein had set 
 to work to re-organise the Prussian army ; Korner 
 had sung his patriotic songs ; the spirit of Pan- 
 germanism had begun to stir, and was soon to find 
 its visible expression in the battle of the nations 
 at Leipzig. But Pangermanism was a develop- 
 ment which Madame de Stael did not foresee. 
 Judged by that test, again her work must be con- 
 demned as wanting in vision. 
 
 282 
 
Unflattering Picture of Germany 
 
 In truth, her real interests were not in either 
 metaphysical or political philosophy. When she 
 wrote of such matters, she wrote as one giving a 
 performance for which she had been carefully 
 coached. The personalities of politics were 
 always more to her than its principles ; and her 
 utterances were spontaneous, original, and acute 
 only when she discussed social and sentimental 
 questions : the rights and wrongs of her sex, the 
 manners and tone of good society, love, happiness, 
 marriage, and divorce. It is mainly, if not 
 entirely, in relation to these questions that her 
 picture of Germany is valuable. 
 
 For what reason the French censor found her 
 remarks on these matters objectionable it is 
 difficult at this date to see. The picture decidedly 
 is not one that vain Germans would be likely to 
 regard as flattering. Though they are credited 
 with solid qualities, they are denied all the graces 
 which make life agreeable. Their powers of con- 
 versation are held up to ridicule and contempt. 
 Talk, as distinguished from argument, is, Madame 
 de Stael maintains, impossible in a language 
 in which an unfinished sentence conveys no 
 meaning because the verb which gives the key 
 to the mystery has to be held in reserve. Social 
 intercourse, it is added, is made barbarous by the 
 rigidity of German etiquette. " Everyone is kept 
 in his place as if it were the post of duty ; " 
 whereas, in France, the salon had anticipated the 
 career in being open to the talents. The good 
 
 283 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 manners of the upper classes, in so far as these 
 are to be described as good, are by no means 
 diffused through the community ; the mercantile 
 classes are ignorant and coarse. And so forth, 
 till the impartial reader gathers the impression 
 that the German rather than the French censor 
 was the proper functionary to take offence. 
 
 On these matters, however, Madame de Stael 
 writes with a gusto which is still entertaining 
 because her comments are still largely true. She 
 holds our attention because she is not lecturing 
 but sounding the personal note ; and she sounds 
 that note even more emphatically when she treats 
 of sentimental themes. Nothing is more character- 
 istic than her insertion, in the midst of her examina- 
 tion of the various German systems of Ethics, of 
 a chapter entitled " De I'amour dans le mariage." 
 It was a subject on which she had begun to think 
 before she was married, and which continued to 
 haunt her long after she was left a widow, though 
 one suspects that the word " marriage " became a 
 form of speech employed to describe her relations 
 not with her husband but with her lovers. 
 
 *' In an unhappy marriage," she bursts out, 
 " there is a violence of distress surpassing all 
 other sufferlno's in the world. A woman's whole 
 soul depends upon the conjugal tie. To struggle 
 against fate alone, to journey to the grave with- 
 out a friend to support you or to regret you, is an 
 isolation of which the deserts of Arabia give but 
 a faint and feeble idea ; and when all the treasure 
 
 284 
 
Sorrowful News 
 
 of your youth has been given in vain, when you 
 can no longer hope that the reflection of these 
 first rays will shine upon the end of your life, 
 when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you 
 of the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and 
 colourless as a livid spectre that precedes the night, 
 your heart revolts, and you feel that you have 
 been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth." 
 
 A passionate complaint truly, and one which 
 perhaps comes strangely from the woman who 
 had deserted her first husband for M. de Narbonne, 
 and while living with her second husband con- 
 tinued to write love letters to Benjamin Constant ! 
 And yet, in a sense, absolutely sincere, being, as 
 it were, a summary of all the wrongs which she 
 had suffered at the hands of all her lovers ! 
 
 To those who met Madame de Stael in London, 
 however, it may well have appeared that, what- 
 ever her.griefs, she suffered chiefly on paper. Two 
 items of sorrowful news reached her. She heard 
 of the death of her second son, Albert, whose 
 head was actually sliced off in a duel with a 
 Cossack officer ; and she also heard of the death 
 of her first lover, M. de Narbonne, from typhus 
 fever contracted in a garrison town. But she 
 was none the less delighted to be the lion of the 
 season, succeeding in that character to Maria 
 Edgeworth, who had succeeded to Lord Byron. 
 Miss Berry met her at dinner on the evening of 
 the day on which the news of Narbonne's death 
 had arrived. "One must acknowledge," is the 
 
 285 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 sardonic comment in her Journal, "that one could 
 not lose an old lover more gaily, as it was said 
 of Charles the Seventh of his kingdom." 
 
 Her losses certainly kept her in seclusion no 
 more than did her daughter's attack of the 
 measles. Society was circumscribed in those days. 
 Within its limits she went everywhere and met 
 everybody, straying occasionally beyond its limits 
 to meet the men and women of letters whom the 
 circle did not include. All the memoirs, diaries, 
 and letters of the period are full of her name ; 
 the commentators are unanimous in paying tribute 
 to the copious eloquence of her conversation. 
 " She talks folios," is Byron's verdict ; and the 
 references to her in Miss Berry's Journal are mostly 
 to the same effect. " Madame de Stael," she says, 
 " came, talked, questioned, and went away again 
 like a flash of lightning, or rather like a torrent ; " 
 and she writes, about a month later, to Sir William 
 Gell : "You have just come in time to save 
 Madame de Stael's life, who certainly would have 
 ^(7^;'^^ herself to death in another week." Similarly, 
 to Lady Hardwicke, who complains that she has lost 
 her voice, she offers the consolation that "there 
 cannot certainly be a more convenient visitor to 
 a dumb woman than Madame de Stael ; " while a 
 letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth contains the 
 remark : " The Stael left Richmond much about 
 the same time that we left Twickenham, and 
 wherever she is, there will society be also — if it is 
 to be had within ten miles a la ronde. Except 
 
 286 
 
Social Triumphs 
 
 during her visit to Bowood, and now that she is 
 for a week at Middleton, she has been constantly 
 in town, giving very agreeable dinners and soirees, 
 with two or three women and half a dozen men — 
 dont elU se charge toute seule." 
 
 The list of the eminent personages whose 
 acquaintance Madame de Stael made or renewed 
 might easily be extended to fill several pages. 
 She entered society through one door with Lady 
 Jersey and through another door with Sir James 
 Mackintosh and Crabb Robinson. At Sir Hum- 
 phry Davy's house she dined with Sheridan, 
 Whitbread, and Grattan. Visiting Lord Lans- 
 downe's country seat, she met Etienne Dumont 
 and Sir Samuel Romilly. As she was anxious to 
 know Godwin, a part)'' was arranged for the pur- 
 pose. Lord Liverpool entertained her. The 
 Duchess of Devonshire took her to pay a call in 
 her barouche, and she "related for nearly an hour 
 the works that she thought of writing. " S he is more 
 than once accused of " monopolising " Curran ; 
 and Coleridge, as we have seen, compelled her to 
 listen to him. Byron took a journey of sixty 
 miles in order to be presented, and relates that 
 "she justified what I had heard," but "was still 
 a mortal and made long speeches," adding that 
 she preached politics to the politicians, and that 
 "the sovereign himself was not exempt from this 
 flow of eloquence." Other names which one 
 meets in the various chronicles of her sojourn 
 are those of the Dukes of Sussex and Gloucester, 
 
 287 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Lords Stafford and Harrowby, Lady Holland, 
 Wilberforce, Brougham, Malthus, Rogers, whom 
 she ranked next to Scott among the English 
 poets of the day, Croker of the Quarterly, and 
 Bowles, the parson sonnetteer. The most jealous 
 of her enemies could not have denied the com- 
 pleteness of her social triumph. 
 
 Nor was it in society alone that her personality 
 made its impression. Its influence was exerted 
 through her books no less than through her 
 conversation ; and Crabb Robinson tells a striking 
 story of the case of the daughter of a country 
 clergyman, whose perusal of a translation of 
 Delphine and Corinne " so powerfully affected her 
 in her secluded life as quite to turn her brain." 
 The young woman wrote to the author, asking 
 to be allowed to become her amanuensis, and, 
 not satisfied with the formal refusal of her 
 services conveyed through a private secretary, 
 found a means of being presented. She threw 
 herself at Madame de Stael's feet, and repeated 
 her request, but was admonished on the folly 
 of her desire. " Domestic life," Madame de Stael 
 assured her, " affords more permanent happiness 
 than any that fame can give. You have a father — 
 I have none. You have a home — I was led to travel 
 because I was driven from mine. Be content with 
 your lot; if you knew mine, you would not desire it." 
 
 With these words the petitioner was dismissed. 
 " The cure," Crabb Robinson solemnly adds, 
 "was complete. The young woman returned 
 
 288 
 
Still Bound by Sentimental Chains 
 
 to her father, became more steadily industrious, 
 and, without ever speaking of her adventure with 
 Madame de Stael, silently profited by it. She 
 is now," he concludes, "living a life of great 
 respectability, and her friends consider that her 
 cure was wrought by the only hand by which 
 it could have been effected." 
 
 Evidently Madame de Stael's days throughout 
 that London season and for some months after- 
 wards were well filled. How far she enjoyed 
 the gaieties in which she participated, and how 
 far she merely sought in them deception and escape 
 from the disappointments of the realities, one 
 dares not venture to decide. All that one can 
 say with absolute certainty is that, in the midst 
 of her dissipations and her studie.^;% Madame 
 de Stael did not quite shake herself 'free from 
 the sentimental chains that bound her, She 
 moved in a blaze of social success and literary 
 glory ; she was storing up knowledge for the 
 purpose of writing a great work on the British 
 Constitution — a work which she is said to have 
 asked Murray to commission for a fee of . six 
 thousand guineas. She was attended by her 
 husband, whom it was her duty as well as her 
 privilege to love. But, even so, Benjamin Con- 
 stant, to whom she had meant to say farewell 
 for ever, was never for long out of her thoughts. 
 She had said her last good-byes to him, as she sup- 
 posed, in November 1812 ; and already, in August 
 1 81 3, she was corresponding with him again. 
 T 289 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Benjamin Constant at Gottingen — His intrigue on behalf of the 
 Crown Prince of Sweden — It comes to nothing, and he goes to 
 Paris — Madame de Stael's letters to him — Rocca is not to be 
 " a hindrance " — Napoleon having abdicated, Madame de Stael 
 goes to Paris. 
 
 At the time when Madame de Stael was the 
 flashing comet of a London season, Benjamin 
 Constant was boring himself to extinction in 
 small German towns, dining, as we have seen, 
 " with all the Hardenbergs in the world," over- 
 whelmed rather than sustained by the sweetness 
 and goodness of Charlotte. He knew nothing 
 of the marriage with Rocca, whom he supposed 
 merely to have succeeded to his own post as 
 lover. "H61as! chere Albertine!" had been the 
 exclamation wrung from him by the farewell 
 letter ; and then he turned to seek such con- 
 solation as he could derive from his social 
 environment and his book about Religion. 
 
 One of his neighbours was his first wife, but 
 his heart did not go back to her ; he merely 
 remarks, in his letters, upon the curious tastes 
 which she has developed with the years. " She 
 keeps," he writes to his aunt, "one hundred and 
 twenty birds, two squirrels, thirty-six cats, eight 
 dogs, and a number of other miscellaneous 
 
 290 
 
Benjamin Constant at Gottingen 
 
 animals. They all live in a large apartment 
 adjoining her bedroom, and she has to employ 
 three women to keep the menagerie in a state 
 of passable cleanliness. Besides this, the small 
 boys of the town amuse themselves by throwing 
 all the stray cats and dogs they can find into her 
 garden, and she takes care of them all until she 
 can find a home for them." 
 
 Another letter of about the same date contains 
 an interesting comment on some amorous intrigue 
 of no special importance of which he has heard. 
 "What strikes me in this story," he remarks, 
 **is the utter failure of great public events to 
 disturb our social and conjugal habits. The world 
 is on fire ; men kill and ruin one another. All the 
 nations are threatened, and all the individuals are 
 trying their best to keep afloat in the midst of the 
 general shipwreck ; and yet women still find time to 
 be unfaithful to their husbands, and — what is more 
 remarkable — the husbands find time to be jealous." 
 
 The book is also mentioned. One day the 
 author worked at it from six o'clock in the 
 morning until six o'clock at night. But little 
 progress is made, and the blam.e is thrown upon 
 the Gottingen Library. It "is Hke an ocean in 
 which one loses oneself. Hardly have I read 
 what seems indispensable for my purpose, than I 
 discover something which it is still more indispen- 
 sable to read. If I stayed here for twenty years I 
 should be no farther on than I am to-day." All 
 the letters, in short, are the letters of a man who 
 
 291 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 is eating his heart out with boredom — who feels 
 more and more the need of active occupation. 
 
 Presently the active occupation was found. 
 The end of Napoleon's dominion was clearly at 
 hand. Benjamin's letters trace the course of his 
 downfall in the form of an allegory, designed to 
 deceive the censor. The Emperor is referred to 
 as Jacqueline, and his battles are called lawsuits. 
 Jacqueline is losing her cases, and is likely to be 
 sent home to her village. Napoleon, that is to say, 
 is losing his battles, and will have to abdicate. And 
 what then ? It is not at all certain that a Bourbon 
 Restoration will be acceptable to France. There 
 is room, at all events, for an alternative intrigue. 
 
 So an intrigue was set on foot — a poor little 
 intrigue, of which the historians hardly take cognis- 
 ance, and about which we find little information 
 elsewhere than in \}i\^ Journal I ntivte. From this, 
 however, we gather that Bernadotte, now the 
 Crown Prince of Sweden, thought that it might 
 be possible to secure the succession to the French 
 throne for himself or his son, and that Benjamin 
 Constant was asked, and consented, to help. He 
 hesitated, it is true. " I must not forget," he 
 writes, "the natural timidity of my disposition, 
 and I must not act like a lunatic to console myself 
 for having- acted like a fool." But the hesitation 
 was overcome, and Charlotte raised no objections, 
 but was willing to stay quietly at home while her 
 husband went forth in pursuit of adventures. 
 
 The language in which the Diary deals with 
 292 
 
Collapse of the Swedish Intrigue 
 
 the matter is rather cryptic. The Swedish Prince 
 figures there as " Le Bearnais," the Bernadotte 
 family belonging to the department of B^arn. 
 He came to see Benjamin, and invited him to 
 dinner, showed him some '' very propitious " letters, 
 made a further appointment, and departed. " Our 
 plans," notes Benjamin, "are developing;" but 
 he adds : " I must make haste if I am to be in at 
 the death." The Prince confers upon him the 
 Order of the Polar Star — "which gives me 
 pleasure ; " and then he travels night and day to 
 meet the Prince at Liege, where all his promising 
 schemes collapse, as he relates in enigmatic sen- 
 tences. When he tries to see the Prince, he 
 hears that he is ill, and perceives that the Prince's 
 attendants are putting obstacles in his way. The 
 Prince makes a speech to the French prisoners, 
 and is not well received. Events meanwhile are 
 moving fast : Talleyrand is active ; Louis xviii. 
 is proclaimed; and the Bearnais returns to Paris 
 without even having set foot in France. But 
 Benjamin goes on to Paris, accompanied by 
 Auguste de Stael, whom he has picked up at 
 Louvain, leaving his wife in Germany. 
 
 That is the whole history of the Swedish 
 intrigue ; and there has rarely been an intrigue 
 more foolish and futile. Madame de Stael, 
 however, heard of it, and was interested, and it 
 was indirectly the cause of the renewal of her 
 relations with her lover. A letter to Schlegel 
 shows how closely she was watching events. 
 
 293 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 "What," she asks, "is Benjamin about, and is 
 your Prince making use of him? He owes me 
 something for the zeal with which I sing his praises 
 and defend him against the envy of others." And 
 at the same time she was exchanging letters with 
 Benjamin himself. One of his letters to her is de- 
 scribed as being " more passionate than in the days 
 when he loved me most ; " and if we had the whole 
 correspondence before us, we should probably be 
 able to say the same of some of her letters to him. 
 A few of the letters were printed, long ago, in 
 Strodtmann's Dickter-profile und Character-kopfe ; 
 others were quite recently published by permission 
 of the Baroness de Nolde, great-granddaughter^ 
 of Madame de Constant, in the American Critic. 
 They contain a few, but not very many, political 
 allusions. We read, for instance, that Lord 
 Liverpool considered the Swedish Prince's ad- 
 dress to the French, of which he had seen a 
 draft, "the finest thing that he had seen in his 
 life." There is talk, too, about books and 
 publishers. We read of the great success of De 
 V Allemagne, and Madame de Stael offers to 
 arrange with Murray for an English edition 
 of the much - talked - of work on Religions. 
 Albertine's name also occurs again and again. 
 Benjamin, we infer, never wrote without sending 
 the child an affectionate messag-e which called for 
 a reply. But the chief note of the letters was 
 that of lamentation for lost happiness. 
 
 . ^ By her first husband. 
 294 
 
Lamentation for Lost Happiness 
 
 "Benjamin," we read in one of them, "you 
 have destroyed my life ! For ten years no day 
 has gone by without suffering on your account. 
 How I loved you! Let us leave all that alone, 
 as it is so cruel — and yet I shall never be able to 
 forgive you, as I have never ceased to suffer. 
 . . . Our life is as a house built on the sand and 
 full of weariness — nothing but sorrow endures." 
 
 Another striking passage is : "I do not wish 
 to die without seeing you again, without having 
 spoken to you as I used to speak ; but I should 
 wish to die after, because you have hurt me to the 
 depths of my soul, and you will wound me again. 
 Adieu, adieu, I am always as I have been, and 
 you can still tell yourself that I have shed tears 
 only on the death of my unfortunate child and on 
 your letters ; the rest is a cloud, but real life is pain." 
 
 In one of the letters Madame de Stael writes 
 that she is in very poor health, and may die at 
 any time. One may suspect the appeal ad 
 misericordiam, but the same report reached her 
 friends at Geneva. "Her stomach gets worse 
 and worse every day," writes Madame Rilliet- 
 Huber to Henri Meister at a date at which 
 we know her to have been dining out almost daily. 
 Indisposition, however, by no means diverted her 
 thoughts from her old lover. She invited not only 
 him but his wife to visit her, promising that " I shall 
 in no wise accuse her of what I found it too cruel to 
 accuse you of yourself in former days. " She assured 
 him at the same time that he might renew his rela- 
 tions with her without fear of the wrath of Rocca. 
 
 295 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " M. de Rocca will behave to you as he does to 
 M. de Montmorency. Our mutual attachment is 
 formed for life ; he helped me in my misfortune 
 with such noble courage and such tenderness of 
 heart that I shall never forget it. He has become 
 another being, and you will recognise neither his 
 manners nor his conversation. Do not, then, 
 think of him as a hindrance. . . . It is not for a 
 week, but for life, that we should settle in the 
 same place ; but will you do it ? " 
 
 Thus, in these fragments of a striking corre- 
 spondence, we see Madame de Stael form her 
 plans. She is strong enough, she thinks, to tear 
 her way through entanglements — clever enough 
 to thrid the mazes of the most complicated senti- 
 mental situations. Since she means well, nothing 
 that she does can be wrong. She will be equally 
 kind to all her lovers, reckoning her husband as 
 one of them. They shall form a happy family, 
 taking it in turns to enjoy the greater share of her 
 favours and the chief place in her regard. For 
 the time being Rocca must give way to Benjamin ; 
 he is good and amenable, and he will not mind. 
 
 The course of public events, as it happened, 
 was favourable to her purpose. The Allies had 
 beaten Napoleon at Leipzig ; they had outflanked 
 him and marched round him in the French cam- 
 paign of the early months of 1814 ; they were in 
 Paris, and it was open to the exiles to return. 
 Madame de Stael would doubtless have returned 
 in any case. She who, sitting by the blue waters 
 
 296 
 
The Return to Paris 
 
 of Lake Leman, had sighed for the gutter of 
 the Rue du Bac, could not conceivably have 
 resisted that temptation. Considerations of 
 business as well as of pleasure drew her thither ; 
 for now that the Emperor had abdicated, there 
 was more than a chance that the debt of the 
 French Treasury to Necker might be paid. 
 Above all, however, the lover to whom she had 
 said so many last good-byes was there ; and she 
 felt that she must hasten to him, even as, long 
 ago, in the days of her youth, she had hastened 
 to Mickleham to meet M. de Narbonne. 
 
 " She made me some extraordinary con- 
 fidences," says Miss Berry, who continued to 
 see her frequently until her departure. We do 
 not know what the confidences were, but we can 
 guess, for though Madame de Stael concealed 
 her marriage, she never made a mystery of her 
 love affairs. Miss Berry, we gather, did not 
 take the confessions very seriously. " Emotion," 
 she says, "is not what she excites nor what she 
 feels except momentarily. She does not dwell 
 long enough upon anything ; life, characters, and 
 even feelings pass before her eyes like a magic 
 lantern. She spends herself upon paper, and 
 runs through the world to see all, to hear all, and 
 to say all — to excite herself, and to give it all 
 back to the world, and to the society from whence 
 she has drawn it." " Now she is gone," she adds 
 in a letter, "while / am regretting her, she will 
 never think more of me until we meet again." 
 
 297 ..^- 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Perhaps not. Her mind, as we have seen, 
 was occupied with more engrossing thoughts. 
 She expected much, though, as the event proved, 
 disappointment was in store for her. 
 
 It may be that her rich imagination had 
 coloured that letter in which she told Schlegel 
 that Benjamin wrote "more passionately than 
 when he loved me most." It may be, on the 
 other hand, that Benjamin's expressions exceeded 
 the ardour of his inward feelings. The Diary, at 
 all events, expresses no joy at the meeting, but indi- 
 cates rather that, in so far as he loves her at all, 
 it is not for her own sake but for her daughter's. 
 
 " I dine with Don Pedro, and attend a recep- 
 tion at the great Chancellor's. Madame de Stael 
 arrives. I go to see her, and find her altered, 
 pale, and thin. The interview passed without 
 any display of emotion. Albertlne is charming — 
 as bright and clever as can be. How I wish that 
 I could pass my life with her ! " 
 
 And then again : — 
 
 " Dinner at Gerando's with Ancillon, a man of 
 wit. Pass the evening at Madame de Stael's. 
 She is altogether changed, absent-minded, almost 
 stiff in her manner, thinking only of herself, 
 listening little, and interesting herself in nothing." 
 
 In the letters, too, we find the same note sounded. 
 " My relations, if relations I have, with Madame 
 de Stael," he tells his cousin Rosalie, "are more 
 than simple. I pass weeks without ever seeing 
 
 298 
 
The Little Rift within the Lute 
 
 her alone, and days without seeing her at all." 
 And in another letter to the same cousin we find 
 this remarkable passage : — 
 
 " Madame de Stael is living, as you know, in 
 a country house near Paris. As she is at a 
 distance from me, I see her less than if she were 
 at Paris. It is true, of course, that her charm and 
 her celebrity attract to her house all the dis- 
 tinguished strangers, both men and women, who 
 are here. But a decline of one's interest affects 
 one very much in the same way as a diminution 
 of one's fortune. A man who would think an 
 income of a thousand crowns wealth if he were 
 penniless, regards it as poverty if he has had an 
 income of ten thousand crowns in his time. 
 Similarly those who have once been lovers relapse 
 into mutual indifference when their affection for 
 each other is only like that which they feel for 
 people in general. Besides, I am a little angry 
 with her, for I cannot speak to any woman in 
 Paris without her spreading the report that I am 
 in love — which is ridiculous at my age, and an 
 inconvenience to me in my public position." 
 
 There, clearly, is the little rift within the lute. 
 Widening, it does not, unhappily, make the 
 music mute, but imparts to it a harsh and grating 
 sound. To indifference there succeeds an open 
 quarrel — a very ugly quarrel about money matters. 
 There was a time, as has been related, when 
 Madame de Stael deliberately lent money to 
 Benjamin Constant, in order to make it difficult 
 for him to break off his relations with her. When 
 
 299 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 he wanted to repay her, she refused to accept 
 repayment, and would not even help him in fixing 
 the amount of the debt. The settlement at 
 which they finally arrived was only the result of 
 his unflinching insistence. He practically forced 
 upon her a mortgage on some of his property, 
 repayable, together with whatever interest should 
 have accrued, out of his estate, at his death. But 
 now, of a sudden, we see Madame de Stael trying 
 to upset that settlement and demanding cash. 
 
 Her letters demanding the cash are included in 
 the Critics collection ; and it is very painful to 
 read them. The woman who of old had loved — 
 and perhaps still longed to love — takes in them 
 the tone of an indignant dun. Benjamin's con- 
 duct, she declares, " passes all that I believed of 
 the human heart." *' What a man ! " she exclaims. 
 "A man capable of a cowardice which is worse 
 than a theft ! " She will only communicate with 
 him through the medium of her solicitor ; pro- 
 ceedings shall be instantly begun. 
 
 And so forth. It is a dispute for which one 
 instinctively seeks a motive other than pecuniary, 
 and the key to the mystery is the complaint to 
 Rosalie that Madame de Stael cannot see Ben- 
 jamin speak to another woman without spreading 
 the report that he is in love with her. The 
 report was not only circulated ; it was a true 
 report. Benjamin was in love — head over ears 
 in love — with Madame de Stael's bosom friend, 
 Madame Recamier. Hinc illce lacrimcB. 
 
 300 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Benjamin Constant in love with Madame Recamier — His account 
 of the passion in his Diary — Finding that he loves in vain, he 
 rejoins his wife. 
 
 Napoleon's sister, Caroline, Queen of Naples, 
 had asked Madame Recamier to find a good 
 journalist who would write a pamphlet setting 
 forth her husband's claims to consideration in 
 that rearrangement of the map of Europe which 
 the Allies were negotiating at Vienna. Madame 
 Recamier at once thought of Benjamin Constant, 
 whose pamphlet against the Emperor had made 
 a great stir ; and as Benjamin Constant was no 
 ordinary .journalist to be hired or bought, she 
 flirted with him. For a season he was at least 
 allowed to call her Juliette and to write to her 
 several times a day ; and for the sake of those 
 privileges, and in the hope of others which he 
 did not obtain, he duly composed the pamphlet, 
 and even returned the proffered fee of 20,000 
 francs. We have only to look at the Diary to 
 see how suddenly the passion seized him. 
 
 " I pass the evening with Madame Recamier, 
 and this woman, by whose side I lived in 
 Switzerland, and whom I have seen so often and 
 in so many circumstances without her making the 
 
 301 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 faintest impression upon me, now, all of a sudden, 
 inspires me with violent sentiments. Am I mad, 
 or only silly ? But the feeling, I hope, will pass 
 away." 
 
 " Alas ! The feeling does not pass away ; the 
 passionate fever which is only too familiar to me, 
 has invaded my heart and obtained complete 
 dominion over it. It is all up with work, with 
 politics, with literature. The reign of Juliette 
 begins. It is a circumstance, apparently of the 
 most trivial character that has thrown me into 
 this irresistible whirlwind of the heart and mind 
 — a matter of advice to be given, and something 
 to be written for the Murats, who have asked 
 Juliette (who is under obligations to them) to 
 apply to me. Her desire to do what they want, 
 the seductions which she has thought it her duty 
 to employ, and the confidential conferences thus 
 necessitated, have turned my head. I feel that it 
 is so. And yet I am aware of the danger to 
 which I am exposing myself, for I have to do 
 with an avowed coquette. But the fascination 
 of the difficulty to be overcome leads me on." 
 
 " My life is a torment through the inconceivable 
 agitation into which this woman throws me. It 
 is making me grow old before my time. I pay 
 calls here and there, etc. Any device is good 
 for killing time ; my blood is at fever heat. I 
 have seen her alone. Never was her manner 
 more coquettish — that is her charm. It is im- 
 possible for me to tell whether I have made the 
 slightest progress in her heart ; she does not 
 even seem to be sorry for me. This evening, 
 
 302 
 
Madame R^camier's Flirtation 
 
 after she had given me an appointment and 
 failed to keep it, I ahnost choked to see how little 
 regret she showed. I had to leave her, and 
 I fell into convulsions in my suffering and my 
 passionate desire. 
 
 "What has become of you, peaceful life of 
 Gottingen ? " 
 
 " I wanted to make her uneasy by my absence ; 
 but I could not resist her, and I went to see her. 
 I perceive that she becomes every day more cold 
 and more reasonable. She inspires me with 
 horror. I would never see her again if I thought 
 that that would trouble her. I would give ten 
 years of my life to make her suffer the half of 
 what I am suffering." 
 
 B 
 
 To despair succeeds exaltation, in spite of 
 enjamin's discovery that he has a rival. 
 
 " She gave me an appointment, and I ran to 
 keep it. My sufferings moved her. She promised 
 that she would often see me alone, and that she 
 would listen to me. She spoke to me affectionately 
 of my interests and my career. Nevertheless, 
 she made herself so agreeable, in my presence, 
 with M. de Forbin,^ that I had to seek an inter- 
 view with him afterwards and arrange that we 
 will fight to-morrow." 
 
 " What with Juliette's distress, and her tender 
 promises on condition that I do not fight, and 
 the efforts of the seconds, the matter is arranged, 
 
 ^ An einigri who had fought against his country, and was pre- 
 sently to be made a peer of France. He and Benjamin Constant 
 fought a duel, as the result of some press polemics, in 1822. 
 
 303 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 though we are both resolved to assail each other 
 again on the smallest ground of offence." 
 
 " I saw her again to-day. Please God, I will 
 not boast. I am too much afraid of some sledge- 
 hammer blow. But I do believe that I have 
 made a little progress. She believed that I was 
 leaving her, and had written to complain. She 
 admits that I love more passionately than anyone, 
 and only doubts the durability of my attachment. 
 She almost confessed to a fear that it would not 
 last long." 
 
 The attachment, at any rate, lasted longer 
 than the lady's preferential smiles, for the next 
 entry is : — 
 
 " My stars ! I give it up. She has made me 
 pass a diabolical day. She is an empty-headed 
 bird, a cloud, without memory, without dis- 
 crimination, without preferences. Her beauty 
 having made her the object of continual homage, 
 the romantic language to which she has listened 
 has given her an appearance of sensibility which 
 is only skin deep. I never find her in the 
 morning the same person to whom I said good- 
 night the evening before. Her memory is so 
 defective that the pleasure which she has derived 
 from one intimate tete-a-tHe never suggests to her 
 that she should seek an opportunity for another. 
 She is as kind to everybody as she is to me. 
 
 " After this attack of despair and anger I calmed 
 down, and, finding Forbin with her in the 
 evening, I opened my heart to Juliette in his 
 presence. This established confidential relations 
 between the two aspirants to her favours. We 
 
 304 
 
A Strange Confidante 
 
 both proceeded to picture our love to her — with 
 the result that I ended by bursting into a mad 
 fit of laughter, 
 
 " I must have done with it, and the sooner the 
 better." 
 
 So Benjamin tried to argue himself out of his 
 mad passion, and selected a strange confidante 
 to help him. 
 
 " Thinking that I might detach myself from 
 Juliette by a cold process of reasoning, I told the 
 whole story of my mad passion to Albertine, 
 though without mentioning the lady's name. I 
 admit that this was absurd, and that I was wrong. 
 Will that cure my foolishness, and shall I continue 
 occupations so shamelessly puerile for a man 
 like me ? But alas ! she holds my heart in her 
 claws, and never was madness more inopportune." 
 
 It was inopportune because Benjamin's political 
 writings were attracting a great deal of notice. 
 Distinction was in store for him if he chose to 
 have it, as was made clear to him by the compli- 
 ments paid to him whenever he dined out. On 
 the other hand, Juliette was making it clear that 
 she intended to offer him nothing more serious 
 than her friendship. The next passages in the 
 Diary show that conclusion demonstrated to him. 
 
 " It seems silly to venture nothing with a woman 
 with whom one is very much in love, and with 
 whom one is often tite-a-tUe at two o'clock in 
 the morning. I must persevere." 
 U 305 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " I have an appointment with Juliette for this 
 evening, and I prepare a written composition in 
 order to arouse her emotions. It was a success. 
 She was really moved; there was more abandon 
 in her manner than ever. And yet I got nothing 
 for my pains. There is a barrier there which I 
 perceive, and which paralyses my endeavours." 
 
 "It is all over. Beneath her manner there is 
 nothing but the most complete indifference. 
 Love is not to be looked for? Friendship? 
 That is hardly worth while with a soul so dead 
 as hers. I must go away from her, or I must 
 cure myself. But I have been shouting that into 
 my ears for the last ten months, and I feel that 
 I shall do neither the one thing nor the other." 
 
 The cure, indeed, was not to be found yet 
 awhile. On the contrary, a fresh gleam of hope 
 began to shine upon the lover. Juliette had been 
 cruel, and had left a letter unanswered, so that 
 Benjamin was reduced to tears and despair. 
 But he had met Madame Krudner, who had 
 promised to plead for him. "Who knows," he 
 exclaims, "if the heart of Juliette will not be 
 opened to me when attacked by this ally ? " 
 
 Madame Krudner was, in truth, a strange 
 ally in such a situation. She had been in her 
 time a fashionable beauty, a woman of letters, 
 and a frivolous and unfaithful wife. Her novel 
 Valirie had appeared at about the same date as 
 Madame de Stael's Delphine, and had been only 
 less successful. Its theme, like that of Delphine^ 
 
 306 
 
Attracted to Mysticism 
 
 was autobiographical, and it confided to the world 
 the author's passionate attachment for a man who 
 was not her husband. The frailty, however, no 
 less than the confession, belonged to the past. 
 Madame Krudner had found religion, and was 
 the most conspicuous of the mystics of the 
 day. In that capacity she exerted a remarkable 
 influence over the Russian Emperor, who is said 
 to have been especially amenable to such influence, 
 because his mistress had lately forsaken him for 
 his aide-de-camp, and is said to have inspired the 
 idea of the Holy Alliance. It was in that character 
 also that she appealed to Benjamin Constant. 
 
 Religion had always interested Benjamin. He 
 had begun, as we have seen, to write a book 
 about religion on the backs of playing-cards in the 
 drawing-room of that Madame de Charriere whom 
 he treated so badly ; and he continued to work 
 at it, in the intervals of his amours, for a period 
 of forty years, adding and altering almost until 
 the day of his death. Moreover, religion for him 
 had always meant mysticism rather than moral 
 obligation. He had encountered mysticism at 
 Geneva, where a mystic missionary was once 
 brought before the magistrates and charged with 
 paying excessive attentions to the ladies of his 
 congregation, "under the pretence that he was 
 inspired by God." At Lausanne the Chevalier 
 de Langallerie had almost persuaded him to 
 become a mystic. So that the ground was well 
 prepared, and we read without surprise : — 
 
 307 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " Madame de Krudner sent for me. Her con- 
 versation did me good. She was adorable in her 
 compassion for the love which tortures me, and 
 promised her help in linking Juliette's soul with 
 mine. At the same time she gave me a manu- 
 script for Juliette. I read it. There are no new 
 ideas in it, but it is touchingly true, and some of 
 the passages penetrated to the depths of my soul. 
 There, yes, there lies truth. I feel that it is 
 so. All my passionate sentiments are subdued. 
 O powerful and good God, complete my cure." 
 
 " Madame de Krudner gave me a prayer to 
 write out, and it made me melt into tears. What 
 an amount of good that woman's influence does 
 me ! I saw Juliette again, and was gentle and 
 calm, but I fancy she is not very prone to religious 
 ideas. She loses herself altogether in the coquetry 
 which she makes it her business to practise, 
 and in her pleasure or distress at tbe pain which 
 she causes the three or four aspirants surround- 
 ing her. Finally she is willing to do a little 
 good when it is not too much trouble, and sets 
 the mass above everything, sighing sighs which 
 she believes come from her soul, though their real 
 meaning is that she is bored." 
 
 "I have seen Juliette again, and — miracle of 
 miracles — she wants to find religion. Madame 
 de Krudner triumphs, and hopes to succeed in 
 uniting us spiritually. I prayed with Juliette." 
 
 A good beginning, but quickly followed by dis- 
 appointment. Neither love nor religion fulfilled 
 the high expectations thus hastily formed of them. 
 First it is the collapse of religion that is noted. 
 
 308 
 
Collapse of Religion and of Love 
 
 " Spent the evening with Madame de Krudner. 
 There are certainly some good things among 
 these people's beliefs and ideas, but they go too 
 far with their miracles and their descriptions of 
 Paradise, of which they speak as they might of 
 their own bedrooms." 
 
 And then we read of the collapse of love. 
 
 "Alas! Madame de Krudner was not a true 
 prophet, for Juliette has never treated me more 
 shamefully. Yesterday she made four appoint- 
 ments with me, and did not keep any of them ; 
 and, in the evening, I found her the ne plus ultra 
 of coquetry, perfidy, lying, and ; hypocrisy. But 
 Madame de Krudner has given me strength to 
 bear that and to calm myself. It is much. I will 
 once more become a serious man, recover my 
 strength of mind, and resume my pen. I feel 
 that, and I wish it." 
 
 The end is assuredly near, if it has not actually 
 come, when a lover can write like that ; but the 
 severest blow to Benjamin's passion must have 
 been that struck during the Hundred Days. He 
 was one of the last of the champions of the Bour- 
 bons who remained at Paris to defy the Corsican 
 — "this cunning half-barbarian," as he called him. 
 He was still insulting the Emperor in thQ Journal 
 des Debdts after his arrival at Fontainebleau ; 
 and he has left it on record that he did so for no 
 other reason than to please Madame R^camier. 
 But Madame Recamier was still unkind. 
 
 " How beautiful you looked, standing before 
 309 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 your door," he wrote to her, "like a white angel 
 ascending to heaven, and illuminating with celestial 
 splendour the darkness of the earth. But," he 
 added, " angels have a heart. They love, and it 
 touches them to be loved." And then, having 
 written that, he abandoned his plans for flight 
 to America, accepted the overtures that were 
 made to him, and gave in his allegiance to 
 Napoleon, who nominated him Councillor of 
 State. *' My love persists," he writes ; and the 
 correspondence certainly persisted. Letters were 
 still .being exchanged for some time after the 
 Waterloo debacle ; but they grew less frequent 
 and more formal. Such affection as Madame 
 Rdcamier had bestowed upon Benjamin Constant 
 was transferred to others, and ultimately to Chateau- 
 briand ; and Benjamin, on his part, ceasing to be 
 afflicted, went to Brussels to meet his wife. 
 
 Madame Constant had travelled 150 leagues in 
 mid-winter on "frightful roads" to join him. 
 Informing Madame R^camier of her arrival, her 
 husband adds, as it were, a testimonial to her 
 merits : " She is an excellent person, with a very 
 loving heart, a very noble soul, and an integrity 
 of character and an honesty which are my admira- 
 tion." Then, changing the subject, he proceeds 
 to retrospects and reproaches : " When I consider 
 how little advantage women have derived from 
 loving me, I think you were very wise not to do 
 so ; though I would congratulate you more warmly 
 if it had cost you a greater effort to refrain. The 
 
 31Q 
 
An Interesting Forecast 
 
 only wrong that you have done me was to desire 
 that I should love you — a weakness that lasted 
 five days. I can speak to you on the subject 
 without bitterness because the pain is past." 
 
 It had not passed, however, without leaving 
 traces behind. The correspondence did not cease ; 
 it did not even cease to be [frequent. From 
 London, where Benjamin and Charlotte spent 
 several months after leaving Brussels, letters 
 continued to be despatched, relating ostensibly 
 to various little matters of business, but couched 
 in language unusual in business communications. 
 The most interesting passage is the writer's fore- 
 cast — so soon to be belied — of the life that he 
 will live on his return to Paris. ** I shall work 
 there," he declares, ** at matters quite unconnected 
 with politics. I shall not go into Society, for I 
 hate it ; and I shall await the end of a life which 
 promises me no further satisfaction, but which I 
 should like to finish in tranquillity, far removed 
 from strangers, giving to the person whose destiny 
 I have taken in charge, and who is an angel in 
 her affection and her goodness, a happiness which 
 I shall try to pretend to share." 
 
 311 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The Constants in London — The publication oiAdolphe — The place 
 of Adolphe in French literature. 
 
 Benjamin Constant was well received in London, 
 though some of the leaders of English Society 
 declined the acquaintance of Madame Constant on 
 account of her double divorce. Very likely that 
 was one of the reasons why she complained, as 
 she repeatedly did, that the English climate was 
 unsuitable for her health. The Diary notes that 
 her " equivocal position " was a cause of embarrass- 
 ment and annoyance. No details are given, 
 however, and that branch of the subject may be 
 passed over. A more interesting entry is this : — 
 
 " I have read my novel to various friends. It 
 has a great success. I am going to have it 
 printed. They are giving me seventy louis 
 for it." 
 
 The reference was, of course, to 'Adolphe-\- 
 the romance, written in 1807, in which the author 
 had promised himself that he w^ould tell the story 
 of his life. He finished it, the Diary tells us, in 
 a fortnight ; and it does not appear that he had, 
 at the time, any thought of publishing it. He 
 acquired, however, the habit of reading it aloud 
 
 312 
 
Adolphe a Great Success 
 
 to his friends, much as Rousseau used to read 
 aloud extracts from the Confessions ; and the 
 habit grew upon him. The Hsteners generally- 
 wept. 
 
 At the particular reading to which the Diary 
 alludes Miss Berry was present, and her account 
 of the incident is as follows : — 
 
 " In the evening at the Bourkes, where there 
 had been a dinner, Lady Holland, Madame de 
 Lieven, etc., and where Benjamin Constant read 
 his romance, or history ; I do not know what to 
 call it, as he has not given it a name. It is very 
 well written — a sad and much too true history 
 of the human heart, but almost ridiculously so 
 with the company before whom it was read. It 
 lasted two hours and a half. The end was so 
 touching that it was scarcely possible to restrain 
 one's tears, and the effort I made to do so made 
 me positively ill. Agnes and I both burst into 
 tears on our return home." 
 
 That was the effect on an English audience, 
 and we learn from the Due de Broglie that the 
 effect on a French audience was similar. 
 
 The Duke, be it remarked, was not a friendly 
 witness. He had a poor opinion of the novel, 
 and he did not like the novelist — for reasons 
 which are obvious though he does not mention 
 them. He was in love with, and about to marry, 
 Albertine de Stael ; and Adolphe was therefore, 
 from his point of view, a work which exposed 
 a skeleton in the cupboard of the family which 
 
 313 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 he proposed to enter. Its author seemed to be 
 confessing — or perhaps to be boasting — that he 
 had loved, and had tired of, the lady who was 
 to be the mother-in-law of the head of one of 
 the historic houses of France. He knew — for it 
 v^as notorious — that the confession was founded 
 upon fact. It was a condition of things which 
 offended his dignity as well as his moral sense 
 both before his marriage and afterwards. Looking 
 backwards, in later years, he ignored what he 
 could of the story, and took such revenge as was 
 possible on Benjamin Constant, by holding him 
 up to ridicule and contempt. 
 
 Benjamin's relations with Madame Rdcamier 
 and Madame Krudner gave him his opportunity. 
 He drew a graphic picture of the aspirant to 
 the favours of the coquette spending his nights 
 in the salon of the mystic, "sometimes upon his 
 knees engaged in prayer, and sometimes extended 
 in ecstasy upon the carpet." He added that 
 Benjamin was even anxious to enter into a com- 
 pact with the Devil in order to obtain the 
 privileges which he had vainly supplicated God 
 to grant. He deplores the bad taste of Adolphe^ 
 and declares that its effect upon French literature 
 has been that of a taint or an infection. But he 
 admits that, when the author read it aloud in 
 Madame Recamier's drawing-room, the listeners 
 were impressed. 
 
 "There were," he writes, "twelve or fifteen 
 of us present. The reading lasted nearly three 
 
 314 
 
Curiosity Stimulated 
 
 hours. The author was tired. As he approached 
 the denouement, his emotion increased, and his 
 fatigue augmented his emotion. At last he 
 could no longer contain himself, but burst into 
 sobs. The contagion affected the whole assembly, 
 already itself much moved, and tears and groans 
 prevailed. Then, suddenly, by one of those 
 rapid transitions which, if we may believe the 
 doctors, are not of rare occurrence, the sobs, 
 having become convulsive, turned to nervous 
 and irresistible bursts of laughter ; so that, if 
 anyone had entered at that moment, and surprised 
 the author and his listeners in that condition, he 
 would have been at a loss to know what to think, 
 or how to explain the effect by the cause." 
 
 A romance which produced this sort of success 
 when read aloud could hardly fail to attract 
 attention when printed ; while the curiosity of 
 the curious was further stimulated by the question 
 whether it should or should not be read as a 
 roman-a-clef. It is impossible to say what the 
 author meant the world to think ; but we know 
 what he thought his acquaintances were likely 
 to think, from two passages in letters to Madame 
 R^camier. 
 
 In June 1816 he professes to regret the 
 publication. "I never," he writes, "see the 
 inconvenience of any course which I adopt until 
 after I have adopted it. I am afraid that a 
 person to whom it does not really bear the most 
 distant application, whether as regards her position 
 or her character, may be hurt. But it is too late." 
 
 315 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 In October of the same year he reports, with 
 apparent satisfaction: '''■ Adolphe has not caused 
 any quarrel with the person whose unjust sus- 
 ceptibility I feared. She has, on the contrary, 
 seen my desire to avoid any allusion that might 
 annoy her. I am told that another person is 
 furious. That woman is very vain. I was not 
 thinking of her at all." 
 
 The explanation of the allusions, supposing 
 them to need any, may be found in the letters 
 which passed on the subject between Charles 
 and Rosalie de Constant. It is Charles who 
 writes first. 
 
 "In reading Adolphe, my dear Rose, you will 
 have observed that Benjamin explains his conduct 
 by depreciating his character ; and, as someone 
 used to say, he wished to make it known that his 
 private life was governed by the same principles 
 as his public career. He has caused the English 
 papers to insert the statement that the characters 
 in his novel are not portraits of persons whom 
 anybody knows ; but those who have known 
 both him and her will not be deceived by this 
 declaration. Several of his readers will have 
 known ElMnore ; her name was Lindsa}^ She 
 was a young woman, agreeable in company, half 
 French half English, brought to live in con- 
 cubinage by the machinations of adventurers. 
 She had intelligence, but no education. Her 
 adventures with Benjamin made a good deal of 
 talk in their time. The lady of Coppet has no 
 place in this masterpiece. To sell oneself for 
 
 316 
 
Rosalie de Constant's Criticism 
 
 money seems to me the depths of degradation, 
 and I am the less ready to forgive him for that 
 than I should be if he had acted in pure cynicism. 
 This book, my dear Rose, causes me real 
 annoyance. I cannot rid myself of a feeling of 
 attachment to my relatives — especially to those 
 with whom I have been on intimate terms. 
 Benjamin's wit and talents might have shed 
 lustre on us all. He now covers us with mud 
 and shame." 
 
 Rosalie replies at length in a letter which 
 constitutes one of the best criticisms ever written 
 alike of the book and of its author. 
 
 " You are right. Adolphe caused me real pain. 
 It made me feel again something of the suffering 
 which the story on which it is founded caused me. 
 The situation is so well depicted that I fancied 
 myself carried back to the time when I was the 
 witness of an unworthy servitude, and of a weak- 
 ness based upon a noble sentiment. It is not her, 
 except in the respect of her tyranny. But it is 
 him ; and I can quite understand that, after 
 having been so often dragged into prominence, 
 so diversely judged, and so often in contradiction 
 with himself, he has found some satisfaction in 
 explaining himself, and in pointing out the causes 
 of his errors and the motives of his actions in a 
 relation which has so powerfully influenced his 
 life. But I would rather that he had not 
 published the explanation. The story is sad, 
 and inspires only painful sentiments from the 
 beginning to the end. Where the material 
 truth is altered, ideal truth suffers. I find the 
 
 317 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 end specially painful : the consequences are dis- 
 couraging. Poor Benjamin! I believe him to 
 be one of the most unhappy men in the world. 
 His mind works with such exactitude that it 
 shows him every side of every question and all 
 the consequences of all the errors into which 
 enthusiasm or weakness lead him. Every year 
 I hope that what is good and great in his nature 
 will gain the upper hand, and place him in the 
 position which he ought to occupy ; every year 
 he causes me fresh grief and disappointment. 
 But I will not hate him for faults which do no 
 harm to anyone but himself, and are never 
 inspired by bad intentions ; I shall consider 
 that I owe him that share of friendship of 
 which you deprived him so long ago with so 
 much severity. . . . Perhaps if you had remained 
 his friend, that would have checked a good many 
 of his faults. In the days of the terrible scenes 
 I often used to think : ' If he had a real friend — if 
 Charles were here — he might be able to withdraw 
 from this unworthy position.' ... In the novel 
 you do not appear to perceive any of the beauties 
 of thought and style with which it is replete. 
 I think there are few novels more profoundly 
 moral, or better demonstrating the power of 
 education. What might he not have come to 
 if his own education had been directed by a 
 Christian father and mother! How easy it was 
 to arouse him to an enthusiasm for good, to 
 orderly habits, and even a passion for order! 
 How many truths women can learn in his book 
 concerning the part played by imagination in 
 the passions, concerning their empire over their 
 lovers, and on the manner in which their tender- 
 
 318 
 
Opinion of Charles de Constant 
 
 ness Increases while that of men diminishes. I 
 beg you to read it again without thinking of 
 Benjamin. You will see how full it is of acute 
 and just remarks. . . . 
 
 "You must understand that the Lindsay story 
 was invented from beginning to end at Coppet. 
 He had not time in his life to be influenced by two 
 women as he was by one. But at least he has not 
 done her the wrong of introducing her personality 
 into his story ; for Ellenore is not in the least like 
 the lady of Coppet, who has much more ludicrous 
 displays of devotion at her command. ..." 
 
 To which Charles rejoins : — 
 
 " With you, my dear Rose, I thought I might 
 express myself freely. What you tell me proves 
 that I was wrong. Your determination to defend 
 him will not allow me to open my heart and tell 
 you all that I think ; so let us say no more about 
 it. Only I swear to you that everybody mentioned 
 Madame Lindsay in this connection before the 
 arrival of Madame de Stael, whom I have only 
 seen at Lady Hamilton's, I am told, too, that 
 the death of Ellenore is that of a Madame Talma 
 to whom he was much attached. You are pro- 
 foundly ignorant of your cousin's adventures. 
 Not that he made any secret of them, but that 
 we have had the discretion not to tell you." 
 
 What, then, is the truth.'* It is, of course, as 
 the shrewd Sismondi divined, that the author had 
 deliberately tried to throw his readers off the 
 track. So far as externals went, Mrs. Lindsay 
 was indubitably his model ; but the emotions 
 
 319 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 which he analysed were the emotions which 
 Madame de Stael had caused him. And the 
 external circumstances of the story are of no 
 importance. It is only the psychology that 
 counts. 
 
 As a story, indeed, Adolphe is rather badly put 
 together. The stage management, and even the 
 stage carpentry, leave much to be desired ; the 
 novelists of our time are much better craftsmen. 
 They know how to present a story in pictures, 
 whereas he could only relate one. His novel 
 reads less like a work of fiction than like a state- 
 ment of a case drawn up for counsel's opinion. 
 But that does not matter; or at all events it 
 does not matter much. Benjamin Constant was 
 doing a new thing, though he did it clumsily — 
 plucking his heart out of his breast, dissecting it, 
 and telling the world, in the form of fiction, not 
 what he had observed or imagined, but what he 
 had felt. Not what he had felt at this or that 
 moment of supreme exaltation, but what he had 
 felt on the whole, during illusion, and after dis- 
 illusion. He was, in short, the pioneer of the 
 novel of analysed experience — a common genre 
 nowadays, but at that time new to literature. 
 He was fin de siecle, as the phrase goes, at the 
 very beginning of the nineteenth century. 
 
 And, of course, analysing candidly and writing 
 dispassionately, he discovered and expounded a 
 new emotional situation, and broke up the con- 
 ventional emotional machinery of novels. 
 
 ?!20 
 
A New Emotional Situation 
 
 The conventions which held the field when he 
 wrote were very simple. Either you loved or 
 you did not ; but if you did love you loved 
 tremendously — there was no middle course. The 
 great tragedy was to love in vain ; the reasonable 
 expectation was that love would last for ever. 
 Sometimes, of course, it happened that love did 
 not last for ever ; sometimes a man loved and 
 rode away. But a conventional explanation was 
 always ready to hand. Men were deceivers ever ; 
 women had been the victims of their deceptions 
 through the ages. 
 
 To have read Adolphe when saturated with 
 these conventions must have been like entering 
 a dark room with a guide carrying a lantern, or 
 like hearing a new witness whose unexpected 
 evidence, abounding in "new facts," upsets the 
 calculations of the Court. It is there shown that 
 a love affair may involve many other tragedies 
 besides that of loving in vain, and that a man 
 who, according to the conventions of fiction, is 
 merely a heartless deceiver, may be quite 
 innocent of any intention to give pain, and may 
 himself be the principal sufferer from the failure 
 of his emotions to answer to the call upon them. 
 
 The story is merely of a man who contracted a 
 liaison, and got tired of it, and was then divided 
 between his desire for freedom and his sense of 
 responsibility to his mistress — who finds, to his 
 dismay, that he has squandered his emotional 
 substance in riotous living which he has not even 
 X 321 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 enjoyed. His tragedy is the tragedy of trying to 
 love and failing — of fanning a fire that cannot be 
 made to blaze ; the tragedy also of the sense of 
 futility and wasted effort which comes to the lover 
 whose love has flickered out, and who reflects 
 that he has missed what was perhaps his last 
 chance of finding happiness in love. 
 
 One does not suppose, of course, that Benjamin 
 Constant was the first man who endured the 
 mental agony of which he writes. He was no 
 more the first than he was the last. Love being, 
 as even the earliest novelists knew, the most 
 intoxicating kind of happiness, no man who has 
 once tasted it puts it away from him of malice 
 aforethought ; he is no more tempted to do this 
 than he is tempted to blind or maim himself, or 
 destroy any of his faculties. So much is obvious ; 
 and it is obvious, too, that the ccBur sensible — as 
 they said in those days — must always have felt 
 that there was tragedy in ceasing to love no less 
 than in ceasing to be loved, and have suffered 
 pain from the belief, erroneous though it may 
 have been in many cases, that the extinction of 
 his passion would make a woman miserable for 
 the remainder of her days. But though these 
 emotions were not new to life, they certainly 
 were new to literature. Previous novelists had 
 passed them by — perhaps because they were 
 ashamed of them, perhaps because they did not 
 think that they would attract the public. 
 Benjamin Constant gave them expression be- 
 
 322 
 
Influence on French Literature 
 
 cause he was writing not for the public but for 
 himself, and, in writing for himself, had no other 
 wish than to tell the truth. 
 
 He had his reward, though hardly in his life- 
 time. It was his ambition, as he once wrote to 
 Cousin Rosalie, to *' leave something behind 
 him " ; and, to that end, he laboured for several 
 years at a History of Religion in several volumes. 
 He left it, and its place is in the lumber-room. 
 But he also left Adolphe, and the place oi Adolphe 
 is still upon the bookshelf on which we keep the 
 books we read. Not only is it frequently re- 
 printed ; its influence can also be traced in the 
 works of many eminent French writers. The 
 central idea of L' Education sentimentale — the 
 idea of the futility of the philandering which 
 leads nowhere — is the secondary idea of Adolphe. 
 The story of Sapho is actually the story of 
 Adolphe, set in a new social environment, and 
 better told, by a better story-teller, with the 
 embroidery characteristic of his genius. And 
 though Sapho may not be the most amusing, or 
 the most pathetic, or the most dramatic of 
 Alphonse Daudet's novels, it is the best in the 
 sense that it cuts most deeply into the hidden 
 places of the human heart. 
 
 323 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 In Paris — Marriage of Albertine to the Due de Broglie — Trouble 
 about the dowry — Madame de Stael applies to Benjamin 
 Constant for money — He refuses it — A quarrel and a renewal 
 of friendship. 
 
 Madame de Stael had reached the autumn of 
 her life, but in the echoes of her activities that 
 still reach us we detect no hint of an autumnal 
 tone. Even failing health hardly relaxed her 
 energies. Her manner was still that of one who 
 felt that there was much to be done, and little 
 time in which to do it; "faint but pursuing" 
 might have been her motto at this stage. She 
 was running after Benjamin Constant, whom she 
 found, as we have seen, more evasive than ever 
 before ; she was running after Necker's millions, 
 which a Bourbon might be expected to repay, if 
 only because a Bonaparte had refused to do so ; 
 she was running after a husband for her daughter. 
 At the same time she was trying to reconstitute 
 Society in her salon in Paris, at Clichy, where she 
 spent some of the summer months, and at Coppet, 
 to which she paid a brief visit. 
 
 " As for Society," she writes to Miss Berry, " it 
 amounts to nothing, though a few remnants of it 
 assemble at my house ; " but, in saying this, she 
 did herself less than justice. The Due de Broglie 
 
 324 
 
The Leader of Society 
 
 speaks very differently. " She was welcomed 
 and run after," he declares, "even at Court and 
 by the Ministers, and humoured in the Faubourg 
 Saint - Germain ; her drawing - room was the 
 rendezvous of all the strangers whom the Restora- 
 tion brought to Paris." Among the more dis- 
 tinguished strangers whose names he mentions 
 were Canning and the Duke of Wellington, Sir 
 James Mackintosh, Lord Harrowby, and Hum- 
 boldt. Even the Russian Emperor paid her a 
 visit — that Lafayette might be presented to him : 
 a fact which she asks Miss Berry to mention 
 casually to her Russian friends, "in order that 
 they may respect me." We hear from other 
 sources of receptions at which she entertained as 
 many as eight hundred guests. The Due de 
 Broglie, we gather, did not think her extensive 
 hospitality altogether becoming at the hour of the 
 humiliation of her country ; but it doubtless 
 appeared to her that, wherever Society could be 
 gathered together, her place was at the head of it. 
 In the pursuit of the millions, Benjamin 
 Constant was her aide-de-camp. In his letters to 
 Madame Recamier he repeatedly speaks of him- 
 self as *' running " on her behalf, and as having to 
 prevent or repair indiscretions due to her pre- 
 cipitate hurry to be paid. Services of that 
 material kind he was always ready to render, in 
 order, as it were, to compensate her for his 
 sentimental slackness. In the past the rendering 
 of them had sometimes resulted in the renewal of 
 
 325 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the sentiment for which they were intended to be 
 the substitute. But that was no longer possible. 
 As Charlotte had intervened in the past, so 
 Madame Recamier was intervening- now. 
 
 The relation of the parties to the drama was, 
 indeed, at this stage, curious and confusing. 
 Benjamin, in spite of his new passion, had not 
 lost his affection for his wife. Several of the 
 letters to Madame Recamier invite pity for her 
 sad case. She is a great lady, the husband 
 declares, in her own country ; but if she is 
 brought to Paris there is a danger that Society 
 will receive her coldly because of that double 
 divorce. That is his excuse for leaving her in 
 Germany while he is philandering in France ; 
 and he appears to offer it in all sincerity. Mean- 
 while he pays his court to Madame Recamier at 
 Madame de Stael's house ; the two ladies remain- 
 ing meanwhile upon the friendliest terms, though 
 the latter took it upon herself to warn her lover 
 against the former. 
 
 "You will come to no good," she told him, "in 
 your present state of mind, whatever the cause 
 of it may be. You offend everybody by not 
 listening to what people say, and not answering 
 when you are spoken to, and refusing to be 
 interested in anything that anybody says to you. 
 You soon will not have a friend left if you go on 
 like this. I, for my part, have ceased to care for 
 you. Your wife will also quarrel with you ; and 
 if it is love that accounts for your condition, I 
 
 326 
 
Madame Rdcamier's Coquetry 
 
 assure you that the person with whom you are in 
 love will never have any affection for you." 
 
 This last statement, at any rate, was a true one. 
 Madame de Stael, knowing Madame Recamier 
 from of old, knew that she was as passionless as 
 she was beautiful, and never engaged her heart 
 in any of her innumerable flirtations. The 
 knowledge enabled her to remain her friend in 
 spite of appearances, and to refrain from censorious 
 criticism of her coquetry. Criticism on that head 
 was left to Albertine, who, though young and 
 brought up in the midst of levity, had already 
 acquired serious views of life, and who, in July 
 1 8 14, wrote to her friend. Mademoiselle de 
 Barante : " Madame Recamier is pretty and good, 
 but a life of trivial coquetry does not elevate the 
 soul. She would be a better woman if she had 
 not squandered her heart here, there, and every- 
 where." 
 
 What Madame de Stael's husband was saying 
 and doing at this period we do not know. Seeing 
 that her marriage to him was still unacknowledged, 
 and that the child which she had borne him was 
 being brought up under a false name in a village 
 in the Jura, the probability is that he said and 
 did very little. He had accepted an undignified 
 position, and he had to make the best of it ; 
 perhaps he was glad that he was an invalid and 
 had that excuse for remaining in the background. 
 At all events, he remained there ; and one hears 
 little of him except that his wife did at least refuse 
 
 327 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 to turn him out of her box at the Opera to make 
 room for Benjamin Constant. His case, however, 
 by no means exhausts the complications ; and 
 perhaps the strangest fact of all is that the Due de 
 Broglie, in the midst of this sentimental confusion, 
 v/as at once associating with Benjamin Constant 
 and making proposals for the hand of Albertine 
 de Stael. 
 
 The lovers, it is evident, suited one another 
 admirably. Neither of them was very brilliant, 
 and both of them were very serious. It was said 
 by frivolous observers that in the days of their 
 courtship they conversed chiefly on the principles 
 of taxation ; but that is the sort of thing that 
 frivolous people are much too fond of saying 
 about serious people. The only grave barrier 
 between them was a difference of religion ; and 
 that hardly mattered, since all serious people, 
 unless they are fanatics, are of the same 
 religion. 
 
 The religious difficulty, at all events, does not 
 seem to have been the difficulty raised by the de 
 Broglie family. The Duke's mother, married 
 en secondes noces to the Marquis d'Argenson, gave 
 her consent to the match, but his other relatives 
 objected strongly. " Such," he writes, "was the 
 prevalent current of opinion, and so great was the 
 folly of aristocratic prejudice, lately disinterred, 
 that my marriage with the daughter of a great 
 Swedish nobleman was regarded as a mesalliance. 
 I was reminded of the opposition between the 
 
 328 
 
Aristocratic Prejudices 
 
 Mardchal de Broglie and M. Necker in 1789; 
 our two families were represented to me as 
 Montagues and Capulets ; my uncle Am^dee, to 
 whom I was under real and recent obligations, 
 denounced me as ungrateful to him. The talk, 
 in short, was loud, and grew louder from hour to 
 hour." 
 
 Probably the bridegroom's summary of that 
 talk is not quite exact and complete. The Due 
 de Broglie's relatives were as serious as he was 
 himself, and they were not in love. Not the 
 dead father-in-law but the living mother-in-law 
 was presumably the obstacle in their eyes. She 
 was serious enough in her own way, but hardly 
 so in theirs. She had lived her private life in 
 public, almost as one giving a performance to 
 appreciative spectators. They can hardly have 
 known less than Gibbon and Miss Berry about 
 her relations with M. de Narbonne ; and they 
 can hardly have known less than Barras about 
 her relations with Benjamin Constant, and may 
 easily have shared the doubts expressed in 
 Barras' Journal whether the ''great Swedish 
 nobleman " was in fact Albertine de Stael's father. 
 Moreover, even if they entertained no such doubts 
 and resfarded the scandals which had raised the 
 question as ancient history, there was still the 
 case of Rocca to be considered. It is all very 
 well for the Due de Broglie to write that Rocca's 
 malady condemned him to "retirement and 
 absolute silence." Rocca, at any rate, was in 
 
 329 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Paris, figuring as amant en titre, written of by- 
 Byron as " Monsieur 1' Amant." One can under- 
 stand the objections of serious, old-fashioned 
 people to a mother-in-law thus attended and 
 encumbered. 
 
 " But I stuck to it," writes the lover. ** The 
 marriage was arranged and announced immedi- 
 ately after my mother's arrival, and was only 
 postponed on account of the settlements which 
 depended upon the repayment of two million 
 francs generously lent to the State by 
 M. Necker." 
 
 This, however, is another branch of the subject 
 concerning which the Due de Broglie only tells 
 us a portion of the truth. The actual facts have 
 to be deduced from the correspondence published 
 in the Critic to which allusion has already been 
 made. The dowry, it appears from these letters, 
 was a sine qua non of the marriage ; and if the 
 Government would not discharge its debt to 
 Necker, it must be provided from some other 
 source. The sudden return of Napoleon from 
 Elba interrupted the negotiations proceeding for 
 the assumption of the liability by the State. 
 Madame de Stael, who had retired to Coppet, 
 could not conveniently lay her hand upon the 
 ready money ; and she decided that Benjamin 
 Constant must find it for her. He owed her 
 (as she considered) 80,000 francs ; and he 
 had implored her (so she declares) upon his 
 knees to permit him to associate himself with 
 
 330 
 
Trouble about the Dowry 
 
 Albertine's happiness. Now was the time. 
 Benjamin must tear up the old agreement and 
 "place 40,000 francs at Albertine's disposal." In 
 April 1 8 1 5 she wrote to him to that effect, adding 
 that, in anticipation of his favourable answer, she 
 had promised that sum to the Broglie family. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, Benjamin Constant 
 had no more facilities for laying his hands upon 
 ready money than Madame de Stael herself. 
 Most people, in fact, found ready money a scarce 
 commodity during the Hundred Days. He had to 
 excuse himself, therefore, and the correspondence 
 speedily became embittered. "You, owe me 
 80,000 francs" runs through it like a leit-motif, 
 there are, as we have already seen, the most 
 violent threats of legal proceedings. There is 
 very little on the subject in the Journal Intime, 
 but one entry shows us what was Benjamin's 
 point of view. "A letter," he writes, "from 
 Madame de Stael. She would like me to do 
 nothing to promote my own fortune, and to hand 
 over to her the little that I possess. A delightful 
 arrangement that ! " And he adds elsewhere that 
 the quarrel has quite destroyed the remnant of 
 affectionate sentiment which he had still retained 
 for her. 
 
 No doubt it had nearly done so, if not quite. 
 Unable at the moment to be generous, Benjamin 
 Constant had only adhered to legal rights freely 
 bestowed upon him ; and he was entitled to be 
 angry at reproaches which he esteemed unjust. 
 
 331 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Madame de Stael herself admitted as much when 
 she had leisure to be reasonable. " Your justifi- 
 cation," she wrote presently, "is perfect;" and 
 her letters, growing gradually milder, may almost 
 be read as an apology presented in instalments. 
 In June, a few days before the battle of Waterloo, 
 she writes : " If I can reconcile myself with God, 
 after having reproached you, I will perhaps 
 become softer." In July she is saying : " I wish 
 that you believed that I am better disposed to 
 you than I was." In August her hopes of 
 recovering Necker's loan having improved through 
 the fall of the Empire, she appeals to Benjamin 
 to do what he can to strengthen Victor de 
 Broglie's devotion to her daughter: "Try to 
 speak of her before him. One can praise her 
 certainly without exaggerating." In September 
 it is : "The state of your health causes me much 
 uneasiness," and also : " I rely entirely on your 
 pride and your zeal in what concerns Albertine ; " 
 and finalty : " Give my son good advice about 
 my affair. Do not think any more of the one 
 that was in question between us." 
 
 So that was the end of that. The restored 
 Bourbons undertook to pay their debt to Necker; 
 the Papal permission for the mixed marriage was 
 obtained ; Victor de Broglie set out for Coppet, 
 accompanied by Auguste de Stael and his half- 
 brother, Rene d'Argenson. They crossed the 
 Jura in the snows of January 1816, at the time 
 when Benjamin Constant was preparing to leave 
 
 332 
 
Albertine's Wedding 
 
 Brussels for London. Sismondi joined them, and 
 they went on over the Mont Cenis to Parma, 
 Bologna, Florence, and Pisa, where Madame 
 de Stael and Albertine awaited them. The 
 marriage was celebrated at Pisa on February 20, 
 1816, Sydney Smith's brother, Bob Smith,^ acting 
 as witness. It was from Albertine, now Duchesse 
 de Broglie, that Benjamin Constant heard the 
 news. "All the great emotions of my life," she 
 wrote, " make me wish to think of you and speak 
 of you. . . . What a sad combination of circum- 
 stances was necessary [to prevent you from being 
 present at my wedding! I would not have 
 believed it six years ago ! " 
 
 " By God's grace, she is happy," Madame de 
 Stael wrote in a letter despatched under the 
 same cover; and Benjamin wrote to Madame 
 Recamier : — 
 
 " I know that Albertine is married, and I hope 
 she will be happy. Her husband is an excellent 
 man, and I do not think that she on her part, 
 brought up as she has been, feels any imperious 
 need of an expansive sensibility. By the excesses 
 and reactions of her own enthusiasm Madame de 
 Stael has taught her children to be perfectly 
 rational. At the bottom of my heart I have, 
 together with my affection for her, a kind of 
 grudge similar to that of the Irishman who 
 accused a woman of having changed him at 
 nurse." 
 
 ^ Commonly called " Bobus." Co-editor with Canning of the 
 Etonian Microcosm, and afterwards Advocate-General of Bengal. 
 
 333 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 Madame de Stael in Italy with the Broglies — Return to Coppet — 
 Distinguished guests — Byron's visit. 
 
 Let it be said at once that Albertine de Stael 
 found calm contentment in her married life. 
 Perhaps, if she had been quite enthusiastically 
 and deliriously happy, she would have been a 
 little less prone to quote the Scriptures in her 
 correspondence and to appeal to the consolations 
 of religion. One always suspects something of 
 the sort in the case of the ostentatiously religious ; 
 but it is not necessary to insist. The Due 
 de Broglie, at any rate, was so attached to his 
 wife that, when she died at a comparatively early 
 age, he withdrew from all his public activities ; 
 and there is no evidence that the divergence of 
 their creeds was ever, even temporarily, a cause 
 of estrangement. The agreement was that the 
 sons should be brought up as Catholics and the 
 daughters as Protestants ; but the whole of their 
 posterity became Catholic in the course of time. 
 Some of Madame de Stael's grandchildren even 
 took Catholic orders. Her great-grandson, Comte 
 d'Haussonville, the present owner of Coppet, an 
 Academician, and the author of Le Salon de 
 Madame Necker, was one of the polemists who 
 
 334 
 
In Italy with the Broglies 
 
 combated the anti-clerical policy of MM. Waldeck- 
 Rousseau and Combes in the columns of Le 
 Gaulois. A deplorable relapse, no doubt, in the 
 eyes of many readers, but one on which there is 
 no need to comment in the present volume. 
 
 The early days of the honeymoon were passed 
 in the north of Italy in the society of Madame 
 de Stael ; and the course of events is best traced 
 from the Due de Broglie's Reminiscences, 
 
 He speaks, in the first instance, of an excursion 
 to Pescia to see Sismondi, the form and scope 
 of whose work on the History of the French is 
 said to have been determined by the conversations 
 which then took place. Lucca was next visited, 
 and then, on the return to Pisa, Madame de Stael 
 announced that she was bored, and " at the first 
 breath of spring transferred her establishment 
 to Florence." There, once again, she found 
 brilliant society, of which the most distinguished 
 pillar was the Comtesse d' Albany, mistress 
 successively of the Young Pretender, of the 
 poet Alfieri, and of the French painter Fabre. 
 
 "Every day," the Due de Broglle writes, 
 "between two and three o'clock in the after- 
 noon, she kept a gossip and scandal shop. 
 Every member of the little club laid at her feet 
 his tribute of news of no importance, seasoning 
 it with trivial comment. Not all who wished 
 to come were admitted to this gathering. An 
 exception was made in favour of Madame de 
 Stael, and I was invited in her train ; but I did 
 
 335 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 not abuse my privilege. Once was enough for me. 
 Evil speaking has always seemed to me the most 
 childish and foolish thing in the world." 
 
 Towards the end of Lent the Due de Broglie, 
 accompanied by Auguste de Stael, escaped to 
 Rome. The escape was from the insistence 
 of his mother-in-law that he should always be 
 attending receptions, dressed in his best clothes. 
 He refused to call at the French Embassy, and 
 neglected to see the Pope, preferring to spend 
 his time among the monuments and in the picture 
 galleries. As soon as Easter was over he returned 
 to Florence, whence, three days later, the whole 
 party set out for Coppet. At Bologna, where 
 they passed a day, the leaders of Society were 
 afraid, for political reasons, to associate with 
 Madame de Stael, feeling that their connection 
 with Murat's mad enterprise had already com- 
 promised them sufficiently. At Milan, on the 
 contrary, Madame de Stael *'was well known, 
 and her salon in her inn was never empty." 
 Gonfalonieri, the rising hope of the Italian 
 Liberals, held long and violent arguments with 
 Schlegel, and " dear Monti " also came to call. 
 Benjamin Constant, it will be remembered, said 
 that he had "a superb face"; but the Due de 
 Broglie declares that he "cut a poor figure," that 
 his "attitude was humble and his conversation 
 not brilliant," and that Madame de Stael tried 
 in vain " to restore him to self-respect and to the 
 good opinion of others." 
 
 336 
 
Distinguished Guests 
 
 At Milan the party divided. Madame de Stael, 
 attended by Rocca and Schlegel, returned to 
 Switzerland by the Mont Cenis and Savoy. The 
 Due and Duchesse de Broglie went to Como, 
 and thence crossed the Simplon. At Coppet, 
 however, all were again reunited ; and Coppet 
 was once more gay. The leaders of the Opposi- 
 tion in Genevan politics were welcome there — 
 such men as Etienne Dumont, Pictet Diodati, 
 Frederic de Chateauvieux, and de Candolle, the 
 naturalist ; while open house was also kept for 
 such travellers making the grand tour as came 
 that way, and were worthy to be received. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne was one of the visitors — " the 
 perfect model," says the Due de Broglie, "of the 
 great Whig nobleman." Henry Brougham was 
 also entertained there. Asked some question as 
 to English legal procedure, he sat down and wrote 
 currente calamo a long essay on the subject, which 
 is preserved among the Broglie papers. Von 
 Stein — he who had reorganised the Prussian 
 army after Jena — passed through on his way to 
 Italy, pausing to denounce in indignant language 
 the revival of despotic institutions in Central 
 Europe, and expressing himself with extreme dis- 
 dain concerning his own sovereign, the Prussian 
 Court, and the German Bureaucracy. Laharpe 
 — the friend of the Emperor Alexander, who had 
 organised the liberation of the Canton of Vaud 
 from the dominion of Berne — came over from the 
 house at Lausanne where, living in retirement in 
 Y 337 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the bosom of his family, he looked down upon 
 the scene of his triumphs, and fought his battles 
 over again. To strike the note of contrast with 
 him, there was the Chevalier de Langallerie — he 
 who had almost persuaded Benjamin Constant to 
 become a mystic — a " fat little man," according to 
 the narrator, who enjoyed his dinner and com- 
 plained of indigestion, snored in an arm-chair, and 
 awoke to invite pity for himself as a victim of 
 insomnia, yet conversed admirably upon spiritual 
 matters. Finally, to strike the note of contrast 
 with everybody, there was Byron. 
 
 He and Madame de Stael had not altogether 
 liked each other when they had met in London. 
 As rival social lions they had roared against each 
 other, stood in each other's light, and interfered 
 with each other's importance. He had protested 
 that her conversation was too copious ; she had 
 credited him with "just enough sensibility to ruin 
 a woman's happiness." But now the conditions 
 were different. The principal victim of Byron's 
 sensibility was Byron himself; his admirers had 
 turned on him and hounded him from the country. 
 That was the sort of situation with which Madame 
 de Stael could sympathise. He had hesitated to 
 call, but his apprehensions were quite groundless. 
 Though an English visitor, Mrs. Hervey, fainted 
 in the Coppet drawing-room when she heard his 
 name announced, the Coppet hostess did not mind. 
 Most likely she was angry with the lady. At 
 any rate, she was flattered to be presented with 
 
 338 
 
Byron's Visit 
 
 a copy of Glenarvon — the novel in which 
 Byron's character was attacked by Lady CaroHne 
 Lamb ; and she took the keenest interest in his 
 difference with Lady Byron. " I believe," he 
 writes, " Madame de Stael did her utmost to 
 bring about a reconciliation between us. She 
 was the best creature in the world." 
 
 Her difficulty in so exhibiting herself must havfe 
 been the greater because neither her admiration 
 nor her friendship for the poet was shared by the 
 members of her household. On the occasion of 
 Mrs. Hervey s hysterics the company in general 
 "looked as if his Satanic majesty had been 
 among them ; " and if her son-in-law did not 
 follow the example of the others, his reason for 
 refraining was by no means his esteem for Byron's 
 talents, but rather his feeling that he was himself a 
 superior person, capable of seeing through Byron's 
 fanfaronade. This is his account of the matter, 
 and his appreciation of the poet : — 
 
 " Lord Byron, an exile of his own free will, 
 having succeeded, not without difficulty, in per- 
 suading the world of fashion in his own country 
 that he was, if not the Devil in person, at least 
 a living copy of Manfred or Lara, had settled for 
 the summer in a charming house on the east 
 bank of the Lake of Geneva. He was living 
 with an Italian physician named Polidori, who 
 imitated him to the best of his ability. It was 
 there that he composed a good many of his little 
 poems, and that he tried his hardest to inspire 
 
 339 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the o-Qod Genevans with the same horror and 
 terror that his fellow-countrymen felt for him ; 
 but this was pure affectation on his part, and 
 he only half succeeded with it. ' My nephew,' 
 Louis XIV. used to say of the Due d'OrMans, ' is, 
 in the matter of crime, only a boastful pretender.' 
 Lord Byron was only a boastful pretender in the 
 matter of vice. 
 
 "As he flattered himself that he was a good 
 swimmer and sailor, he was perpetually crossing 
 the Lake in all directions, and used to come fairly 
 often to Coppet. His appearance was agreeable, 
 but not at all distinguished. His face was hand- 
 some, but without expression or originality ; his 
 figure was round and short ; he did not manoeuvre 
 his lame legs with the same ease and nonchalance 
 as M. de Talleyrand. His talk was heavy and 
 tiresome, thanks to his paradoxes, seasoned with 
 profane pleasantries out of date in the language 
 of Voltaire, and the commonplaces of a vulgar 
 Liberalism. Madame de Stael, who helped all 
 her friends to make the best of themselves, did 
 what she could to make him cut a dignified figure 
 without success ; and when the first moment of 
 curiosity had passed, his society ceased to attract, 
 and no one was glad to si^e him." 
 
 So the summer passed. Madame de Stael, in 
 the leisure which her social duties left her, was at 
 work on her Considerations sur la Revolution 
 frangaise — a combined panegyric of her father 
 and of the British Constitution. Rocca was still 
 ill, and she wrote about him to Madame R^camier, 
 telling her what she had previously told Benjamin 
 
 340 
 
The Magnetism of Paris 
 
 Constant, that his nature was changing, and add- 
 ing : ** Such patience, such thorough appreciation 
 of and thankfulness for my care, have made him 
 the most perfect friend that I could imagine " — 
 language which, 'it will be admitted, was hardly 
 that of passion. To Benjamin, at about the same 
 date, she wrote that her health was failing and 
 her life likely to be short, concluding : " But 
 I value it because it is now a happy one, and I 
 deplore the time of which I was robbed by un- 
 happiness." Evidently she was at last outgrowing 
 the violence of passion, though she was not yet 
 losing, and indeed was never to lose, her political 
 and social interests, and her desire to be always 
 "in the movement." 
 
 To her, indeed, as to Voltaire, this passion to 
 be in the movement was to be fatal. The attrac- 
 tions of the French capital lured the sage from 
 Ferney to his death ; similarly Madame de Stael, 
 who might have lived long if she had remained at 
 Coppet, heard Paris calling, and could not resist 
 the call, even at a season at which the climate was 
 likely to be unfavourab. 2 both to her own health 
 and to that of her husband. Her son-in-law 
 returned before her ; but she soon followed him, 
 attended by Rocca and Schlegel, arriving early in 
 November. 
 
 "That was her last winter, "the Due de Broglie 
 writes. 
 
 341 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 Madame de Stael's last journey to Paris — Her illness and death. 
 
 Madame de Stael was already ill when she 
 arrived at Paris. The first symptoms of paralysis 
 had declared themselves. But she would not give 
 in or submit to treatment. 
 
 "She resisted the attack," writes the Due de 
 Broglie, ** with heroic impetuosity : invited every- 
 where, going everywhere, keeping open house, 
 receiving in the morning, at dinner, and in the 
 evening, all the distinguished men of all parties, 
 ranks, and stations, taking the same interest in 
 politics, literature, philosophy, and Society, 
 whether serious or frivolous, intimate or noisy, of 
 the Government or of the Opposition, as in the 
 brightest days of her early youth." 
 
 He goes on to name names. M. de Barante, 
 we read, gave a dinner for the purpose of intro- 
 ducing Royer-Collard to Madame de Stael, and 
 Royer-Collard, being a pedant, was shocked by 
 her vivacity. Camille Jordan also reappeared 
 upon the scene. The Due de Broglie does not 
 mention that Camille Jordan had once been 
 Madame de Stael's lover, but merely, while 
 admitting the charm of his conversation, sniffs at 
 him as "provincial." From other sources we hear 
 
 342 
 
Alarming Symptoms 
 
 of her as entertaining Pasquier, Fontanes, Lally, 
 and Chateaubriand An extract from a letter from 
 Madame Rilliet-Huber to Henri Meister may 
 complete the picture. 
 
 ** Madame de Stael has reached the height of 
 her ambition. Her house is the most animated 
 in Paris, and she exercises all the influence she 
 wishes without encountering any opposition. 
 Her fortune is great ; her daughter is charming ; 
 Rocca may pass ; but I am sorry to say that her 
 health is much disturbed. She writes to me often, 
 and wishes to return to Coppet." 
 
 The date of that letter is February 14, 1817 ; 
 the strain of the season had had time to tell. It 
 was only a few days later that the symptoms 
 became alarming. Attending a reception at the 
 house of the Due Decazes, Madame de Stael 
 fainted on the staircase. She was lifted to her 
 carriage, and from her carriage to her bed. 
 Dropsy was diagnosed, and when the dropsy got 
 better, paralysis began to set in. 
 
 Even so, thanks to her strength of will, she 
 seemed to get better. She rose, and dressed, and 
 "received ; " she even gave dinner parties, though 
 she had to leave her children to do the honours of 
 her table. As the weather improved, she was 
 removed from her house in the Rue Royale to 
 another in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, where 
 she sat in the garden in a state of semi-somnolence. 
 It was at this stage, presumably, that she wrote 
 
 343 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 (or rather dictated) her last pathetic letter to Miss 
 Berry. ''Cruel cramps," she said, had deprived 
 her of the use of her hands and feet ; for ninety 
 days she had been lying on her back, "like a 
 tortoise, but much more troubled in my mind 
 and my imagination than that animal." She 
 had hoped to start for Switzerland on the 
 I St of May, but cannot even be sure of starting 
 on the I St of July. In fact, she passes her time 
 alternately in self-deception and despair : " Truly 
 it is a punishment of Heaven when the most 
 active person in the world finds herself as it were 
 petrified." "May God," she prays, "deliver me 
 from the abyss in which His hand alone can 
 avail me ! " 
 
 Every physician of note in Paris was called in ; 
 and as none of them afforded any relief or held 
 out any hope, the Due de Broglie posted to 
 Geneva, meaning to bring the celebrated Dr. 
 Butini back with him. Butini would not come. 
 He was an old man, he said, and would not risk 
 his own health in a hopeless case. The next 
 best man was Dr. J urine, who knew Madame de 
 Stael, and out of affection for her rather than for 
 the sake of his fee, consented to take the journey. 
 But he arrived too late, and his treatment had not 
 even the temporary illusion of success. It was 
 now apparent to all that the effort to live had 
 nearly exhausted itself, and that the end was very 
 near. 
 
 Yet the effort continued. " When I arrived at 
 344 
 
The Closing Scenes 
 
 Paris the 17th of June," writes one of Miss Berry's 
 correspondents, ** she was supposed to be at the 
 point of death ; she rallied from that attack, and 
 her family indulged great hopes, but which no 
 physician encouraged. ... I saw her a week 
 before her death; she was as eager as ever on 
 politics. M. de Montmorency was by her bed- 
 side, and she disputed with him the great question 
 of liberty as formerly. I dined there on the 
 Sunday ; she saw the Duke of Orleans. ..." 
 
 And so we come to the closing scenes, which 
 may be best described in the Due de Broglie's 
 words. 
 
 *' Madame de Stael received, day and night, the 
 passionately anxious care of her daughter and of 
 a young English lady who had, for many years, 
 resided at Geneva, and whose life, so stormy and 
 unfortunate, had resolved itself, if I may so say, 
 into ardent and impetuous devotion to our family. 
 Mademoiselle Randall and my wife spent alternate 
 nights at the foot of the bed of pain ; my brother- 
 in-law and myself watched alternately in the 
 adjoining room. We could see the fatal moment 
 draw nearer from hour to hour. The nervous 
 agitation became continuous ; the interval between 
 the spasms shorter and shorter. Madame de 
 Stael deceived herself no longer. The loftiness 
 of her soul, the vivacity of her mind, and her 
 interest in persons and things never deserted her 
 for a day, an hour, or a minute. What she feared 
 was that she might not see herself die — that she 
 might' fall into a sleep from which she would not 
 wake. 
 
 345 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 " A sad presentiment ! 
 
 "On the 13th of July, towards eleven o'clock 
 in the evening, at the close of a very painful day, 
 everything seemed quiet in Madame de Stael's 
 room ; she was dozing. Mademoiselle Randall 
 was at her pillow, holding one of her hands ; my 
 wife had lain down exhausted on a chair bedstead, 
 and my brother-in-law was lying on a sofa. I 
 went home, and threw myself, without undressing, 
 on my bed. Towards five in the morning, I 
 awoke with a start, jumped out of bed, and ran to 
 Madame de Stael's room. Mademoiselle Randall, 
 who had fallen asleep while holding her hand as 
 I have described, had found, on waking, that the 
 hand was cold, and that the arm and the whole 
 body were motionless. 
 
 " All was over. 
 
 "The doctor in attendance, summoned in haste, 
 found only a lifeless corpse upon the bed." 
 
 She had died as she had feared, and as many 
 another would have wished to die — with no priest 
 to mumble formulae ; with no accompaniment of 
 unavailing tears, and no harrowing and pro- 
 tracted deathbed scene ; unconscious of all the 
 complications at the hour when the tangle was cut. 
 
 The occupant of the second floor of the house 
 placed his apartment at the disposal of the 
 mourners. " I installed M. Rocca, M. Schlegel, 
 and Mademoiselle Randall there," writes the Due 
 de Broglie, "and I returned to pass the night in 
 the house of the dead. Benjamin Constant came 
 to join me there, and we watched by the body 
 
 346 
 
Necessity stronger than Moral Law 
 
 together. He was touched to the quick, and 
 genuinely moved. After having exhausted 
 personal recollections, we consecrated long hours 
 to serious reflections, discussing all the problems 
 which naturally arise in the soul in the presence 
 of death." An impressive scene truly, and per- 
 haps the most moving in the whole of the troubled 
 history of their love. 
 
 Each of the lovers had been unfaithful to the 
 other, and yet each of them had been necessary 
 to the other — a truth which they had proved to 
 themselves again and again, while trying their 
 hardest to disprove it. Both lives had been rich 
 in other interests, both personal and political ; 
 but their passion had been the great fact in both 
 lives that always mattered even when they per- 
 suaded themselves that it did not matter at all. 
 Though Benjamin Constant had married a second 
 wife and Madame de Stael had taken to herself 
 a second husband, they both found it impossible 
 to respect the barrier which they had themselves 
 set up. We have seen how Benjamin, while 
 apparently living a peaceful domesticated life with 
 Charlotte at Gottingen, noted in his Diary that 
 he was as much occupied with Madame de Stael 
 as he had been ten years before. We have also 
 seen Madame de Stael assuring Benjamin Constant 
 that her marriage to Rocca need be no hindrance 
 to the renewal of her intimacy with him. Their 
 relations towards each other were governed by a 
 Necessity stronger than any moral law. 
 
 347 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 It is true that, with the passing of the years, 
 the intensity of the emotion had slackened. That 
 was a part of their tragedy — as it is a part of the 
 tragedy of all dramas that are too long drawn out. 
 Both of the lovers had nearly attained fifty years 
 of age ; both of them had outgrown the early 
 capacity for passion. Madame de Stael's letters 
 show that she had latterly cherished the memory 
 of a passion rather than the passion itself 
 Benjamin Constant's Diary shows him fully per- 
 suaded in his own mind that the last remnant of 
 his sentiment had perished. 
 
 There exists, and has been printed, a character 
 sketch of Madame de Stael which was to have 
 been included in a work which Benjamin Constant 
 began but never finished on the early years and 
 early friends of Madame R^camier. It was written 
 at the time of his foolish unreciprocated passion for 
 that lady, and it is couched in the cold tone of 
 critical and amused approbation. All the incon- 
 sistencies — and they were many — in Madame de 
 Stael's character are brought into clear relief. 
 Madame de Stael is depicted as a woman who 
 always does what she wishes to do, and always 
 believes that whatever she does is right, support- 
 ing any line of conduct by the appeal to first 
 principles divinely sanctioned. 
 
 "If she is in love, and if the object of her love 
 has a will that opposes her own, and speaks of the 
 claims of his family and his duties, or asserts 
 any other title to independence, partial or com- 
 
 348 
 
Love stronger than Death 
 
 plete, permanent or transitory, then nothing is 
 more beautiful than to hear Madame de Stael 
 talk with all the energy of the Nouvelle H^loise 
 of the communion of souls, of devotion, which is 
 the sacred duty of every superior nature, of happi- 
 ness, and of the sacro-sanctity of two existences 
 indissolubly linked together. 
 
 "Is she, on the other hand, a mother, and does 
 one of her children prefer the enthusiasm of an 
 absorbing passion to the obedience which she 
 claims ? Then nothing is more sublime than the 
 picture which she draws of the duties of filial piety, 
 the obligations of the family, the rights of a 
 mother, and the necessity of a young man's dis- 
 engaging himself from frivolous affections in order 
 to enter upon an honourable career ; for every man 
 owes an account to Providence for the faculties 
 which Providence has given him, and woe upon 
 him who thinks that he can live for love! In all 
 that Madame de Stael is not an egoist ; for she 
 does not mean to be one, and morality is a matter 
 of conscience." 
 
 That is the most characteristic passage in the 
 essa}^ It has been said, most plausibly, to be the 
 criticism of a lover who has definitely ceased to 
 love. Benjamin Constant, when he penned it, 
 would have considered the verdict just. But 
 death came and proved that love was stronger 
 than death. Benjamin Constant was always in 
 love with love even when he was not in love with 
 Madame de Stael ; he himself has written that 
 the necessity for love was the ruling passion of his 
 life and the determining factor of his career. 
 
 349 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 Madame de Stael had loved him to his undoing, 
 but at least she had loved him as no other woman 
 had. It was inevitable, at this solemn hour, that 
 he should remember that — the memories returning 
 to him with a rush — and should forget the rest. 
 
 For if he could not love her, at least he could 
 love no other. At the time of the last estrange- 
 ment he had written that there was no longer 
 anything for him to look forward to in life. He 
 might or might not have continued in that mood 
 if she had lived. But she had passed beyond 
 these voices, and, passing, had set the seal upon 
 his words. The curtain had fallen on the drama. 
 It would never be lifted, and there would be no 
 other drama to follow ; he was too old to begin 
 his sentimental life again. So he watched by the 
 bier, engaged with many solemn reflections, 
 mourning not only for his mistress, but also for 
 his own dead youth. 
 
 350 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 The last years of Benjamin Constant. 
 
 They buried Madame de Stael, according to her 
 desire, in her father's sepulchre at Coppet. The 
 coffin was met by Bonstetten and Sismondi — the 
 "Mondi"^ who had still remained faithful when 
 the fear of Napoleon drove away her other 
 friends ; and all Geneva, as the Due de Broglie 
 tells us, followed the funeral. Her will ac- 
 knowledged her husband, who only survived her 
 a few months, and the child which she had 
 borne to him. The latter had been registered in 
 the name of Giles, and described as the son of 
 American parents. Certain formalities had 
 therefore to be performed in order that the 
 situation might be regularised. Auguste de 
 Stael duly performed them, and fetched the 
 infant from the house of the Protestant minister 
 who had taken charge of it and kept its mother's 
 secret. "I ask you," he wrote to Meister, "to 
 extend to my brother Alphonse the protection 
 and friendship with which you are good enough 
 to honour me. I hope that he will one day be 
 worthy to feel the value of it." There are also 
 
 ^ " Die meisten Bekannten fliehen, Frende wanken, nur Mondi 
 nicht." — Bonstetten to Frederika Brun. 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 some affectionate references to the child in the 
 letters of the Duchesse de Broglie. She finds 
 him backward, takes him for walks, and tries to 
 teach him what little she knows of natural history. 
 
 This Rocca episode is not, it must be allowed, 
 an agreeable story for an admirer of Madame de 
 Stael to face, and most of her admirers have 
 therefore slurred over it, hinting apologies as they 
 passed. She could not be expected, they suggest, 
 though without insisting, publicly to change a 
 name which she had made illustrious by her 
 talents ; and so she may herself have argued. 
 But the excuse leads rather far. We need not, 
 indeed, concern ourselves about the wrong done 
 to Rocca ; he was a fool, and was treated accord- 
 ing to his folly. But the case of the child, brought 
 up, with a false dtat civil, under the name of 
 Giles, is pitiful and painful. He was sacrificed, 
 not to his mother's proper pride, but to her 
 vanity. She was more afraid of laughter than of 
 moral reprobation. In most matters, and on 
 most occasions, she could defy the world ; but 
 she could not afford to place the weapon of 
 ridicule in her enemies' hands, and shrank from 
 their mockery of her autumnal love. She shrank 
 from it the more, no doubt, because her love for 
 Rocca was not really love, but only make-believe, 
 and a concession to the weakness of the flesh. 
 That is all that there is to be said on the subject, 
 and it is best to say it and have done with it. 
 
 Something should be said, however, of the 
 352 
 
Overrated and then Underrated 
 
 literary genius which, in the view of Madame de 
 Stael's admirers, partially justified her in adopting 
 different moral standards from those accepted by 
 less gifted persons. She was certainly overrated 
 in her lifetime, and she has probably been under- 
 rated since. She was highly esteemed at one 
 time for her contributions to metaphysical and 
 political philosophy, but these are negligible 
 because they were not original. The voice was 
 only an echo, and the echo was not always 
 accurate. In metaphysics the chief credit belongs 
 not to the interpreter who tried, in a few well- 
 chosen words, to tell the world what Kant thought, 
 but to Kant who did the thinking, and, in a less 
 degree, to Schlegel and Crabb Robinson, who 
 expounded the doctrine of Forms and Categories 
 in language which Madame de Stael was capable 
 of understanding. In politics she echoed Necker, 
 and had little to say except that all would have 
 been for the best in the best of all possible worlds if 
 Necker 's advice had been followed — a proposition 
 which finds no supporters among serious historians. 
 Among novels, on the other hand, Corinne 
 indubitably counts to a certain extent, and in a 
 certain way. It is a monument of self-deception, 
 just as Adolphe is a monument of self-analysis. 
 Both works alike may be described as bitter cries, 
 but the methods of the authors are antithetically 
 opposed. Madame de Stael writes as one who 
 cries for the moon, and can find consolation in 
 pretending that she has got it ; Benjamin Constant 
 z 353 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 as one who has obtained the moon, and only- 
 wishes that someone would take it off his hands. 
 He, that is to say, built on a real and she on a 
 fanciful foundation ; and the distinction is reflected 
 in the respective fortunes of the two romances. 
 The success of Corinne was a brilliant flash in 
 the pan ; the success of Adolphe was much less 
 brilliant, but has proved much more enduring. 
 For Adolphe was true ; and, even in fiction, it is 
 truth that tells in the long run. 
 
 Personality, however, tells also ; and in all 
 Madame de Stael's work it was the personality, 
 not the philosophy, that told. Her version of 
 the philosophy of Kant, for instance, is interest- 
 ing not because it is sound but because it is 
 sentimental, and because sentiment rather than 
 philosophy was to her the thing that mattered. 
 She wanted to pull wires ; she wanted to be 
 witty and wise ; she wanted a group of flatterers 
 to hang upon her wise and witty words ; but all 
 that was nothing worth unless she could also 
 love and be loved. That is the idea which 
 pervades her writings, giving them such freshness 
 and vitality as they still possess. That was the 
 quality by which she held Benjamin Constant's 
 affection, in spite of his infidelities, for so many 
 years, and compelled him, in spite of quarrels and 
 estrangements, to consecrate a night of memories 
 and sighs to her when she was dead. 
 
 Benjamin Constant had still, as it happened, a 
 good many years to live ; and the last years of 
 
 354 
 
Benjamin Constant's Political Career 
 
 his life were, from the point of view of the political 
 historian, the most important. So far, he had 
 only been able to give himself to politics by fits 
 and starts. He had lived, like Madame de Stael, 
 though to a less extent, in exile. The love of 
 women had sometimes sapped his energies, and 
 sometimes diverted them into unexpected channels. 
 In so far as he had had any political career at all, 
 it had been a long series of inconsistencies. Now 
 he had a policy and a cause. His action during 
 the Hundred Days had caused him, for a time, to 
 be proscribed, and was a weapon in the hands of 
 his enemies for ever afterwards ; but, on his 
 return, he soon became a Deputy, and a leading 
 figure in the ranks of the Liberal Opposition to 
 the Bourbon rigime. His speeches have been 
 printed, and fill several volumes ; but their 
 interest is for the historian rather than the 
 biographer. It suffices here to note the im- 
 pression which he had made. 
 
 '* His enunciation," writes M. de Lomenie, 
 " was difficult, especially in his first few sentences ; 
 but as soon as he warmed to his work attention 
 was captivated by the appearance of his magnifi- 
 cent figure, and his face, so tired, and yet so 
 handsome, so distinguished, so original, set in a 
 frame of long blond locks which fell in curls upon 
 his coat collar, and by the curious combination 
 of German nonchalance, British stiffness, and 
 French vivacity which characterised his per- 
 sonality. Always witty in his expressions of his 
 
 355 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 emotion, always polite in his persiflage, always 
 cool in his anger, possessed of the art of saying all 
 that there was to be said, he compelled even 
 those whom his utterances profoundly irritated, 
 to listen to him." 
 
 " One saw him arrive at the Chamber," writes 
 M. Loeve Veimars, "always a few minutes before 
 the opening of the sitting, attired in his Deputy's 
 uniform, embroidered with silver lace, in order 
 to be ready to ascend the tribune, in which that 
 costume was de rigueur, at any moment. His 
 head was fair and white. He wore an old round 
 hat, and held under his arm an overcoat, some 
 manuscripts, some books, some printers' proofs, 
 a portfolio of official papers, and his crutch." 
 
 For his friends — and especially for the students 
 who loudly shouted applause — he was the en- 
 thusiastic champion of liberty ; for his enemies 
 he was a man of selfish and extravagant ambition. 
 In truth he was neither the one thing nor the other, 
 but an emotional bankrupt, who could only escape 
 from himself in strife and feverish excitement. 
 
 He had, of course, "the good Charlotte" — the 
 most forp-ivingf as well as the most devoted of 
 wives. He knew her worth. He sings her 
 praises in his letters, seeming, as it were, to pat 
 her on the back, in appreciative recognition of 
 her "angelic" qualities. But she could not fill 
 his life, and his affection for her was only the 
 sort of affection that he might have felt for an 
 attentive domestic servant. He had told Madame 
 
 356 
 
The Burden of Consciousness 
 
 R^camier that he would try to make her happy 
 and pretend to share her happiness. Perhaps 
 he did pretend ; perhaps there were times when 
 the pretence deceived her. But he himself was 
 never deceived. He had survived his interest 
 in life, and there remained only the effort to 
 escape from the burden of consciousness. He 
 made speeches to escape from it ; he fought duels 
 to escape from it; he worked hard at his book 
 on Religions to escape from it ; he gambled to 
 escape from it ; and all his endeavours were 
 equally in vain. 
 
 Sometimes he appeared to be taking himself 
 seriously; at other times he did not. One of 
 his duels — that with M. de Forbin — seems to 
 belong to farcical extravaganza. Crippled with 
 gout, he fired his pistol, sitting in a bath-chair, 
 and honour was declared to be satisfied when the 
 chair was hit. There are stories, too, of his having 
 ridiculed, at the gaming-table, the impassioned 
 arguments which he had just employed in the 
 Chamber ; and he certainly suffered in public 
 esteem by his frequentation of such resorts. But 
 he was thoroughly in earnest when he wrote about 
 religion. As Sainte-Beuve justly says : " ' I wish 
 I could believe ' is written across the pages of his 
 work on that great subject as clearly as * I wish 
 I could love' is written across the pages of 
 Adolpke^ Nor was his conduct by any means 
 that of a farceur during the days of the Revolu- 
 tion of 1830. 
 
 357 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 The outbreak found him in the country, where 
 he had just undergone a grave operation, when 
 Lafayette wrote to him : *' We are playing a game 
 here in which our heads may be the stakes. 
 Come and lay your own stake on the table." 
 The doctors forbade him to stir, but he defied 
 them, caused himself to be carried in a sedan- 
 chair to the Hotel de Ville, and supported, in 
 an eloquent harangue, the monarchical solution 
 of the crisis. " They carried him," says M. Loeve 
 Veimars, " from the Hotel de Ville to the Palais 
 Royal. It was a banner torn and tattered by 
 many combats that they thus unfolded and dis- 
 played with enthusiasm before the fire of the 
 enemy." His reward, apart from his self-satisfac- 
 tion, was a gift of 200,000 francs from Louis- 
 Philippe ; and his enemies naturally declared that 
 he had been bought, though his friends avow 
 that, in accepting the gift, he stipulated that 
 he should still be considered free to oppose the 
 Government if he disagreed with its measures. 
 
 At the height of his political influence and 
 success, however, he remained a supremely un- 
 happy man, as is clear from his letters to his 
 cousins. Sometimes it is his failing health that 
 is his trouble. He fell one day, while descending 
 from the tribune, and thenceforward suffered from 
 lameness in addition to his gout, and had to walk 
 with crutches. " The axe," he writes to Rosalie, 
 "has been laid to the root of the tree." Perhaps 
 he will live for another ten or twenty years, but 
 
 358 
 
Failing Health 
 
 only from day to day, " thanking nature like the 
 man who every morning thanked the Sultan 
 because his head was still on his shoulders." 
 His chest, too, is affected. It gets worse every 
 winter. " One of these winters it will be all over 
 with me, and that winter is not very distant." 
 A little later, he says : — 
 
 "Thirty years ago I said to myself that, after 
 I was fifty, I would not worry about my health 
 except for the purpose of avoiding acute suffering, 
 and I am more faithful to this resolution than 
 I expected to be. My stomach is getting weak, 
 and my eyes are failing. I do nothing to fortify 
 the former, and I do not spare the latter. If 
 I lose my sight before my death, I will keep quiet 
 and ruminate on my past life. Meanwhile I 
 remain active by habit, like the knight in 
 Ariosto, who went on fighting, forgetting that 
 he was dead." 
 
 And then it is : — 
 
 ** Yes, dear Rosalie, the years roll by, taking our 
 strength with them, and bringing infirmities in 
 their train. Bit by bit, they deprive us of all our 
 pleasures, leaving us for sustenance only the past 
 which is sorrowful, and for perspective only the 
 future which is short. I thank you for what you 
 say as to the use to which I have put my life. I 
 have not done the quarter of what I meant to do, and 
 if I were not very much ashamed of having wasted 
 my time and my powers, I should be very proud 
 of all the kind things that people are saying about 
 what I have achieved in spite of the waste. For 
 
 359 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 the rest, what does it matter ? A ditch is there, 
 awaiting the laborious as well as the lazy, the 
 famous as well as the obscure, closing com- 
 placently without caring what it covers. I should 
 like to see you before I descend into it ; but I 
 dare no longer make plans. ... I work, as they 
 say, to 'leave something behind me.' This me, 
 what will become of it, and what will it have in 
 common with that which I shall have left ? No 
 matter! I work because habit compels me and 
 the time is heavy on my hands." 
 
 Last of all we may quote this passage from a 
 letter written to Charles de Constant on the 
 occasion of the death of his wife : — 
 
 " Thus is the world depopulated for those who 
 are advanced in life. All that is dear to them 
 forsakes them, and the world is no longer for 
 them anything but a vast desert, to be crossed 
 with courage. But courage is not the same thing 
 as happiness." 
 
 When that was written, the end was very near, 
 though there was still time for one more failure. 
 On November i8, 1830, Benjamin Constant pre- 
 sented himself unsuccessfully as a candidate for 
 a vacant chair in the French Academy. To the 
 author of Adolphe the Academicians preferred a 
 M. Viennet, whoever he may have been ; and 
 about three weeks afterwards, on December 8, 
 he died. 
 
 Life had disappointed him ; success had come 
 360 
 
A Great Tribute 
 
 to him too late to be gratifying; he had but 
 recently written that he was glad that he was sixty 
 years of age, and that his pilgrimage was nearly 
 over. But his funeral was a blaze of triumph, 
 and the people mourned for him as for a hero, 
 A civic wreath was laid upon his seat in the 
 Chamber. A demand was made that the entire 
 Chamber, in costume, should attend his obsequies, 
 and that a mourning crape should be attached for 
 several days to the flag placed in the Hall of 
 Session, above the President's chair. Crape was 
 also hung from the windows of many of the 
 houses in the streets through which the procession 
 passed. The students, who idolised him, un- 
 harnessed the horses from the funeral car and drew 
 it themselves to Pere Lachaise. Lafayette pro- 
 nounced the funeral oration over his grave. ** From 
 nine o'clock to eleven," writes one of Miss Berry's 
 correspondents, "there were eight or nine pro- 
 cessions at a time crossing the Tuileries Gardens, 
 headed by tricoloured flags, with his name and 
 * Libert6 et Droit ' written upon them. The pro- 
 cession reached almost the whole length of the 
 boulevards ; nothing similar was ever seen at 
 Paris except at the funeral of General Foy." 
 
 A great tribute truly, though if he had known 
 that it was to be paid, his cynicism would have 
 stood between him and any sublime sense of 
 exaltation. The passion of his life was not to be 
 applauded, but to be loved; and it would have 
 meant more to him to know that his wife, whom 
 
 361 
 
Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 
 
 he had so often treated so badly, mourned for him 
 in all sincerity. 
 
 " Dear good cousin," she wrote to Rosalie, '* I 
 only write you a few lines to-day to say that I 
 owe to your letter a few moments of respite from 
 my grief. It is so full of friendship for my poor 
 Benjamin, so full of understanding of his noble 
 character and his loving and tormented heart, so 
 indulgent for the need which he felt for excite- 
 ment and agitation — precisely because it was 
 inseparable from the need of liberty and the hatred 
 of all oppression." 
 
 Things being as they were, he would have 
 asked, one imagines, no better testimonial, no 
 kinder epitaph. We may read it as the proof 
 that in one at least of his aspirations he had 
 succeeded. " Rendons Charlotte heureuse " is one 
 of the good resolutions of the Diary, repeated in 
 one of the letters to Madame Recamier, to whom 
 Benjamin Constant wrote : " I should like to finish 
 my days in tranquillity, giving to the person of 
 whose destiny I have taken charge, and who is 
 angelic in her affection and goodness, a happiness 
 which I will try to pretend to share." 
 
 It was a happiness which he assuredly did not 
 succeed in sharing ; for he asked more from life, 
 and from women, than Charlotte — than any 
 woman, for that matter — had it in her power to 
 give him. But Charlotte refused to make her 
 own limitations a ground of quarrel with him ; 
 she was not jealous of his past, and did not try to 
 
 362 
 
"The Good Charlotte" 
 
 disturb him in the sanctuary of his inner life, but 
 yielded herself to deception, and had her reward 
 in happiness, still cherishing her idol in spite of 
 her knowledge that it had feet of clay. Nor did 
 her love or her adoration cease with death. Years 
 afterwards, when Charles de Constant called upon 
 her in Paris, she received him, standing by her 
 husband's bust. 
 
 The End 
 
 363 
 
INDEX 
 
 Acosta, Chateau d', 195. 
 "Adolphe," 125, 214, 312, 314, 
 
 316, 317, 320, 321, 323, 353, 
 
 354, 357, 360. 
 Albany, Comtesse d', 174, 237, 
 
 269, 338. 
 Alembert, d', 27. 
 Alfieri, 335. 
 " de rAUemagne," 246, 248, 250, 
 
 279, 281, 294. 
 Arblay, General d', 67. 
 Argenson, Marquis d', 328. 
 Argenson, Rene d', 332. 
 Auxerre, 194. 
 
 Barante, Prospere de, 190, 261, 
 
 342. 
 Barclay de Tolly, 273. 
 Barras, 102-105, 329. 
 Bernadotte, 292. 
 Berry, Miss, 74, 285, 286, 297, 
 
 313, 324, 32s, 329, 344. 
 Boissy-d'Anglas, 102. 
 Bonaparte, Joseph, 132, 133, 
 
 138, 149. 
 Bon deli, Julie von, 4, 17. 
 Bonstetten, 20, 30, 127, 161, 197, 
 
 199, 200-202, 244, 256, 351. 
 Bowles, 288. 
 Brevans, 231-233. 
 Broglie, Due de, 313, 324, 325, 
 
 328-330, 332, 334, 335-337, 
 
 341, 342, 344-346, 351- 
 Broglie, Duchesse de, 333, 337, 
 
 352. See also Stael, Alber- 
 
 tine de. 
 Brougham, Henry, 288, 337. 
 Brun, Frederika, 194, 197, 244. 
 Bruns\vick, Prince of, 138. 
 
 Brunswick, Princess of, 138. 
 Burney, Dr., 68. 
 Burney, Fanny, 38, 67-70. 
 Byron, 185, 285-287, 303, 338-340- 
 Byron, Lady, 339. 
 
 CandoUe, de, 337. 
 
 Canning, 325. 
 
 Carbonnifere, Ramond de, 35, 
 280. 
 
 Caroline, Queen of Naples, 301. 
 
 Cayla, Mile, 11. 
 
 Charles-Augustus, Duke, 138. 
 
 "Charlotte," 212-214, 216-223, 
 228-231, 234-237, 241, 256- 
 258, 260, 264, 265, 275-278, 
 290, 292, 311, 326, 347, 356, 
 362. See also Madame 
 Dutertre. 
 
 Charrifere, M. de, 89, 92. 
 
 Charriere, Madame de, 89-92, 
 94, 96, 98, 141, 163, 188, 206, 
 208, 213, 229. 
 
 Chateaubriand, 114, 310, 343. 
 
 Chateauvieux, Frederic de, 337. 
 
 Chatre, Marquise de la, 67, 77. 
 
 Coleridge, 287. 
 
 Colombier, 89, 93-96. 
 
 " Considerations sur la Revolu- 
 tion frangaise," 340. 
 
 Constant, Benjamin, 32, 82-84, 
 el passim. 
 
 Constant, M. Juste de, 231. 
 
 Constant, Madame, 310, 312. 
 See also " Charlotte." 
 
 Constant, Rosalie de, 44, 84, 94, 
 100, 102, 112, 117, 119-121, 
 140,141,151, 153, 197, 201,202, 
 213, 223, 225, 234, 236, 239, 
 
 365 
 
Index 
 
 240, 242, 243, 251, 261, 298, 
 300, 316, 317, 358, 362. 
 
 Coppet, 31, 32, 34, 48, 49, 60, 61, 
 62, 71, 72, 75, 81, 102, 109, 
 no,. 115, 117, 127, 130, 140, 
 149, 172, 177, 182, 185, 209, 
 219, 224, 239, 242, 244, 319, 
 
 324, 332, 334, 343, 351- 
 "Corinne," 174, 185, 186, 189-193, 
 
 215,250, 267, 281, 353,354- 
 Correvon, M., 10, 11. 
 Courland, Duchess of, 138, 165, 
 
 196, 202. 
 Cram, Baroness von, 94. 
 Grassier, 2, 5, 23. 
 Croker, 288. 
 Curchod, Suzanne, i, 3-8, 10-12, 
 
 20, 22. See also Madame 
 
 Necker. 
 Curchod, Pastor, 6, 21. 
 Curran, 287. 
 Cuvier, 197, 200. 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey, 287. 
 
 Decazes, Due, 343. 
 
 "Delphine," 113, 123-126, 129, 
 131, 188, 306. 
 
 Devonshire, Duchess of, 287. 
 
 Deyverdun, M., 8. 
 
 Diderot, 27. 
 
 Divonne, M. de, 198. 
 
 " Dix Annees d'Exil," 247, 267, 
 274. 
 
 Dumont, Etienne, 287, 2)37' 
 
 Dutertre, M., 215, 217, 218. 
 
 Dutertre, Madame, 173, 212, 
 215,216,232. See also Is/idLdaxne. 
 de Hardenberg and "Char- 
 lotte." 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 285. 
 
 Fauriel, 116, 215. 
 Fersen, Count, 40. 
 Fichte, 138. 
 Forbin, M. de, 303, 304, 357. 
 
 Galiani, Abbe, 27. 
 GenHs, Madame de, 123. 
 
 Gerando, M. de, 52, 128-130, 
 
 139, 217, 298. 
 Gibbon, 4-10, 12,23,26,27,29,30, 
 
 61,63,64, 151, 156, 241, 329. 
 " Glenarvon," 339. 
 Gloucester, Duke of, 287. 
 Godwin, 287. 
 Goethe, i34-i37, 142- 
 Gonfalonieri, 336. 
 Grattan, 287. 
 
 Grimm, Baron, 27, 74, 81, 88. 
 Guibert, General, 38, 39, 40, 52, 
 
 126, 
 
 Hamilton, Lady, 319. 
 
 Hardenberg, Madame de, 112, 
 154, 162. See also Madame 
 Dutertre and " Charlotte." 
 
 Hardenberg, Princess von, 231. 
 
 Harrowby, Lord, 288, 325. 
 
 Haussonville, Comte d', 334. 
 
 Hennin, Princesse d', 67. 
 
 Herder, 137, 142. 
 
 Hervey, Mrs., 338, 339. 
 
 Holland, Lady, 288, 313. 
 
 Huber, Mademoiselle, 28. See 
 also Madame Rilliet-Huber. 
 
 Humboldt, 325. 
 
 Hume, David, 27. 
 
 Jaucourt, M., 67, 71, 76. 
 Jersey, Lady, 279, 287. 
 Jordan, Camille, 129-131, 133, 
 
 172, 189, 194, 342. 
 "Journal Intime," 141, 223, 262, 
 
 292, 331. 
 Juniper Hall, 66. 
 Junot, 132. 
 Jurine, Dr., 344. 
 
 Kotzebue, 138, 139. 
 Krudner, Madame de, 127, 130, 
 245, 306-309, 314. 
 
 Lafayette, 361. 
 Laforest, 138. 
 Laharpe, 337. 
 Lally-Tollendal, 67, 343. 
 Lamb, Lady Caroline, 339. 
 
 366 
 
Index 
 
 Langallerie, M. de, 198, 219, 
 
 245, 338. 
 Lansdowne, Lord, 287, 337. 
 Le Brun, Madame Vigee, 197. 
 Lespinasse,Madainoiselle, 38,40. 
 Lieven, Madame de, 313. 
 Lindsay, Madame, 154, 177, 
 
 181, 182, 212, 316, 319. 
 Liverpool, Lord, 287, 294. 
 Louise, Duchess, 138. 
 Louis Philippe, 358. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 185, 287, 
 
 325- 
 Maistre, Count Joseph de, 81. 
 Malouet, M., 67. 
 Malthus, 288. 
 
 Marmontel, M. de, 22, 27, 64. 
 Maulinie, Pastor, 198. 
 Meistei-, Henri, 62, 74, 79, 80, 
 
 102, 113, 115, r35, 245, 251, 
 
 252, 29s, 343, 351. 
 Mickleham, 38, 66, 297. 
 Montesquiou, M. de, 77. 
 Monti, Vincenzo, 176, 187 196, 
 
 210, 336. 
 Montmorency, Mathieu de, 53, 
 
 67, 71, 76, 194, 198, 246, 247, 
 
 266, 296, 345. 
 Morellet, Abbe, 27. 
 Morris, Gouverneur, 54-56, 185. 
 Moultou, Pastor, 7, 10, 22. 
 Murray, John, 279, 289, 294. 
 
 Napoleon, 132, 150, 173, 195, 
 280, 267, 269, 272, 274, 292, 
 296, 310, 330, 351. 
 
 Narbonne, M. de, 52, 54, 56, 57, 
 58, 63, 65-68, 70, 74-76, 78, 
 loi, 126, 129, 131, 150, 189, 
 254, 255, 285, 297, 329. 
 
 Narishkin, 273. 
 
 Nassau, Madame de, 105, 112, 
 152, 153, 219, 227-231, 233, 
 235, 236, 241. 
 
 Necker, Anne - Louise - Ger- 
 maine, 26, 28, 30, 34, 36, 38, 
 41, 42. See also Stael, 
 Madame de. 
 
 Necker, Jacques, 11-16, 17, 20- 
 
 22, 24, 25, 29-31, 33, 34, 40, 
 43, 46-48, 54-57, 60-62, 65, 
 T2, 74,80, no, 146, 147,281, 
 
 291, 353- 
 Necker, Louis, 13, 17-19, 
 
 48. 
 Necker, Madame, 1, 7, 9, 10, 
 
 21-27, 29, 30, 34, 59-61, 63, 
 
 64, 74, 79, 156. See also 
 
 Suzanne Curchod. 
 Necker de Saussure, Madame, 
 
 28, 37, 124, 125, 149, 166, 
 
 170. 
 
 Oberkirch, Baroness d', 21. 
 Oelenschlager, 197, 246. 
 Orange, Prince of, 138, 139. 
 Orleans, Duke of, 345. 
 Orloff, 273. 
 
 Pavilliard, Pastor, 4. 
 Phillips, Mrs., 67, 70. 
 Pictet, 196. 
 Pitt, William, 40, 72. 
 
 Radziwill, 138, 139. 
 
 Randall, Mile, 201, 345, 346. 
 
 Raynal, Abb^, 22, 27, 30. 
 
 Recamier, M., 211. 
 
 Recamier, Madame, 70, 127, 
 132, 180-182, 196-198, 204, 
 206, 215, 247, 266, 269, 300, 
 301, 309, 310, 314, 315, 325- 
 327, 333, 340, 348, 357, 362. 
 
 Reichardt, 136. 
 
 RilHet-Huber, 201, 252, 295, 
 343. See also Huber, Made- 
 moiselle. 
 
 Ritter, Karl, 196. 
 
 Robinson, Crabb, 134, 141, 279, 
 281, 287, 288, 353- 
 
 Rocca, Albert-Michel-Jean de, 
 255-260, 267-270, 272, 274- 
 276, 290, 295, 296, 329, 337, 
 340, 341, 343, 346, 347, 352- 
 
 Rocca, Alphonse de, 351. 
 
 Rogers, 288. 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 287. 
 
 367 
 
Index 
 
 Rousseau, Jean -Jacques, 7, 18, 
 
 91, 312. 
 Royer-Collard, 342. 
 
 Sabran, Comte de, 197, 199, 
 200, 246, 266. 
 
 Saint-Lambert, M., 27. 
 
 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 27. 
 
 SivUssure, M. de, 81. 
 
 Schiller, 136, 137. 
 
 Schlegel, A. W., 138, r49j iS4, 
 156, 161, 165-166, 169, 174, 
 185, 187, 188, 194-197, 199, 
 200, 202, 208, 211, 218, 225, 
 244-247, 268, 281, 293, 298, 
 
 336, 337, 341, 346, 353- 
 
 Sheridan, 287. 
 
 Sismondi, 127, 148, 149, 161, 
 164, 165, 174, 196, 199, 200, 
 204, 237, 246, 269, 319, 333, 
 
 335, 351- 
 Stael, Albert de, 60, 149, 195, 
 
 239, 251, 269, 270, 285. 
 Stael, Albertine de, 108, 137, 
 
 141, 143, 176, 199, 202, 276, 
 
 278, 294, 298, 305, 313, 327- 
 
 329, 331-334- 
 
 Stael, Auguste de, 195, 199, 200, 
 238, 260, 268,293,332,351. 
 
 Stael-Holstein, Baron de, 38, 
 40-42, 45, 49, 52, 53, 58. 
 
 Stael, Madame de, 4, 9, 10, 13, 
 30, 32, 38, 39, 44-46, 48, 50, 51, 
 53-58, 60, 62, 66-72, 74, 75, 
 78, 79, 81, 82, et passim. 
 
 Stafford, Lord, 288. 
 Stein, 273, 282. 
 Stormont, Lord, 27. 
 Suard, M., 27, 185. 
 Sussex, Duke of, 287. 
 Suvaroff, 273. 
 
 Talleyrand, M. de, 52, 54, 56, 
 67, 75, 76, 78, 104, 124, 126, 
 293, 340. 
 
 Tallien, 59, 102. 
 
 Talma, Madame, 143, 158, 161, 
 162, 170, 180-184, 206,319. 
 
 Thelusson, 20, 31. 
 
 Thomas, 27, 64. 
 
 Tieck, 231. 
 
 Tissot, Dr., 2, 30. 
 
 Tronchin, Dr., 18, 27, 28. 
 
 " Valerie," 306. 
 
 Vermenoux, Madame, 20-22, 
 
 74. 
 Vemes, Madame, 18. 
 Vernet, 20. 
 Villers, 129, 137, 280. 
 Voght, Baron de, 196, 198, 200, 
 
 256. 
 Voss, 135. 
 
 Weimar, 137, 138-141. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 325. 
 Werner, 196, 200, 246. 
 Whitbread, 287. 
 Wieland, 137, 142. 
 Wilberforce, 288. 
 
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